Superhero Detective Series (Book 4): Hunted Page 12

  “My mother told me to pick the very best one, and that is Y, O, U,” Shadow said, spelling out you slowly. Her finger settled on Selant’s index finger. Shadow grinned broadly. She looked like a child seeing a big present under the tree on Christmas morning. Selant whimpered with fear, reeking of his own urine.

  “We have a winner,” Shadow said. She wrapped her hand around Selant’s index finger while still gripping his wrist with her other hand. “Say goodbye to your little friend.” Her exposed very white teeth almost seemed to glow in the dim light. I could hear my blood pounding in my ears as I concentrated on Shadow’s blood. I got ready to knock her out.

  Faster than a striking cobra, Shadow let go of Selant’s wrist with her one hand while her other still held on to his index finger. Her now-free hand rose up and then down blindingly fast like a guillotine. The flat of her hand hit Selant where his shoulder joined his neck. With a small moan, Selant’s eyelids fluttered shut. His head lolled to the side. I was aghast.

  “Tell me you didn’t—”

  “Kill him?” Shadow asked. She let go of Selant’s finger and pulled her foot off of his chest. Selant’s body slumped down in the booth. “Of course not. I just knocked him out is all.” I let out the breath I had not even realized I had been holding.

  “Thank God!” I said. Though I was not the slightest bit hot, sweat trickled into my eye. I wiped it away. “I really thought you were going to rip his finger off.”

  “There was a time I probably would have. You know I don’t like to be touched, much less groped. But, hanging around a Boy Scout like you so much lately has been rubbing off on me.” Shadow frowned slightly. “Honestly, I can’t decide if that’s a good or a bad thing. To tell you the truth, if you had not been here, maybe I would have gone ahead and ripped it off. Old habits die hard. As it is, I think I put the fear of God into Mr. Wet Himself. He’ll think twice before groping another woman.”

  Shadow looked down at Selant’s unconscious form with satisfaction. She bent over the table a bit. She blew away the line of powder on it until it was completely scattered and gone. She straightened back up and looked at me.

  “You asked me earlier if I was having fun,” she said. She smiled. Her smile was wolfish. “Now I am.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “My name is Truman Lord. I want to talk to Brass Knuckle,” I said to the bouncer standing outside the door that opened to the stairwell that led to Brass’ upstairs office. It was just a few moments after our encounter with Tom Selant. Shadow and I had left him unconscious in his booth and proceeded to the back end of the club where we now were. The bouncer I spoke to was both taller and wider than I. He had a shaved head. Telltale scar tissue on his face told me the guy either had been or was still a fighter. The man looked at me assessingly. I wondered if he realized I was a former fighter too.

  “Who’s she?” the man rumbled at me, flicking his chin at Shadow. His eyes darted down to her prominent chest. “Your wet nurse?”

  “She’s my sidekick,” I said before Shadow had a chance to threaten to rip this guy’s finger off too.

  “Partner,” Shadow immediately corrected.

  “And what business do you and your sidekick slash partner have with Mr. Knuckle?” the man said. If he found us intimidating, he certainly hid it well. It just went to show how little he knew.

  “Tell Brass I want to talk to him about the Sentinels. Truman Lord. He knows me. And since to know me is to love me, he’s a big fan of mine.”

  The man looked dubious. Nonetheless, he stepped back to where a phone was mounted on the wall. He picked it up. He cupped his mouth with his hand as he spoke into it. He watched us as he listened to whomever was on the other end.

  “If this guy doesn’t let us upstairs, can I be the one to slug him?” Shadow asked while we waited. “He said I looked like a wet nurse.” She shook her head. “Uppity.”

  “Sure. I’m surprised he even knows what a wet nurse is. He looks like the kind of guy who can only grunt to communicate. He’s smarter than he looks.”

  “It would be impossible for this guy to be dumber than he looks.”

  After a minute or two, the bouncer stepped back over to us. He looked faintly amused.

  “The boss says if you’re the Truman Lord he knows, he’s no fan of yours. He said, and I quote: ‘If someone would put that smartass gumshoe out of commission, I’d give him a medal and throw a party to celebrate.’”

  “Gumshoe? How insulting. I prefer sleuth. Or even shamus.”

  “I don’t think the boss cares. But he said to let you up anyway. Said that maybe you’d get out of line and that maybe he’d get the pleasure of stomping you himself. And when I told him what your friend looks like, he said to let her come up to. Said maybe he’d put her to work.” The bouncer was grinning openly now. He turned partially towards the closed door behind him. He punched a code into a keypad by the door, shielding the numbers from our view with his large body. Untrusting bastard. When the panel lit up green and the door made a slight buzzing sound, the man opened it, revealing a well-lit thin corridor with stairs leading upward. The man gestured towards the open door with a mocking flourish. I started up the stairs, with Shadow behind me. The door closed behind us. The thumping of the strip club immediately disappeared, as if a switch had been flipped. Good soundproofing.

  “Even though that guy let us pass, can I slug him anyway?” Shadow asked hopefully.

  “Maybe on the way out.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  The door at the top of the stairs opened right before we got there. I went through it with Shadow right behind me. We stepped into a long, rectangular, windowless room. In the middle of the room was a long plain wooden table. On it were stacks of cash that would make Donald Trump go from orange to green with envy. Sitting at the long sides of the table were ten men. They were counting the money, binding stacks of the cash together, and taking notes by hand in spiral notebooks. The men looked like the type of men who had gone to school for accounting. Standing watchfully behind the men on both sides of the table were two big men dressed in all black like the bouncers downstairs. They were tall and muscular. Automatic rifles were strapped to their backs, and they had pistols at their belts. They looked like the type of men who had gone to the school of hard knocks and studied thuggery.

  “I know the place I’m going to rob if I ever am stuck for cash,” Shadow murmured softly. Before I could respond, a voice from my left called out.

  “Over here Truman,” the voice said. I looked to the left into an open office door. A man was seated on the couch against the wall of the office by the door. His arm stretched the thirty feet or so from where he was to the doorway Shadow and I stood in front of. His hand was still on the doorknob of the open door.

  “I wonder what he penis looks like,” Shadow said, murmuring again.

  “I don’t,” I said. I walked towards the office the man with the stretched out arm was in, with Shadow right behind me. The man’s elongated arm closed the door behind us. Then it retracted back towards the man. When we walked into the office he was in, his elongated arm closed the door behind us. Then his arm fully retracted into his body until he was just a normal looking guy.

  “How you doing Stretch?” I said to the man.

  “Just fine Truman, just fine,” Stretch said. He took a sip of a large bottle of water, and then put it down on the small table in front of him. He was a wiry white guy with brown hair and prominent Adam’s apple. He had on a grey and white jumpsuit that made him look like he was wearing a onesie. I did not know what the jumpsuit was made out of that allowed it to stretch out along with Stretch’s body when he used his powers. Silly Putty, maybe. I’m no scientist. Stretch’s eyes moved from me to Shadow. They widened in interest, looking her up and down like a cat eyes a canary. The way Stretch looked at Shadow, I thought he would be more than happy to satisfy her curiosity as to what his penis looked like.

  Stretch was not alone in the large, cheaply furnished office. Bra
ss made money hand over fist, but he did not spend his ill-gotten gains on furnishings. On the other side of the room was Gunslinger. Gunslinger was dressed in faded blue jeans and a red and black checkered long-sleeved shirt. A leather, Western-style gun holster was strapped around his waist. The holster contained two six-shooters, both with ivory handles. Gunslinger also had on brown cowboy boots and a matching cowboy hat. The hat was tilted low on his head as Gunslinger leaned back in a cheap metal folding chair, watching the flat-screen television that was mounted on the wall across from him. A black and white John Wayne western was playing. Gunslinger’s stomach swelled out right above his holster, as if he was trying to hide a pillow from view. Gunslinger was not fat, but he was just a few pieces of cake away from being so. He would look ridiculous—like an extra from a Western movie who had taken advantage of the food at craft services too much—if I did not know what he was capable of. Gunslinger was the best man with a gun I had ever seen. That was saying something as I was a pretty fair hand with a gun myself and was in a line of work that brought me into contact with a lot of people who were handy with guns. In addition to his skill with a gun, Gunslinger had the Metahuman ability to surround the bullets he shot with an energy field that allowed them to pierce substances that would stop an ordinary bullet. I had seen Gunslinger shoot through a thick steel door to get to a man on the other side. Unfortunately for me, I had been that man. Fortunately for me, Gunslinger had missed as he could not see through that steel door to aim accurately. I later beat Gunslinger senseless. Maybe karma would have taken care of him eventually, but I have found karma to be less certain than a well-aimed right hook.

  When Shadow and I came into the office, Gunslinger moved forward so that the raised front legs of his chair hit the floor. While looking at me, he casually unhooked the straps securing the guns in his holster. His hands hung at his sides, close to his guns. His dark eyes were inscrutable.

  “Howdy Gunslinger,” I said, giving him my best John Wayne impersonation. “Rustle any cattle lately?” Gunslinger did not answer. He merely nodding to me in acknowledgement. His eyes flicked over to Shadow appraisingly, and then back to me. I did not expect a response. Gunslinger was mute. His vocal cords had been cut by a gangbanger when he was a kid. He could sign, but I had rarely seen him do so. He let his guns do his talking for him. I felt the comforting weight of my gun in my belt. Though Gunslinger was fast enough to shoot me to pieces before I would be able to get my own gun free, it still felt good to have it with me. Some people had blankies; I had a nine millimeter Beretta semi-automatic. I was not too worried about Gunslinger shooting me. I knew Gunslinger would not draw on me without getting the go-ahead from Brass Knuckle first.

  I gave the television Gunslinger had been watching a quick glance. I enjoyed westerns, and I had seen this one before. But, if you looked at westerns from the perspective of Native Americans, the good guys never won. A thought about Avatar skittered through my mind. The good guys often lost in real life too.

  Brass Knuckle was the third person in the office. He sat behind a large cheap desk directly across from where Stretch sat on the couch. He was a big man with longish black hair, brown skin, and small piggish eyes that were set deeply in his big head. He looked like a sumo wrestler who hailed from South America instead of Japan. He had on a shiny blue button down dress shirt that fit him the way a shirt would fit a gorilla. He wore a pink tie tied in a Windsor knot. Brass’ neck was so thick his flesh flowed over his shirt’s collar. It looked like the shirt and tie were strangling him. The world should be so lucky.

  Brass Knuckle was not his real name, of course. Since I had taken a hard look at his background in connection with another case years before, I knew his real name was Sergio Mezza. He was a second generation American, his parents having emigrated to the U.S. from Peru before Brass was born. When his parents had come to this country, they could not speak English and only had the clothes on their back. Brass had kicked off his career when he was a penniless young man as a pimp and street hustler. Now this son of immigrants ran the biggest prostitution ring in one of the biggest cities in the country. The American Dream was alive and well.

  Gunslinger and Stretch were Brass’ bodyguards and chief enforcers. Brass had a lot of enemies and competitors, so everywhere Brass went, Gunslinger and Stretch were sure to go. Like Mary and her deadly little lambs. Nothing about these three was as white as snow, though.

  Brass was reading an electronic tablet which he held in his meaty hand. Since his hands were the size of ham hocks, the tablet looked like a toy in his grasp. His beady eyes looked up at me.

  “Reading the Bible?” I asked Brass. “I love to see a man trying to improve his spiritual life. I particularly enjoy Proverbs twenty-three, verses twenty-seven through twenty-eight.”

  “What the fuck do you want Truman?” Brass said. Clearly he did not know the part of the Bible I referred him to warned about the evils of prostitution. I was casting pearls before swine again. “I let you in to see me. Don’t make me regret it. And who the hell is that?” he demanded, referring to Shadow. As Brass had been speaking, she had casually walked over near where Gunslinger sat. She was looking up at the western playing on the television as if she was fascinated by it. I knew what she was really doing was getting closer to Gunslinger in case there was trouble. No one seemed overly concerned about her. Brass was contemptuous of women as a rule, seeing them as little more than three warm, wet holes he could monetize. The attitude had rubbed off on his men. Like Brass, Stretch and Gunslinger kept their focus on me. Besides, when you looked like a centerfold the way Shadow did, men rarely saw her as a threat. Shadow always used that fact to her advantage. Maybe I should have taken a page out of her playbook and started wearing tight clothes and a push-up bra.

  “She’s an anthropologist,” I said to Brass. “She’s here to study criminals in their native environment.”

  “I’m not a criminal. I’m a legitimate businessman.” Brass said it with a smirk. He and I both knew better.

  “Oh give it a rest. You know I’m neither a vice cop nor an IRS agent. You’re as crooked as a mountain road. Not as scenic though,” I said. “But I’m not here to hassle you about your flesh peddling. I’m here to ask you why you’re having the Sentinels’ mansion watched and why you’re having people followed from it.”

  “The Sentinels? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Brass frowned deeply in confusion. I did not need my powers to tell me he was lying. I had seen better acting in grade school plays.

  “The hell you don’t. You’ve got some men watching the people going in and out of the Sentinels’ mansion and I want to know why.”

  “Even if I did, what business is it of yours?”

  “One of your goons followed me.”

  “Who? Nobody told me they followed you.” Just like that, Brass tacitly admitted he was having people followed. What Brass lacked in brains he made up for in viciousness. I smiled broadly. Brass’ face got red with the realization of his admission. He had probably let me come up to his office because he hoped to find out what I knew about the Sentinels, which was why I had dropped their name to the bouncer manning the door downstairs. But so far I had learned more from him than he had from me.

  “Who followed me is not important. The why is what’s important,” I said. Brass looked stubborn.

  “If you’re going to keep asking me stupid questions, you can just get out,” he said. “And I don’t mean just my office, I mean out of the entire club. And take your black bitch with you.”

  “Black bitch?” I pretended to peer around the room for a moment. “I guess he means you,” I said to Shadow.

  “Both rude and politically incorrect,” she said. “Sad. I only answer to African-American bitch.”

  “Neither of you are funny,” Brass said. “Now get the fuck out of my club.” He gave me a look that was no doubt designed to make me flee in terror. I bore up under it like a trooper. This was not my first rodeo.

  “You ca
n drop the death stare,” I said. “I’m sure all the sixteen-year-old runaway girls you prey on find you terrifying. I’m not sixteen, nor am I terrified.”

  “You should be,” Brass said. He almost smiled. I thought his face would crack. On Brass the almost-smile looked more like the snarl of a gorilla. I had told him the truth—I was not afraid of him. I had been a Hero too long and had seen too much to be afraid of him. I did respect him though. Not the way I respected a special-needs teacher or a doctor who ran a non-profit clinic or someone like Avatar, of course. Rather, I respected Brass the way a sensible person respects what a rattlesnake or a black widow spider can do.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why you care so much about the Sentinels,” I said.

  “Look jackass, like I said I don’t know nothing about the Sentinels. I’m a legitimate businessman and don’t have time to be fooling around in the business of a bunch of Heroes. I want to get back to running my business. Your presence is hampering my ability to do that.”

  “‘Hampering my ability to do that’? Jesus Brass, you must be reading the Wall Street Journal again. Every time I see you, you sound less and less like the flesh-peddling thug both you and I know you to be. Does someone help you pronounce the big words, or do you just sound them out?” I asked. “Though I hope you didn’t learn double negatives like ‘don’t know nothing’ from the Journal. If you did, their editorial standards are going downhill.”

  Brass’ eyes flashed with anger.

  “Just because you’re a licensed Hero, you think you can waltz in here and act like you’re better than me. Well you ain’t. Your shit stinks just like mine does. The main difference between you and me is I’ve got enough money to buy and sell you. I’m an important man in this town. One of these days you’re going to go too far and I’m gonna bury you so deep even the worms won’t be able to find you.”

  “Not even the worms? Eeek!” I was being deliberately irritating. I was trying to goad Brass into saying something useful. It had the side effect of also being fun. “I think Brass here is trying to scare me to death,” I said to Shadow. “Do I look scared?”