Knuckles Read online

  Dirk raised an eyebrow.

  “Physical? You want me to get physical with him?”

  Tony laughed.

  “God no. Peter would wipe the floor with you. What we need is leverage.”

  Tony reached beneath the desk and grabbed a leather bag, one that looked like it was borne from a time when doctors used to make house calls. It made a thunk when he plopped it down on the wooden surface.

  “This is your leverage: a key of heroin.”

  Dirk made a face.

  “Give it to him; I’m sure he has heard of the cartel's involvement by now. If not, he will soon. He’s not stupid—he’ll know what to do.”

  Dirk reached for the bag, but before he pulled it away, Tony’s meaty palm wrapped around the other handle and held fast.

  “This is on you too, Dirk. Consider this your first test; if the drugs go missing, if I don’t have them back here within an hour of the end of the third round, it won’t just be Peter Glike who will be responsible. Do you understand?”

  Dirk stared into the man’s eyes. Nice guy or not, there was a coldness in the man’s soul, a coldness that suggested his words rang true.

  “I understand,” he replied simply.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  Tony sighed.

  “I’m not a bad person, Dirk. Really, I’m not. But I can become something… something else when it comes to business.” He glared at Dirk, and for the first time in a long while, he began to feel uncomfortable. What Tony said next did nothing to appease the feeling. “Some of us have lives, families, even children. Others only have business. If you want to walk away, this is your chance; do it now. I promise that no harm will come to you or yours. You can let go of that bag and walk out of here without looking back. None of my men will come for you, no one will bother you. But if you take this bag, that’s it. You’re in. And once in, there is only one way to get out, a way that also involves a bag… a much bigger bag.”

  Dirk licked his lips, his throat and mouth suddenly dry. His mind flicked back to a few days ago when he tousled his son’s hair and kissed his wife.

  Why do you have to leave, daddy? Can’t you just shave your beard and stay?

  Dirk’s hand remained on the bag, and eventually Tony released it, holding his palms up.

  “Make him take the dive, Dirk. And one more thing—tell Peter… tell Peter to remember that day in the rain.”

  Dirk waited for further explanation, but when it was clear that none was forthcoming, he turned and left the office without another word.

  ***

  “That’s good, 1-2, 1-2. You have more power than this guy, more stamina, more everything. He’s a joke.”

  Peter Glike drove his gloves into the pads, sweat glistening on his bare chest. To Dirk, Peter looked much like he did in the poster above Tony’s desk: hard, cold.

  A killer in the ring.

  He debated interrupting the workout, but then thought better of it. Peter’s coach was a squat man in his mid-sixties, with a white handlebar mustache.

  He remembered Tony’s words about Peter training with the old guard. There was no way to tell if this was the man he was speaking of, but it didn’t matter.

  This had to be done alone.

  There were several other men in the gym, pounding punching bags with grunts or lifting weights with similar enthusiasm. Dirk’s right hand gripped the leather bag more tightly as he surveyed the gym.

  There was a man standing by the office door, but unlike the other heavily muscled men in cut-off tees, this man didn’t look like a boxer. He had short, close-cropped dark hair, a handsome face, and no scars to speak of. Dirk observed him as he punched away on his cell phone, getting a strange feeling that he had seen him before, but couldn’t place where.

  When Dirk crossed his path, the man raised his head and their eyes met for a moment. The man nodded, and Dirk nodded back.

  Spurred by the strangeness of the encounter, Dirk quickly left the gym. Once outside, he waited by the door while his eyes adjusted to the bright sun.

  Cartels…

  Tony was right; things were accelerating much more quickly than either Dirk or his supervisor had expected. A strange giddiness came over him then, and after a quick glance to make sure no one was loitering outside, he made his way quickly to his car.

  Only when he was safely inside his Camaro did he slip the untraceable cell phone from his jean pocket. He flipped it open and scrolled to the contacts. There was only one entry, with no name beside it. The number itself was even blocked.

  The phone rang twice and then went to dead air.

  “DK, one-o-two-one-seven,” Dirk said calmly. There was a short pause and then the phone started ringing again. On the fourth ring, a man’s gruff voice answered.

  “Hello?”

  “DK, one-o-two-one-seven,” he repeated. There was a click, followed by another pause.

  “Go ahead Dirk,” the voice replied.

  Dirk exhaled loudly, his eyes darting around the parking lot before continuing. It was empty, save for a few cars reflecting the bright sunlight like torches.

  “Something’s going down during the fight.”

  “Confirmed.”

  Dirk frowned; the man’s reply suggested that he had already been made aware of this.

  “Requesting further support—this is something big.”

  “Negative; no support forthcoming. Local PD have been alerted, but have been instructed to remain at arm’s length until otherwise directed.”

  Tony’s words suddenly repeated in his mind.

  Some people have families, children, while others only have business.

  In the moment, he hadn’t thought anything of it, but now, looking back, he wondered if the man hadn’t been speaking in hyperbole, but had been speaking specifically about him.

  A chill ran up his spine.

  “Hey, can you have someone check on my family?” he asked quietly. He didn’t like circumventing protocol, but he just had to be sure.

  There was some muffled speech on the other end of the line before the voice returned.

  “Two uniforms are on site.”

  Dirk sighed, then hung up the phone without saying goodbye.

  His eyes drifted to the leather bag on the passenger seat, and he forced himself back into the right state of mind.

  He was a thug, hired to protect Tony and his business, not a man worried about his wife and son.

  After several deep breaths, he grabbed the bag and stepped back into the sun, preparing himself for the conversation with the killer that was Peter Glike.

  Third round—you need to go down in the third.

  Chapter 13

  Coggins felt cool air whip by his face, and even though he knew he was dreaming, he still enjoyed the sensation of flying.

  He was falling from high above the earth, quickly entering the atmosphere, approaching large fluffy clouds. He burst through them without resistance, and then his body slowed to a stop.

  Coggins was suspended in mid-air like God’s marionette, staring down at what he knew to be Askergan County.

  He could make out Main St and the Police Station, and he could even see Andre’s gas station on the corner, the diner at the end of the road.

  Squinting hard, he thought he could make out a figure walking in the middle of the road, but before he could focus, his body was suddenly yanked to one side like a hapless skydiver helpless to the whims of the wind.

  Coggins flew east over a thin forest until he was hovering high above the roof of the Wharfburn Estate. When his eyes rested on the dark smear in the doorway where he had set the fire, his heart skipped a beat and any sense of unencumbered freedom from flying left him.

  In its place nestled only one thing: fear.

  Coggins tried to close his eyes, to look away, but he wasn’t in control of his body.

  The roof slowly transitioned to transparent, particularly the area where the fire had damaged it. He soon realized that he
was seeing inside the estate, his eyes focusing on the charred two-by-eights that made up the roof, and… something else.

  Something glowing.

  As far as he could tell, it wasn’t a fire, per se, but more like a heat signal as if he were looking through thermal goggles.

  What is that? What’s in the house?

  But before he could get a good look at the round shapes, he was falling again, rushing at breakneck speed toward the roof that had rematerialized before his eyes. He moved so quickly that he didn’t even get a chance to break his fall.

  Bradley Coggins’s face slammed into the carpeted floor of the shitty apartment that he had spent the last few months holed-up in.

  Blood filled his mouth, and he gagged.

  “Shit,” he said, swallowing some of the viscous liquid. He went to push himself to his feet, but a dizzy spell overtook him and he fell back down again.

  Coggins swore again and closed his eyes, fighting the spins. He remembered next to nothing of last night. Time passed, and when he finally felt brave enough to open his eyes again, his gaze fell on the empty bottle of Jack laying on its side on the coffee table.

  His heart sunk; he couldn’t help but feel like groundhog day, victim to the same shitty day happening over and over again.

  Getting worse each time.

  Today, he had at least one, and maybe two, deaths on his hands, on his conscience.

  With a grunt, Coggins pushed himself to a seated position, his eyes locked on the empty bottle of whiskey. There was still a thin line of the golden liquid sitting in the bottom of the square glass.

  It took him three tries to pull himself onto the couch, and with the sour mixture of blood and whiskey coating his mouth, every attempt brought with it a strong urge to vomit.

  He couldn’t remember anything of what happened after he had fled the old lady’s house with Yori. But his wounded mind fell short of complete amnesia, much to his chagrin; Coggins could vividly remember the sickening sound his fist made as it crushed the Mexican’s nose, the almost metallic clink of his teeth being broken and forced back into his mouth.

  His gurgling as blood filled his throat.

  The sound of Yori yelling at him, telling him to stop, telling him that they had to leave.

  With his left hand, Coggins probed his own injuries, feeling the sore spot on the back of his head where he had been struck with the butt of the gun. Without thinking, his right reached out and grabbed the whiskey bottle.

  For a long while, Coggins sat alone on the couch, the neck of the whiskey bottle gripped so tightly that his fingers were white. Several times he brought the bottle close to his mouth, then moved it away again moments before it hit his lips.

  When he closed his eyes, he felt the air whooshing by him, the clouds soft, wet against his cheeks.

  Coooooome

  He swallowed hard, remembering the glowing shapes.

  There’s something still in there, inside the estate.

  Coggins swore at himself, then put the bottle roughly down on the table and rose to his feet. He went with the spins this time, thinking that if he vomited, then that was his penance.

  And, besides, he would probably feel better afterward.

  Enough of this shit. I’m a goddamn police officer, or at the very least I was. I was a fucking deputy and… and I can’t do this anymore.

  Coggins made up his mind. He was going to go back and visit Tony, only this time it wouldn’t be for another job. He was going to tell him he was done.

  And whatever punishment came with that decision, then he would accept it.

  For an instant, he was back in the estate, his hands and chest covered in the thick gore, staring up at Alice on the landing, her body seizing violently.

  A tear fell down his cheek.

  Whatever comes of this, I deserve it.

  Chapter 14

  Peter Glike was alone in the gym, trying to get a moment of peace, of silence, one day before the warehouse would be jammed with spectators. Peter wasn’t like other fighters; he was never nervous or excited in the hours or days leading up to a fight. In fact, he never felt much of anything at all.

  A strange calmness, an all-encompassing blanket of serenity draped over him as the fight approached. Peter did what he could to enjoy this feeling, to revel in it. After all, the rest of the time his mind was a frenetic mess. His thoughts were so jumbled, full of fragmented memories of his childhood, of his father, of wanting for a mother he had never met, that a moment, let alone several hours, of peace was rare.

  Peter leaned back against the ropes, allowing the coarse fabric to bite into the underside of his muscular arms, while his eyes drifted about the room. It was hard to believe that tens of thousands of dollars would be exchanged here, in this concrete warehouse of a gym, and double that much dealt in heroin in less than four hours. It was hard to believe, but Peter knew it to be true; it had been that way for his previous three fights. Tonight, however, there was something different; there was a sort of electric thrum in the stale air.

  Something else was about to happen. Something big. Peter just wasn’t sure what.

  It was nearly four years to the day since Tony had first arrived at Peter’s doorstep, his charming smile cutting through the rain.

  And yet he remembered it like as if it were yesterday.

  His father had answered the door, and when his first comment was, “What?” which was quickly followed by, “Sorry, I didn’t know it was you,” Peter had known that something was different about this visitor; he wasn’t one of his father’s friends needing a quick hit, or one of the call girls stopping by for a quickie.

  No, his father, the one and only Stanley Glike, didn’t say sorry to anyone, let alone a stranger who knocks on his door in the middle of a rainstorm. Dressed in a wife-beater and stained Under Armour shorts, his father had further surprised Peter by letting Tony into his house, along with two of his friends.

  Stanley didn’t like to let anyone inside his home.

  Except for the girls, of course.

  Peter was supposed to be sleeping, and if Stanley knew that he was watching through the crack in his bedroom door, he would have received an even greater beating than he had already sustained that day.

  Leaning back against the ring ropes, eyes closed, memories of that day continued to flood Peter’s mind. He remembered everything from the smell of stale tomato sauce that had been left to crust on the stove to the sour smell of old beer sitting in the bottom of the dozen or so Budweiser cans on the coffee table.

  The TV was on, the Boston Bruins were playing the Ottawa Senators.

  The Senators were up three zip in the third.

  Peter remembered everything about that day.

  “Do you… do you want to sit?” Stanley asked, using the blade of his hand to scrape the crumbs off the worn couch.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that, Stan. We won’t be staying long.”

  Stan… no one ever calls him Stan.

  “You want a drink or somethin’? I have—”

  The man waved his hand.

  “No, that won’t be necessary. Like I said, we won’t be staying long.”

  “Well, Tony, what is this about?”

  There was an awkward pause, and Peter thought he saw his father’s hands, hanging limply at his sides, begin to tremble.

  “You know what it’s about.”

  Stanley Glike lowered his gaze.

  “I—I—I, I have—”

  Tony nodded to a large man with a buzz cut in a trenchcoat standing at his left. The man stepped forward, and Stanley cowered.

  “No, please, I don’t—”

  The man reached out and gripped Stanley by the shoulders—Stanley, a man who to Peter always seemed larger than life, unshakable, now looked like a schoolboy about to be liberated of his lunch money.

  “No, please, I’m sorry. It was just a little dope… I—I had to sell it I needed to feed my… my kid. I’m alone here and I have—”

  “
You know the rules, Stan. You can’t deal or sell or even give away product in Pekinish or Askergan. This is my territory. You know this.”

  Stanley’s shoulders drooped, and if it weren’t for the man gripping him, Peter was fairly confident that his father would have slipped to the floor in a puddle of sweat and spit.

  “I had to, to feed—”

  The large man suddenly pushed with one of his meaty palms holding Stanley’s upper arm, and his father screamed.

  Then the man let go and Stanley did fall to the floor, his left arm hanging several inches lower than his right.

  “You have a week, Stanley. A week to pay me what you made for selling the three ounces of heroin in my neighborhood. Do you understand?”

  Stanley looked up at Tony, tears in his eyes.

  “I don’t have the money; I spent it. I had to feed—”

  The big man in the trench stepped forward again, and Stanley held his good hand up defensively.

  “No, please, I’ll get the money,” he whimpered. “I swear, I’ll get you the money.”

  Tony smiled.

  “Good, then I’ll see you at the gym in less than a week. Otherwise, I’ll pay you another visit.”

  And, with that, Tony turned and his henchman followed him out of the apartment.

  For nearly a minute, Stanley just sat on the floor crying. Peter, who was still staring at his father from his bedroom, could barely breathe. He had never seen his father like this.

  Whoever this man Tony was, he meant business.

  Peter inhaled deeply, and then made up his mind. He opened his door just wide enough to slip through and then pressed his back against the wall as he made his way toward the kitchen. A quick glance to the family room showed that his father hadn’t moved since Tony and his men had left.

  Peter opened the back door to the apartment and slipped into the rain barefooted.

  He reached Tony and his men just before he slid into the backseat of his black Mercedes.

  “Hey!” Peter shouted, raising his voice over the sound of the roaring rain.

  Tony turned, as did his two henchmen, one of whom not so subtly reached into the front of his coat. But when Tony’s eyes met Peter’s, he signaled for his man to stand down.