Dead Street Read online

  The very thought of seeing her again made my heart pound and I reminded myself that this had to be a carefully studied move. In my fantasy, she would see me and recognize me and all of those memories would flood through her and....

  Right.

  On the left of the road there was another area, neatly fenced off and identified by a sign that said GARRISON PROPERTIES — ONE OF FLORIDA’S EARLIEST PERSONAL ESTATES, indicating the part of the gated community that was still under development. So far, somebody sure had a big front lawn of sand.

  There was nothing else to be seen until I had driven for another mile and saw the outlines of buildings a couple of miles off the road. There was another brick-gated entry with no attendant visible, but tire tracks were very evident in the sand, all leading on toward the low-lying buildings. Just a little way farther on, a half-dozen head of cattle were browsing amongst some visible greenery. They weren’t any kind of cow I could name, but they sure could exist on desert delights. All of them were big and muscular-looking.

  It was another twenty minutes of driving before the wire fencing appeared. It was the kind to keep animals out, not people. Another two miles and the first small billboard appeared on my right that read SUNSET LODGE — A TOTAL RETIREMENT RETREAT.

  And I breathed a small sigh of relief. This place, even at the gated entry, spelled quiet luxury. From a distance I could see the pleasant shapes of small buildings and the sand sprouted acres of bright green grass. I stuck my head out the window, away from the air-conditioned atmosphere I’d been breathing, and took a deep sniff of the tangy, salt-laden ocean air. Outside the red-brick guard post was a neatly painted sign that read, Yacht Docking and Boat Rental Facilities. Guided Ocean Fishing Trips. Crewed Scenic Sailing Tours Daily.

  The good doctor had really gone all out for his protégé.

  The tan-uniformed attendant, carrying a clipboard in his hand, came out to meet me. He walked with the air of someone in total authority, disguised by neighborly friendliness. He said, “Good morning, sir — can I help you?”

  He was a trim sixty or so with his blond hair cut in a military crew. I handed him the document of home ownership and his smile grew into something natural. When he handed it back he said very seriously, “Great to have you here with us, sir.”

  I took the papers, nodded back and said, “You’re from New Jersey, aren’t you?”

  “Newark. Been retired three years. Name’s George Wilson. My accent show?”

  “To a New Yorker, absolutely.” I stuck my hand out and shook his. “Jack Stang, NYPD, retired.”

  He scowled a few seconds, then gave me a big grin. “Damn, you’re the Shooter, aren’t you?”

  I gave him a weary laugh. “That’s what the tabloids called me.”

  “Didn’t you off Creamy Abbott during that bank heist back in ’82?”

  “No choice,” I told him. “He swung that AK at me and I had to pop him.”

  “Yeah,” he laughed, “one shot right between the horns from fifty feet away.”

  “Pure luck,” I retorted.

  “Pure twice weekly visits to a gun range, pal,” he said.

  I made a face at that observation.

  “Somebody around here was saying they just demolished an old station house back in the big city — was that yours?”

  I nodded. “When I went, the old building went. Hell,” I added, “the street went too.”

  “This place isn’t Manhattan, you know. Think you’ll like it here?”

  I gave him a little shrug and answered, “Anything beats out city noise and multiple gunshots.”

  “Won’t get much of that here,” he told me, “except on the firing range.... Want me to have a car lead the way in to your place?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll find it. I used to be a detective, you know. I’ll have to get adjusted to the area anyway.”

  “No problem. Streets are all in numerical or alphabetical order.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “Sure. You want me to tell the boys at the clubhouse you got here? You’ll be a real surprise to them.”

  “The clubhouse?”

  He pointed vaguely. “Can’t miss it. A big brick building with blue doors right in the middle of the shopping area. You want the right and left turns?”

  I waved him off on that one. “Naw, let me handle it alone. I have to get settled in first.”

  “Sure, Captain. I know how it is.”

  “You can skip the ‘captain.’ I’m off the Job now.”

  “We’re never off the Job, Captain,” Wilson said seriously.

  Everything radiated out from the big early Floridian-styled building with the wooden chiseled sign across its entry that read SUNSET LODGE. I found the block I wanted and followed it halfway to its end. The stucco houses along Kenneth Avenue were one-and-a-half stories, bigger than the other homes I’d passed.

  I saw number 820, Bettie Brice’s address, and my foot came off the gas pedal as though somebody had kicked it away. A few kids played beside other houses nearby, but 820 was quiet, empty. The front windows were half-opened and a UPS package nestled between the arms of a rocking chair on the porch. No car was parked in the driveway.

  My heart started to hammer again as I eased into the driveway beside 818, then got out slowly and walked up the porch steps to the door. I put the key in the lock, turned it and heard it click open.

  The place had a new, recently cleaned smell to it. To me a chair was a seat and a bed was where you slept, but someone had gone to a lot of lengths to furnish this place with truly masculine pieces. Nothing gaudy, nothing oddball, just masculine — with the exception of Bettie’s old four-poster bed and antique desk, which had beat me down here thanks to the movers. Both were in the master bedroom upstairs.

  I wandered through the rooms checking every item out. This was a house a man would have lived in, but furnished by a woman who thought a lot of him and his personal likes and dislikes. One of the ex-cops’ wives down here had lent a hand on the decorating front.

  In a sealed envelope attached to a few other papers was the description of a “secret” area in the master bedroom where I could store any weapons, ammunition or important documents I had. It had been built into the house itself, an area almost impossible to find unless you had a dog that could sniff out gunpowder or gun oil odors. Somebody had been thinking ahead.

  I located the disguised wall section — paneling that was really a door — that revealed a hold for rifles and handguns, shelves for ammunition, ear mufflers for shooting on gun ranges, goggles, latex gloves, and pistol and rifle cleaning equipment. There were two heavy clothes hooks on one wall with a pamphlet selling bulletproof vests hanging from the nearest.

  Even before I laid out my clothes, I pulled all my weaponry out of its case and deposited everything except ... .45 and the old shoulder holster in its newly assigned hiding place. My well-oiled piece I kept right where I could reach it in a hurry on the nightstand. The gun and the four-poster bed made an unlikely couple. Of course, once upon a time so had Bettie and me.

  Getting my clothes in the dresser drawers and the closet took ten minutes, then I went to the kitchen. Non-perishables were stored in the pantry and the refrigerator held all the staples I’d need for a few days. The cooking utensils were stacked away, some still showing their price tags. Even the bathroom was in working order, with new soap cakes, rolls of toilet paper and plenty of new, white towels.

  I tried the toilet bowl and it flushed perfectly. The faucets poured out clean, clear water and the drinking cups had paper hoods draped over them. Thomas Brice had made sure of everything.

  I hoped he had made sure of tomorrow. I’d be seeing her then. When I thought of it I had to take a deep breath and hold it for half a minute. By then my heart rate had returned to normal.

  The drive down had been more tiring than I had expected. My eyes were heavy and as early as it was I hopped into the shower, cleaned up, brushed my teeth and got into bed.

  S
ome dreams are impossible to remember. They get scrambled and exist beyond comprehension. This dream was different. Bettie was outside my door. I could smell her perfume. She was staring at my door and never noticed the black draped figure tiptoeing up the porch stairs behind her. He was carrying a longbladed knife in one hand and the other was stretched out to muffle any sound she tried to let out.

  And I couldn’t turn the knob! I couldn’t get the damned door open!

  I pulled and twisted but the knob wouldn’t turn and just before I could let out an agonizing howl of despair my eyes flew open and I muffled the yell that nearly came out of me.

  Sweat had drenched me. My pulse rate was incredible. It was five minutes before I went back to normal. This time I forced myself to sleep.

  It was still dark when I awoke. In the east the sky was barely showing the first edges of light and I knew that in an hour a new time of life would begin for me.

  I made coffee, had two cups, then got dressed, climbing into a short-sleeved sweatshirt and my old khakis and sandals and went out on the porch to watch the sun come up. In New York it would be late morning before it rose above the apartment rooftops.

  From next door I heard the first bark of a large dog, a short, throaty good morning kind of sound the big ones make to get their owner out of the sack. Then there was just the muted murmur of a lovely girl saying something sweetly unintelligible to her canine pet and the wild beating in my chest was almost painful because I knew it was her! All I needed was any sound. One small sound and now I knew. Bettie was alive!

  And now I was alive too.

  But all I could do was ease myself to the edge of the old wooden rocking chair and sit there, immobilized by what was about to happen. I had lain in the wet grass outside Buck Head Benny’s shack where he was holed up with three of his gang of damned killers all armed with AK’s and sawed-off twelve gauge shotguns, looking for more cops to kill. My backup was still a mile away and all I had was ... .45 with four shots left in the clip and their door swung open with a tiny creaking noise and they all came out too fast. They were ready but they didn’t know where I was until Buck Head Benny spotted me and raised the AK in my direction, but before his finger could tighten on the trigger I took him down and he spun into a crazy twist, the AK going into its staccato chatter with the spasmodic yank on the trigger dying men make and the chopper took out all of his killer buddies behind him.

  Then I wasn’t afraid of anything.

  Now even breathing didn’t come easily.

  Her door swung open and the dog came out, a huge beast for a racing greyhound. And he heard me. He didn’t just sense me. His ears twitched as he picked up the sound of my breath, but there was no angry retort in his posture. For a second he was immobilized and I saw her hand come out, reach down and felt the stiffness in his stance and she said, “Tacos, is someone here?”

  Only ten feet separated us. A million miles of ten feet and I had to squeeze in all those twenty years of thinking and dreaming about what I had thought was completely lost, then suddenly face it up close, only ten feet away.

  She hadn’t changed at all.

  Her beauty was still untouched — shoulder-length brunette hair, the narrow oval face, the pert nose, the ripe full mouth. In a pink short-sleeved top and white shorts and open-toe sandals, she was fresh and vital and tanned, a long-legged beauty still seeming to emanate an invisible radiance and I knew it was something that only I would see.

  I said in an unhurried voice, “I’m your new neighbor, miss...”

  And something odd happened to her face.

  It was a bee-sting reaction without any pain, a brief moment of total consternation, and if I weren’t very much aware of what was happening, I wouldn’t have noticed before she quickly returned to a perfectly normal stance.

  A voice she hadn’t heard for twenty years had been suddenly awakened in her memory, but it didn’t last long. How many times before could that have happened? When another few seconds passed I knew that she had frozen the episode in her memory banks.

  “I’m Jack Stang, ma’am. It’s nice to see you.”

  My voice located my face for her and she looked directly at me without seeing a damn thing. There was no opaqueness to the pupils of her big hazel eyes. They were the same color she’d always had and when she blinked she kept every expression absolutely normal.

  Few would ever suspect that she was totally blind.

  She called back, “And I’m Bettie Brice from Staten Island! Mr. Kinder, the manager here, said you’d be arriving. I hope you enjoy Sunset Lodge, Mr. Stang. Do you have friends here?”

  I let out a chuckle and nodded, even though she couldn’t see it. “Oh, yeah, I have quite a few here already.”

  “That’s nice,” she said. Then she frowned and added, “For some reason your voice is familiar, but I’m sure we haven’t met before.”

  “Well, we’ve met now,” I told her, “and that’s what’s important.”

  “Yes, it certainly is,” she answered, then gave me an airy wave and went down the steps to the sidewalk, Tacos, the greyhound, leading the way. He almost hugged her legs, alert to her every move.

  When she stopped for a second it was as if she were going to retrace her steps, then she made a tiny shrug and went toward the end of the street.

  Chapter Four

  The new black Ford was identified with a lettered logo on its front doors that read

  SUNSET LODGE

  SECURITY

  Beneath it in smaller letters it said,

  Darris Kinder

  Captain/Manager

  All very simple. Nothing ostentatious. The only difference was the sound the engine made. It wasn’t an ordinary Ford vehicle at all. This was a highly refined chase car that could match any vehicle the state of Florida had on the highways. The sound wasn’t noisy. It radiated power. Maximum power.

  Darris Kinder came out from under the wheel, scanned the area quickly and quietly and shut the door very softly. No dome light had gone on over his head when the door opened and I felt a touch of identity with the “Captain/Manager.” He was a rangy, fifty-ish guy with a dark crewcut, light blue eyes and Apache features. When he walked up the path to my porch, it was with a military tread.

  I held out my hand and said, “Semper Fi, Captain Kinder.”

  He grinned back at me and answered, “It shows?”

  “Only to another old gyrene. Come on in.”

  Before he walked through my door he gave another long glance around the neighborhood, then walked in and parked himself in the big rocker.

  I said, “How long were you a cop?”

  “Fifteen years in Newark. Made Lieutenant before I got this deal offered to me down here. Instant Captain, a fivefold increase in pay and a budget bigger than a lot of cities set aside for their police departments.” He paused, his eyes searching my face, “You had a great record, Captain Stang.”

  “Call me Jack. I’m retired, Captain.”

  “I think you know better than that,” he said. “We never really retire, do we?”

  My answer was silence and a grin.

  “I always make courtesy calls to new arrivals, but you are not new to me at all. When Dr. Brice purchased Miss Brice’s house, he made me a confidant in the situation that had occurred, and to what would happen... if any word of this leaked out.”

  “And?”

  “It’s not very comfortable,” he told me.

  “She’s been here years,” I stated, “and there’ve been no leaks.”

  “That damn pack of hoods never gives up. You know that. They aren’t dumb, either. They were able to tuck old Jimmy Hoffa away in a place where all the resources of the U.S. Government couldn’t find him. They influence political activity and control industrial actions through union membership and they don’t take too kindly to anyone throwing a wrench into their machinery.”

  I thought for a moment, then nodded. “How thoroughly did you research the facts?”

  “I didn’t
raise any red flags. The organized crime bunch haven’t shown any interest. Yet. According to all recorded information, Miss Bettie Marlow died in the wreck of that truck in the Hudson River.”

  “Than you’re the only one who knows she’s still alive.”

  “You do,” Kinder said softly.

  “So?”

  “I understand that she has something heavy that could wreck mob operations.”

  “That’s what the ones who grabbed her suspected, not knew.”

  Kinder wiped his hand across his mouth and stared hard at me. He said, “I found out a certain Mafia family kept a close watch on all your activities for twelve years after her supposed death to see if you had acquired any information she might have had.”

  “I didn’t acquire shit,” I said, “and the mob boys know it. They’re pretty efficient. We have our own sources inside their operations.”

  “They haven’t given up, you know.”

  I asked him, “What good would it do them to poke around here, even if they knew enough to? Bettie Brice has lost every trace of her memory. There’s nothing she can say or do that could implicate organized crime any more. All that was twenty years ago.”

  “But it isn’t over yet.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “You’re here now.”

  “Retired.”

  “Noted.”

  Invisible fingers seemed to walk up my back, nails leaving little dents in their trek, not hurting, barely annoying, but indicating something was there that I should recognize.

  My voice didn’t quite sound like me when I half-whispered, “What do you know, Darris?”

  A few seconds passed before he said quietly, “Nothing that would hold up in court.”

  “I didn’t ask you that.”

  “You know how cops are, Jack.”

  “They’re all retirees here.”

  “Sure. That doesn’t stop them thinking. They don’t say much, but they think, all right. They aren’t under orders here any more than you and I are. But we’re still cops and you don’t shake all that training and action. We still obey some rules that were never written.”