Agent with a History

  Chapter Three

  Deep Water

  There was a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door and the sight of it just didn’t sit well with me. It didn’t match with what I already knew of Philippe Valo.

  He was the consummate playboy, devil-may-care thief. He was implicated in a dozen or more antiquity thefts and even a few bank jobs. There had never been enough evidence though to pin an indictment on him.

  He may be flashy, but he was smart too. He liked money and he was good at getting it, by all accounts. He led an easy-going life.

  He was the kind of guy that would proposition a cleaning lady, who accidentally walked in on him having sex, into joining along in the act. Hanging a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door just wasn’t his style.

  I glanced at Rafferty and I saw he was thinking the same thing. We both drew our guns.

  I was about to knock on the door, when I heard a muffled cry of pain from within the room.

  Probable Cause.

  That was all I needed. I shot the key pad lock, disarming it in the process as it returned to its default setting and then I side-kicked the door, busting it open and tearing the security chain off with it.

  Rafferty ducked past me into the room, and I swung in after him. In a split second of realization, I took in the grisly scene of the room.

  Three tall black men were gathered around the only bed in the room, where they were systematically cutting up Philippe just as they must have done to Ahmed.

  The words ‘Police! Freeze!’ stuck fast in my throat as the savage eyed men turned towards the door, nothing but deadly intent in their eyes as they lobbed bloody knives at us.

  I ducked to the side as a knife slammed into the wall where I had just been and took aim at one of the men that was pulling a pistol clear of his waistband. I shot him in the shoulder, but with a grimace of pain he kept bringing the gun up and I shot him three times in the chest, killing him.

  The man beside him was running straight for me and I aimed for his leg and missed. He slapped my gun away so hard it felt like my trigger finger was almost broken off, as the gun flew from my grasp.

  I ducked, as his fist plowed into the drywall where my head had been. I continued on around him and helped his forward movement by shoving him hard into the wall. Before I could secure him against it, he jack knifed backwards into me sending an elbow into my ribs that had me sucking for air and back pedaling away fast.

  I ducked a wild swing at my head only to find that it had been a set up for his other fist, which struck me hard on the cheek bone. I fell off to the side onto my knees, as stars flashed briefly in my head.

  I saw his leg coming at my head in a sideways knockout kick. My rigorous training took over in place of my sluggish brain. I caught the foot and twisted the leg sharply.

  The man cried out at the sudden pain and, with the momentum of his kick at me and my twisting of his leg, he turned over and fell onto his front. I leaped onto him, driving my knees into his back and knocking him back to the floor as he tried to rise.

  I quickly pinned his one arm with a knee, as I pulled his other arm up behind him, until I felt his shoulder about to pop. Rafferty dove onto his legs helping to further hold the man down with his weight. Rafferty apparently had dealt with the other guy at some point in this scuffle.

  I reached for the hand cuffs behind my back with one hand. “You’re going to face a lot of tough questions pal! Not to mention a murder rap!” I said, breathing heavy.

  He reared his head back and I was about to tweak his arm harder to further pacify him, when I heard him chomp down hard on his jaw. His body began to jerk and spasm beneath us and then he was still.

  I felt for a pulse, but there was none. I glanced at his face, turned out to the side, and saw the foaminess of his mouth.

  He had chomped down on a poison capsule under a false tooth!

  Who did that anymore?

  That kind of stuff went out with the Cold War decades ago, hadn’t it? Who would kill themselves in order to avoid capture?

  I heard a groan from the bed and I remembered the tortured man. I jumped up and went to the bed, noticing that the other man in the room was lying on the floor dead, with a hand near a fallen gun.

  I looked down at Philippe’s bloody body not knowing where to start and grimly knew that there wasn’t anything that could be done anyway. He had but moments to live.

  “Call an ambulance,” I said to Rafferty anyway.

  Philippe seemed to be coming in and out of consciousness and I quickly took off his gag. His eyes focused on me.

  “Philippe, this is very important. Can you tell me what you’ve gotten mixed up in? Who sent these men to do this?”

  His words, though weak, were clear enough, “I’m not telling you anything, nigger!”

  His blatant racism wasn’t anything new. I’d dealt with it in one form or another all my life from both sides, black and white.

  I ignored the hatred in his eyes and said in an effort to get him to talk, “Well, if it makes any difference, I’m a half-breed, so maybe you could at least tell the half white side of me something?”

  He shook his head resolutely and muttered out, “I should have listened to Flint. I shouldn’t have stayed. I shouldn’t have….”

  He was fading fast. I leaned close and asked, “Who is Flint? Did he send these men?”

  His eyes opened briefly in comprehension and he shook his head, no.

  “Was he the man that met you at the warehouse?”

  He nodded yes and then slumped dead on the bed, as he exhaled out his last breath. I leaned back up from the bed, as EMTs came rushing through the broken door. I moved away from the bed to stare out the window at the glittering lights of the city.

  At least now I had a name. That was something, right?

  I really wasn’t sure anymore. I needed sleep. The hit to my head had only made my headache worse. I wasn’t going to be able to function much longer at this rate.

  A passing EMT saw my cheek and stopped to work on it. She pulled the split and bruised skin back together with some butterfly stitches and then gave me a reproving look.

  “Those eyes of yours tell me you need to see a bed ASAP and I suggest you stay there for the next ten hours or so.”

  I nodded, got up, and headed for the door.

  Rafferty held my gun out to me and I took it gratefully, just as I was grateful to have him here to back me up.

  “I’m going home to bed.” I said.

  “Good, I’ll drive you there,” he said with eagerness.

  “Okay,” I said softly, being unusually passive.