Alonzo pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and huddled over the tailgate of his pickup, squinting in the faint light. The evening was cold, and the alley was dark. He had an old revolver inside his pocket. A gangbanger on Natural Bridge Road had sold it to him for fifty bucks just twenty minutes ago. Soot coated the weapon’s grip, barrel, and chamber. Judging by the smell, somebody had fired it recently. More than likely, someone had already used it in a homicide. Maybe multiple ones.
That was part of the reason he’d bought it.
Gangbangers didn’t always take care of their toys, though, which made the weapon dangerous. If the cylinder and barrel had become misaligned, a round could get stuck in the chamber and blow his hand off; if the electrical tape the previous owner had wound around the grip slipped, his accuracy could be off; or if soot or other debris made the trigger stick, the weapon might not fire. He couldn’t take that kind of risk.
Alonzo put the revolver on the tailgate of his pickup and then grabbed his kit from the passenger seat. He had spent the first six years of his adult life as a Marine. After that, he had become a cop, a job he thought he’d have until he retired. When he first became a cop, he imagined he was a knight who patrolled the streets and helped men and women in need. He saved people. Most people didn’t need saving, though. Alonzo didn’t know what they needed, but they didn’t need him.
He slid the cylinder from the pistol’s barrel and sprayed every moving part with a solvent made for firearms.
He had liked being a cop. It made him feel powerful, and he got to bust a lot of heads, but the job didn’t leave him with a lot of money for the work he put in. He wanted more. That’s where Sherlock came in.
Alonzo scrubbed the weapon clean and then adjusted the cylinder so it aligned with the barrel. The gun only needed to fire once as he pushed it against a man’s head. Then it needed to sink in the Mississippi.
Sherlock was a lawyer, but he wasn’t a bad dude, and he always paid for what he needed. Tonight Sherlock had given him an easy task: kill everybody in a room and get out. Alonzo didn’t like killing people, but the money made it worthwhile. Not only that, he didn’t kill innocent people. Nobody would miss the fuckers he planned to kill tonight. Hell, the city ought to throw him a parade for what he was about to do. Now he just needed to get it done.
Where other neighborhoods in St. Louis had gentrified, Hyde Park had changed little since Christopher Hughes had last been in it. Christopher tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed toward a well-lit building that looked like a gas station. A chain-link fence surrounded the property. There were cars everywhere. In contrast to the surrounding neighborhood, Warren’s garage looked as if it were prospering. Good for him.
“That’s it,” said Christopher. “You can drop me off out front.”
His driver nodded and darted her eyes around the neighborhood. She looked scared, and he couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t the best neighborhood in town, but if she stayed in the car and kept driving, she’d be fine.
The danger would come at stoplights. If somebody liked her minivan, she’d lose it. Even in north St. Louis—one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country—murders were rare events. Carjackings happened a lot more often.
That wasn’t Christopher’s concern, though. He wanted to see an old friend and to talk business. Sherlock got him out of prison, but somebody needed to bring the lawyer down a few pegs. You couldn’t screw a man’s wife without getting the shit beaten out of you. Warren may have been too old for a recreational beatdown, but he’d know people who were up for one. This would go just fine. Everybody would have a good time tonight.
Almost everybody, at least. Sherlock needed to find out who held the power in their relationship.
I parked on the side of the road about a block from a mechanic’s shop. A brick three-story building cast a long shadow on the road to my left, cloaking my old truck in darkness. It was a dark night, and none of the nearby overhead lights worked. A flashlight would have been nice, but I didn’t want to give my position away by turning mine on. I’d rather stumble on the broken sidewalk than get shot by a paranoid Christopher Hughes.
As I got out of my truck, the orange tip of a cigarette burned to my right. Three young men sat on the front steps of a row house not too far away. As the breeze blew toward me, I caught a whiff of flavored tobacco, but there was something else there, too. It wasn’t marijuana; it almost smelled like oregano, which made me think it was synthetic weed.
At the moment, I was more interested in my safety than their drugs, so I crouched against my truck and kept my hand over the firearm on my belt. The herbalists didn’t seem to care I was in the area. They kept talking and passing their cigarette back and forth. Hopefully they wouldn’t become a problem.
I was out of my jurisdiction, but I crept forward anyway, being careful to stay in the shadows cast by nearby buildings. If Christopher wanted to have a normal conversation with someone, he could have picked up a phone. If he didn’t like phones, he could have met someone for coffee. If he didn’t like coffee, he could have hosted someone in his hotel room.
He had done none of that, though. He waited until the police car in front of his hotel disappeared, and then he snuck away to visit a mechanic’s shop in north St. Louis in the middle of the night. A man who wanted to catch up with a friend would meet him in a bar, while a man looking to score some weed would ask around at a club. That wasn’t the behavior of a man who wanted to catch up with an old friend. I didn’t know what Christopher planned, but I intended to find out.
I looked over my shoulder to make sure the smokers I had seen earlier weren’t following me. Even with my eyes now adjusted to the gloom, I could barely see them. One of them waved. I considered flashing a badge at him to see what he’d do, but instead I turned and faced the garage again.
The garage wasn’t too far away, but it was lit well. I didn’t know how I would sneak up there and listen to whatever was going on inside, but I didn’t have a choice. No matter what Christopher Hughes said in interviews, he wasn’t the victim in all this. He was a predator, and predators never changed. They just got smarter. If we left Christopher alone, he’d be running underage prostitutes through St. Augustine by week’s end.
I wouldn’t let that happen.