Deadly Silence (Silence Jones Action Thrillers Series) Page 4

  Kip faced Jake, in an armchair, which was much older looking than the sofa, and standing to the side was Wesley, his hand on his father’s shoulder. The two of them wore the same clothes from earlier in the evening—Kip, a green flannel work jacket over a faded blue polo shirt; Wesley, a black V-neck T-shirt and a pair of baggy, light-washed jeans.

  Seeing the outfits again not in the warehouse's dark parking lot but in the bright, warm light of the living room, sent a wave of melancholy over Jake. He pictured Kip on the asphalt, screaming, Glover kicking him in the side.

  A woman of Kip’s age, her brown hair streaked with white and eyes filled with dread, sat in the adjacent loveseat beside a pale-skinned teenage daughter wearing wannabe goth clothing. A boy of about three was splayed out on the round, red area rug smashing Hot Wheels cars together, and when his mother commanded him to stop, he huffed and ran the cars in parallel lines along the pattern of the rug.

  “Pensacola Police?” Kip said. “Florida … I don’t understand.”

  Jake was taking a hell of a chance revealing himself to Bowman, but there was still only so much detail he could provide. So he said, “The men you’ve seen me with, the two I was with earlier, are part of a gang out of Pensacola. There’s an organized crime connection between that gang and Nick Moretti’s. I need you to tell me what’s happened here. From the beginning.”

  He pulled his PenPal notebook from his pocket, a brand-new one he’d picked up at an office supply store on the way to the Bowman’s. The cover was bright orange; the pages were clean and fresh. He took the mechanical pencil from the binding.

  Kip looked up at his son—who squeezed his shoulder encouragingly, walked away—and then faced Jake again.

  “Three months ago, one of Moretti’s men comes to my shop. Says that we were lucky enough to be selected for protection service. We were told that we were to pay an annual fee of ten thousand.”

  A classic protection racket—a scheme in which a group of ne’er-do-wells guarantee “safety” from violence to individuals who pay up. But the protection they’re providing isn’t from any genuine threat; rather those who have offered the protection will supply the violence should payment not be made.

  Jake nodded. “You went to the police, I hope?”

  “Of course. But what are they going to do? Everyone knows Moretti runs the show around here, but no one can touch him. And besides, it’s not like the man we saw officially announced himself as one of Moretti’s men.”

  “So you gathered your money.”

  “Ten thousand is a lot to pay, but what choice did I have? I made a withdrawal from our bank and was on my way to the place Moretti’s man told us to meet, and these two black panel vans chased me off the road, into a parking lot. Three men robbed us at gunpoint.”

  “Describe them.”

  “They wore black ski masks. Big guys. Two of them were average height; one was pretty short.”

  “What happened then?”

  “We went to the drop point. Moretti’s man was waiting for us, the same one who came by our shop. We explained what happened, and he gave us another week to get the money, told us the time and location to drop it off.”

  “Which ended up being your first meeting with me and the two from Pensacola,” Jake said.

  Kip nodded. “Right. We got the money, headed for the drop point, and it happened again. The same men, the same black vans. Then at the meeting, your man, the mean one, the one with the stocky build, demanded the cash with twenty percent interest in five days.”

  “So before you came to make that payment tonight, you were intercepted once more?”

  Kip threw up his hands, shook his head. “We went to a different bank branch, took a different route to the drop point, and they still found us. And now your man wants fourteen grand and is only giving us until tomorrow. I’m not going to be able to raise that kind of money. We’ve just lost thirty-two thousand dollars! We have no more money, and—”

  He paused. Proud tears welled in his eyes. His wife hopped off the loveseat, crouched beside him, took his hand. He looked at her, ran his thick fingers along her face, then turned to Jake.

  “I think it’s Moretti,” Kip said. “He’s having his men stage these robberies. Taking our money over and over until he bleeds us dry, then he’ll move on to the next one.”

  “No,” Jake said. “It’s not Moretti.”

  “How do you know?”

  Because I just sat across from him an hour ago, Jake thought.

  “Just trust me. It’s not him.”

  “Then who?”

  Jake leaned back, the squishy sofa cushion accepting him with a wheeze. He looked at the plastered ceiling.

  Who indeed?

  “If it’s not Moretti…” Jake paused, looked to the floor, watched the Hot Wheels cars exploring the rug. A sick thought occurred to him… “If it’s not him, someone had to have tipped him off. And it had to be someone who knew you were being pressured by Moretti, someone who—”

  There was a metallic click from behind.

  Across from Jake, Kip’s eyes went wide, going up and to the right, looking over Jake’s shoulder.

  Jake slowly turned. The wooden bones of the sofa creaked.

  Wesley was behind him. Teeth bared, clenched. Brow furrowed. Eyes that belied his countenance, showed his fear.

  And in his hands was a revolver.

  Aimed at Jake.

  Chapter Seven

  Silence remembered the strange reaction that had fallen over him that night when he’d turned to find Wesley Bowman’s gun pointing at him. It hadn’t been panic; it hadn’t been fear. His mind simply continued forward in police officer mode, chiding himself—Why hadn’t you seen this coming?

  On the table was his shitload of scrambled eggs. A big, yellow, steaming mound. Eight eggs, Val had told him. He appreciated that she’d taken his request for a copious amount seriously. He’d put the plate at the back of the table—by the paper napkin dispenser and salt and pepper shakers—while it cooled.

  In front of him was the phonebook he’d requested, open to the gray pages of alphabetical listings within the business section. He’d flipped to the Bs. There was no listing for Bradshaw Incorporated.

  He shut the phonebook, pushed it aside, and centered his notebook in front of him, gave some thought to what he’d written earlier but was distracted by a constant stream of speech from Val. She was crouched inches away from him, arms crossed on the tabletop, chin resting on her right forearm.

  “My ex left me five years ago,” she said, eyes downcast, looking over the laminate as though studying the washrag swirl patterns. “Left me and my six-year-old son. But he’d had a foot out the door the whole time, for the entire year we dated before Toby was born. Haven’t gotten a call from him, let alone any kind of child support. I need this job. It’s a good job, believe it or not, for what it is. Tips aren’t bad, and the tables roll over fast, being right off the highway and all.”

  Silence wrote WESLEY BOWMAN, circled it, and drew a line connecting this new bubble to the BENITO RAMIREZ bubble. He hadn’t looked up, but he could feel her eyes upon him in the break in her speech.

  “You know, you’re a good listener. Unlike most men. Maybe it’s ’cause you don’t talk.”

  He glanced up at her then, blank-faced.

  “You really don’t talk much, do you?”

  “No.”

  She didn’t jump back as she had before, but her lips parted and she squinted, as though searching his face for the cause of his growl.

  “That’s a heck of a voice you have. You sound like a bullfrog with a smoking habit, like, three packs a day.” Her hands instantly covered her mouth, her pretty brown eyes going wide over her thumbs. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean anything by that.”

  Silence shrugged.

  She removed her hands, squinted at his face again. “Sounds like it hurts. Does it?”

  Silence nodded.

  A grimace-smile formed on her lips
, one of genuine sympathy. “Aww. I’m sorry. That’s gotta suck.” She studied him. “What’s your name, by the way?”

  Earlier he’d considered giving a pseudonym to Adriana and decided against it, but this time his decision was in the affirmative. The fake names he gave himself were always one-syllable, easing the strain on his throat a tad, and since he was in Bobbie Sue’s Family Restaurant, he went with, “Rob.”

  Not Bob.

  Rob.

  He liked Rob better.

  Val smiled. “Good to know you, Rob.” She folded her arms on the table again, put her head on her forearm and resumed her study of the laminate. “You have a good heart. You’re a good guy. I can tell. I’m good at reading people.”

  Silence was good at reading people too. C.C. had pointed it out to him during his days as a police officer, told him it was a skill he could use to his advantage in his line of work.

  From Val, he got the sense of a well-meaning soul fully committed to improvement. There were so many people who liked to tell you how they were turning their lives around, how they were dedicated to change. But few actually followed through. Val, he could tell, was one of the few genuinely committed individuals.

  She sure did talk a lot, though. And he didn’t have time to give her his full attention. He returned to his notepad, wrote TRAITOR beneath WESLEY BOWMAN, circled it.

  “At first I thought you were a jerk,” Val said. “Your voice makes you seem gruffer than you really are. You’re just a big teddy bear deep down, aren’t you?”

  I killed three men less than an hour ago, Silence thought.

  Val traced a fingernail along the tabletop, watched it. “Yeah, this isn’t a bad job for what it is. And I need it. But it definitely has its drawbacks, too. For one thing, there’s this point system they got in the computer. If you hit five points, they fire you. You get one point for being five minutes late. Can you believe that? You get a point if a customer complains, a point for chew-and-screws.”

  Silence looked up, raised an eyebrow.

  “Walkouts,” she clarified. “When a customer takes off without settling the bill.”

  He nodded.

  “Anyway, I have four points. One more and Kevin’ll can me. You have a kid, you end up being a few minutes late now and then—tee-ball practice, school cancellations. Before you know it, you have four points. Whatcha gonna do?

  “But the points aren’t the worst thing, believe it or not. It’s Kevin. The freakin’ night manager. He’s become the most significant man in my life aside from Toby. Ugh, how sad is that? Complete slime ball. Total creep. He’s disliked me from day one. Well, day two, actually. He hit on me the second night I worked here. Of course, I said no. I mean, the man looks like a garden gnome. And he’s weird. Who comes on to a subordinate on their second day at the job? I was even nice about rejecting him, but he’s given me a hard time ever since.”

  She lifted her head from her arms, looked past Silence.

  “Annnnnd there he is right now. Watching me. Shocker. See him?”

  Silence turned. “Yes.”

  Kevin really was a garden gnome—squat proportions carried on an average height, doughy face and pillow arms. Bald on top, cropped close on the sides. Short beard, half-full of gray. His short-sleeved blue shirt bore a name tag on one side and the Bobbie Sue’s logo on the other. He stared at Silence’s booth from the swinging doors leading into the kitchen. When he saw Silence gazing his way, he disappeared, the door swinging behind him, hinges squeaking.

  Val scoffed. “Coward. I swear he still has a thing for me. He must think I’m with you.” She gave a wry grin, bordering on salacious. “Not such a bad idea, actually. You’re not married, are you?”

  “Engaged.”

  “Shame. She’s a lucky lady. Anyone ever told you that you look like Johnny Depp?”

  “Yes.”

  Val glanced back toward the kitchen. “Kevin can’t give me a point for talking to you. There’s a section in the employee manual about ‘contagiously creative customer service.’ ‘3CS,’ they call it. Blech. I always play that card when I need a moment off my feet. It’s a nice little loophole. Kevin’s just trying to intimidate me, glaring at us like that. I’ll get a lecture later. But I’m gonna keep talking to ya, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Silence nodded and went back to his notebook.

  Val continued. “I’m getting out of here, Rob. Out of this restaurant, out of this life. I started taking classes over at the community college. Actually, not ‘classes.’ A single class.” She laughed. “Tuesday and Thursday nights. Gotta start somewhere. I’m gonna make a better life for Toby.”

  Working hard to create a better life for her son.

  Adriana had expressed the same sentiments a short while earlier.

  It was a soul-crushing notion to think that so many people had to fight and scratch and crawl to have a good life. Of her many spiritual and intellectual thinkings, C.C. often referred to the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha, particularly the first one, which was incredibly bleak when taken by itself.

  Life is suffering.

  As Silence looked at his notes, another thing that Val had just said struck a chord with him—the fact that Val said she was attending community college. Wesley Bowman had been taking classes at a community college as well.

  Wesley Bowman, the traitor, the one who had sold out his own family.

  In the present situation, Adriana, like the Bowman family, had been intercepted on her way to make a protection payment. But her only family member was her son, and he’d been kidnapped.

  Or had he?

  If the parallels between the situations were so similar, maybe there was another connection in the fact that Wesley Bowman had sold out his own family in an attempt to join the very same criminal organization that had been tormenting them.

  Could Benito Ramirez be doing the same thing? Was the kidnapping staged? Was Benito trying to join Lowry’s gang?

  Silence drew a line from the TRAITOR bubble below WESLEY BOWMAN, brought it just below BENITO RAMIREZ and stopped.

  He made a new bubble beneath the Ramirez bubble that connected to the line he’d just drawn: TRAITOR?

  He thought back to the moment Wesley’s treachery was revealed.

  Chapter Eight

  Utter chaos in the Bowman house. The daughter screamed. The young son bawled. The mother ran to the boy, covered him, shouted something of primal urgency to her husband. It was swallowed by the din of pandemonium.

  And Wesley continued to aim the gun at Jake.

  Jake slowly raised his hands. “Are you sure this is what you want to be doing, kid?”

  “Wesley…” Kip said.

  The gun rattled in Wesley’s hands. He replied to his father but didn’t take his eyes off Jake. “I … I had to do it, Dad. It was for all of us. A better future for Kimberly and Stevey.”

  Kip released a long sigh. “What have you done, boy?”

  Wesley still didn’t take his eyes, or gun, off Jake.

  “There was this guy,” Wesley said. “He told me that if I helped him intercept the payments, he would turn me into a made man in his gang. Imagine that future. Not this working-at-the-store-taking-classes-at-night bullshit. Something better. Something I could share with all of us.”

  “You’ve bankrupted this family!”

  “And now you’re aiming a gun at a police officer,” Jake said.

  Wesley scoffed, Mr. Tough Guy, but the sound that escaped his lips was as much a shudder as a snicker. “Yeah, a cop who’s way out of his jurisdiction.”

  “Very true. But how do you think this is gonna turn out for you? Man Kills Police Officer in Family Home. You think this gang you’re trying to join is gonna want that kind of ink? You think they’ll make you a made man then?”

  Wesley digested Jake’s words, distraught.

  All eyes were on Wesley. Jake’s, Kip’s, the teenage daughter’s, those of the mother and the young boy she sheltered. Horrible sounds interrupted the qui
et—whimpers, sniffs, crying from the toddler.

  Wesley continued to think. The gun rattled in his hands.

  Jake watched the small movements, those nearly imperceptible elements that could tell you which way a situation was going to swing. Wesley’s eyes twitched. Muscles rippled over his long face. Movement in the lower lip. And just when it looked to Jake like a bit of the steam was releasing, that disaster would be averted...

  Wesley’s finger tensed.

  His trigger finger.

  Jake leapt from his chair. Screams from the family as he crashed into Wesley. The two of them flew back, landing on a coffee table. The wooden legs snapped, glass surface shattering.

  Jake had hold of Wesley’s wrist, right below the weapon. He smashed it in the shards of glass. A yelp from Wesley, but the gun remained in his hand.

  Wesley squared a fist, swung, and Jake juked to the left, dodging the blow. He yanked Wesley’s hand behind his back, rolling him onto his stomach, then twisted the other arm.

  The gun dropped, clanged on the floor.

  Jake gave Wesley’s arms a final yank, tangling them up behind him.

  Then he leaned into Wesley’s ear and said, “Let’s talk, shall we?”

  Chapter Nine

  Val was no longer kneeling beside Silence’s table. Now she sat in his booth, directly across from him.

  “It’s rough out here for a single mother,” she was saying. “Not just the lack of money or the quality of life; it’s all the time I lose with my son.”

  Val’s speech faded from Silence’s attention as he looked at his notepad.

  The last set of notes he’d written—the traitor connection between Wesley Bowman and Benito Ramirez.

  Surely Benito wasn’t the traitor that Wesley had been. Silence thought of the framed photo that had been on Adriana’s end table, the strapping youth in a cap and gown, tall, dwarfing his mother as he stood with his arm around her. The pure-looking eyes, clean-cut face, ready to take on the world.