M.I.A. Hunter: Miami War Zone Page 8

  Unfortunately for the don, the lock was virtually useless. Who would worry about buying an expensive lock for a second-floor entrance?

  Stone forced it easily with a piece of stiff plastic.

  He stepped inside the room. It smelled of musty disuse. Probably no one had spent a night here for years.

  There was a heavy carpet on the floor, and Stone padded softly to the door into the hallway, putting his ear against it to listen.

  From downstairs he could hear the sound of voices as the security team laughed and joshed. He couldn't make out any distinct words. In fact, if he hadn't known that they were down there, he might not have heard them at all.

  Which meant that they probably couldn't hear him, either. He continued to listen, to wait for any indication that he had set off some hidden alarm.

  After several minutes, he went back to the balcony. He was convinced that he had been correct. There was no security for the second floor.

  He wiggled the rope as a signal for his men to come up.

  Hog came first, displaying again his unexpected agility. Stone wondered how he had happened to trip over the sprinkler head. Hog rarely made mistakes like that.

  Loughlin came next, pulling the rope up after him as he crouched on the balcony in the shelter of the rail.

  "We were afraid you'd found a woman in here and decided not to call us," Loughlin said.

  "Just checking it out," Stone told him.

  "What next, then?"

  "We pay a little visit to the don."

  Chapter Nine

  Don Vito Lucci was not thinking about the possibility of visitors.

  He was not thinking about the security men watching television and drinking downstairs.

  He was thinking about the redhead who was running her moist tongue over his withered thighs and working her way to a more certain source of pleasure for him.

  He didn't mind that she was taking her time. At his age, he needed a little bit of extra time.

  It helped if the girls were young.

  It helped if they didn't mind being roughed up a little, too, though tonight he didn't think he would need that part of it.

  He looked into the mirror above his bed and watched the girl's head move. He watched the way her ass wiggled just the tiniest bit as she got closer to his pubic area. It made her seem as if she were enjoying herself, and he didn't care if she was only doing it to fool him. He didn't mind being fooled.

  He reached down a liver-spotted hand and put it on the back of her shining red hair to guide her to where he wanted her to go.

  The girl was fooling, of course. She was only nineteen, and she would much rather have been with a young, wellhung stud about her own age, someone who could give her a thrill or two. There wasn't much of a thrill in trying to help some old guy get it up and then trying to help him keep it up for more than a few seconds.

  She had been in Don Vito's bedroom before, and she knew that he had a problem in that area. That was when he got mean. If he couldn't keep it up, it was never his fault. It was always the girl's.

  Sure, he was moaning in pleasure right now, but that could change. And when it did, he could turn ugly. It had happened before, so she did her best to keep him happy, twitching her bottom, which she knew he was watching in the big mirror, and faking excitement.

  She hoped he'd be able to finish soon. She was tired and wanted to go home.

  Stone and his men crept quietly, swiftly, down the carpeted hall. Loughlin stopped at the top of the stairway to keep watch, while the other two proceeded toward a door from beneath which a thin line of light seeped into the hall.

  Stone reached the door and palmed the knob. He didn't really expect it to turn, and it didn't. He got out his plastic.

  The thing that worried him was the light. Apparently the don was a man accustomed to staying up much later than most people. Well, they would just have to be extra careful, get the lock sprung silently, and move in so quickly that he didn't have time to sound any alarm.

  Stone worked the door cautiously, making less noise than a spider weaving a web. As he worked, he could hear the chatter from downstairs. A fine bunch of bodyguards they were! If all went well, they would be looking for new jobs soon, or they would be shark bait on some charter boat. Stone thought he might bet on the shark bait.

  The lock clicked, and Stone turned the knob, pushing the door at the same time. He and Hog burst into the room, guns drawn.

  They needn't have worried about attracting Don Vito's attention by making too much noise at the door. His mind was not on such matters as his own safety at the moment.

  In fact, he did not even know that two armed men had entered his room.

  The girl knew. She was looking straight at them, her eyes round with fear and surprise.

  She couldn't scream, however. Her mouth was full.

  Stone gestured at her with his pistol barrel, indicating that she should just continue. Why not let the don be completely relaxed for their interview?

  Don Vito was oblivious to the byplay. He lay supine, his face red, his heartbeat racing, his spine beginning to stiffen.

  Hog quietly closed the door behind him, staring at the girl. It was hard to believe, but he thought he knew her.

  Loughlin stood at the top of the stairs, listening. A voice broke through the general rumble of talk.

  "Ain't it about time for the boss to be through with that bitch?"

  "What d'you care, Al? It ain't your turn to take her home is it?"

  "You're damn right it is," Al answered. "I get pretty fucking tired of it, too."

  Getting out the car and taking the girl home for the night was a job that Don Vito's men didn't like. The girls were always in a bad mood, and sometimes they'd been roughed up a little bit. They were good-looking, but there was never any chance of striking up a conversation and maybe working something up. By the time they left Don Vito, they didn't want to have anything to do with men for a while.

  "You just don't wanta miss the start of Young Lady Chatterley," the first voice said, referring to an X-rated movie that was to begin shortly on one of the satellite channels.

  "Stick this in your ear," Al said. "I'm going upstairs to get the bimbo."

  "Maybe you'll get invited in," someone called out.

  "Har har har," Al said.

  Loughlin drew back into the shadows at the end of the hallway.

  The instant that Don Vito was finished, the girl leaped off the bed and stood beside it, her hands attempting to cover her nakedness.

  "Get back down there, bitch," Don Vito ordered. "I didn't tell you to stop."

  "Maybe she doesn't like to eat in front of company," Hog suggested.

  Don Vito sat up rapidly, pulling the covers up over the lower part of his body. "What the fuck?"

  "Maybe we ought to be asking you that question," Stone grated.

  Don Vito opened his mouth.

  Stone waved the Beretta. "Make one sound louder than a whisper, and you're a dead man."

  Don Vito shut his mouth.

  "Take care of the woman, Hog."

  Hog ambled over to the redhead. "What's a bad girl like you doin' in a nice place like this?" he asked. "You shoulda stuck to strippin'."

  Stone cut a glance in the woman's direction. "What?"

  "The Black Pussy Cat," Hog informed him. "The stripper that was at the table with Castillo and Rodriguez."

  "Well, put her out."

  The redhead was too scared to move. She had given up trying to cover herself. Hog had seen it all before.

  "I really hate to have to do this to a pretty little thing like you, miss," Hog apologized, "but I don't think you want to watch this."

  He clipped the redhead on the point of the chin. "Sorry, ma'am," he said, catching her as she collapsed.

  "I don't know who you two fuckers are, or how you got in here, but you're dead meat," the old don spat. "My boys will carve you up and feed you to the dogs."

  "Your boys are too busy watching TV to
do much of anything right now," Stone told him. "And the dogs are taking a nap." He stepped to the bedside. "Now then. I have a few questions to ask you."

  "Fuck you," the don hissed, his thin chest heaving with emotion. "I don't talk to assholes."

  Stone pressed the barrel of the pistol to the side of the old man's head. "Are you sure about that?"

  "You don't scare me, asshole. You fire a shot and the whole house comes running."

  "You may be right." With his left hand Stone pulled out the silenced .22 automatic. "But no one will ever hear a shot from this."

  Don Vito's eyes narrowed. "What did you want to ask me?"

  "Just a couple of simple questions. Let's start with the first one. Do you have Jack Wofford?"

  "Never heard of him. Is he an asshole, too?"

  "He sure talks dirty for an old man," Hog said. He was admiring the room. "I got to admit he has a good decorator, though. I like all this red shit."

  "Too bad he's not going to live to enjoy it any longer," Stone growled. "Do you still have that plastic knife?"

  "The one that's so brittle that it breaks off in people's bodies? Yeah, I still got it." Hog bent down and removed the knife from his boot.

  Stone took it from him. "Where do you think we should stick him first?"

  Hog thought about it. "How about the abdomen. He'd still live for a while, long enough to beg you to finish him off after he told you what you wanted to know."

  Stone nodded. "Sounds good."

  Al should have been to the top of the stairs by now. Loughlin couldn't figure out what had happened to him. Was there another way to reach the don's room, a second staircase? He heard a toilet flush.

  "That take a load off your mind, Al?" someone yelled.

  "Everybody's a fucking comedian."

  Loughlin heard steps on the stairs. Al was coming up.

  Stone held the knife poised, pointing it in the direction of Don Vito's abdomen beneath the covers.

  Hog was struck with an inspiration. "Wait a minute. I got an idea. A guy with a room like this, a nice mirror on the ceiling, a padded leather bar, a guy with a redhead in the room, there's some things worse than dying. You know?"

  Don Vito glared at him. "What the hell do you mean?'

  "Well, I was brought up in Texas." Hog smiled and rubbed his hands together. "I worked on a cattle ranch for a couple of summers, and I had to learn how to do what they call 'cutting calves.' That's a nice way of sayin' they castrated 'em. There was one guy that always brought a little brown paper sack when we did that. He saved all the calf balls and fried 'em up for supper. Mountain oysters, he called 'em."

  Stone listened to the performance in silence. For all he knew, it might have been the truth.

  "Now you bein' so old, I expect your balls would be too tough and stringy to eat. In fact, you hardly ever use 'em, I bet. Still, I know you'd miss 'em if they were gone. And that's exactly what they're gonna be if you don't tell my friend what he wants to know. You see that plastic knife."

  Don Vito didn't answer, but his eyes were riveted on the knife in Stone's hand.

  "It's real sharp," Hog went on. "I can have those old balls of yours off before you can count to ten. Slip a rubber band around the sac, and you won't hardly bleed at all. You got any rubber bands around here?"

  Don Vito tried to speak, but his mouth was dry. "N—no," he finally croaked.

  "Well, never mind. You probably ain't got much blood in you anyway. Probably runs real slow. You'll be all right."

  Hog walked over to where Stone was standing. He extended his hand.

  Stone put the knife in it.

  "You hold that gun on him real steady, Sarge. That way he won't flinch too much. No tellin' what else I might cut off if he flinches. We don't want to mess up his plumbin' completely."

  Hog reached for the edge of the covers, which the old man held in his clawlike hands.

  "Crazy," Don Vito managed to say. "You're fucking crazy!"

  "Yessir," Hog agreed. "I expect you're right."

  He ripped the covers out of Don Vito's grip and tossed them to the foot of the bed. "Shit. They've shrunk up so little I might have to cut everything off after all. What d'you think, Sarge?"

  "Go ahead. We don't have time for delicate surgery."

  "Right." Hog moved the knife.

  Al looked down the dark hallway. Usually the bimbo would be done by now and ready to go. Sometimes they were waiting in the hall.

  But sometimes they weren't. On those occasions, Al liked to go and listen at the door, his ear pressed to the wood. Somehow it gave him a feeling of power to hear the intimate cries of the mighty crime lord.

  It was just something Al enjoyed. He didn't think of himself as sick.

  He started down the hall toward the door where the thin line of brightness still showed.

  He never got there.

  Loughlin came up behind him like a fog. One of the Brit's big hands covered Al's mouth, while the thumb and forefinger squeezed his nose tightly shut. At the same time, Loughlin wrapped a forearm around Al's neck, pulling backward with a terrible force.

  There was not much Al could do. Loughlin had effectively prevented him from yelling, snorting, or even breathing.

  Al's body jerked convulsively as he tried to get a breath. He tried to thrash from side to side, he tried to kick, he tried to bite.

  Nothing worked.

  Al's eyes bugged out. His body suddenly strained forward, his back arching as if a thousand volts of electricity were flowing through him. His heels beat a tattoo against Loughlin's shins.

  The Brit hung on, his forearm tightening inexorably.

  Al's body continued to spasm as he tried more and more desperately to suck in the air his lungs were starving for.

  After what seemed to Loughlin quite a long time, the struggles stopped. Al's body went limp.

  The point of the knife touched Don Vito's scrotum. "Wofford!" he hissed.

  Stone punched him in the temple with the pistol barrel. "Don't raise your voice again."

  The don's voice came in a hoarse whisper. "The D.E.A. guy, right?"

  Stone nodded.

  Hog didn't move the knife.

  "I didn't know the name, I swear it." Don Vito's breath came in ragged gasps. "But if it's the D.E.A. guy, yeah, I can tell you about him."

  "He's the one. Tell me, or my friend starts to cut."

  "I don't know anything. I'd tell you if I knew."

  "Go ahead, Hog, cut them off. Don't be too gentle."

  Hog gave a little jab with the knife, enough to draw blood.

  "Oh, shit!" Don Vito wailed. "Oh, shit! I'd tell you, but I don't know anything!" Even in his extreme fear, the old crime boss had lost none of his cunning. He knew that the longer he could hold out, the more likely the two men were to believe what he told them.

  And he was going to tell them. There was no doubt in his mind about that. But he wasn't going to tell them everything. Hog gave another dig with the knife.

  "I don't have him! I don't know nothing about it! It wasn't my idea!"

  "Wait a minute," Stone growled. "You say you don't have him. Then tell me who does. Whose idea was it?"

  "It was my son. Charlie. They call him Crazy Charlie. Who knows what a crazy man does? Shit!"

  "And you have no idea at all where your son might be keeping Jack Wofford? None at all?"

  "No! I swear it on my mother's honor!"

  "That's too bad, then." Stone's eyes were cold. "Chop 'em off, Hog."

  At least Al had just dumped his load, Loughlin thought. It was always messy when someone you were strangling voided his bowels.

  Keeping his hand over Al's mouth and nose, and keeping his grip on his throat, the Brit dragged the corpse backward to the bedroom through which he and the others had entered.

  He dumped the body on the musty bed.

  Al lay dead and still, his sightless eyes staring into the room's darkness.

  "Sweet dreams," Loughlin told him.

&nbs
p; What the hell, Hog figured, maybe the old guy doesn't care after all. "Kiss 'em good-bye," he snarled, moving the point of the knife in hard against the groin and reaching with his hand as if to grasp the scrotum to tighten it for the cutting.

  "He's at Charlie's place! Shit! Charlie's place!"

  "And where is that?" Stone snapped.

  Don Vito gave an address in a trembling voice. Hog kept the pressure on the knife.

  Stone had no idea where the address was, but he knew that Carol Jenner would be able to locate it almost instantly on the map.

  Hog looked disappointed. "He might be lyin'," he said plaintively. "Let me cut 'em off anyway."

  The door opened behind them.

  Stone whirled, the .22 lowered.

  "It's only me," Loughlin said. "Sorry to interrupt. It looks like quite a touching scene."

  Hog's eyes never wavered from the don's face. "It might have been a whole lot more touching."

  "I'm sure. I just dropped in to give you a news bulletin. I had to kill a guy in the hall. They might miss him downstairs soon, though given the kind of worthless rat he was, I wouldn't count on it."

  "We were just about through here anyway," Stone told him. "Let's tie the old man up."

  Just at that moment the redheaded woman on the floor stirred and raised up. Hog glanced at her.

  It was Don Vito's first, last, and only chance. He was old, but he was still vicious. Still dangerous. And lifelong habits are hard to break, especially those related to survival.

  Ever since he was a young hood, working his way up through the ranks, Don Vito Lucci had slept with a gun nearby. Even sex was not enough of a distraction to make him forget his weapon.

  When Hog's eyes slipped away and the pressure from the knife eased somewhat, he twisted in the bed and reached his scrawny hand underneath the stack of pillows.

  He came out with a short-barreled .38.

  Stone moved even faster than Hog, the hard edge of his hand smashing into Don Vito's throat, crushing his larynx, killing him instantly.