Chapter Six

Friday, mid-afternoon

  

Riding shotgun again in Mutt’s Caddy, top down, Brack lit the cigar Darcy wouldn’t let him smoke. Mutt took a hit of vapor and exhaled a cloud of mist. The day was Deep South hot, the sky a clear and cloudless blue. The sun wouldn’t set for another few hours.

“So who’s this person we need to talk to?” Brack asked, avoiding the slight tension between them from their last encounter.

“You’ll see.” At a stoplight, Mutt hung an arm out the car, tapping on the steel door to the beat of “Brick House” by the Commodores.

Brack took in a mouthful of the Dominican’s finest and exhaled. He wanted to ask his friend more questions, but decided it would be better to let things play out.

A black four-door Wrangler, also with the top down, stopped next to them, cutting through any remaining tension. The doors were off, the same way Brack liked to roll in his old Jeep. Three bikini-topped and short-shorted young women in it were giggling, apparently at a joke directed at him and Mutt.

“How you ladies doing?” Brack asked.

The driver, a twentyish blonde, turned to the two other twentyish blondes and giggled some more. Then she turned back to the two men.

“What are you guys supposed to be?” she asked, her snotty attitude even more exposed than her body. “The pimp scene went out in the seventies.”

“Why?” Brack said. “You girls looking for work?”

Mutt had been in the middle of taking a drag of vapor and choked up.

“Seriously?” she asked, still with attitude. “You guys look like you have to pay for it.”

“And you three look like you’re selling it,” Brack said.

The driver’s flame-red lips dropped open.

The blonde in the passenger seat leaned forward. “Listen here, perv—”

“Look,” Brack interrupted her. “We’ve had a really bad morning. How about we all head to the closest watering hole and I buy you gals a round of whatever you want? Show you we aren’t all that bad.”

“Opie,” Mutt said, “we ain’t got time to be flirtin’ with no girls.”

Brack turned to Mutt. “Coming from you, that’s real rich.” Back in Charleston, the man had been like a deer in rut.

The light turned green and Mutt hit the gas, his face pinched together and jaw muscles bulging.

  

Brack and Mutt sat at a bar across town from his own establishment where they were supposed to meet Mutt’s source who, according to Brack’s vintage Tag watch, was late. To not arouse suspicion or frighten whoever they were meeting, both men had left their guns in the car.

Mutt looked around the room, then lowered his head. “Opie, we got some company.”

Brack spotted what his friend referred to. Three men approached dressed in some version of the same biker get-up, black t-shirts with skulls, jeans, and leather boots.

With the three bikers still twenty feet away—ten feet from when Brack would get up and charge them—he heard a slightly familiar voice behind him, snotty attitude and all.

She said, “Those are the two that called us prostitutes.”

Mutt said, “What the—”

Brack took his eyes off the men in black to see the three blondes from the Jeep pointing at him and Mutt. Next to the blondes stood three defensive lineman-sized clean-cut white guys.

Bikers in front of them.

Jocks behind.

Guns in the car.

Under his breath, Brack said, “How did we get ourselves into this one?”

Mutt replied, “You and yo’ big mouth.”

Returning his attention to the bikers, now eight feet away, Brack said, “I got the hogs. You take the bubbas.”

Mutt said, “This gonna be fun.”

Maybe for you, Brack thought. These bikers fought dirty.

Brack grabbed a beer bottle off the bar and smashed it across the closest Harley rider’s head.

The other two did not startle. One caught Brack with a blow to the side of his face. The other tagged him with a gut punch. Brack doubled over, grabbed a stool, and swung it across the closest knee, catching it just right. The goon fell beside his fallen companion. The remaining one caught Brack with a good uppercut and slammed him backwards into the bar. Dazed and confused, Brack told himself he had one play left. As his opponent approached, Brack reached behind, steadying himself by grabbing the edge of the bar with both hands. Supported by his hands only, he kicked with both feet. His Italian loafers slammed into the biker’s black leather vest. The goon flew backward into a support beam and crumpled to the floor.

Brack shook the cobwebs out of his head and turned to see what else might be happening. Two of the bubbas were down, but the third had a hold of Mutt’s silk shirt and threw a solid widow-maker punch into Mutt’s face. With whatever force Brack had left, he kicked the giant in the back of his knee, buckling his leg. As the jock twisted to face him, Brack slammed his elbow into the jock’s face and his nose exploded. Blood spurted all over the three wannabe blonde hookers, who squealed and ran away.

The bubba let go of Mutt, who fell to the ground.

Brack coughed and spoke to the bloody nose. “You done?”

He sure hoped the jock was finished, because he had nothing left.

As if just noticing the blood gushing out of his broken nose, the giant put both hands to his face.

“Well?”

From behind him, Brack heard an authoritative voice say, “It’s time to break it up.”

Brack knew better than to turn his attention away from his opponent. In one of the mirrors, he could make out two uniformed officers walking toward them.

  

The Atlanta Police Department’s building on Spring Street featured holding cells crowded with an assortment of races. America was, after all, the melting pot, and this jail attempted to prove the point. When Brack was put in the back of a cruiser and hauled away, he’d been separated from Mutt. Having lost sight of his friend, Brack now stood in the corner of an overpopulated cell. He kept to himself, glad there were no mirrors. His face felt as if it had grown two sizes from the beating he’d taken from the bikers, and he really didn’t care to see how bad he looked. At least his bones were intact.

Brack’s past experience in similar situations—and he’d had more than his share—told him he would be taken to a room called the “box” with a one-way mirror and asked a few “questions.” He’d already been Mirandized so anything he said could and would be used against him. So far Brack hadn’t asked for an attorney, but did think about calling his in Charleston.

True to form, a uniformed officer escorted Brack from the cell. Jeers and catcalls from his fellow detainees awarded him with the momentary status of a rock star, albeit one old enough to know better than to get arrested for a bar fight.

The officer opened a door and told him to take a seat at a table. The room had a mirror and one involuntary glance told him he looked as if he’d lost the brawl. He pulled out a chair, its aluminum legs scraping across the worn linoleum, and sat.

A few minutes later the door opened and Detective Nichols entered. He smiled, took a seat across from Brack, and placed a file folder on the table between them.

“I need to remind you,” Nichols said, “that anything you say can be used against you.”

“And I have a right to an attorney.”

“Would you like an attorney?”

“Not yet. Where’s Mutt?”

Nichols’s forehead creased. “I think you have more pressing needs at the moment.”

Brack said, “I’ve been in this situation before. More than a few times, unfortunately. Now, it was nice of you to be the one to come in here and talk to me. I appreciate that. Before I answer any questions, I want to know that my friend is okay.”

“He is. We released him ten minutes ago. Seems the witnesses at the bar all agreed that the three men had attacked him and he had defended himself.”

“Were they arrested?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now, what’s in the file?”

Sitting back in his chair, Nichols opened the folder and spread out three sheets of paper. “These are the three men you fought with. They are very bad apples.”

Brack looked up from the sheets to him. “Bad apples? That’s the best you can do?”

“Okay,” he said, “all are ex-mercenaries. Trained killers.”

“I’m a Marine. Mercs are nothing but basic-training flunkies.”

“You were a Marine. Now you’re a civilian.”

“Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

“You haven’t even asked me what the charges against you are.”

“Because,” Brack grinned for a second, “there aren’t any.”

Detective Nichols did not rein in the surprise in his face. “Why do you think that?”

“Just a guess. Witnesses to the ruckus will tell you I started it by taking out one of these pansies with a beer bottle, thus initiating it all. But I’ll bet the pink slip to my Porsche that none of the bad apples, as you call them, are going to file any charges.”

“Good guess.”

“They are going to square things up on the street.”

Nichols flipped through a few pages. “Their files suggest that’s the way they work.”

“So what are we doing here?”

Closing the file, Nichols said, “I told you if I saw you again like this, I’d have you escorted out of town.”

“It’s a free country,” Brack said, jonesing for a cigar.

“I’d rather know you are safe back in Charleston than dead here on Peachtree Street.”

“Me too. But I haven’t finished what I came to do.”

“Which begs the question,” he said. “Why are you here?”

Brack told him about Regan.

Nichols said, “If she’s with Kelvin Vito, you’re better off simply heading home.”

“But aren’t you the police?”

“Yes,” the detective said. “And I don’t have time to be babysitting some soda cracker from out of town with a death wish. Going after this Regan, or Vito, is precisely that.”

  

The next morning, Saturday, Mutt and Brack sipped hot French-pressed coffee from mugs at Cassie’s house while she served free food to Atlanta’s homeless. Brack was quiet and deep in thought. At least he pretended to be. The one thing on his mind at present was who had set them up the afternoon before. A knock at the door followed by someone letting themselves in had them both look up.

Darcy walked into the kitchen where they sat. “Detained again, I see. The more things change...” She didn’t bother to finish the cliché that was growing older by the second. Instead, she said, “You guys look like you got beat up.”

Brack said, “It was six against two.”

“Yeah? It looks like you lost.”

“Whatever,” Brack said. “We walked away. They didn’t.”

“You wanna cup of coffee?” Mutt asked.

She sat her purse on a chair. “Of course.”

Mutt worked Cassie’s French press like a real barista. Considering the sludge he used to pour, his technique now was nothing short of a miracle. He served it to Darcy in a mug along with a chilled miniature stainless-steel cream pitcher. “You take sugar?”

“Why thank you, Mutt.” An astonished look crossed her pretty face.

Brack realized that Cassie had done quite a number on his old buddy, and he had to give her credit. She didn’t have much to work with, but she managed to domesticate the big wild pooch.

“What happened to you?” Brack asked him.

Mutt said, “Huh?”

“French-pressed coffee? Cream in little pitchers? What happened?”

Darcy said, “Shut up, Brack. It’s obvious Cassie’s had a positive influence on him.”

“Whatever,” he said. “We got bigger things to worry about than my Marine buddy being neutered.”

Mutt said, “That’s cold-blooded, man.”

Brack smiled at him. “I’m just trying to give you some balance.”

Darcy looked irritated. “Oh yeah? Where are you getting yours from?”

That one cut deep on a lot of levels. Ignoring her question, Brack said, “At this point I’m ready to bust in there and drag Regan out.”

“Opie,” Mutt said, “it was six to two and we barely got out of the bar. Vito’s got an army. We ain’t gonna bust in nowhere. That’s all he needs to barbeque us alive.”

“Mutt’s right,” she said.

“Well, of course you’d agree with him, since he served you gourmet coffee in a pink apron. I’d like another opinion.”

“And I’d like to be rich,” she said. “Oh, wait a minute. I already am.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Brack said. “The rest of us have to work for a living.”

Her grin vanished in a flash. “I work harder in one day than you have since the day I met you.”

Deciding she was probably right, Brack switched gears. “So, Mutt, you want to tell us about this traitor that was supposed to meet us yesterday at that bar?”

“I got fooled,” Mutt admitted. “It was one of them anonymous tips. Someone called me and said to meet them there. I’m sorry ’bout all that, Opie.”

Brack said, “That’s okay, my friend. Regan is forcing us to grasp at straws.”

“If it weren’t for Cassie,” Mutt said, “I wouldn’t be doin’ any of this.”