1 Motor City Shakedown Read Free Page B

That’s a fair point. Okay, I’m going.
     

 
     
    TWO
     
    Detroit Police Lieutenant Allen Phelps parked on the deserted upper deck of Detroit Mercy Hospital’s parking garage, got out of his car, and stood there staring in silence at the huge complex of interconnecting buildings that made up the hospital.
    Somewhere inside it, he knew, there was a man who could ruin Allen’s life.
    He lit a cigarette and kept staring; huffing jets of smoke though his nose. He was an average-sized man, all-in-all, but the intensity of his stare was larger than life. His eyes trained along the windows of the hospital, machine-like and patient. He rarely blinked. Finally, his deliberate searching came to a stop and he settled on one window in particular.
    ‘724,’ he thought. ‘Bingo. Hello, Vernon. You rat fuck.’
    Identifying the room brought little satisfaction, and he sucked down two more cigarettes before Noel Hammond appeared, pulling his gray Buick Regal up alongside Allen’s red Saturn.
    Allen watched Noel get out and walk over to him. Where Allen was all coiled-energy and focus, Noel was a soft-featured man with an easy, self-deprecating smile.
    “Chief,” Noel said.
    Allen flicked his cigarette out over the ledge of the garage, where it was caught in the wind and carried away in a looping spiral. Allen watched it with a nervous certainty in his gut that he was that cigarette butt, plunging down and down, undone.
    He pushed the foreboding away and turned to look at Noel.
    “Let’s hear it,” he said.
    Noel pulled his notepad out of his jacket pocket and flipped through it until he came to the most recent page.
    “Let’s see. His attending says fractured left forearm. Broken left wrist. Fractured jaw. Fractured left orbital bone, probably with some loss of vision, but we don’t know yet. Severe concussion. Two broken ribs. Severe bruising all over. Laceration to the forehead—that was me, I think. I took a swing at him as they were pulling him down and caught him with the edge of the barrel.”
    Noel pulled his duty pistol out from under his arm and held it up.
    “See? Caught him there and kind of tore, I guess.”
    Allen scowled.
    “I don’t care about your fucking love tap, Noel. Is he awake and yakking his head off? That’s the only thing that matters. Because if he is? You and me, we need to start thinking about heading for the border, pronto. Get it?”
    “He’s on heavy morphine, Chief. I swung by the nurses’ desk and got chatting one of them up. Made out like I wanted to know when we could start asking him questions. She says they’re keeping him sedated until tomorrow night. If the swelling in his head goes down by then, they’ll run some scans.”
    Allen nodded along, his hands on his hips.
    “So maybe we have a day,” he whispered. “That’s plenty of time to get it done.”
    “That’s what I figured, too.”
    Al threw him a withering scowl, his eyes narrowing with contempt.
    “ Oh, is that what you figured? You know what I figured? I figured you were going to turn his fucking lights out, Noel. That was the plan, right? Or am I remembering it wrong? Is that it? Did I tell you dipshits to smack him with your guns like a bunch of old ladies swinging their purses, or did I tell you to put a bullet in his fucking head?”
    Noel put his hands up between them, as if he could ward of f the Lieutenant’s fury.
    “Lee fucked us,” he protested.
    “Lee? Lee’s dead . Lee didn’t fuck you. Lee got fucked. I just came from the M.E.’s. They were opening his chest with a giant saw! Lee! Lee, with his brain getting weighed on a scale and his guts laid out, and you’re blaming him ?”
    Noel watched the lieutenant building up his outrage, and recognized it as a situation he didn’t want to let continue. If left unchecked, Allen Phelps was fully capable of feeding a slight irritation until it was a roaring wrath that only physical violence could quench.
    So Noel did what he’d learn to do over