Third Strike Read online

  I felt the hefty steel door kick as it connected with a body. One jolt as he rebounded backwards, then another as he cannoned off an inside wall and came crashing back for a rematch. The door won both rounds.

  We charged through the gap to find a Goliath of a man struggling groggily to rise but his legs were trapped behind the vee of the open door. He wasn’t tall so much as enormously wide, with a stained T-shirt stretched to the limit of the fabric’s elasticity around his bulging gut. His physique might have been useful when he was upright, but floundering on the ground he was in serious danger of Greenpeace activists trying to roll him back into the sea.

  Nevertheless, he made a reflexive grab for us. It was a valiant attempt but his coordination was gone. The best he could manage was to claw sluggishly at empty air as we passed. Sean merely swapped the gun into his left hand and, with almost casual violence, hammered the side of his fist into the man’s exposed temple. The smack Goliath’s skull made as it bounced off the brickwork behind him made me wince. When he went down for the second time, he was out cold.

  We paused, tense, but nobody seemed to have overheard the doorman’s rapid defeat. Nobody who cared enough to come and see, anyway.

  I straightened slowly as Sean stepped back over the unconscious man and shoved the steel outer door closed again.

  “Harry?” I said, keeping my voice no louder than a whisper. “Who the hell’s Harry?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, there’s always a Harry.”

  Inside, the small bare entrance hall was only marginally less seedy than the exterior of the building had suggested. The doorman had a little recess at one side, with a folding card table and a chair with the stuffing leaking from the seat. The table contained a selection of dead beer bottles, some crumpled White Castle burger wrappings covered in ketchup, and a tiny portable TV tuned to one of the sports channels. It told me all I needed to know about Goliath’s lifestyle and expectations.

  Only one other door led off the hall and we took it, moving fast through the narrow opening and spreading out on the other side.

  The next room was bigger, and empty. At least some attempt had been made at decoration here, with a couple of faded prints on the walls—illustrations out of the Kama Sutra. The positions didn’t look anatomically possible, never mind fun.

  A built-in couch had been fitted into the corner. It was covered in pink velour and had retained its original nasty hue by dint of the clear plastic cover that protected it—from what, I shuddered to imagine. The illumination had been kept low in a poor attempt to be seductive. A single bulb filtered through an upside-down dark red shade. The dull lino underfoot made faint sucking noises as we crossed it.

  The far wall was covered by a thin curtain, that was suddenly pulled aside. Sean and I both reacted instantly, snapping the guns up. An Asian girl with long straight blond hair came through, wearing a smutty pale pink negligee. She froze for a second when she saw us, then started screaming.

  I was closest. I reached her in one long stride and, following Sean’s earlier example, hit her with my upswept elbow under the jaw, aiming for the sweet spot just to the side of her chin. The effect of the blow was magnified by the fact she had her mouth open when I delivered it.

  Her teeth clacked shut as her eyes rolled back and she dropped, graceless enough that I didn’t have to check if she was faking. She and the blond wig parted company, revealing short black hair, badly cut, beneath it. Close to, she was neither as young as she was supposed to be, nor as old as she had become.

  I turned to find Sean watching me.

  “What?” I said. “You think the ‘Harry sent me’ line would have worked on her?”

  “Maybe not,” he agreed, “but let’s try and leave the next one awake enough to answer questions, shall we? Like—where’s your father?”

  I turned away without answering. As soon as we’d entered the place I’d been fighting the underlying sense of panic. My father might be many things, but indiscriminate was not one of them, and the last thing you could possibly be in a place like this was choosy. Surely, if he’d really wanted the services of a prostitute, he would have picked somewhere more upmarket than this. On sanitary grounds, if nothing else.

  He’s dead. My God, he has to be dead.

  Shaking my head did little to dislodge the recreant idea of it. I flexed my fingers round the pistol grip of the illegal gun. If anything had happened to my father, I vowed I would find the men in the Lincoln, and I would watch their bodies fall.

  My only disquiet was that it wouldn’t be the first time.

  “Let’s find out, shall we?”

  The brothel was laid out on five narrow floors that branched out from a musty central stairwell. Each floor had rows of doorways along a thin partition wall, leading to tiny, lightless cubicles. Sean and I swept the building from the ground up.

  The occupants were nearly all female and mostly alone. The majority of the workforce looked Asian—possibly Korean or Vietnamese. The girls seemed to live in the rooms where they worked, their few shabby possessions hidden behind a curtain or in a flimsy plywood wardrobe.

  The place had a smell all of its own. Old cooking fat that had been overheated one time too many, mingled with stale sweat and other, more earthy odors, all not quite masked by the false cheer of cheap fabric freshener and the thin reek of even cheaper perfume.

  And desperation. The only locks we encountered were on the outside, which probably accounted for the browbeaten lack of reaction to our arrival. If any of the girls spoke English, they weren’t making a big thing of it, but I suppose it was unlikely they were being paid—in any sense—for their sparkling conversational skills.

  On the fourth floor up, we kicked the lock off the inside of a door this time and found a woman older than the others, a fact which was obvious even in the low light. Her larger living quarters spoke of middle management rather than labor.

  We caught her bending over an old square sink in one corner of the room, and she straightened with an expletive that was pure homegrown Brooklyn. Statuesquely built, her most startling feature was a pair of massive breasts that, to my cynical eyes at least, were so clearly man-made they probably had a “Best Before” date stamped on them. Her dress was gaudy without even the excuse of being cheap.

  Very recently, someone had caught her a belter across the left-hand side of her face and she’d been trying to negate the aftereffects with a cold wet cloth pressed against it. She went deathly pale at the sight of us, but stood her ground, putting the cloth down slowly.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she demanded. Her eyes flicked to the doorway behind us a couple of times, waiting for Goliath’s intervention. When it didn’t come, she checked us out again and frowned. Her tone modified a little. “Whaddya want?”

  “English guy,” I said shortly. “Came in here about half an hour ago. Where is he?”

  She heard my accent and her face grew calculating, but she didn’t try to bluff us. By the look of the bruising, she’d tried that ploy once today already and it hadn’t gone well for her.

  “Upstairs,” she said. The reluctant fear in her voice twisted in my belly, grabbed at my chest as I began to move. “Hey, I didn’t have nothing—”

  “Stow it,” Sean said.

  He was right behind me as I took the stairs to the final floor two at a time, was alongside me as we broke our way into each of the matted little rooms up there. He didn’t speak, and I’m not sure I would have heard him over the raucous clamor inside my head even if he had.

  It was the last room. It always is. We hit the door hard enough for the flimsy hardboard to rip out of the frame and sway drunkenly from one hinge before toppling to the floor.

  Inside, we found my father standing centered under the dusty bulb. He was minus his suit jacket, with the buttons of his shirt halfway open, revealing a vee of pale hairless chest beneath, and he was just in the process of sliding his tie out from under his collar.

  Or rather, the girl in front of him was takin
g care of that part.

  She was young—much younger than just about any of the girls we’d seen so far in that place. Well under the age of any kind of informed consent, with taut skin the color of latte and glossy long dark hair. Her back had been to the doorway, presenting us with a perfect view of a slender body not yet entirely spoiled. She spun, gasping at the violence of our arrival, to reveal classic almond-shaped eyes.

  Apart from too much makeup, she was completely naked. Just for a moment, the side of my brain responsible for lucid thought and reasoned argument totally shut down. Instinct and training took me forwards, only peripherally aware of Sean moving to check and secure the room.

  I closed in on my father, registered the absolute shock and the pure, undiluted shame that coated him like a layer of grime, moments before he covered it with a haughty mask. That was what did it. Another silent lie on top of all the others.

  Blinded, I gave a howl of utter rage and backhanded him across the face with enough force to snap his head round. I was still wearing my bike gloves, which had tough carbon fiber protectors across the backs like lightweight knuckle dusters. My father staggered a pace from the blow, but made no attempt to block me or prevent another. That was enough to bring me up cold.

  Raked with guilt and anger, I felt the blood drop out of my face so fast that my vision buckled and I nearly fell.

  “You … bastard,” I said.

  The certainty that he was dead, and all the emotions connected to that conviction, had set vicious barbed hooks deep into every part of me. The sudden discovery that he was very much alive ripped them out all at once, leaving behind a bloody mess of tattered thoughts and raw confusion.

  He was alive, and I wanted to kill him for it.

  “Charlie.” It was Sean who spoke, gently, firmly, putting his hand onto my forearm to press it downwards. It was only then I realized I had the gun up, had been watching my father’s reaction over the top of the sights and had seen nothing wrong with the picture that presented.

  “Don’t do this,” he murmured. “I hate to resort to cliché, but he genuinely isn’t worth it.”

  I let my arm drop away, found it was trembling as badly as the rest of me.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I wouldn’t waste the round.”

  I lurched back as the adrenaline boost drained away, almost collapsed against the wall near the doorway to the corridor. My left thigh burned and I resisted the urge to grab at it. I was damned if I was going to show more weakness in front of him.

  As soon as we’d burst in, the girl had scuttled onto the rumpled bed by the far wall and tucked her legs up close to her body, head buried against her knees and her arms wrapped tightly round them. If you look insignificant enough, and you can’t see the monsters, maybe they will leave you alone.

  No, they won’t.

  Her submissive posture angered as much as it disturbed me. There was a thin dark red robe on the floor that was trying to be silk but was as artificial as the madam’s breasts downstairs. I leaned down, snatched it up and threw it across to her. She stopped rocking just long enough to clutch it in front of her body.

  “Well, well, Dick,” Sean said then, his voice softly mocking. “This opens up a whole new side to you.”

  My father darted him a savage glance but didn’t reply. The area around his cheekbone had already begun to swell, puffy. I hadn’t broken the skin but he was going to have a hell of a bruise.

  Still clinging to that brittle dignity, he retrieved his tie from where the girl had dropped it in her flight, fed it back through his collar, and began reknotting it. His movements were apparently calm and sedate, but it was little more than a thin veneer. I could see the shake of his hands, the pulse in his jaw.

  “So, you still think you don’t owe me any kind of explanation?” I said.

  He refastened his cuff links and reached for the jacket he’d laid across the back of a narrow chair. The suit had been tailor-made for him by Gieves & Hawkes of Savile Row and fitted to perfection, in devastating contrast to the decayed dilapidation of that tawdry little room.

  “I owe you nothing, Charlotte,” he said then, and his arrogance was astounding. “I make my own choices. I won’t ask how you found me—invading people’s privacy seems to be second nature to you—but I most certainly do not need your approval for my actions.” He allowed his lip to curl just slightly. “Nor do I require you to accompany me.”

  “Approval?” I said, aware my voice had become almost a squawk. I flung a hand towards the huddled creature on the bed. “She’s young enough to be your daughter, for fuck’s sake! Christ, she’s practically young enough to be mine!”

  He stilled. “Get out, Charlotte,” he said coldly. His eyes skated over Sean, who’d been standing watchful and silent during the exchange. “And take your nasty little bully boy with you.”

  Sean shrugged off the insult and started for the door. As he passed, my father gestured to the gun Sean carried with an expressive flick of his fingers.

  “Violence. Is that the only thing you people understand?”

  We’d caught him in a run-down brothel with a naked teenage hooker and still he tried to take the high ground.

  “Perhaps it is,” I said, not moving. “So how’s this for violence? If you don’t walk out of here with us, right now, I’ll knock you senseless and carry you out—and, believe me, it would be a pleasure. Either way, you’re leaving.”

  His spine straightened. “You can’t.”

  “Oh, don’t tempt me.”

  “No, you can’t!”

  I registered the edge of panic in the rising tone with something akin to wonder. Of all the emotions he’d shown since we’d entered that room and exposed him, this was the first hint of fear.

  “I can’t leave you here,” I said, without pity. “If my mother—”

  “That’s just it.” He grasped the reference like a talisman. “Your mother. If you feel anything for your mother, Charlotte, then just leave me here and go before it’s too late. Please.”

  “Too late? What the hell are you—”

  Then, from underneath us, we heard crashing and highpitched screaming and loud voices bellowing commands. Sean and I ran into the corridor. About halfway along was a narrow window with a view down into the alleyway. When we looked down, all we could see were the flashing lights on top of the squad cars.

  “Oh. Shit,” Sean muttered. His eyes met mine. There weren’t any other exits or we would have found them on our way up. The management was clearly more anxious about customers trying to skip out without paying, than they were about the possibilities of escape from a fire.

  Sean picked the illegal Kel-Tec out of my nerveless grasp. Without having to watch his hands, he stripped the gun down to its frame and dumped it out of the window, where it fell five stories, straight into the open Dumpster by the entrance. His own weapon quickly followed. Nobody on the ground heard or saw a thing. Even so, I knew we were headed for deep, deep trouble.

  We went back. My father hadn’t moved, but someone had hit fast-forward and he’d aged maybe twenty years. His face was gray in the dull light. “It’s the police,” I said. “The place is being raided.”

  My father nodded, mildly resigned, as though I’d told him it looked likely to rain, and the sudden realization hit me that somehow he’d known this was going to happen. The girl continued to rock gently on the bed.

  And we waited, the four of us, for the thunder of boots on the stairs.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Well, congratulations, guys. I do believe this will go down in history as a screwup of monumental proportions,” Parker Armstrong said. He raised a tired smile that lost heart long before it reached his eyes. “As I understand it,” he added with morose humor, “they can see it from space.”

  We were in the conference room at the agency. High-tech and spotless, it had been furnished with an eye to luxury and none at all to cost. The suspended ceiling seemed to hang in a cloud of ice blue neon, perfectly highlighting
the swirling grain of the maple wall panels. At one end was a projector screen for presentations. It was rarely used, but I knew for a fact the sound system that went with it had cost more than my last house.

  Parker was in the power seat at the top end of half an acre of mirror-polished table. Sean and I were shoulder-to-shoulder about halfway along, with Bill Rendelson scowling ferociously at us from the other side.

  We’d been offered a seat but preferred to stand. I had to fight the urge to do so at attention. Back straight up, arms straight down so my thumbs were precisely in line with the seams of my leather jeans, knees just slightly bent so I could hold the position for hours if I had to. Only the lack of dress uniforms prevented this from being an action replay of the travesty that was my court-martial.

  I felt thoroughly dirty. We were both still wearing the same clothes we’d been arrested in, roughly twenty-eight hours earlier. If it hadn’t been for some fancy footwork on the part of Parker’s legal team, we would probably still be in jail.

  The last glimpse I’d had of my father was of him being bundled, handcuffed, into the back of a police cruiser. I’d asked the lawyer who’d got me out what had happened to him, but the man seemed to be billing by the word as well as the minute and my credit was obviously running short.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, aware that I was starting to sound like a scratch mix. “But don’t blame Sean for any of this. I’m the one who dragged him into it.”

  “Aw, come on, Charlie.” Parker sat back, his voice almost gentle in its admonition, even if his body language betrayed his impatience. “You know as well as I do that Sean makes his own decisions.”

  “Of course,” I agreed quickly, before Sean could jump in, “but nevertheless, this was—and should have remained—a family matter.”

  “‘Family matter’—is that so?” Parker echoed sharply. “You make it sound like some kind of sick tradition. Does your father always take you along when he goes visiting cheap hookers?’Cause that’s just plain wrong.”