A Hard Rain Read online

  “No kidding,” Dix said, putting a hand over his nose. He took a deep breath and held it, then stepped toward Mr. Data and took the box, stepping back quickly while indicating Mr. Data should not move. It still wasn’t fast enough to escape the awful smell Mr. Data carried with him from that basement.

  Dix fished Jessica Daniels’ keys out of his pocket and tried the small one on the box. As he suspected it might, the key fit and opened the box.

  Inside there was a stack of money and another ledger. Dix opened the ledger. Right up front were the addresses of every major crime lord in the city, plus a few he hadn’t heard about. It seemed he now knew where the headquarters of Benny the Banger and Harvey Upstairs Benton were. Benny’s was only ten blocks away, pretty close to the spot where Benny’s goon had tried to stop him on the street.

  Dix flipped through the rest of the book. It was the same sort of thing that Cyrus Redblock had done in his ledger. Mostly it was records of payoffs to cops and others. Again Dix did a quick check to make sure Detective Bell wasn’t in the book. Dix was happy to see he wasn’t.

  Now they had a lot more to trade, if they could just find someone to trade with.

  Dix handed the book to Bev. “Hide this on you somewhere,” he said.

  She nodded and a moment later the book disappeared under her coat.

  Dix made sure there was nothing else besides the money in the box, then locked it again and tossed it to Mr. Data. “Put that back in the wall, but make sure you leave the rock out just enough so someone with a good eye will find it.”

  “Gotcha, boss,” Mr. Data said, turning to head back into the garage.

  “And Mr. Data,” Dix said, “when you are finished, find Detective Bell and report finding the bodies, nothing more. Don’t tell him about us being here, or finding any ledgers.”

  Mr. Data nodded.

  “And one more thing,” Dix said. “Before you rejoin us, change clothes and wash off.”

  “Boss?” Mr. Data asked, clearly puzzled.

  “Trust him,” Bev said. “I’d toss that suit away if I were you.”

  Mr. Data looked down at his suit as if searching for a hole.

  “Meet us at Benny the Banger’s headquarters when you are finished,” Dix said. He gave Mr. Data the address and then turned to head off down the street, motioning for Mr. Whelan to gather up his men and follow.

  “Now what are we going to do?” Bev asked, walking beside him, her breath white in the cold night air.

  “What can we do?” Dix asked. “We’re going to keep following this trail until it goes dead, or someone drags a red herring across our path.”

  “You sure after the perfume and the odor of those bodies, we’d smell it if they did?” Bev asked, laughing.

  “After what we’ve been through tonight,” Dix said, “I don’t think my nose will ever work right again. And it feels as if we’ve been going in the wrong direction right from the start.”

  He had had that nagging feeling for some time, but saying it out loud made it even stronger.

  “I’ve had the same feeling,” Bev said.

  They walked for a half block, saying nothing, their heels clicking on the sidewalk, the sound of the other men following in the distance.

  Finally Bev said what Dix had been thinking. “The problem is, I don’t see any other direction.”

  “Neither do I,” Dix said. “So no matter how much it stinks, we follow it.”

  Clues from Dixon Hill’s notebook in “The Case of the Missing Heart”

  • Cyrus Redblock’s ledger of bribes to cops and city officials would be enough to control the city.

  • Slippery Stan Hand had somehow taken the book and stashed it in Jessica Daniels’ apartment.

  • Slippery Stan Hand had his own ledger of bribes.

  Chapter Seven

  Who Was That Masked Man?

  Section One: Only a Shadow

  LOTS OF ELEMENTS make people see things that aren’t there on a city street late at night. Shadows of the cars parked along the street, the blackness of the alleys, the shades of gray tempered only by a distant streetlight. With the Luscious Bev beside him, and five of his men a short distance behind, Dixon Hill walked purposely through one of the darkest areas of the city. The buildings were in poor repair, garbage littered the street and sidewalk, and the lights on each corner had long ago burnt out and not been replaced. Behind every car he thought he saw something move.

  Beyond every corner a gunman shifted.

  Down every side alley a figure ran.

  His imagination was taking every shadow, every dark shape, and turning it into an enemy. He kept trying to tell himself he was seeing things. There couldn’t be a group of men following them so carefully.

  That’s what he kept repeating to himself every time another motion caught the edge of his vision, but it didn’t help. He kept seeing things.

  Finally, a shadow seemed to form into the shape of a man fifty paces in front of them, then slide off into an alley.

  “Did you see that?” Bev whispered as she matched him stride-for-stride down the sidewalk.

  “You saw it as well?” Dix asked, stunned.

  “I’ve been seeing things in the shadows since we left the garage,” Bev said. “I’m spooked by it, let me tell you.”

  “I thought I was imagining it all,” Dix said. “We can’t both be imagining the same things, now can we?”

  “Not likely,” Bev said. “But considering the condition of the reality we find ourselves in, and what is happening in this city, anything is possible.”

  Dix had to agree with that. But at least he hadn’t been imagining things. And if these shapes were real, they could be caught.

  At that moment a cat yowled and streaked across the street in front of them. It was being chased by a large dog into an alley. Dix followed the cat and dog with his gaze, only to see another shadowy figure lurking in the darkness. This shadow seemed to be wearing a trench coat and hat.

  “There’s no doubt we’re being tailed,” Dix whispered to Bev, “by a group that is doing its best to stay out of our way.”

  Dix touched Bev’s arm just enough to keep her with him as he slowed his pace, letting Mr. Whelan and the rest catch up. When they were only a few paces behind, Dix motioned for Mr. Whelan to come up beside him.

  “See the men shadowing us?” Whelan asked. “They are pretty darned good at it.”

  “Not good enough to keep us from seeing them,” Dix said.

  “Maybe they want us to see them,” Bev said.

  Dix thought that over. There was a chance of that, but more than likely the men shadowing them worked for one of the crime bosses. Maybe, if Dix was lucky, the one who had the Heart of the Adjuster.

  “Okay, we’re going to call their bluff,” Dix whispered to Bev and Mr. Whelan. “They want to play cat and mouse, we’ll give them a little confusion to go along with the mix. Have everyone stay ready, hands on their guns.”

  Whelan nodded.

  “And stay within ten paces of us,” Dix said. “I don’t want to go spreading out too much. And follow my lead.”

  “Understood,” Mr. Whelan said, slowing down and dropping back to the men behind. Dix could barely hear him whispering the instructions to the others. He gave Mr. Whelan enough time, then again with his arm against Bev’s arm, he increased their pace.

  Quickly, he moved their speed up to a point where Bev was almost having to break into a trot to keep up. Dix could hear that behind him the other men were matching the speed.

  They reached a corner and Dix turned right, moving at the same speed for the entire length of the city block.

  The shadows around them seemed to be a little more obvious, a little more rushed to find cover ahead of them.

  At the next corner, Dix again turned right, heading back in the direction they had come from a few moments before, only one block over.

  That move caught one of their trailing friends actually out in the middle of the street. He wore a d
ark coat with the collar up and a dark hat, showing almost no face. He moved quickly into an alley between two buildings as they marched past. Dixon Hill ignored him.

  At the next corner they turned right again.

  Dix could feel himself starting to breath hard, and Bev was clearly having trouble maintaining the pace in the high-heeled fashion of the day.

  One more right at the next corner and they had gone completely around the block. This move again caught a man in a dark coat out in the open. The guy shook his head and ducked for cover.

  At the next corner, Dix turned his group right again, covering the same ground they had already covered. But this time, not more than twenty paces down the sidewalk, Dix grabbed Bev’s arm, stopped quickly, and turned around, heading back in the direction they had just come at the same fast walk.

  They went right through the startled group with Mr. Whelan and back around the corner, this time to the left, retracing their steps.

  The guy who had ducked for cover a moment before was back out in the open. And close to the corner, clearly moving to try to follow them.

  Dix pulled out his gun and leveled it on the guy. “You move and you’re going to be testing the rebirth theory.”

  The guy froze like a deer in the headlights of a Ford.

  Dix motioned for Mr. Whelan and the others to take up positions along the street in the shadows, guarding both ends of the block. He motioned Bev to go with them. Then Dix moved up to the man he had captured in the middle of the street and took his gun, tucking it away.

  “What do you say we just stand here,” Dix said, “until your friends come out of hiding?”

  The guy, his eyes dark slits under his hat, said nothing.

  It didn’t take long, as Dix figured it wouldn’t. Another man in a dark coat came around the corner at a run. He stopped cold when he saw Dix and his prisoner in the middle of the road.

  Mr. Whelan stepped out of a shadow, gun drawn. “Hands in the air, or I put you face down in the gutter.”

  The man froze for an instant, then raised his hands.

  Dix motioned for Mr. Whelan to bring him to the center of the street.

  “I figure you have two more friends out there yet,” Dix said.

  At that moment, from the other direction, another man came around the corner, running, his coat flapping. He too was quickly captured.

  Dix and Mr. Whelan moved all three prisoners out of the street and over to the mouth of an alleyway and back into the darkness.

  “What do you plan on doin’ with us?” the man Dix had captured asked.

  “Shadows speak,” Dix said. “I’m stunned.”

  At that moment one more dark-coated man appeared at a run and found himself facing two of Dix’s men, guns drawn.

  “I’m betting that’s all of you,” Dix said. “You want to tell me different?”

  The guy said nothing.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Dix asked. He motioned to Mr. Whelan. “Line them up against the wall.”

  The alley was just dark enough to make everyone look like a dark shadow, yet light enough to see what they were doing. Dix was counting on the darkness to help his plan, just as these four had used the same darkness to follow them.

  Whelan and the others did as they were told, then Dix had everyone stand back. Dix turned to his people and in such a fashion that the men against the wall couldn’t see, winked at Whelan and Bev. “Follow my lead,” he whispered.

  Whelan and the man next to him nodded.

  Dix turned back to their prisoners. “I’ll take the one on the far right,” Dix said. “Each of you take one and we’ll get this over with and get on our way.”

  “I got the one next in line,” Mr. Whelan said.

  Two other men added they would take care of the other two.

  “Make your shots count,” Dix said. “Clean shots between the eyes. No point in making them suffer.”

  “How about we use their own guns,” Mr. Whelan said, extending the charade.

  “Good idea,” Dix said, taking from his belt the gun he had taken from the man in the street.

  “Give me a second, Dix,” Bev said, moving toward the sidewalk at the mouth of the dark alley. “I don’t want to get blood on my shoes like the last time.”

  “Wait!” the man Dix had first caught shouted, his voice echoing in the narrow, dark alleyway, the panic clear. “You can’t just go an’ kill us.”

  “And why not?” Dix asked. “Wasn’t that what you had intended for us?”

  “No,” the guy said, his head shaking as if someone was yanking it with a rope. “We was supposed ta just follow ya.”

  “And who gave you that order?” Dix asked.

  “Benny da Banger,” the guy said, glancing at the man beside him against the wall, who seemed just fine with giving up information in exchange for not being killed.

  “Well, isn’t that a surprise,” Dix said. “We were just on our way to visit him.”

  The guy said nothing.

  “Well,” Dix said, “the way I figure it, we take out you four here, we have less to deal with when we get to your boss.”

  “He don’t want a fight with ya,” the man said.

  “Then why did he want you to follow us?” Dix asked, waving the man’s gun in his face.

  The guy was breathing so hard, he was almost panting. He glanced at the other men beside him. All seemed to be staring ahead in the darkness, looking at the guns aimed at them. None of them were going to give him any help, that much was clear.

  “He just wanted to make sure of somethin’,” the guy said.

  “And just what would that something be?” Dix asked.

  Again the guy hesitated, then blurted out the answer. “That you wasn’t da one who took out Stan Hand and Redblock’s gangs. Benny figured since you and da cop took down da Undertaker and Ghost Johnson, you might be gunnin’ for him next.”

  “And what if I was gunning for Benny?” Dix asked. “What were your orders then?”

  The guy swallowed so hard, the gulp echoed off the brick walls.

  “You were supposed to stop us, right?” Dix asked.

  The guy said nothing.

  “So why shouldn’t we just stop you here and now?” Dix asked, his voice as low and as mean as he could make it. “Seems only fair to me.” He raised his gun.

  “Yeah, me too,” Whelan said, following Dix’s example.

  “Wait!” the guy shouted, holding up his hands and waving them. “I told ya everythin’!”

  “Really?” Dix asked. “You didn’t tell me who did snatch Redblock.”

  “The boss thinks it was Upstairs Benton.”

  “And you think for your lives, your boss might be willing to work with me in finding Benton?”

  The guy looked like he might be sick. His eyes were large, filled with fear. Dix knew without a doubt he was telling the truth.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t be speakin’ for Benny. He’d kill me quicker den you can.”

  “Now I know I’m getting the truth,” Dix said, lowering his gun. “How about we all go for a little walk to talk to Benny, as if we’re all the best of friends?”

  Dix put the gun back in his belt and motioned for the others to do the same.

  Benny’s men slowly lowered their hands, clearly confused.

  “This way, I think,” Dix said, motioning for the men to head back out of the alley and into the street with him. “Unless I got my address wrong.”

  The guy nodded and stepped away from the wall, moving up to a spot beside Dix as they walked down the middle of the street.

  The silence of the night was broken by the heels on pavement of the small parade all marching toward the same destination.

  Dix let everyone walk in silence for a block, then turned to Benny’s man beside him. “I’m really not looking to take down Benny,” Dix said. “Just looking for a small gold-painted ball about this size.” Dix held up his finger and thumb to show the man how big the Heart of the Adjuster
was. “You seen anything like it?”

  The guy shook his head. “Naw, nothin’ like that.” Dix could feel the disappointment and the slight feeling of panic twist through his stomach. They had to find the Heart quickly. It was only a matter of three or four hours now. And if this guy was telling the truth, then it was Harvey Upstairs Benton that might have it.

  Unless he had been following the wrong lead the entire time. What happened if Harvey had snatched Redblock and Slippery Stan Hand, but hadn’t taken the Heart? That would leave them at square zero with no time left. But someone had taken the Heart out of the Adjuster, someone in this world, some thief with connections to Redblock or one of the other bosses and this entire mess.

  So right now, they had one suspect left, and the only choice was to follow that one lead until they found the Heart or ran out of time.

  Or came up with a better idea.

  Right now, in the middle of the dark street, with people following him like the Pied Piper, Dixon Hill was fresh out of ideas.

  Thirty-seven minutes after the Heart of the Adjuster is stolen

  Captain’s Log. Personal.

  A short time ago, while Chief Engineer La Forge and Mr. Data were finishing the last of their tests on a device to shield the impulse drives from the effects of the Blackness, the holodeck malfunctioned and switched to the Dixon Hill program. The device they were working on was unharmed, but on the switch, two things happened that led to what may be a fatal series of events.

  First, the safety features of the holodeck were shut off by the malfunction, leaving Mr. Data and Engineer La Forge in that world, standing over a small device they were calling the Adjuster.

  They were located just outside the office of the fictional character, Dixon Hill, near the top of the stairs. However, they could not leave, since the malfunction also closed and locked the holodeck doors.

  Both men moved to find a way to reopen the doors, while other members of the crew worked from the outside toward the same aim.

  During their attempts the Dixon Hill program switched three times, once leaving them standing in the middle of a busy street for ten seconds, a second time moving them to the sidewalk for almost a minute, but always bringing them back to the hallway outside Dixon Hill’s office.