an oncoming car.
The new car held down its blaring horn for a long time as it sailed northward on the boulevard. Sal punched the gas, tires squealing as he turned left, crossing the centerline of the road and bulleting southbound.
His taillights were vanishing red dots by the time the guys in the second car climbed back inside, laughing and crowing that they’d sure showed him.
The press of male bodies grew thicker as Ginger neared the club’s front door. A wise guy grabbed her right breast and squeezed it clown-like, like he was honking a horn. She leaned into him and she must have worked a knee, because the joker went white-faced and open-mouthed as he crumpled up like a crushed beer can.
Ginger brushed past him and disappeared inside the club. The guy she’d kneed lay curled up on his side on the pavement, gasping for breath, clutching himself with both hands between his legs. His face had gone from white to green.
Those nearby, including the guy’s buddies, thought that was funny as hell and stood around yukking it up. They didn’t think it was so funny a moment later when a club bouncer came barreling out the front door, looking more than ready to do some bouncing.
He told the joker’s buddies to get him the hell out of there. They hauled the disabled man to his feet, holding him up with their hands hooked under his arms. He was still using both hands to hold his privates. His pals half carried, half dragged him across the lot and loaded him into their parked car.
The beefy bouncer stood there with meaty fists on his hips, watching them as they drove away. He went back inside the club.
Steve had paid little attention to the distraction, focusing on the tail man, the Crown Vic driver still standing on the corner. Steve stood where he could watch the other without being seen by him. Five minutes passed before the other made a move, starting up the street toward the club. He made a beeline for the entrance. Steve got a good look at him.
The tail man was big, with a bodybuilder’s physique, one that had been augmented by megadoses of steroids. He would have made the club bouncer look modest-sized by comparison. Fortyish, he wore his dark hair cropped close to the scalp, as close as a three-day beard. His blocky head seemed as wide as it was long. His brows were thick dark vertical lines; he had a thick black mustache of the type that Steve for some reason always associated with firefighters and cops.
The tail man didn’t look like a firefighter, but he didn’t seem the type for a shadow job either; he was too broad-beamed to be unobtrusive, to pass for just another face in the crowd. If a subject once caught a look at him, he woudn’t be forgotten. He was a big bastard. Appearances be damned, though; a tail man was just what he was. A tail man and what else?
He wore a dark sport jacket, tight T-shirt, and baggy slacks. He wore a gun in a shoulder rig, and from the size of the bulge it made under his left arm, it must have been some cannon.
At first impression, Steve would have tagged him for a cop, an undercover cop maybe. That would have jibed with the Crown Vic he was driving; the machine had a major-league mill with mucho muscle under the hood, and was favored by a lot of police departments around the country.
Steve checked out the man’s shoes; shoes were a tipoff. Cops, even undercover ones, tend to pamper themselves with a certain kind of shoe: wide, thick-soled black oxfords that are comfortable for those who spent a lot of time on their feet. This guy, though, was wearing heavy-duty work boots with reinforced toes; they stuck out from beneath wide-legged pant cuffs. Footwear that was good for kicking down doors or giving a stomping.
Whoever he was, before he stepped through the club’s front doors, a couple of head shots of him were snapped by Steve’s cell phone camera.
Steve wasn’t much for fancy gadgetry when he was on assignment; the fancier the gadget, the more that could go wrong with it. Should he be apprehended by the authorities, it wouldn’t do to be found in possession of sophisticated hardware that could be sourced back to the military and compromise his cover.
Nowadays, everybody has a cell phone, and even the most basic models come with built-in cameras. Steve’s cell had a few refinements that weren’t exactly standard option, such as an encrypter-decrypter, scrambler, and several other security devices, including a fail-safe destruct mechanism that would activate if any unauthorized personnel tried to tamper with or investigate the unit, turning its hardware into a fused lump of slag that looked like the results of battery leakage.
The communication mode was now switched off; when Steve was on the hunt, there was no distracting taking or receiving of calls.
The tail man smelled of cop, but it didn’t figure. Durwood Quentin III was in deep shit, but it was all on the federal level. No federal investigative agency, not the FBI or ATF or any of the others, tolerates heavy steroid use by its personnel, and this guy was seriously on the juice. That was obvious at a glance; even his muscles had muscles. Legitimate bodybuilding can do only so much and no more; you can be sure that anybody built like a comic book superhero got there with some chemical assistance.
The same generally went for state cops. A county or city cop could get away with it maybe. But why would they be interested in Quentin? The tail man’s acquaintance with the likes of Ginger could indicate a vice squad operation. Or a criminal one, either Mob or independent. Or who knows what…?
Whatever it was, Steve didn’t like it, but for now he’d play a waiting game. He decided against going into The Booby Hatch for a look-see. He didn’t think the tail man was on to him, and didn’t want to risk tipping him off by nosing around too closely.
Steve hung around outside the club for another five minutes before slipping away. He crossed the street, taking a circuitous route to an alley he’d noticed earlier and filed away mentally as a good potential observation post.
Certain that he was unobserved, he eased into the passageway between two buildings, where a few paces swallowed him up in blackness. From the alley mouth, he could see the club, its parking lot, and down the street where the Crown Vic was parked. He stood around for a couple of minutes, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the lack of light before giving the alley a quick once-over. The passageway didn’t run clear through the block of buildings to the next parallel street; it terminated in a kind of courtyard behind the backs of the two buildings fronting the street, and was used by both businesses as a parking lot. It was empty now of all but a white delivery van.
The back of the space was hemmed by an eight-foot-high chain-link fence; beyond lay a long gravel strip ten feet wide that bordered the backs of several one-and two-story commercial buildings separated by driveways and walkways that accessed the street parallel to this one.
That was good. No locals were going to be using the alley as a shortcut between the two streets. Steve settled in for stakeout.
About fifteen minutes later, the tail man emerged from inside the club. The crowd of loiterers was thinning, though the lot was still about two thirds full of parked cars. He stood off to one side by himself, smoking a cigarette.
Ten minutes later, Quentin came out through the front doors, hanging all over Ginger, an arm draped across her shoulders. Loose-jointed, disheveled, his red flushed face plastered with a sloppy grin, he seemed to be feeling no pain.
The tail man was in Quentin’s field of vision, or would have been if Quentin hadn’t been busy trying to look down the front of Ginger’s top. He didn’t have to look hard to see much; that plunging V-neckline put plenty on display.
Ginger and the tail man made eye contact for an instant, no mutual flash of recognition
