cobra and the delinquents 9

 

Chapter 9 Cliff Hanger

 

While I was in Denver, I thought I might as well infiltrate Cliff’s lair. He owned a nice penthouse suite, which was as friendly as any shadow haunt might be.

I took an apartment overlooking it, and used drones and very high-powered cameras to film the interior.

He also had a janitor, who was paid fairly well, but who was not averse to a win of a lifetime, two tickets to Hawaii, all expenses paid. He and his wife were happy to pack up and go at the drop of a hat.

I made it seem that his win had been delayed in the post so he had to leave right away; I laid on a car to the airport, too. He wasn’t about to turn it down. I took on his face and finger prints, and made my way around the place. I had limited time – I did not want to leave Willow with an idiot like Briggs for too long, especially if Cliff was thinking of sending another team.

He used Sylvia’s birthday as the combination of his safe.

Why do these people go for expensive security systems, only to use easy-to-guess passwords? I went in there and methodically photographed everything. He was working for both the mob and the Yakuza; a nervous sort of splitting of masters, but then, he was arrogant, and thought he was untouchable.

I took the floor below his in the name of Abraham Lincoln, and the appearance of Abe if he had ever been bald with a long moustache. Yes, I do carry the odd prop with me. I can’t alter my amount of facial hair.

I went to the effort of copying Cliff’s apartment precisely, though my antiques were quick mockups 3-D printed, just for the look of it. And worth buying a 3-D printer just for that purpose. Equally worthwhile buying a couple of decorating drones to paint the walls the right colour, and a lot faster than I could. What, did you have an image of me with a paintbrush, taking four hours to do what a drone with a spray nozzle could do in half an hour, and more accurately at the edges, too? Bite your tongue. There are tools for such work and I provided the brains, not the gruntwork. I scanned every ornament, to be able to recreate it pretty closely.  Only the room I was filming had a touch of work done to it, with a false wall installed, which had a secret panel that came forward with the shelving attached to it, to reveal a secret space behind.  I loaded this with documents, and jewellery.

Precise copies of Jamie’s mother’s jewellery that James McNeal had never let Sylvia wear. She knew the pieces, though. You’d never know from surveillance footage that it was 3-D printed, with zircons and coloured glass.

And Jamie’s mother was from old money and those were honest solid antiques.

Next, I had a drone filming me, wearing Cliff’s face putting the jewellery in his new safe.

It did not take long to edit homing in on Cliff’s window to cutting in the footage of me fondling tiaras and necklaces and putting them into the secret room.

I sent the footage to Sylvia, to the Mob, and to the Yakuza.  The latter two just had ‘guess whose secrets he’s hiding there for blackmail’ as the tagline. I didn’t bother with a tagline for Sylvia.

I flew back to the airport nearest the ranch and drove home.

Something ought to give. And I had enough information on his other teams to take them apart at my leisure, or give them to someone else to play with.

 

When I got back, it was to discover that we had had visitors.

One Craig Thomas and other members of the Street Rats to be precise.

Their reason for being here? To bring drugs to Hammond Fitzgerald and any other kids who wanted them, and to bribe or intimidate whoever was in charge.

Craig Thomas had made two fundamental errors, besides that of turning up in the first place. Firstly, he had called Willow ‘Doll’ and secondly, he had informed her that if she played her cards right, she could be his main squeeze, and he would show her the high life.

Willow gave him one chance. She told him and his thugs ‘Get out now.’

Guess what? Strike three for three. He laughed at her. As Willow said, there were only four of them.

I noted that Jeff Briggs was suddenly being very polite to Willow.

Craig Thomas would be spending some of the time he would be doing in the Federal Penitentiary hospital. Dave had set the leg of the guy with the fractured femur, and ascertained that Craig could still manage to pee without too much blood in his urine, so he wasn’t about to die yet; and the other two only had concussion, so nobody would notice much difference.

Yup, this is a Federal facility, that means he comes under Federal jurisdiction.

In the meantime, he came under Cobra jurisdiction, and Willow had had Hammond put together a few leaf springs to make into collars, and had them chained to the wall in the garage facility.

“If we run the grinder, nobody will hear them scream as we question them,” she said.

The matter-of-fact tone broke them faster than threats. As it was designed to do. I don’t like torture; it’s inefficient. But bullies are cowards, and Willow had mentioned all the tools we had in there, and what they would do to human flesh. They were begging to talk to me, to a man who could understand. I learned more about the organisation of the Street Rats than I wanted to know, and enough about the hidden higher echelon to be able to piece together a lot about the bosses who ran the drug ring. They would tell me more. In the meantime I had names Hammond had not known, locations, contacts, and markets.  It all got recorded for Willow and me to sort through methodically when we had the time.

And until we were ready to give time to it, Craig and co were going on ice. This meant the cellar. Another bunker. You can never have too many bunkers. But bunkers also work nicely as jails. Our prisoners were not going into the system; because if they were in the system, they could be found, and removed from the system by those with enough pull. Because we could not rule out that they had that sort of pull when one considered that Craig Thomas had gone to the same expensive school that Hammond Fitzgerald attended.

Hell, I was not even sure if it wasn’t institutionalised in the school.

It was.

A few more questions… I had to start the grinder to set them off again… and I discovered that there were scholarships for clever girls and boys from poor backgrounds, who disappeared into trafficking. And they would have to be tracked down.

I did not know if there were those who were in the drug and trafficking ring who had that sort of pull, especially with the Feds…

Bloody Tarquin!

He was doing it again!

He got me into competing on ‘Extreme’ under the excuse of a sanction, and actually to investigate all its irregularities; now he had appealed to my vanity of being able to help troubled kids by pointing me at the troubled kids whose backgrounds had dangerous elements higher in the system.

I phoned him and told him to get his butt over here soonest.

He came.

“Any apple crumble?” he asked, hopefully.

“Aunty Fee probably saw you and is doubtless making it,” I said. “Not that you deserve it.”

“Why don’t I deserve it?” he asked, plaintively.

“Because you set me up to dig deeper into these kids and find out the extent of drug dealing and child trafficking in Federal circles, and how far Cliff Dunton’s organisation reaches, didn’t you?” I said.

He managed to look only marginally shifty.

“I wasn’t sure that Sylvia McNeal was involved with Cliff Dunton,” he said. “He is a fixer; he gets things done. That you have anything on him is a bonus.”

“That’s probably past tense by now,” I said.

“Past tense?”

“Well, if the mob and the yak move with the speed I expect them to do, I would imagine he has gone to meet honourable ancestors, so sorry, not sorry,” I said. “I should have footage of the feeds I left. I have a list of all his teams; they can be taken out in detail.”

“How the hell did you arrange that?” he asked, shaken.

“I’m good,” I said. “I left Sylvia and his main clients under the impression he was double-crossing them all. Honestly? He’s too low a low life to step on personally, but I wanted him out of Jamie’s hair. So, I thought I’d arrange him an on-purpose.”

“Definitely not an accident,” said Tarquin. “I want to see what you did.”

I invited Jamie to view my recordings as well. I explained how I had set up the identical room and homed in on it.

“It was nice to get photos from inside his apartment, as well, by impersonating the janitor,” I said. “Even the most careful of people don’t even notice the janitor.”

“I ask mine about his family,” said Tarquin, mildly.

“You are, I admit, out of the league of most people,” I said. “Most people barely treat menials as human.”

Jamie was making mental notes. I was willing to bet he would soon know the details of the families and interests of every maid and cleaner in his home and father’s office.

“You’re very inventive, sir,” he said. “How did you get the precise ornaments? Isn’t that my mother’s jewellery?”

“I used a 3-D printer, which is why it was nice to go there and scan them,” I said. “Otherwise they would have been approximations only, and someone with a quick eye might have seen them. I hacked the insurance appraisals of your mother’s jewellery. It’s still safe in the bank.”

“Dad said it would be for any daughter I had,” said Jamie. “It’s been in my mother’s family as a collection for over a hundred years.”

“I’d have said some of the pieces were older than that,” I said. “I didn’t read the provenance; I didn’t have time.”

“I will, though,” said Jamie.

 

My surveillance of Sylvia had her staring at the feed I had sent her, in anger and horror; then she whirled right off to visit Cliff, and only did perfunctory repairs to her make up, taking no more than twenty minutes.

She arrived before any of the organised bunch. Hell hath no fury like a woman bilked of jewellery and all that sort of thing.

“Cliff!” she said in a clipped tone, which was not quite a snap. “I know you managed to get hold of it, and though most of it is too heavy for me without extensive remodelling, I hope you got it for me.”

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“Tina’s jewellery,” she said. “I thought James had it in a safety deposit box I wasn’t able to access.”

“I have no idea who Tina is or what you mean,” said Cliff.

“Tina! Jamie’s mother,” said Sylvia, crossly.

“Oh, she had jewellery you covet?” said Cliff.

Sylvia gave a little titter.

“Don’t act coy; someone sent me a trideo of you stowing it in your secret room,” she said.

“What secret room?” said Cliff.

It was at this moment that the mob and the yakuza also came calling; two elderly, distinguished men, one with a name that sounded something like Fettucini and the other with a name approximating Sushi, and their two… associates. You know, the sort of associates who looked like gorillas by the time they were twelve, and devolved from there.

“We need an explanation,” said Sushi-san. [Oh, if you care, go and look up the gumi in Denver for his real name; I wasn’t that interested to remember. Equally Mr. Fettucini.]

“I don’t understand,” said Cliff.

Sylvia helpfully showed him her trideoclip.

He frowned.

“But that isn’t me. It can’t be me; I don’t have a secret room,” he said.

They tried to open it.

I skipped through the next bit where he was being… spoken to… severely and questioned on how to open it. He lost a few teeth along the way, and if he didn’t have internal bleeding, it wasn’t the fault of Gorilla one and Gorilla two, and Oni ichi and Oni ni.

“I can’t open the room for you because as far as I know, it doesn’t exist,” he sobbed. “Oh, God, oh, God, nothing has gone right since Sylvia had me try to get something on that retired schoolmaster who has her stepson in his care.  I don’t know what’s going on any more.”

This was not the right answer.

One of the Oni-sans slit his belly open, just as one of the Gorillas picked him up and threw him out of the window, quicker than I could manage to sensor it.

Jamie made a horrid gulping noise, Tarquin gasped, and so did Willow as Cliff flew out of the window with his guts trailing after him.

They snagged on the radiator, and he was still screaming, dangling by his insides until they tore out and dropped him to end in a rather messy puddle on the sidewalk.

“I suppose that ended on what you might call a Cliff hanger,” I said.

Willow slapped me across the back of the head.

“I’m not sure I fancy apple crumble anymore,” said Tarquin.

Well, the rest of the film saw them taking demolition tools to the wall and discovering Cliff’s bathroom behind it; and the police turned up.

There would be a lot of explaining to do.