setting in motion the murder of Colonel Millard Sterling, an honorable officer who was doing his duty, Brinker prexy Durwood Quentin III had crossed a threshold and entered the Dog Team’s gunsights.
Team member Steve Ireland had drawn the sanction. Now somebody else was trying to horn in on the game.
Who?
Less than an hour earlier, Quentin’s Cadillac had rolled into The Booby Hatch’s parking lot. The Crown Victoria that had been following it continued southbound to the next intersection and turned left into a side street.
A few cars behind, Steve Ireland’s sedan cruised through the cross street and kept on going. Glancing left, he saw the Crown Vic’s red taillights come winking on as it braked to a halt in the middle of the side street. In his rearview mirror, he saw the vehicle make an illegal K-turn back onto the main drag, so that it was pointing northbound toward the club.
At the next light, Steve turned right, then right again, putting him northbound on a street running parallel to the one where the club was located. He followed it for a couple of blocks, made another right, then another, emerging southbound on the boulevard a long block above The Booby Hatch.
Pulling in at the curb a couple of car lengths past the corner, he parked the car and killed the lights. Rolled up the windows and switched off the engine.
The overhead dome light was switched off so that it wouldn’t light up when the car doors were opened. Steve got out of the car and locked it. It was on the opposite side of the street from the club, a good hard stone’s throw away. The neighborhood was pretty crummy, but there wasn’t much danger of the car being broken into or stolen, not on The Booby Hatch’s Mob-protected turf.
Reaching under the left side of his utility vest, he surreptitiously adjusted the flat pistol tucked butt-out in the top of his pants against his hip so that it sat the way he liked it. On a hot night like this when everybody was wearing lightweight summer clothes, wedging the gun in his waistband was less conspicuous than wearing a shoulder rig or clip-on belt holster.
He made sure his T-shirt covered the rod. It would slow his draw, but life is trade-offs. The flap of the utility vest reached down below below his hip and added to the concealment.
He strolled along the sidewalk, toward the club. The economy might be in the toilet, but you’d never know it by the mass of parked cars crowding The Booby Hatch’s lot. The witching hour was near, tomorrow was a work day, but the joint was jumping. It just goes to show people find the money for what they really want, Steve thought.
The building throbbed with the muffled beat of electronically amplified, bass-heavy dance music that thudded like war drums in the night. Loud as it was, it couldn’t drown out the buzzing and crackling of the neon sign that spelled out the club’s name over the entrance. The lurid red glare splashed the front and sidewalk like the blaze of a burning building.
Knots of men milled around, both blue-collar working stiffs and suit-and-tie office drones. From the noise they were making and the seething restlessness of their movements, it was obvious that more than a few of them had a load on.
Steve kept on walking. Further down the block, he spotted the Crown Vic parked on the same side of the street as the club. It was empty.
Two attributes his trade demanded were sharp eyes and good night vision. He spotted a man standing on the corner of the side street where the Crown Vic had made a K-turn. The man stood in a patch of gloom, but the street lamps were so bright that there wasn’t much shadow to be found.
A big guy, with short dark hair and a mustache. The guy from the Crown Vic. He was talking to a woman. Steve couldn’t make out too much detail, but from what he could see of her figure and how much skin she was showing, it was a sure bet that she wasn’t a recruiter from the local mission making a midnight run to save souls. Their heads were close together, but their body language said that they weren’t a couple, at least not in the usual sense of the term.
Steve checked for traffic, turned, stepped down off the curb, and crossed the street, angling back toward the club. It was easy to melt into the swarm of drunks and loudmouths clustered on the sidewalk and in the parking lot. The neon sign buzzed, the red glare seethed and flickered, the electro-beat was a physical thing that vibrated through the pavement.
Nobody paid any attention to Steve. Covering behind an SUV, he looked for the couple on the corner.
They must have come to a parting of the ways, because the woman was walking along the sidewalk toward the club, while the man hung back on the corner, idling in place. She moved like she felt right at home, striding boldly, confidently, breasts bobbing, hips swaying, long legs flashing. As she neared, Steve got a better look at her. She was the kind of woman used to being looked at, and worked hard at it.
She had long hair and wore a dark, low-cut sleeveless top, a skirt whose hem barely reached the top of her thighs, and knee-high shiny white high-heeled boots. As she closed in on the club, the click-clacking of her high heels against the pavement beat out a percussive rhythm that made itself heard over the clamor of the dance music, the buzzing sound, and the hangers-on crowding around in front of the building.
The loiterers started buzzing louder than the sign as they became aware of her presence. Heads swiveled around so fast to take a look at her that some of their owners risked whiplash. Eyes bulged or narrowed, depending on their owners. Gawkers nudged their buddies to get an eyeful of the newcomer.
She was an eyeful, all right. In her high-heeled boots, she stood about five-nine. Her red-hair was cut in bangs across her forehead and hung down at the sides to mid-chest level. Her hair was cherry red, and from its uniform straightness and the glossy artificiality of it, it looked like a wig.
Her skin was bone-white, her features bold. Wide dark eyes were ringed with enough mascara to give them a raccoon aspect; a bold, red-lipped mouth turned up at the corners, though not necessarily in a smile. She was broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, wide-hipped, and long-legged. Her breasts were strictly from implants, and the cosmetic surgeon hadn’t stinted on the silicone on the day they were installed.
Catcalls and whistles, hoots and hollers vented among the loiterers as she moved among their midst. A car was pulling out of the parking lot, causing her to pause to let it pass. Steve used the opportunity to take a couple of pictures of her with his cell phone camera for future reference. The street was almost as well lit up as the crowd, allowing the camera to catch a pretty sharp image.
The car braked to a halt, blocking the sidewalk. The driver’s-side window rolled down and the driver, a curly-haired fat-faced guy, stuck out his head. He must have known her, because he called familiarly to her. “Ginger! Hey, Ginger, it’s me, Sal! C’mere, doll!”
Ignoring him, Ginger walked around the back of the car, making her way toward the club’s front entrance. Sal rolled down the passenger-side window and leaned across the front seat, continuing to call to her. “C’mon, let’s go for a ride! Ginger!!”
Wriggling eel-like through the knots of males, not looking back, she kept on her hip-swaying way. With practiced ease, she avoided the clutching hands of guys trying to cop a feel.
“Ginger, Ginger!”
Another car was trying to get out of the lot, but Sal’s car was blocking the exit. The driver of the second car leaned on the horn hard. Sal gave him the finger and shouted what the other could do to himself. The second car had four guys inside; a couple of them opened the doors and started to get out. Sal saw them coming. His car lurched forward into the street,
