Chapter Seven

Saturday

  

Even a senior correspondent couldn’t relax on a weekend, so at nine Darcy had to leave for work. With some free time, Brack left Shelby with Taliah and Mutt at his rental house and drove forty minutes north of the city to the Piedmont Preserve. Tara had invited him to visit her at her day job. He remembered that she worked with elephants.

She met him by the main entrance wearing a Panama hat, white t-shirt that covered most of her tattoos, and khaki shorts and boots. A security hut nearby gave shade and a fan to the elderly attendant who staffed the desk. The temperature was already eighty-five degrees, though it was technically still spring.

“I never did thank you for saving my brother the other night,” Tara said.

“How’s the shoulder?”

“Sore, but loosening up.”

Brack looked around. A large fence surrounding the Preserve stretched almost forever in both directions. “I’ve never been to a place like this.”

She took his arm. “Then let me give you the nickel tour.”

The firmness of her touch felt good to him.

She played guide for a twenty-minute walking tour of only part of the five-thousand-acre facility, consisting mostly of pasture, woods, and a few buildings. Thanks to this location away from the city, the air was fresh and clean.

Tara said, “And now you can help me feed Mr. Grumpy.”

“You feed Mutt in here?”

She laughed. “No. Should we?”

“Who’s Mr. Grumpy?”

Tara led him around a building that looked like a super-sized barn to an area in the back. Twenty feet from them stood the largest animal Brack had ever been this close to without bars between them. The elephant was over ten feet tall and weighed at least ten thousand pounds. Large tusks protruding from the sides of its trunk looked even more intimidating. The mammal was taking hay off a bale of the stuff and flapping his ears as he chewed.

“This is Mr. Grumpy,” she announced.

Brack had faced men with guns and cheated death many times. But this imposing life standing two car lengths in front of him was something else entirely.

Mr. Grumpy greeted them with a loud trumpet blast from his prodigious proboscis.

Tara approached him slowly and Brack followed, realizing he walked behind her instead of beside.

“How’s Mr. Grumpy doing?” she asked him in a sweet but firm voice.

The elephant gurgled a reply and continued eating.

She picked up a handful of hay from the pile and held it out to him. The elephant snaked his trunk around the bunch and inserted it in his mouth.

As Mr. Grumpy munched, Brack tentatively picked up a handful like Tara had and held it out to him. The elephant took it from him, put it in his mouth, then wrapped Brack in a long gentle hug with his trunk.

Tara put a hand to her mouth in surprise. Brack hoped he wasn’t about to become the beast’s next mouthful.

“He really likes you,” she said, patting Mr. Grumpy and saying, “Good boy.”

Then he released his captive.

“He’s never done that before, Brack. He doesn’t usually like anybody.”

“Birds of a feather,” Brack said, hoping not to reveal how intimidated he felt.

They spent some time with Mr. Grumpy, Brack getting more comfortable with the beautiful beast, as well as with a few other elephants roaming freely, then Tara walked him to his car.

He said, “I need some exercise. You want to work out with me when you get done here?” He always kept a gym bag in the car with fresh clothes and tennis shoes.

She smiled. “Are you sure you can handle my routine?”

Brack thought of his trainer back in Charleston, an ex-University of South Carolina linebacker who still benched four hundred pounds. Although his routine balanced both cardio and weight training, it was no picnic.

“I guess I’ll find out.”

  

Brack leaned against his Porsche and smoked a cigar while waiting for Tara in the Preserve’s parking lot. A voice in the back of his mind told him he should be hunting for Regan, but his gut was telling him a connection existed here that he ought to pursue. Sometimes the right thing to do seemed the least logical. At least that’s what he told himself. His hunches had blown up in his face before.

Tara came out of the back gate and walked toward Brack. He clipped the burning end off the cigar, crushed the ash with his loafer, and put the remainder of the cigar in his pocket.

“Tsk, tsk,” she said. “You know those things are not good for you.”

He popped a mint in his mouth and smiled. “I gave up booze. Cubans and Oreos are all I have left.” He’d also given up chasing women with questionable morals, but he wasn’t about to announce that little tidbit to her—at least not today.

“Wow,” she said. “Two things we have to work out of your diet.”

“Where are we headed?”

Showing off a mouth full of gleaming white teeth, she said, “Follow me.” She got in an older Toyota 4Runner.

The Porsche followed her back to the northeast Atlanta suburbs. They parked at an upscale shopping center. Taking up half the center’s footprint stood a modern gym. Big glass windows exposed a multitude of people working out on various cardio machines.

The cigar was probably not the best warm-up activity he could have done. The only thing going for him was his two-hour session every other day with his personal trainer. Thanks to that USC linebacker, Brack was in the best shape of his life, tobacco and junk food notwithstanding.

The gym session was as tough as Tara had promised. She matched him set for set on the machines and with the free weights, even after he stepped up his reps. Though Brack worked out more frequently than most men, Tara was a machine when it came to personal fitness. They finished with strength building in what could be called a dead heat if they had been competing, and Brack expected they’d hit the treadmill to close out the session with a nice run. Where Shelby and he lived on the Isle of Palms, Brack enjoyed regular five-mile jogs around the island, so he wasn’t concerned.

But Tara guided him to the stair machine for what she called a casual climb. Except that she set the speed on a seventy-steps-per-minute interval with no time limit. Brack’s body was used to a decent clip on flat island roads. This was more like a sprint up the stairs to the top of the Empire State Building.

He managed to keep up with her for seventeen and a half minutes before he jumped off, ran to the closest trash can, and threw up. After everything he’d eaten for breakfast had exited, Tara handed him a towel. “Ready to give up those cigars now?”

His first instinct was to tell her where she could go, but lucky for him he had to toss more of his innards first. Another trainer came by to say that none of Tara’s challengers ever made it to the stairs before they dropped out, so Brack could consider himself in pretty good shape.

With his head in the trash can, his mind managed to form two words: just great.

After his stomach settled and a warm shower in the gym’s locker room relaxed him, Brack walked out famished and a little ashamed. As if to add insult to embarrassment, Tara said she had a bachelorette party to go to and took a rain check on Brack’s offer of dinner.

  

While Brack drove back to Mutt’s house to spend time with Shelby, Darcy called with a tip from one of her sources. So at nine o’clock that evening, he and Mutt sat in the Porsche watching the address of the exclusive club they’d been tipped about. Atlanta’s classic rock station played through the high-end speaker system.

They’d been parked maybe five minutes when the vehicle Darcy told Brack to watch for arrived.

The black Mercedes G63 SUV pulled to the curb, the rear door opened, and Kelvin Vito stepped out. Mutt recognized him from all the press coverage he’d received, both from his links to the underworld and from the charitable events he hosted to counter the former. Vito turned to extend a hand inside the open door. An African-American woman took his hand and exited the large SUV. Holding her head high, as a queen would, she resembled the photo Brack had seen in Regan’s bedroom. Thin, really too thin, Cassie’s sister wore a beautiful black dress with gold highlights. Arm in arm, the couple strolled into the private club followed by two very large, very muscular beefcakes. Rambo wannabes. And by the cut of their sports jackets, Brack could tell they covered more than muscle tissue.

“Well, I’ll be,” Mutt said. “Darcy was right. And there’s Regan.”

“So that’s her,” Brack said. This was all a lot of trouble for one very small woman.

Mutt reached for the door handle to get out.

Brack put a hand on his shoulder. “Easy there, cowboy.”

“Let’s get her so we can go on home,” he said.

“What about those two meatheads?” Brack asked. “They got heaters in shoulder rigs.”

“What you worried about, Opie? We handled worse than them before.”

“Yeah. But I don’t feel like being in a shootout today.”

Mutt shrugged and took out his vaporizer, which brought to mind Brack’s exercise routine with Tara. Somehow he didn’t feel like joining Mutt in lighting up a smoke. Instead, he remarked, “Shaft and Mike Hammer ride again.”

“Mike Hammer?” Mutt said. “I thought you wanted to be James Bond.”

“Hammer is more my style.”

“Yeah,” Mutt said. “Rough around the edges.”

The station commercial break ended and the wail of Prince’s guitar in the intro to “When Doves Cry” wafted through the speakers. RIP, Prince, Brack thought.

Mutt said, “We got to get in there.”

“They aren’t going anywhere.”

When the song ended Brack drove up to the entrance of the club. Slipping the valet a twenty to park the Porsche, he and Mutt bypassed the line and walked directly to the bouncer who manned the roped section designed for celebrities and those with enough cash to avoid waiting. Mutt slid the big man a bill and he unclasped the velvet rope to let them by. Their next stop was the window to pay the cover charge.

The young lady behind the glass might have been all of twenty-one. Mutt handed her two more bills identical to the one he’d slipped the bouncer. She nodded once with a tilt of her pretty little head, motioning the newcomers to move on.

As Mutt and Brack opened the double doors and entered the darkened nightclub, Brack marveled that this time it was his friend shelling out for cover charges. So far Mutt was in for one-fifty. And the evening was just getting started.

Like camera flash bulbs, spotlights and strobes bounced over the walls and the crowd at the speed of machine-gun fire. Mutt and Brack strolled casually to the bar, first, because Brack was thirsty, and second, so they’d have a place from which to observe and locate their target.

Brack ordered a club soda and lime and Mutt got a draft beer. He pulled out his vaporizer and took a few more puffs.

“The best thing about this,” he said, showing off the contraption, “is I can smoke anywhere I want.”

Not quite, but he had a point.

Taking in the crowd of millennials, Brack spotted their target and his entourage in an elevated far-corner booth.

Mutt saw them at the same time. “How you want to play this?”

“We’ll never get past the meatheads without some form of violence,” Brack said. “Not that I have too serious an issue with that. But let’s hold back. Sooner or later, Vito has to take a whiz.”

After another hit from his vaporizer, Mutt said, “I ain’t got nothin’ better to do, anyway.”

Across the room, Brack spotted a familiar face among a group of women, one of whom wore a tiara on her head.

Tara must have sensed his gaze and looked his way. She smiled, left the tiara wearer and the rest of her party, and made her way over.

Mutt noticed and turned his head toward Brack’s ear. “You better watch yourself with this one.”

Tara came up to Mutt and gave him a peck on the cheek and a hug, then did the same with Brack.

“What are you guys doing here?”

Brack mimicked the girl in the cover charge booth and merely gave a head nod in the direction of Vito and his crew.

“I figured as much,” she said. “He’s a real piece of work, you know.”

“I’ve been described that way myself,” Brack said.

“Yeah? Well, whatever you are or have done, I’m sure it pales in comparison to Kelvin Vito. He may look like a hip club owner who makes things happen. But he’s into a whole lot of very bad things from the skin trade to exotic animal poaching. It makes me so mad that we spend all this time and money to help people and to preserve endangered species, and he profits from the destruction of both.”

Mutt said, “We’re here for Regan.”

“This is the first time I’ve seen her out with him,” Tara said.

“You come here often?” Brack asked, instantly regretting the pick-up line phrasing.

She took it in stride. “My brother likes these places. So do some of my friends. If it wasn’t for them,” she said, motioning to the group, “I wouldn’t be here.”

“Opie and me was tryin’ to figure how to play this. Straight up or wit a slant.”

She said, “With Vito, better play the slant. In fact, the greater the angle, the better your chances. Like I said, he’s a real piece of work.”

Her advice resonated with Brack, although probably not how she thought it would.

Mutt looked at him. “What you thinkin’?”

Brack reached into his wallet, took out the valet ticket for the Porsche, and handed it to Mutt. “I’ll be right back. Get the car if something goes wrong.”

Mutt started to say something, but Brack stepped away too quickly to hear it and strode toward the target. He reasoned that if Vito was so sharp it took a pretty wild slant to fake him out, he must have prided himself on the angles. Playing this one like a head-on collision might be the only way to succeed. And since Brack didn’t live here or have to stay and suffer the consequences, what he was about to do was better done alone.

He got within a couple of feet of the elevated platform before the two meatheads came to their senses and rose to block him from stepping up to their level. They crossed their arms over their massive chests and stood with their feet apart.

Brack calculated he was half a foot shorter than each of them and about half as strong as either one. But the Marines had taught him to improvise, adapt, and overcome. These two seemingly immovable objects were about to get a lesson on what happened when they underestimated their opponent.

Another movie scene came to Brack’s mind. One from Clint Eastwood’s Heartbreak Ridge.

The beefcake standing above Brack’s right arm put his hand on Brack’s shoulder and opened his mouth to say something. Brack jerked both his arms out in front of him, grabbed each man by his crotch, and squeezed hard. So hard that the surprise in their faces turned to horror, then agony, all within two seconds. Both tried swinging at Brack’s arms, but succeeded only in losing their balance. They fell off the platform and landed with loud thumps.

The music might have stopped, but Brack hardly noticed. With both of them now out of the way, he had unrestricted access to Kelvin. And the arrogant jackass had the audacity to merely sit there and watch, as if he weren’t in any danger. He wasn’t, of course. Brack was already way out on a limb. If he harmed Vito but failed to kill him, there would be no place on earth where he’d be safe from the gangster’s unlimited resources.

“They were two of my best,” he said. “Take a seat.”

“No thanks,” Brack said.

Vito pursed his lips as if to consider. After a beat, he said, “Okay. So what can I do for you?”

Staring into Vito’s eyes without blinking, Brack said, “The young lady with you, Regan. Her sister is worried about her. A quick phone call letting her know everything is okay would go a long way to easing her burden.”

With amusement in his smile, Vito said, “You went through this whole exercise and all you want is for Regan to call her sister?”

“I do whatever it takes.”

Regan said, “I don’t have a sister.”

Neither Vito nor Brack made as if they heard her protest. Instead, Vito said, “For someone who beat up six of my guys already, Mr. Pelton, you sure are playing this fast and loose.”

So he did know who Brack was. “Yeah, well, I’d keep my head down if I was you.” Brack slowly reached into his pants pocket and took out a fat roll of hundreds he’d withdrawn from his own safe before he left Charleston. Cash always came in handy, like right now. He peeled ten bills off the roll and laid them on the table. “For any inconvenience I might have caused.”

Brack turned around to leave. One of the giants had gotten to his feet but was still hunched over. The other lay in the fetal position on the floor. Strolling past them, it occurred to Brack that most of his moves had come from all the movies he’d baked his brain watching when he should have been doing something his mother called “more constructive.”

Because he didn’t see Mutt or Tara, he headed for the front door. His Porsche was already waiting at the curb with Mutt in the driver’s seat. Tara sat in the back. As soon as Brack got in, Mutt revved the motor and got them out of there in a hurry.