A Touch of Torment Page 2

  Khava gestured to the closed door. “May I please make my delivery now, sir?”

  Tommy leaned his hands on the stainless-steel cart. “Look, Sport,” he said, “I’m not trying to be difficult, but Miss Perrino just had a death in the family. She’s in no shape to receive any gifts. So you could leave it with me or bring it back later. Your choice.”

  Khava offered a pained expression as he returned to his original explanation of the delivery. Tommy wasn’t paying attention, however, because he felt the cart jerk in his hands beneath him. It was an unnatural, manmade movement. He tilted his head to the side of the cart and noticed a stainless-steel door. The metal latch on the door was unfastened.

  Tommy flipped the latch shut then looked up at Khava. “What’s inside the cart?”

  Khava looked confused. “What do you mean? I’m carrying three dinner plates for room 510.”

  Tommy’d had enough. Cara was inside dealing with the death of her father and he needed to be there for her. He pushed the cart toward Khava, forcing him back.

  “Listen, killer,” Tommy said, feeling his muscles constrict. “You are leaving right now, or we are going to have ourselves a little Chechen standoff.”

  There was a moment of indecision on Khava’a face, until the cart began jostling so vigorously that Khava couldn’t play innocent any longer. He made a move for his waistband, and Tommy rammed the cart so hard, the guy fell back, hitting his head against the wall. The cart still rocked viciously as someone tried to escape the tiny compartment.

  Khava came out with his pistol and Tommy dove at him, selling out that he could get there in time.

  He didn’t.

  Khava fired wildly, the bullet ringing past Tommy’s ear as he landed on Khava’s chest, the gun sliding away on the industrial strength carpeting.

  Tommy shoved his elbow into Khava’s neck as the guy spit into his face. Tommy got to his knees and landed a solid punch to the mouth, but Khava didn’t blink. He smiled up at Tommy with bloody teeth. They built them tough in Chechnya.

  A couple of doors opened from down the corridor as guests poked their heads out.

  “Who sent you?” Tommy said, a hand around Khava’s throat and a knee on his sternum.

  Khava’s smile broadened. “You mess with the wrong people, you guinea.”

  “Guinea? Shit, what decade you living in?”

  There was a loud high-pitched howl from inside the metal container while the cart wobbled violently.

  When Tommy glanced over his shoulder at the sound, Khava seized the opportunity to uppercut him under the chin. The pain shot through Tommy’s brain and his vision went white. He rolled off Khava, temporarily blinded and suffering from a concussion. He could feel Khava scramble over him and knew the Chechen was headed for the gun.

  Tommy swiped randomly and snatched Khava’s pantleg, hoping it was soon enough to prevent his demise. There were screams in the corridor as guests watched the debacle unfold right before their eyes. Tommy desperately pulled on Khava’s pants, tasting blood in his mouth and straining to remain conscious. As his vision slowly returned, he could see the cart tip over and the champagne bottle rattle onto the carpeted hallway.

  Khava kicked Tommy in the head, and for a moment he thought he would black out.

  A nearby door opened, then shut. Tommy was hanging onto Khava’s leg like a cowboy trying to wrestle a wild calf. There was a distinct metallic thump that rang through the corridor, like an aluminum baseball bat connecting for a deep drive over the wall. A moment later, Khava’s body went limp in Tommy’s grasp.

  Tommy was still on his back, trying to control his breathing, listening to the gaggle of voices in the hallway and the constant drum of a fist banging inside the service cart.

  A face appeared over him. It was a pretty face with compassionate eyes.

  “You all right?” Cara asked, clutching her metal ThermoFlask.

  Tommy tried to nod, but a lightning bolt of pain shot down his neck and into his shoulders. He was confused, too. Why was a Chechen trying to kill Cara?

  The elevator dinged and a large man in a brown uniform came rushing out with his Glock 22 out in front to him. He acted like he’d used it before.

  “Put it down,” he ordered Cara.

  “It’s a water bottle,” she said with disgust in her voice. She pointed to the guests now coming forward and rambling their stories to the hotel security guard. “They’ll tell you what happened.”

  The security guard kept his gun pointed at Khava, while he spoke into the microphone on his collar, requesting assistance.

  The guests came out of their rooms after the gunshot, so they couldn’t have seen who fired the weapon. And by the look of Khava on the floor, it seemed like Tommy could’ve been the shooter.

  Cara cradled Tommy’s head in her arms, her eyes still swollen from crying. “This wasn’t a coincidence,” she told him.

  “No,” Tommy said, remaining still and gathering his senses. “We need to get out of here.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” a male voice said from behind the throng of hotel guests.

  A Baltimore police officer approached Tommy with his gun drawn. “Who fired the weapon?”

  Cara pointed to Khava. “That’s the guy who shot the gun.”

  The officer glanced around at the guests milling in the corridor for confirmation, but no one could verify her claim.

  “Have you been shot?” the officer asked Tommy.

  “No, he missed,” Tommy replied, sitting up and leaning against the wall.

  “Uh huh.” The officer looked at the security guard who shrugged.

  Cara got to her feet and tugged her robe tight around her neckline. She glared at the officer who looked young, like the kind of guy who’d wear his baseball cap backwards when he was off duty.

  “You come to a crime scene where there was a shooting,” she said, with her hands on her hips. “What’s the first thing you look for?”

  The officer cocked his head, afraid to be caught with the wrong answer.

  “The bullet hole,” Cara informed him.

  The officer glanced around the corridor, pretending not to be listening to her, but not wanting to look stupid either.

  “It’s right there,” one of the guests said, pointing to a spot on the wall next to the door to Cara’s suite.

  “Now,” Cara continued, “if the bullet hole is in that wall, and Tommy is right here, and that guy is over there, who do you think fired the gun at whom?”

  The officer didn’t like her tone and said, “Listen, Ma’am.”

  “Ma’am? Do I look like a Ma’am?”

  The officer’s face tightened. “Are you in law enforcement?”

  “No, but I’m a journalist, so I know how to observe a crime scene.”

  “Okay, well, let me do my job.” The officer grabbed Tommy by the arm and said, “Let’s go.”

  “Where?” Tommy scrambled to his feet.

  “Headquarters, to straighten this out.”

  Cara was about to argue, but seemed to understand this guy wasn’t going to have any of it.

  “Pack your bags,” Tommy said to Cara, trailing behind the officer. “Meet me down at Central.”

  She frowned and shook her head. They weren’t going to compete with an incompetent police officer. Better to solve it with experienced officials downtown. Plenty of whom Tommy already knew.

  The stairwell door opened and a couple of officers came into the corridor, single file, weapons drawn.

  “Tommy,” Officer Pete Dority said. “What’s going on?”

  The newbie officer pulled Tommy by the arm and made no attempt to engage with the arriving officers.

  “Hey, Pete.” Tommy said as they approached the door to the stairwell. He pointed to the upended service cart. “Be careful. There’s someone inside of that thing and I’m guessing he’s carrying a weapon.”

  “Where you going?”

  Tommy gestured toward the young officer. “New guy, getting h
is feet wet.”

  Dority looked confused and wanted to say more, but the newbie pushed Tommy through the door into the stairwell. He gave Tommy a shove toward the stairs, still holding his gun by his side.

  “What’s your problem?” Tommy said. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  The officer kept nudging him all the way down the stairs until they reached the bottom floor. He yanked Tommy out a side exit to the back parking lot, where the snowstorm had gathered momentum. He shoved Tommy up against the back of a blue Ford Crown Victoria and said, “Spread your legs.”

  Tommy had to place his hands on the frozen roof. “Are you arresting me? I’m a witness.”

  “So you say,” the officer said, frisking him, then pulling the cell phone from his pocket and taking it away. He opened the back door to the Ford Vic and shoved Tommy into the back seat where a steel cage separated the front and back seats.

  The bench seat was stiff from the freezing weather and the windows were sealed by a blanket of snow. The officer wiped away the snow debris from the front windshield and got behind the wheel. As he pulled away, Tommy said, “You got heat in this thing?”

  “Let the engine warm up first,” he said with a slight accent that Tommy couldn’t pinpoint. He thought he’d try the lowkey approach and see where that got him.

  “Let me ask you something,” Tommy said. “How long have you worked for Central?”

  The guy didn’t respond.

  “Can’t be too long if you don’t know Pete Dority.”

  “Three weeks.”

  “Ah, it makes sense now. I suppose you don’t know my cousin Nick Bracco? He’s with the Bureau. Heads up the terrorist division.”

  “Nope.”

  “You know, my uncle used to patrol the Western back in the day. Nick’s dad. Until he was shot down by gangbangers down on Gold Street.”

  “Sorry to hear about that.”

  Tommy rubbed his hands together, trying to mitigate the chill. They were heading north on Central Avenue where Tommy recognized an old cigar shop. “You ever been to Davidus, on top of Mustang Alleys?”

  “Nope.”

  “Really? You don’t get around much do you?”

  “I just got here from out west.”

  “Where from?”

  “Arizona.”

  “Hmm, that’s funny, because that’s where Nick lives now, up in Payson. He and his partner, Matt McColm.”

  “And they head the terrorism division from there?”

  “Well, they work out of the Baltimore office, but they travel all over. Get home as much as possible, but you know how it is.”

  “I sure do.”

  The officer was sounding more pleasant now and Tommy felt like this could be defused once he got to the Central District office. Tommy probably knew half the guys who worked there. He was more concerned about Cara. She needed to be watched after. Whoever was trying to kill her wasn’t going to stop until they succeeded.

  They went past Baltimore Street at a rapid pace.

  “Hey, I think you missed the turn there, buddy.”

  “Nope.”

  The guy kept his hands on the wheel, but now peered at Tommy through the rearview mirror. Tommy began putting the pieces together. Slowly. The guy didn’t know Pete Dority. Everyone knew Pete.

  “Arizona, huh?” Tommy said. “You wouldn’t happen to be Chechen would you?”

  Tommy could see a pair of eyes smiling through the mirror.

  “Ah, shit,” Tommy said. “You guys are really starting to piss me off.”

  Chapter 3

  They were grilling Cara in her room while she sat on her bed with her arms folded across her chest. The guy inside the cart and the room service guy had been taken into custody. It was dramatic and tense and Cara couldn’t turn off her journalist tendencies.

  “So why would someone want to kill you?” Officer Dority asked.

  She didn’t like how her robe rose up when she sat, so she stood and paced. “I don’t know,” she lied.

  Dority didn’t look convinced.

  There was a knock and Dority’s partner opened the door.

  “We’ve got all the testimony we need,” a uniformed officer said. “She wasn’t involved. She was the target.”

  Dority nodded, then waved him off. Once the door closed, he said, “How do you know Tommy?”

  “He’s an old friend,” she said. “Now, I have a question for you .”

  “Shoot.”

  “Tell me about the officer who took Tommy to headquarters?”

  Dority looked over at his partner and got a blank stare.

  “We’ve never seen him before,” Dority said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did he say who he was?”

  “No. Why did he take Tommy?”

  Dority didn’t have an answer for that.

  A jolt of fear ran up the back of Cara’s neck. “You split up the witnesses and compare stories,” she said looking at Dority for confirmation. “Isn’t that the correct procedure?”

  He shrugged. “That’s how it’s normally done. Did Tommy threaten him? Resist arrest?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then I have an even better question,” Dority said. “How did he get here so fast? Jeff and I were across the street grabbing a coffee when the call came in. We ran right over. How did that guy beat us here?”

  Cara didn’t need to hear any more. Her reporter bone throbbed in her head. She picked up her phone from the dresser and went through her contact list. She found the name she was looking for and pressed the button.

  * * *

  They were still going north on Central, past Orleans and now transitioning into Hartford, past St. Francis of Assisi, toward the Beltway. Tommy didn’t know where they were headed, but he knew his best chance of surviving was getting out of the Crown Vic before it got there.

  “Listen buddy, I’m sorry,” Tommy said.

  “For what?”

  “For whatever happened when you were a kid that turned you into an asshole.”

  Again, the smiling eyes.

  “I mean, your dad was a real prick, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “Your mom?”

  “They were great.”

  “C’mon. What happened?”

  The guy made eye contact, then paused, before he said, “You really want to know?”

  “I really do.”

  “The short answer is—my brother was recruited by the Chechen Mafia when I was fourteen. We came from a poor family and the money was really good.”

  “You mean the money you stole?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a heartwarming tale. What’s your name anyway?”

  “Malkin.”

  “So, Malkin, are you taking me to be murdered?”

  “Only after you tell us everything you know about that bitch back there.”

  “Sure,” Tommy said. “Makes sense.”

  “You were simply in the wrong place, that’s all. We’ll get to her once the smoke clears.”

  Tommy slid down and stretched his legs up onto the cage that separated them, ready to start kicking.

  Malkin showed his pistol, then placed it up against Tommy’s foot. “You make one stupid move, and I’ll end your life right here. You want that?”

  Of course he didn’t, but Tommy also knew he couldn’t wait until he got to their destination. He pulled his legs down. “So where are you taking me?”

  Malkin turned on the heat, directing the majority of the blast to the front windshield to remove a layer of ice. “Someplace where you can offer us information for your life.”

  “Yeah, because you’re gonna let me live, right?” Tommy said, unable to remove the sarcasm from his voice.

  “Maybe. We are reasonable people.”

  “Sure you are. Tell me something, what did Cara do to get a hit called on her?”

  “It’s a family thing. Her father was interfering with our business. We had to eliminate anyon
e who might retaliate.”

  “You know she’s a journalist.”

  “I am well aware.”

  “That play a part?”

  Malkin shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  It didn’t. These people weren’t exactly concerned about negative press. Tommy groped for an exit strategy while examining the landscape. It was late and the darkness and the snowfall conspired to reduce the visibility of possible witnesses. It felt like they were driving inside of a tunnel.

  “How long before we get there?” Tommy asked.

  “Soon,” Malkin said. “You can start preparing your lies now so you can get them out of the way.”

  As the snow blanketed the road ahead of them, Tommy looked through Malkin’s sideview mirror and spotted a pair of headlights behind them. They were the right size and shape of a police vehicle, but there were no emergency lights on the roof.

  Occasionally the Crown Vic’s tires slipped on a layer of slush and Malkin had to slow down to keep the tires on the worn pathway in front of them.

  “I don’t get it,” Tommy said. “Why couldn’t you work out your differences with the Perrino family?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I understand better than you think,” Tommy said. “I used to work for Sal Perrino.”

  Malkin looked over his shoulder. “Really?”

  “Another lifetime ago, when he lived in Baltimore. I ran book for him.”

  “Makes it easier for me to kill you.”

  “You should’ve left his daughter out of it. She has nothing to do with his business.”

  “Too bad. We made a promise we would eliminate his family and we keep our promises.”

  Tommy was curious about something. “Why not take Cara, if she’s who you’re after?”

  “She was wearing a robe,” Malkin said.

  “Huh,” Tommy said. “And you didn’t have time for her to change before the real police arrived.”

  Malkin nodded. “You were the next best thing. Give us all the details we need and we’ll get her the next time.”

  Tommy glanced over his shoulder at the same headlights behind them. He pulled out a purple toothpick from his jacket and dug it between a couple of molars. “You seem awfully confident, I mean going up against the Sicilians like that.”