Rick Mallet Ch. 11-12

Ch. 11 Surveillance

We followed Ivana without hesitation. She led us another half-block down the alley and into the back door of another triple-decker, no different from the one we'd just left, except it wasn't the scene of remembered trauma, and she opened a shiny new lock with a shiny new key. Inside, she nodded wordlessly to a short-haired, dark-suited young man holding a MAC-10 at port arms and mounted quickly to the second floor.

We entered through the second door into a room teeming with activity. Two agents wearing white shirts, ties, and headsets sat monitoring a bank of video screens. Across the room a group in tactical gear conferred. In between, in discussion with two other obvious feds, stood Felix Bottoms.

He looked up and came toward us, "Rick, glad to see you! Nice job getting out of that hole, aside from needing Agent Lingas to save your ass at the end."

"Agent Lingas?"

Ivana Kikyanutsoff extended her hand, "Connie Lingas, CIA."

Felix said, "It figures that right when an operation as delicate as this one is about to go down, you'd walk into the middle and blow it up like a hand grenade, Rick. Connie, why don't you take Gina to the lounge before you hustle back to Lucky Lewis's. Luscious didn't see you coldcock him, but he won't stay out in that alley forever. Great work, by the way. Gina, it's always a pleasure."

The women left. Felix turned to me. "Velda called me earlier. Her body is one of the seven wonders and her ass is a natural cockholster. I gave her a jizz enema she'll be shitting out for days. You ought to tap that, Rick."

I just shook my head. At least Velda would be less edgy for the rest of the week.

Felix was still talking. "It's like Gina told you, Lucky's gone straight... because he got flipped. We have his place and the Johnsons' joint totally wired."

"Why's the CIA in on this?"

"That's the million dollar question and the national security conundrum." He walked over to the bank of video screens. "Give us a little highlight reel," he said to one of the monitoring agents. Then he narrated, pointing at the screen. A young man wielded a riding crop, striping the back of a bound blonde. "A city councilman's son." A chubby naked gray-haired man lay on his back. Two women in leather stood over him, urinating on him. "Our senior senator." An Arabic-looking man sucking a muscular man in leather while a similarly-dressed woman penetrated him from behind with a strapon dildo that dwarfed Gina's bat. "The crown prince."

Felix turned to me. "We didn't put cameras and microphones in there. We tapped into the Johnson system. They've got blackmail material on local, national, and international figures. They're tied in with international drug dealers, human traffickers, and terrorists. So we've got a combined task force. Which means clusterfuck. Everything's getting kicked up to a higher authority. State wants to protect the crown prince so they can use him, the police chief wants the councilman's son to take a fall, but the mayor wants to protect him. You get the picture."

The bank of video screens showed the action in each room of the triple-decker. I noticed the empty basement room with the chair I'd broken. Another screen showed Luscious Johnson getting to his knees in the alley.

"Ten pounds of shit in the old five-pound shit hole. So what's happening?" I gestured at the group in tactical.

"Jimmy Mack Johnson is due in there within the hour, a high-level drug runner from Mexico is already in the house, and an international financier is coming in to pick up half-a-dozen young women to fly to his private island. They think they're going to a weekend party, but his history is to drug them up, use them for the weekend, then sell them to a group in Brazil. We're hitting every door in the next couple hours. Right now the agencies are negotiating who takes a fall and who gets pulled out and protected."

"Let me go in with you."

He looked at me. "Don't fuck around, Rick."

"Seriously. I want to see Jimmy Mack and Luscious when you hit them"

"All right. I do like the idea of Jimmy Mack setting a new record for shortest time out of the slam."

I looked at the bank of video screens.

Ch. 12 A Blast from the Past

The door swung open, then a loud voiced said, "I thought something stunk. Who let that asshole in here?"

I turned. "Wax."

"Doggy, get the fuck outa here."

I could feel the heat rising in me. "Try and make me."

He started toward me. Felix stepped forward, "Cool it, Pete. He walked into it on an unrelated matter," He looked at me, "Right?" Then went on, "We can't turn him loose until the action's over. I'm keeping him with me. You're city police liaison, here as a courtesy, so back off."

Wax turned away and went to the tac bunch. I knew what was coming. He told the old story in a loud voice. "You know about Doggy? I was on the graveyard shift downtown, Vice. We had an operation going to nail Lucky Lewis and Jimmy Mack Johnson, so we had wiretaps going and surveillance. Well, one night, this asshole -- I guess he missed the briefing, probably drunk or hung over -- off-duty, gets loaded in Lucky Lewis's. Then he stumbles off down the street straight into a shitstorm in the triple decker, same place we're hitting pretty soon.

"J-Mack ran a string of hookers out of there and he was pissed about something. According to the testimony, this drunk asshole hears the hookers screaming and charges into the dump just as J-Mack takes a slash at Gina with a razor knife."

They all stood stone-face like LE types do. One said, "Like taking a sledgehammer to a Michelangelo." That got them all smirking.

Wax continued, "Asshole here disarms J-Mack, knocks him out and handcuffs him."

Now they're all looking at me like they're impressed. They haven't heard the punch line.

"All the hookers line up to give him a thank you fuck or blow job. Instead of calling it in, he goes one-man orgy."

They're still looking at me with respect.

"Someone else called it in, and a shit-ton of black-and-whites rolled. We had to get out of the surveillance van and slow them down a little. You guys know who Dixie Normis is?"

"The Drag Show chick?"

"Yeah, that's him. Back then he was a sissy whore that J-Mack had working street corners. So anyway, we all bust through the door, and Doggy here has is cock up Gina's back door, and Dixie has his cock up Doggy's. And one of the uni's let a paparazzi through the door."

None of the looks were respectful now. They all kind of wandered off like they had something else to do besides kill time.

Felix tried to comfort me, "Don't let Wax get to you, Rick. Half those guys would give their left nut for a collar like that, or to get their cock into Gina. And if they don't know the joy of prostate stimulation, they don't know what they're missing."

"Yeah, well. Whatever. Once an asshole, always an asshole, I guess."

I went back to looking at the video monitors. I spotted the room where the half-dozen college dropout party girls were drinking champagne. Felix said, "they give them a combo of Ecstasy and roofies." On the monitor a fat, sweaty, balding guy in a suit pushed a compliant young blonde to her knees and unzipped his trousers.

Another monitor caught my eye. A door opened into the empty room, and four college athletes walked in with one young woman. She had on black combat boots, a short black skirt and a matching bustier, and her hair was a shaggy orange mop. Angel Stonewood.