Sin City Assassin (The Bill Dix Detective Series Book 3) (17 page)

“Please, you gotta believe me, man, I’m sorry. So, I heard she was taken down outside Pahrump in a big fire fight with the police.” The supplier had a pit in his stomach and began sweating profusely.

“Bullshit! There’s nothing on the news. You’re a dead man, you mother fucker! Do you know who I am?” Enraged, Blass looked down to see he’d destroyed the tennis ball then looked up. Women and children, men—Christ, even the dogs—had stopped and were staring at him as he screamed into his cell phone.   

He gathered himself. Blass covered the microphone of the cell phone. “Oh gosh, I’m so sorry everyone, please forgive me.” Most of the people went about their business. An elderly woman shook her head at him.

The supplier was in a full panic. “It’s the truth, man. My friend works at the gas station where it all happened. He said a Honda Civic driven by a hot girl pulled up for gas and the lady came inside. She walked back out, stopped, pulled out a couple guns and began firing wildly on a bunch of undercover cops!” He cursed himself for being so greedy.

Blass mulled the information in his head. It sure sounded like Marie, but he needed more to be certain.

“Keep talking, asshole,” said Blass.

“My friend said all hell broke loose at the gas station and the cops chased the lady out toward the hills behind the station. He said cops came pouring in and he even saw a damn helicopter. He said he heard a few more gunshots and then an ambulance came. He said he heard one of the cops say something about the ‘Mantis’ being caught… he mentioned the name Dix too.”

Blass almost choked.
Goddamn, Bill Dix
. Everything the supplier was telling him had to be about Marie. He grimaced and clenched his jaw tight.
How the fuck did Dix know about Marie? How did they find her? How the hell did they catch her? How could none of this be on the news? Where the hell is she?
The questions blasted his mind like a shotgun round. Based on what he knew now, it was very likely Marie was just a few yards away from him in the hospital. He began formulating a new plan, that of rescuing Marie.

“Anything else?” he asked the supplier.

“No man, please, you have to believe me. I’m sorry okay? I’ll take whatever you want to do to me, but please, leave my mom alone!” The supplier was almost in a state of shock. He loved his mother more than life itself. He couldn’t believe how badly he’d screwed up this time.

Blass laughed. “I’m not an animal. But you fucked up. We’ll be in touch, but your sweet mother is fine,” he said in a sadistic tone, “for now anyway.” Before the supplier could plead further, Blass hung up on him.

He put his cell phone in his pocket and began packing up his tennis equipment. He turned to walk toward the hospital and noticed two marked units pull up to the park. An elderly lady, the one who’d shaken her head at Blass earlier, was talking to them and pointing in his direction.
This ought to be interesting
, he thought. He causally looked around for escape routes and squeezed the bottom of his tennis bag confirming his Glock firearm was there. Instead of walking away, he walked right toward the officers.

He got about twenty feet from them before they finally engaged him in a conversation.

“Hey, buddy, stop right there,” said the taller of the two officers. His partner, built like a pit bull, stood next to him in a bladed stance tapping his handgun.

These guys never change
, thought Blass.

“Hello officers, how can I help you?” Blass poured on the charm and feigned weakness.

The taller officer pointed to the elderly woman, “She says you were cussing up a storm on your cell phone.”

“Oh dear, I didn’t know that was a crime.” Blass toyed with the officer. He realized he needed to be careful because the men had him basically cornered. He would not be able to get out his gun and shoot both cops and get away because there were too many witnesses. He considered grabbing a hostage. It would buy him time, and he’d have a much better chance of escaping. However, he needed information and desperately wanted to find Marie so he stalled some.

The officer smugly shook his head. “That
isn’t
a crime, smart guy, but threatening to kill someone is.” Both officers took up defensive positions in front of Blass. Their body language and eyes told Blass they wanted answers.

Blass pretended to be shocked. “Oh gosh, is that what she said?” he asked as he pointed over at the elderly woman standing a few feet away near their patrol car.

The officers nodded.

Before they could question him further, the elderly lady said, “What did he just say? Is that young man talking foul again?”

Blass saw his way out, but he needed to be patient.

The shorter officer jumped in. “Let me have your driver’s license please. We need to run you out, and figure out what to do next.”

Blass obliged. He carefully reached into his tennis bag and moved the Glock to get to his wallet. The officers had no clue how close to death they were. Every bone in his body wanted to retrieve the Glock, kill the cops, and put a bullet in the old lady.
Calm down
, he thought.

He fished out his identification and handed it to the officer. He was in such a rush that he exposed the Canadian ID card that was behind his Nevada driver’s license and it caught the eye of the officer.

“Hey, what’s that other ID card?” asked the officer.

Blass knew giving it up would tie him back to Marie. He hesitated. The second officer moved closer and unsnapped his taser holder.

“Let me see the other ID card, pal, or we’re gonna have some issues here.” The officer watched Blass and his hands like a hawk.

Blass felt like such an idiot for being careless enough to expose the ID card, but he had to show the officers now or risk further complications. He fished it out of his wallet slowly and handed it to the officer.

The officer laughed and looked over to his partner and said, “What the hell is a Permis De Conduire?”

The second officer scoffed. “Sounds French to me, maybe this guy’s from France.”

The two officers shared a laugh. It was not funny to Blass. The officer inspected the Canadian driver’s license and held on to it. He stepped back a few feet and ran the subject out through dispatch. As he did, he noticed there were two different last names on the identification cards, which caused him some concern.

“Hey, why does one card say your last name is Laurin, and the other one says Blass?

Blass didn’t even hesitate. “Oh, that’s my surname, I’m Canadian. When my parents divorced, I never changed the names around to reflect the same name," he looked sheepish, "I'm lazy, what can I say.” The officer nodded and ran both names out for the person standing in front of him. He had no idea none of the information would ever come back to Blass.

Dispatch confirmed the man had no arrest warrants or criminal history. The taller officer heard the same update through his ear microphone and became a little less tense based on the fact the subject was clear of warrants and had no criminal history.

Blass needed to go and was done toying with the cops. “Guys, I’m sorry to waste your time like this,” he pointed to the elderly woman, “But she’s clearly hard of hearing and she’s only a few feet from me. I did not threaten anyone over the phone.”

Again the elderly lady chimed in. “Why does that young man keeping pointing at me? What’s he saying?”

“Son of a bitch,” said the taller officer, “this guy’s right. She can’t hear a damn thing.”

The shorter officer looked at his partner and shrugged. They both knew they had no case and no reason to keep the subject detained any longer. They both had a feeling the guy was lying, but they had no victim, and the only witness was hard of hearing.

The smaller officer handed Blass his identification information. “Consider this your lucky day. Be advised, in Las Vegas, we don’t take kindly to foreigners using foul language in front of women and children. Have a great day.” The two officers thanked the elderly woman and walked back to their patrol car and left.

Blass cast an ugly glare to the elderly woman and decided he couldn’t walk into the hospital now because there was too much attention drawn to him. During the ordeal with the cops, people from the hospital had come out to watch. Blass begrudgingly got into his car, circled the block, and worked on another plan to get inside. All he could think about was rescuing Marie.

Chapter 33:

Dix and his men, wearing plain clothes, worked further away from the hospital and toward the park. Dix noticed the park was quite nice, and had tennis courts. He could see the large office building behind the park. As he scanned faces and the area he grunted. Almost everyone was on a damn cell phone.
Well shoot
, he thought,
this is gonna be tough.

Some of his men worked slowly into the park, but had to be careful because they needed to blend in with the other people so they didn’t tip off the person using the target telephone. A couple of other guys acted as if they were old friends reconnecting and sat on a bench to catch up on old times. A few others began stretching and jogging in the area.

One of the men working with Dix noticed a man with a newspaper on his lap watching Dix. He texted the physical descriptors and location of the suspicious person to Dix’s cell phone. Dix received the text and waited a few seconds before scanning the area to locate the suspicious person. The man was having a heated discussion on his cell phone and he was looking in his direction. With a subtle nod, Dix indicated to his team that they should keep eyes on the suspect. He texted them back and told them to keep looking for more suspicious people.

A few minutes went by and no one really stood out. Dix felt his cell phone vibrate indicating he’d received a text message. He opened the message and saw it was from Pierre. He rubbed his chin while reading the text. It stated the target telephone was still in the area per the ping and the person was currently using the phone. Dix quickly looked up and could see the person he and the team had looked at earlier was not on his phone. Dix texted the team to advise them the man he’d told them to watch was not their target.

Dix walked around the park some more. Everyone was a suspect to him, excluding children and the elderly. Each person was lumped into compartments in his head, threat or no threat, possible target or not a target. Dix knew Marie and her brothers were Canadian and wondered if the person they worked for was also Canadian. He scanned the area for people who appeared to be foreign that maybe wore different clothing or looked like a tourist. As he looked over toward the tennis courts he felt his heart pause. He could see a man on his cell phone standing in the tennis courts, but two things struck Dix as odd. One, the man was squeezing the hell out of a tennis ball and didn’t have a partner or racket out, and two, he was visibly upset, suggested by his beet red face and he had a vein bulging in his forehead. Dix texted the team to move closer to the guy on the tennis courts and attempt to set a perimeter to ensure the person could not get away.

The man hung up and immediately Dix received a text message from Pierre stating the target phone had just ended a call. Dix felt his pulse accelerate. He hoped another ping would happen shortly, and that the ping would still show the target phone in the area. If that happened, Dix was pretty sure the man on the tennis courts was their guy. Dix texted his team to move in closer. As the team members began taking up positions closer to the subject, Dix saw two marked police cruisers park in front of him and both officers sprung out of their vehicles and began walking toward the same subject Dix and his team were surveilling.
Damn, someone called in his tirade on the cell phone,
thought Dix. He retrieved his cell phone and told everyone to stand down and stay out of the way of the local cops.

The two officers contacted an elderly female who pointed at the subject Dix had been watching. The officers nodded and began interviewing him. Dix watched as the man looked nervous. He wasn’t sure, but every time one of the officers stood in a defensive stance, the subject countered by shifting his weight and blading himself to the officers. It wasn’t something the normal everyday citizen would do. The officers appeared to ask the subject for his identification. It looked like they ran him out and eventually let him go.

Dix, however, was not done with the man. He noticed the subject picked up speed and ducked into a busy parking lot once he was far enough away from the officers. None of Dix’s people were over in the lot. At the same time, three vehicles backed up and began pulling out. No one had eyes on the subject, and in the blink of an eye, he was gone. Dix began to curse himself and tried to rush over to the lot to see the license plates of all three vehicles pulling away. He tried to commit them to memory. Then his cell phone began to ring.

Dix retrieved his cell phone and saw it was Frazier calling him.

“Hey buddy, where you at?” Dix asked Frazier.

“I was headed your way, but I got a call that Marie was out of surgery so I stopped in at the hospital real quick. It seems she may be able to speak in about an hour.”

Dix nodded. “Okay, we think we may have spotted the guy somehow tied to her, but we just lost him right outside the hospital.” Dix felt a sting when he made the statement. He was not accustomed to failing and shook his head when he caught himself chewing his nails.

“No shit? Damn, did you get a plate or physical description?” Frazier wondered how the great Bill Dix would lose a subject so quickly. Then he recalled how the first few minutes of surveillance were the most crucial and they were most likely to lose their target.

“Well, I’m not happy about it. But, I think we snapped a few photos of him and two of your uniformed guys ran him through dispatch before we were set up to watch him. It’s a start.”

“Yeah, but it would have been nice to see where he went,” replied Frazier.

Dix nodded and snorted. “I know. Three cars left at once and we were all on foot. No way we could get into our cars and stay with him. Hey, grab something to write with, I have a license plate for the car he left in.”