Joel Goldman - Shakedown

I followed her to the door. The breeze stirred her hair. She brushed it away from her eyes. We were inches apart. She was a magnet.

“Remember what I said,” I told her.

“You do the same. Don’t come back.”

I sat in Kate’s car on the northbound side of Fifth Street and started the engine. The night had turned cool, the drop in temperature coating the windows with a layer of dew. Tanja was standing inside the bar, peering out over the neon sign promising free beer tomorrow and waiting for me to drive away.

I pulled away from the curb, wondering whether Colby Hudson was standing in the shadows behind her, watching me over her shoulder. Petar and Maja Andrija’s house was a few blocks to the north, dark and silent as the rest of Strawberry Hill as I glided past. Glancing in my rearview mirror, I saw a burst of light suddenly?are from their open front door, the porch light blinking on and framing Colby as he?ew down the stairs and bolted into the protective darkness surrounding the house next door.

He’d been at Tanja’s parents’ house, not at the bar. She could have called him by now but, if she had, she would have told him to sit tight until she was certain I was gone. His departure looked more like a jailbreak than a careful getaway. Either he wasn’t supposed to be there or he wasn’t supposed to have left.

I stayed off the brakes, not wanting him to think that I’d seen him, knowing that he wouldn’t recognize Kate’s car and that he’d wait until I was out of sight before he started moving. Advantage mine.

I crested the hill at the intersection of Fifth and Ann in front of St. Ann’s Church, which sat on the southwest corner of the intersection, the church and the street named after the same saint. A playground stretched from the east side of the church to the curb. This was where Marty Grisnik and Tanja had gone to school, Marty probably stealing a kiss, getting whacked on the back of his head by a nun for his trouble.

I turned left onto Ann, then right into an alley, where I parked the car. I popped open the dome light and unscrewed the bulb, not wanting to give the edge back to Colby when I got out of the car.

He could have gone in any direction. I was counting on him choosing the only one that gave me a chance. I found a doorway recessed a couple of feet into the damp, limestone wall of the church facing the playground. Standing in the doorway was like nesting in a cave. It was so dark that Colby could have spit on my shoe and not known it. I held my gun at my side, and waited, steady as the rock that surrounded me.

My eyes adjusted to the dark, the shapes of the playground equipment coming into focus. Thinking of the playground as a clock, I was at twelve o’clock, Fifth Street was at six, a swing set in the center. Ann Street was at three o’clock and the jungle gym was at nine. The playground covered half a block and was surrounded by a chain-link fence meant to keep kids and balls in, not meant to keep rogue FBI agents out. If Colby were headed this way, he’d stay close to the church and away from any passing headlights.

Sound travels farther late at night, undiluted by kids playing ball or cars grinding their gears. The jingle jangle sound that chain-link fence makes when someone climbs over it would have been lost in the mix of daytime background noise. In the still of the night, it sounded like an out-of-tune wind chime.

Colby slipped by my doorway, his head down, less than two feet from where I stood. I waited until he’d gone ten feet past me and then stepped onto the playground, my gun aimed at him, calling his name.

He stopped, his back to me. He was wearing jeans and a light jacket. He raised his head, his right shoulder turning in as he reached in to his jacket. I knew he preferred a shoulder harness to a holster stuck in his pants or clipped to his belt.

“You won’t need that,” I told him.

“Why, Jack? Because you’re unarmed or because you’re not going to shoot me?”

“Because I won’t shoot you if I can help it but I will shoot you if I have to. You pull your gun and there’s a lot better chance that will happen. Turn around real slow, keep your hands where I can see them, and talk to me.”

He turned around and said, “You don’t have to do this.”

“Then I apologize in advance. Unzip your jacket, use two fingers to lift your gun out, and put it on the ground. Use three fingers and I’ll shoot one of them off. Then kick it over to me.”

“Listen, Jack.”

“Don’t say a word until I tell you. Just get rid of your gun.”

Colby did as he was told and I kicked his gun toward the jungle gym, steel skidding hard on the asphalt. I pointed my gun at him.

“You can lay down on your stomach, I can cuff you, and search you for your backup gun, or you can save me the trouble and put it on the ground along with any other toys you’re carrying.”

“Give me a break, Jack. You don’t even have your fucking badge. I’ll keep my hands where you can see them, but that’s all. You don’t like it, you can shoot me, or you can come over here and search me.”

I had made a stupid bluff, the kind that always made the other guy bold when he called it and I had to fold. Backing down wasn’t an option. That would turn our power struggle on its head.

“Don’t push me, Colby. Be a good boy and lay down.”

“No,” he said, taking a step toward me.

“Don’t make me shoot you.”

“You won’t. In the first place, I’m unarmed and I haven’t threatened or attacked you. In the second place, you haven’t told me that I’m under arrest. In the third place, if you shoot me you won’t get what you really want.”

He was right on all counts. My right hand began to quiver. I squeezed the butt of my gun to steady myself but it didn’t help. My belly broke out in minitremors. I could feel them but I hoped Colby couldn’t see them.

“Where’s Wendy?”

“She’s not at the Andrijas’ house.”

“That’s what you were doing there? Looking for her? Then where is she?”

“That’s not the way this is going to work. You put your gun down and kick it over to me. Then we’ll talk.”

“She loves you. Now you’re using her as a bargaining chip?”

“You’re the one pointing a gun at me. Doesn’t leave me a lot of choice.”

I reached in my pocket with my left hand, removed my cell phone, and?ipped it open. “I make one call, we’ll have company. Or you can tell me where I can find Wendy and walk away.”

“Go ahead. Make the call. That will be worse than shooting me. Troy and the rest of the gang will show up. I won’t talk until I get a lawyer and the lawyer won’t let me say a word. Besides, they’ve got nothing to charge me with. By the time I walk out the door, it won’t matter where Wendy is. It will be too late.”

My heart slammed into my throat. “She’s alive?”

“Last time I saw her.”

“When was that?”

“Last night.”

“Where?”

“Her place. We were having dinner. I left. When I came back, she was gone.”

“How can you do this to her?”

Colby ran his hands through his scraggly hair, his eyes hard but not hard enough to hide a pained wince, too?eeting to be fake. Kate had been a better teacher than she gave me credit for. I was seeing things I would have missed.

“I’m not the one doing it.”

His question matched his involuntary confession. He was worried about Wendy, too.

“Then let me help you get her back.”

“It’s not that simple,” he said, looking away.

And then I understood. “So you’re willing to sacrifice her to save your own ass. Just like you did Thomas Rice.”

Colby took a deep breath as if he was about to launch a denial and then dropped his hands in surrender. “Rice was different.”