Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Ellie kept her Glock trained out in front of her and slipped out the bedroom door. She silently retreated down the hallway on this side of the house. She walked backwards, staring into the kitchen, looking at Nunez's lifeless body as she scanned for other movement. She backed around the corner and turned toward the end of the hall that terminated at the master bedroom. She heard a rustle from the living room, near the kitchen. Deneford might be assessing his partner, she thought, getting sloppy in the process. She arrived at the end of the hall, and, with her weapon drawn in a tight grip, she risked a peek around the corner.

  She immediately wished she hadn’t. The butt of Deneford’s pistol came slamming just below her sternum, knocking her backwards. She had underestimated the stealth of such a large man. He had made the noise from the other side of the living room, intentionally - that much was clear now. And in the space of a few seconds, he had soundlessly slipped across the room, down the hall, and readied himself, waiting for whoever was in the house with him.

  The force of the impact sent Ellie backwards, and the air evacuated her lungs as her diaphragm spasmed from the trauma. She landed hard on the hallway floor, her weapon slamming into the bedroom door frame and coming free from her grip.

  Deneford stepped over Ellie and assessed her. His face contorted as he recognized the lady he knew to be Shirley Dunham, only now her hair was longer, blonde. He tilted his head. “What the hell…?” he said out loud.

  Ellie coughed and wheezed, trying to gain a breath that would allow her to get back in the fight. It didn’t come soon enough. Deneford slid his weapon into the back seam of his pants and straddled Ellie, coming down over her in a full grappling mount. He was now sitting over her torso, his thick muscular thighs on either side of her hips. He pressed his weight into her, pinning her to the ground.

  “Who are you?” he asked. The cordiality of Paul Greenberg’s assistant was gone.

  Ellie sputtered, forcing her mind to focus beyond the violent turn of events, knowing that she would need every moment of mental clarity to get out of this alive.

  He decided not to wait for an answer. He made a fist, pulled up, and sent it down hard into the side of her ribcage. She saw it coming, and, with what strength she could muster, she tightened her abdominal muscles to prepare for the impact. It came, harder than she had anticipated, hitting her ribs with all the force of a battering ram.

  The impact jolted her and sent a wave of pain radiating up her entire left side. Still, she was gaining her breath back. She could feel her diaphragm start to relax and oxygen come back into her lungs in ragged gasps.

  “Who are you?” he asked again, looking down on her with a face simultaneously registering both confusion and anger. His knees squeezed into her hips as he tightened the hold he had on her.

  Ellie had attained the level of black belt in Jiu Jitsu before she had entered the CIA. During her time with TEAM 99, she had found it necessary to use it in the field on a few different occasions. Occasions when the undesired situation of close combat fighting was inescapable. This position - pinned flat to the floor - was the last place she wanted to be. Deneford had already moved the fight through the first two phases: closing the distance and bringing the fight to the ground. From where he was Deneford could continue raining blows down on her until she was incapacitated, or even dead. He had her so she couldn’t shoulder backwards or buck her hips. It would be up to Ellie to bring about the last two phases of their engagement: achieve a dominant position and finish the fight.

  The tendons on Deneford’s neck stuck out like thick cords, and his eyes were dilated with an adrenaline-infused anger. He reached down and grabbed her by the throat, shoving the web of his thumb up into her larynx.

  His fingers dug into the soft flesh around her neck, and the weight of his hand pressed hard, blocking any chance of more oxygen flowing into her body. Her face reddened, and, for the briefest of moments, she struggled against him. His torso was too high for Ellie’s fingers to reach his eyes. Ellie knew she couldn’t bridge him up with her legs, couldn’t force his center of gravity up. He was too heavy and she too small in comparison. Her only way out would be to get him off center. Her one saving grace was that, for now, her arms were free. This wasn’t over yet.

  With her right hand Ellie reached around and grabbed him at the crook of his elbow. With her left, she reached up to his shoulder and gathered his t-shirt into her hand. With a quick snap she cinched her left elbow down toward his thigh. His hand was still around her throat, but her efforts had loosened the grip, and now he could no longer freely move his arm.

  Behind him Ellie’s feet were searching furiously for his ankle, so she could trap it, so she could gain leverage. She couldn't find it, so instead she braced up on the balls of her toes and pulled her assailant toward her shoulder. Deneford’s balance was thrown off, and he tumbled past Ellie’s face and down toward the wall. Ellie swiveled and came up in between his legs. She had broken the mount.

  Deneford, while clearly surprised at the turn of events, showed no signs of being uncomfortable on his back. He would have had training in close combat as well. Ellie watched as he lifted his knees to keep Ellie at bay and then he locked his ankles behind her back so she couldn’t mount him.

  Ellie decided to end this. She did not have the stamina to grapple with him for the next five minutes. She had a surprise for Trigg Deneford; one that he wouldn’t see coming, the same way Eric Cardoza had not seen it coming.

  She reached behind her and found the handle of her butterfly knife, poking out just past the top of Deneford’s ankles. She flicked out the knife, grabbed the handle, and in one swift motion brought the blade down and into the top of Deneford’s left thigh, just a few inches below his waistline.

  He screamed and released the hold his legs had on her lower body. Ellie scrambled onto him, mounting him, and, while his eyes bugged out in pain, she rose up and sent her right fist into his face. She tossed the knife behind her, and, before he could muster any defensive measures, Ellie hit him again, this time with her left. His head flopped back. She bought her right fist up one more time and brought it down with all the malice of an angry hornet.

  His head jolted to the side, unnaturally.

  He lay still.

  Ellie remained where she was, panting, watching to make sure he didn’t move. She gathered herself, pushed off of him, and slowly stood up with the help of the wall. She bit down on her bottom lip in an effort to re-channel the pain that still screamed out from her ribcage. She gathered up her knife, her gun, and Deneford’s gun. She walked to the end of the hall and turned. Entering the kitchen, she stepped over Nunez’s body and looked out the back door to ensure no one else had arrived during the last few minutes. She removed a phone from her pocket. The screen had been cracked during the fight, but not badly enough that she couldn't use the keypad.

  She called Garrett.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The lights from a dozen emergency vehicles pulsed across half of the neighborhood, bathing homes, lawns, and rustling palms in alternating sheets of red and blue. Minutes earlier, they had carted off Mateo Nunez's body. Deneford had been driven away in an ambulance soon after. They had laid him on a stretcher and cuffed his wrists to the rail, wheeling him past Ellie on the way out. He had stared her down with unveiled enmity. She held his gaze, watched as they shut the rear doors and drove him away. It would be a while before he could put any weight on his left leg again.

  Ellie sat against the rear bumper of Garrett’s Expedition. She was tired and sore. She wanted to go home and take a hot bath and relish a very full glass of Merlot.

  Mark and Garrett stepped across the front threshold of the house and walked toward her.

  “How are you?” Mark asked.

  Her right hand was swollen from where she had twice laid it into Deneford’s face. Her ribs ached. Her thigh was still sore from getting hit with the kayak paddle the other night. The stitches on her arm had popped during the scuffle. The skin on her neck was raw. “Fine.”

  “What were you thinking going at that alone?” Garrett asked.

  “I wasn’t going to risk not getting our man.”

  “Next time, wait for backup. We clear on that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did Nunez just run back in the house like that?” Mark asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I choked him a couple seconds too long. He must have been in a panic. Some people can’t think straight in situations like that.”

  “All the other stuff aside,” Garrett said, “you did a hell of a job, Ellie.”

  “I’m sorry I disagreed with you about raiding the stash house.”

  “We got lucky is all. If you hadn’t gotten Cardoza and come up here, we wouldn’t have gotten these two. It would have been just another raid.”

  “Why was no one from the SRT in the backyard at Ridgeside?” she asked.

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to wait and read Jet’s report tomorrow.”

  She rubbed the tender skin around her throat. “How did the raid go?”

  “Nine arrests, although two of them were prostitutes. Jorge Changa, Jimmy Joe Claude’s old friend, he was there. We got him too. One of Jet’s men, Special Agent Sanchez, got shot in the arm. He’ll be all right, but he’ll be out of commission for a week or two.”

  “We recovered a laptop,” Mark said. “And a couple flash drives. We’re sending them over to Glitch for review.”

  “So what now?” she asked.

  “We’ll work through tonight’s events and decide from there. Ellie,” Garrett said.

  “Yes?”

  “Get your butt over to that ambulance. That’s an order.”

  She sighed, stood up. “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

  He raised his brows to her.

  She walked toward the emergency vehicle with a sense of satisfaction. Things hadn’t gone down with Deneford the way she had expected, the way she had wanted. That would have been an angle she would have liked to have worked a little more. Maybe, after the dust settled and people were interrogated and files and records examined, they would be able to find out who he was working for, who was above him. For now though, the evening had gone well enough. Better than they had expected. What began with a standard raid on a stash house ended with them taking down a ghost, a man who had plagued this area with fear and illicit drugs for far too long.

  Mateo Nunez was dead.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The weatherman said today would be a high of eighty-five degrees in Miami. Darkness had recently descended on the city, but the concrete and asphalt continued to release heat like an iron radiator that had just been switched off. Still, Jared “Chewy” Robinson was so very cold. Some days he was sick of it all. Nothing really did help. Hot baths, thick coats, long johns, thermal socks; they took the edge off, but even those things couldn’t get deep into his bones and keep him warm.

  Chewy walked up the steps to the second floor. The apartments looked more like a dirty, trick-turning motel than a cluster of permanent living quarters. His feet hit the landing, and he turned left and started scanning the numbers on the doors. He stopped in front of the brown door with the number he was looking for. He sighed. Chewy liked what he did for Ringo. He respected Ringo. Yet, there were some things in their line of work he wished they could avoid. This was one of those things. Ringo had made a decision, and it affected other people.

  He sighed again. Then he knocked on the door. A shuffling noise came from the other side. The curtain on the front window moved, and a young girl’s dimpled face looked through it. She disappeared after he made eye contact with her. Finally, he heard the chain slide and the door lock kick back. The door opened slowly, and light from inside illuminated the tall, hairy man standing at their doorstep.

  An old Latino lady wearing a nightgown and slippers looked up at him, somewhat nervously. “Can I help you?” The girl - must have been ten or eleven - stood behind the old lady, her face a mixture of curiosity and fear.

  Chewy hated this. “You are the family of Manuel Saucedo?”

  The old lady’s face creased. “Yes.” Then she added, hesitantly, “What can I help you with?”

  Chewy reached into his trench coat. He pulled his hand out and raised it toward her. The old lady’s eyes almost crossed. “What…?” she began nervously.

  “Please, take it.” The envelope was thick.

  The girl stepped up next to her grandmother and stared at the envelope. “Luciana, step back please.” The girl obeyed. The lady looked back at Chewy. “What is it?”

  “Please, Manuel asked me to give it to you if anything happened,” he lied.

  At the mention of her grandson's name, the older lady’s face fell. She looked back at the envelope. “He sent you with this?”

  “Yes.”

  She reached out and took it. It was heavy and sealed, and she didn’t open it. She knew what it was. “Luciana.”

  “Yes?”

  “Take this. Put it on the table.”

  The girl obeyed.

  “How did you know my Manuel?”

  “We did some work together. We trusted each other.” There was something he didn’t like about lying to someone’s grandmother. He added, truthfully. “He was a good man.”

  “Yes. Yes, he was.”

  “Please, be careful with that,” Chewy said. “Don’t let anyone know about it.” He looked at the girl. “Don’t tell your friends or anyone at school.”

  She nodded in reply.

  Chewy looked behind them into their small space. “He would have wanted you to be somewhere else. Somewhere safe. Somewhere you can be happy.” He didn’t know that for sure. He only knew what he would want if this were his grandmother, his little sister.

  The lady said nothing, only stared at him.

  He nodded at them courteously. “Be well,” he said, and then walked off. They stuck their heads past the door frame and watched him disappear down the stairwell. He heard the door click shut.

  Chewy stepped into the parking lot, littered with dead palm fronds, cigarette butts, and loose newspaper. He glanced back up at Manuel’s door as he crossed the main road, entering a dark side street with a crumbling old building on his right and an empty lot off to his left. He felt good about what he had done. He had chosen to do it himself, and he would tell no one. Ringo had made the decision to execute Manuel Saucedo. It was the right decision. Manuel did not know who Ringo was; Ringo rarely, if ever, met anyone face-to-face. Chewy had been the face of his organization to Manuel. But in giving up Chewy, the feds would have gotten that much closer to Ringo. Aldrich had executed Manuel, and they had all breathed a sigh of relief. But Chewy had thought, ever since, of his own grandmother, whom he had gone to live with as a boy after his own parents died in a plane crash. He thought of how Manuel was the only provider for that little girl and that old lady. He had decided to do something about it. The cash had been from his own reserves.

  No one ever need know.

  He kept walking with his arms crossed tightly in front of him in a vain hope that it might warm him a little. That’s when he saw them. Three figures coming down the street in his direction. He wanted no trouble. He had come here for one purpose, and now that it was completed he just wanted to drive back home.

  With each step he angled to the right to give the oncomers a wide berth. As expected, they weren’t interested in one. They closed the gap and chuckled as they approached him. Chewy stopped. A single sodium light hung on a telephone pole in the center of the empty lot. It gave enough light to make out the features of the Latino men now directly in front of him, blocking his way.

  One was tall, but still stood a couple inches beneath him. The other two shorter but thicker, one of them wearing an Orlando Magic hat low over his eyes, the other bald. They all wore white wife-beaters and black shorts that sagged near to their ankles. Several silver and gold chains hung off their necks, and their skin was littered with tattoos.

  The bald one jutted his chin toward Chewy. “Hey, Amigo. What are you doing out here? You get lost or something?”

  “I’m not lost.”

  “Yo man, you weird looking, you know that? What’s with all the hair?”

  “I’m cold.”

  “Cold?” Two of them laughed. “Man, it’s hot out here, yo. Like ten o’clock at night and still got sweat running down my crack.” So, he asked again, “What are you doing out here? I’ve never seen Bigfoot in the city.”

  “What I’m doing here is none of your business.”

  The thug bobbed his head. “Okay, okay. You know, we've been watching you since we seen you pass this way earlier. Wondered what you were up to. What uh...what did you give that lady? That was Manuel’s family. What kind of business did you have with them?”

  Chewy stared blankly at them.

  “I saw a thick envelope is what I saw,” the one with the hat said. “Maybe you gave them some pity money, huh?” Then a light dawned in his eyes, and he said, “Maybe you killed Manuel, and you feel bad about it.”

  “It doesn’t matter who killed Manuel,” the taller man said. He boldly stepped up to Chewy until their noses were an inch apart and Chewy could smell the staleness of his breath. “What matters is what he gave them and if it’s something we might want.” His eyes bored into the strange-looking man on their street. “My man asked you what you gave her. You need to answer him.”

  It was at that moment that Chewy knew that he would kill these three men. If he didn't, they would take the money. He locked indifferent eyes on the man. He sighed deeply into his face. “I gave her an envelope with three hundred thousand dollars worth of one hundred dollar bills.” All three men scoffed in unison. “Yeah, whatever,” the bald man said. “If that’s true, why would you tell us?”

  “Because you asked.”

  The man in his face said, “Well, there’s only one way to find out, and that’s to go ask them ourselves.”