Matt Hilton - Judgement and Wrath

'He's only one fucking pussy,' an anonymous voice shouted from out of the crowd. 'We can take him out.'

'One pussy with a gun at your stinking boss's head,' I reminded the shouter. Turning my attention to Tats, I asked him, 'How would you like things to go? Bit of a party animal, I guess. Should be a good turnout for your wake.'

'Put down your goddamn guns,' Tats yelled. 'Any of you muthas with itchy fingers, you're gonna answer to me!'

Smiling at him, I grabbed a handful of his denim cut-off.

'Me and you are going to walk out of here together,' I told him.

He was shorter than I was, but bulkier in the chest. Slightly awkward for getting a hold round his neck. Making do with bunching his cute little ponytail in my left hand, I stuck the SIG under his ear. That way we moved towards the door.

A man to my right maybe still had it in his mind that I was a cop. Cops will always warn before they shoot. He lurched at me, trying to grab the gun away from Tats' throat.

But I'm not a cop.

My sidekick found his knee. There was a tendon-popping twang and his leg now had a two-way joint. His face screwed around the agony, a good target for my elbow. He went down, but at least in his unconscious state he wasn't in pain any longer.

In the fraction of a second that it took to take the idiot out, the SIG had never wavered from its target.

'Any more of you assholes want to test me?' I growled.

They hung back like a pack of hyenas, wary of the lion in their midst, starving but too afraid to try to snatch away its kill.

Taking that as my cue, I dragged Tats backwards and out of the door. Arrayed along the road outside was a row of chopped and converted Harley Davidsons and other bikes I didn't recognise. I shot at a few of them, putting 9 mm ammo through their gas tanks. One of them went up in the air like the space shuttle, trailing fire and burning fuel that splashed most of the others. Rapidly I dragged Tats away from the conflagration, even as others began to spill out of Shuggie's. Suspended between their desire to get Tats free and saving their beloved bikes, there could only be one winner. I was able to bundle Tats into my Ford Explorer without anyone else trying to play the hero.

Screeching out of the parking lot, I pushed the SUV into the eastern lane approaching eighty miles an hour and gaining.

'Fuck, man!' Tats said from the passenger seat. 'You didn't have to go as far as blowing the bikes to hell.'

I smiled. The action had done my bad mood the world of good.

'Had to make it look real, Ron, otherwise they might've guessed you were a willing hostage.'

I'm not a cop. I'm not a bounty hunter. But I didn't mind the cash kicked back my way for taking Ron Maynard in.

He was grateful for the service, even thanked me for my help as I passed him over to his bail bondsmen on the outskirts of Tampa. I nodded at him, but didn't accept his hand. After all, he was a punk criminal who'd hurt too many people in the past. His only endearing quality — and the reason I'd agreed to the job of getting him out — was his desire to get away from the lifestyle and go whistleblower on his gang's activities. His testimony would put a shitload of his friends behind bars. Not as satisfying as if they'd been sitting astride their bikes when I blew them to pieces, but there you go. Still a good result.

It was the small hours of the morning but the sub-tropical heat was like a wet hood thrown over my head. An air-conditioned room and comfy bed seemed like a nice idea, but I'd arranged to meet with my friend Jared Rington first. Didn't matter what time it was, Rink would be waiting up for me.

Rink has a condominium up in the wooded lands north-east of Temple Terrace, but he keeps an office for his private investigations business in downtown Tampa. It was outside his office that I parked the Ford. Few people were out on the street, and what traffic there was in the area was reduced to the occasional police cruiser or taxicab. The blinds had been drawn on the window to his office and a 'Closed' sign was hanging in the door, but when I twisted the handle the door swung open.

Rink was sitting behind his computer tapping keys as I walked in and shed my coat. He just didn't look right at the desk. He should have been in a wrestling ring or octagonal cage. If he was a foot shorter and one hundred pounds lighter he'd have looked like the hero from a 1970s Kung Fu movie. He owed the blue-black hair and hooded eyes to his Japanese mother, while his size and muscular build had to have been passed down from his Scottish-Canadian father.

'Got a call thanking us for a job well done,' he said. He gave me a grin, his teeth flashing white against his tawny skin. 'Course, we might have to do a little damage control over the shit storm you left at Shuggie's Shack. Did you have to burn down the entire building?'

'It burned down?' I couldn't help the chuckle. 'Never mind, it was a pigsty. Shuggie will likely thank us.'

If things worked out with Maynard, Shuggie's wouldn't be getting as many customers in the future. The owner would get more from the insurance payout than the place was worth.

Pulling out the envelope that Richard Dean had passed me, I put it down on the desk next to Rink's computer. 'What do you know about this client, Rink? Impression I got was he's on paranoia overdrive.'

'Just your run-of-the-mill white-collar worker with a mortgage to support,' Rink said. His Arkansas drawl always made me think of Wild West heroes; which was apt considering Rink was as quick on the draw with a gun. All that was missing was the white Stetson.

'So how does he come up with that kind of cash?'

On the drive over, I'd pulled into a rest stop. The way in which Dean had conducted the meeting had set off a worm of unease inside me. The envelope contained a number of photographs and a wad of cash. Twenty thousand dollars to be precise.

'Maybe he's done a little digging into his daughter's college fund. It ain't like she's gonna be needin' it.'

Moving the cash to one side, I laid out the series of five photographs. The first showed a pleasant — if homely — looking young woman smiling into the camera. She was slim, her slightly prominent ears emphasised by her tight ponytail. She wore only a dab of make-up and her jewellery didn't extend beyond silver studs in her ears and a delicate crucifix on a chain at her throat. Her clothes were a conservative blue cardigan over a white blouse. Richard Dean's seventeen-year-old daughter, Marianne, looking shy and uncomfortable in front of the lens.

In contrast, the young woman in photos two and three could have been lifted directly from a celebrity gossip magazine. This woman was the type you usually see hanging on to a movie star's arm. If it weren't for the crucifix I wouldn't have immediately made the connection to the insecure child in the first photograph. Marianne had definitely blossomed from drab duckling to radiant swan.

The final two images gave me most concern. The first showed Marianne in the back of a limousine. She was drunk, her hair disarrayed, clothing twisted askew. The man sitting beside her was mugging for the camera as he slipped his hand up the hem of her dress. His face was cruel, mindless of the token effort that Marianne made to push his hand away. Then there was photo number five. A flat portrait shot lifted from a Miami P.D. file.

Marianne had been crying. Her hair was dark with sweat and clung to her forehead. Mascara was smeared down her cheeks, but failed to hide the bruises round both eyes. Her top lip was split in two places, and an earring had been torn from her left lobe, leaving dry blood streaking her neck.

The most poignant thing that was instantly noticeable to me was the lack of her crucifix.

There was a note pinned to the final shot. Handwritten by Richard Dean, it said, 'Will the next photograph be taken from the M.E.'s post-mortem report?'