The Filthy Few: A Steve Nastos Mystery (13 page)

“Yeah. Our tech guys will copy the drive and we'll put it back later. Thanks again.”

Carscadden turned, leaving the doorman and entered the revolving door into the main lobby of the hotel. The check-in area was to his left. To the south, up on the wall, was a large picture of a proud, portly man wearing a red tunic covered in medals and regalia. There was a martini bar to the right. Carscadden glanced left again and noticed Nastos scowling at him from the check-in counter. Carscadden joined him there, any enthusiasm he felt from finding the computer disappearing.

Carscadden said, “There's cameras all over the main lobby. I know they have some in the elevators too but none in the hallways. What do you say we go through the computer now? We may not need to confront these guys at all.”

“And you know about the cameras how?”

“A previous domestic assault case.”

“Conviction registered?”

“My guy took a plea. Peace bond. He deserved jail though, asshole. So what do you say we back off?”

Nastos grunted, “These guys are essentially ghosts. Fake
ID
on the rental contract, probably fake everything. We might be able to get away with some fingerprints here and get their real names. I've dealt with organized crime before. Unless you have a warm body in front of you, you don't have anything at all.”

When the woman came to the counter Carscadden provided their investigator's
ID
. “Yes, ma'am. We're investigating two men who are staying here. They are defrauding hotels and airlines and your co-operation would likely be appreciated by American Airlines, to whom these guys owe half a million dollars that we know of.”

She glanced at the
ID
then back to Nastos. “Should we call the police here?” Her blond hair was clamped behind her neck tight enough to give her forehead the appearance of having a shot of Botox.

Nastos had an answer ready. “This is a matter that our employer wants to resolve civilly before turning it over to the police. It's a complex fraud. I guarantee that the
ID
they provided on check-in is bogus. Any credit cards will likely bounce. I hope for your sake they didn't charge too many meals to the card, because sometimes those things don't kick back
NSF
for a few days and by then these guys will be gone.”

She called the manager and Nastos had to go over the cover story again. They showed the investigator's
ID
to the hotel manager. He was a tall, gaunt funeral-director-looking man, ageless and spooky with dark circles under his eyes.

After some negotiating, he okayed the release of the customers'
ID
that they used to check in. It was a photocopy of their driver's licences. They were obviously fakes, which only bolstered the story that the two men were some type of organized crime.

Carscadden left the manager a business card then he and Nastos spoke at the elevators. Nastos began, “Room
313
. They don't look like much but you never know. We go in, I'll do the talking, then we take what we need and it's over.”

16

Vince lay on top of the bed staring up at the smooth ceiling. There were no coffee-coloured water stains or spiderwebs let alone blood splatters. He stared until he began to see the illusion of depth.
Do kids still stare at the clouds? Do they put down their stupid cellphones long enough to leave their houses?

He pondered the lifestyles of the type of people who could live in such perfect places as this, free from the stress of providing the basics for their families. Or do the challenges just change? He answered himself with a quote from Plato that a professor had told him while he was at military college.
Only the dead know the end of war.

He rolled over to face Christian. He was still hard at work with one of the two prostitutes that they had dialed up to the room earlier. The other girl was in the shower,
freshening
up
, she had said seductively. He had a vision in his mind of what she was actually doing in there and had to force it from his mind. With a chipped tooth and odour of stale beer, she was a long way off from anything remotely resembling seductive. The girls and the drugs were the worst part of the lifestyle.

Christian was groaning louder and Vince tried to block it out, the only respite being that Quickdraw would be done soon.
Thank god the kid is quieter than last night or I'd have to shoot him and toss the girls out the window.
The worst part of working with Christian was the constant reminder of how uninterested and awful he would be at leading a criminal organization. In the military Vince had learned that leaders had to lead. They have to be the most sober, the most prepared and ambitious for growth, not a hedonist with no corporate knowledge. Vince stood abruptly and grabbed his phone from the counter. He started for the door but was interrupted.

Christian's bed creaked out of rhythm. “Where
you
going?” he asked. “Your girl's gonna be out soon.”

“I'm going to hell, Christian, you and me both.” Vince stepped out into the hallway letting the door slam shut behind him then walked down to near the elevators. He dialed a number that was committed to memory. A man answered, “House.”

“This is Vince Druer. I'm in town. I need an appointment to drop by, talk some business.”

“Vince Druer? Are you serious? You wanna come here?”

“I have an offer. You can understand that I want to be discreet. I understand that you will take some serious security measures.”

There was silence on the phone, not even the sound that it was an active line anymore. A minute later the voice replied, “Call back tomorrow for the time.” The line disconnected. Vince checked the phone screen to be sure the call was done then deleted the number from the call log. There were few things that gave him butterflies. Not killing, not torture, not roller coasters, not sex with working girls, however, meeting with these men made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. It represented more than escape; it was the biggest “fuck you” to Christian and the entire organization that he could engineer.

He closed his eyes and exhaled sharply. There wasn't time for another call but he made one anyway. He dialed a number and took a photograph out of his breast pocket. As the phone rang he held the picture away and studied it.

Her voice was quiet. “Hello?”

“It's me.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Yes. It is.”

She sighed. “Why are you calling? Is everything still —”

“Good. Nearly there.” It was a feeling of lightness. It wasn't until this moment that he felt like he had finally allowed himself to acknowledge the decision that would change his life forever. “It's time. It's happening this week. I made the call, I meet them tomorrow. You have to be ready to move fast.”

“Call me after. So I know it went okay.”

“I will. And like I said, nearly there.”

“Oh, thank god. I can't wait until this nightmare —”

“Baby. Just be ready to move. I gotta go.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too.”

He hung up and put the phone in his pocket while he still appraised, no, absorbed the picture. He took a breath and put it away. He turned back to the room feeling at peace. Like the essence of him, the part that he had to keep hidden and under control no longer needed to be suppressed.

He opened the door with the key card and went inside.

His
girl
was out of the shower, naked, an amateur tattoo on her shoulder read,
Thugs
Life.
She lay back on the bed, her legs spread-eagled and good to go. She was propped up on her elbows drinking vodka straight from the bottle and watching the show Christian was providing in the next bed over. She hooted when she saw Vince and said, “Well, well, looks like there's a new cowboy in town.”

“No thanks, honey, I've got a headache.”

Her face twisted. “Stage fright?” She giggled and took another long drink.

“No. I'd rather just save it for my wife.”

In that world, love was a curse word, morality was a punch line, and this comment had them all laughing in no time.

He went over to the bed. She perked up. When he sat she tried to coil her legs around him but the thought of her crotch anywhere near him was revolting. “Why don't you hop in the other bed? You might have a better time.” Then under his breath, “I know I will.”

“Hey, what's that supposed to mean?”

He yanked the bottle of vodka away from her. “It means anyone who'd fuck you is too lazy to jerk off. Now move your ass out of my bed.”

Her face contorted into a scowl. “What's your problem, asshole?”

The other girl laughed. Mid-chuckle Christian aggressively finished with her, his face in a snarl, trying to catch his breath. His girl barely flinched, too busy laughing to put a show of pleasure on for him.

Vince stood up and took a long pull from the bottle then set it down on the table. When she reached for it he slid it away and growled, “No.”

Christian rolled off of the girl, onto his back and began pulling his pants up. “Jesus, Vince, what's up with you?”

“Listen, I'm sick of living like this.” He opened the top drawer of the bedside table and brought out a Sig Sauer pistol. The body and grip was black, the slide, stainless steel. He tucked it into the back of his pants.

Christian forgot about his pants and reached down to the floor to grab a bottle of Drambuie. He cracked the seal and took a drink. “We'll have a better time without you.” He pointed his index finger to the girl on Vince's bed then turned his hand palm up and beckoned her over. “Why don't you come over here and join the dark side?”

“I thought you'd never ask.” She stood up, raised her nose at Vince then turned to Christian and slithered over to the bed. “You ready to saddle up, big boy?”

“Make me happy and make it snappy, I just need a line first.”

Vince dropped his head back and closed his eyes.
Jesus, kid, don't ever let a hooker know you have blow. We'll never get rid of them now.

Christian sat up on the bed and pulled the bedside table over. Out of the bottom drawer he took out a small plastic bag and delicately ripped open the red-lined zip at the top. He was hunched over and in a rare moment, serious.

It was all Vince could do to not kill them all there and then. Fantasies ran through his mind of making it look like a failed rape-murder, or drug rip-off, framing Christian and the two whores in each other's deaths. The only reason he stopped himself was that the room was rented in his name, and the place was littered with gang insignia that Christian demanded the girls notice when they came in the room.

Vince turned to leave. “I'm a little cranky so I'm heading down to the bar to cool down before I blow someone's head off,” he said to everyone and no one. He reached for the handle but paused when he heard a knock at the door.

17

Carscadden straightened up from the door. “Sounds like someone is home.” He put down the laptop computer and pressed his ear against the door. “Can you make anything out?”

“Let's just get this over with.” Nastos hammered the door with the bottom of his fist. “We find out what they have to say for themselves then we confront the cops when we have all of the facts.”

The door swung open. Nastos immediately appraised the man, seeing that it was the person they had watched earlier out front of the tattoo parlour then again getting out of the car downstairs. What he saw he didn't like. Angry, hostile, wanting a confrontation.

“We're from the concierge desk. We'd like to offer you a complimentary bottle of the champagne of your choice.”

Carscadden was cool; he didn't react to the sudden change of plans.

The man at the door was perplexed. “Complimentary champagne?” He stuck his head out into the hallway. “You have a cart with you?”

“No. We're here to take the order in person . . .” Nastos trailed off, peeking into the room and seeing the three-way sex show on the far bed. Up the man's entire arm was a tattoo that read
Dogs of War
. “If you'd rather we can come back later.”

The man at the door said, “That's my fucking computer.”

Nastos felt the adrenaline dump into his blood. His heart thumped in his chest making him feel as if he were in an elevator that had gone into free fall. He nodded for Carscadden to leave.

Carscadden smiled, in mock surprise. “No way, you have the same kind as me?”

The world began to move in slow motion. They watched as the man began reaching his right hand around to his lower back, the index finger and thumb apart with the other fingers curled to grab something, and it wasn't the place people kept wallets or business cards.

Nastos reacted to the threat cue immediately. He tackled the man, forcing him into the room. While in the Robbery Unit he had gone through special weapons training with the Tactical officers. He had learned pistol-stripping drills, one-hand takedowns and strangleholds. He could hear the instructor yelling in his ear.
Be
aggressive
. And if aggression didn't work, be
more
aggressive.

Carscadden followed him in. Nastos tried to get on top of the man, but he was agile, adeptly ducking a punch and grabbing Nastos around the neck in a fluid movement. Carscadden saw the other man rising from the bed and body checked him to the floor. When he tried to get up, Carscadden started punching him repeatedly. The man Nastos was fighting was clearly a trained fighter. Trying forearm locks, repositioning his feet, it wasn't long before he was able to get out from under Nastos. The gun had fallen away, likely under the bedframe, but it was hidden by the bed skirt and Nastos had bigger problems.

It was a gouging, frantic, desperate fight and Nastos knew he was outmatched. Blows rained down on him from every direction. His thighs and upper arms ached. He sacrificed a chance to throw the man to twist savagely and grab Viktor's gun from his waist. The man struck Nastos' hand, sending the gun sliding across the carpet. If he lost to a vicious man like this, he would die on the floor of this room. His head was twisted sideways with a knee pressing on his neck. He bucked and flailed his legs, trying to twist his way up to no avail. With his throat constricted he couldn't shout for help from Carscadden, who might even be losing his own fight. He had seen Carscadden tackle the other man but had no idea what happened after that.

The girls had screamed and shouted at first but now they were quiet, gathering their clothing, frozen between running down the hallway naked or watching two men get beaten to death.

Despite the agonizing desire to breathe, Nastos noticed how colours were beginning to fade. The world was becoming a black-and-white pixelated place of suffocating failure. He was growing tired but never for a moment considered giving up. Unable to keep fighting the man, he instinctively stretched out under the mattress for the gun. Before he could reach it, the room became dark. Sounds of shouting and screaming became dull and faded as a curtain of warmth and darkness enveloped him.

“Nastos, up, move!” There was a shock of movement, a flash of red and blue as he saw the door approaching him on an awkward angle. “Move!”

He crumpled into the elevator, groggy and confused. Another moment of time was lost and he came to lying on the ceramic floor. He croaked, “What happened?”

“Your guy is one tough son of a bitch. I busted a lamp over his head, no effect. To get him off of you I had to wrap the cord around his neck.”

“How'd you take out your guy?”

“He was drunk, naked and in the middle of two girls.” Carscadden showed Nastos his fist. “Look at that. I think it's broken.”

The middle knuckle on his right hand stuck out twice as far as the one on his left. The knuckle for the little finger was obviously dislocated. Nastos looked up to Carscadden's flushed red face. He saw that his suit was ripped, smeared in drips of blood, and the buttons on his shirt were ripped open revealing his pale flesh. Slowly he staggered to his feet, shaking his head to clear out the cobwebs. “He must have hammered my ear. I'm so dizzy I can barely stand.”

“Yeah. That one guy was an animal. He rag-dolled the two of us. I'd be happy if I never met up with him again.”

Nastos noticed that the elevator was not moving. They were between floors. Carscadden put a hand up. “I pressed the Stop button. Take a minute to get ourselves sorted out before we walk out of here.”

“Good idea.” Nastos sucked in air. It hurt to breathe.

“I have bad news.”

He tried to straighten up, which made his head swim. He stooped forward, his hands on his knees. “What?”

“Our wallets. They took our wallets and my cellphone. You have your phone?”

“You're kidding me. We were supposed to find out about them. Now they know everything about us.”

Carscadden was standing. He tucked in his shirt and straightened his tie. “Come on. We need to get out of here and come up with another plan.”

Nastos slowly straightened up. He put his back against the wall and tried to smooth out his suit. Carscadden came over and helped. He said, “We know they're not cops, maybe we can —”

“I know who they are, or what they are.”

Carscadden looked into his eyes. “Who?”

“Dogs of War,” Nastos said. “Google it. It's a biker gang. They're out of Mexico originally. They don't play nice.”

“No shit.”

Nastos felt his phone vibrate. “I still have my phone.” He reached into his pocket and pulled it out.

“Who's calling?”

Nastos checked the caller
ID
. “You are.” He put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

The voice on the other end was calm. “Steve Nastos. Kim Bolton Boulevard. That's out in Scarborough. Google Earth. You have a nice place.”

Nastos put the phone on speaker for Carscadden's benefit. “What do you want?”

“We'll start with money. I want fifty thousand dollars cash by the end of the day.”

Carscadden shook his head to say “no.” Not no to the money, no to this can't be happening. If they had Nastos' address they would have his, the phone numbers of all of his family, their addresses. Biker gangs were international. There was no telling what they would do to protect themselves.

“I can do twenty grand but it won't be easy to get it in cash that fast. You know what banks are like.”

The man laughed. “Sounds like you're having a personal problem. You have a family, Steve Nastos? A wife and kids, that sort of thing?”

“I'll go to the cops.” He felt weak delivering the line, knowing how lame it sounded as soon as it left his mouth.

“Go to the Pope for all I fucking care. I want my money.”

“And then you leave me alone?”

“No. Then I ask you for more money. And after you're broke, you're going to start doing things for me. Things to get me more money. You beginning to figure out how this is going to work?”

Nastos hung up the phone. “We'll start with cancelling your phone and getting them to remotely wipe it clean.”

“My family, we can't assume that it will work —”

“No. We can't assume anything.”

Carscadden squatted down, running his hands through his hair. “Josie, Tara.”

“We shut the office and operate somewhere else. I can't stay at home. Neither can you. We're not just in serious trouble here. An international biker gang. Our lives as we have known them are over.”

Nastos rubbed his eyes. “Viktor's place. There's nowhere else to go.”

Nastos slid himself into the passenger seat of the car, reclining the seat and slowly buckling the seat belt. “I must be getting older. Everything hurts.”

Carscadden started the car and pulled away from the curb. “How you lasted as long as you did against that guy, I have no idea. If I had just put the computer somewhere else . . .”

Nastos flipped the visor down to appraise himself in the mirror. He had scrapes on his face but nothing that looked or felt like it was going to bruise. He glanced at Carscadden's right hand. “That thing is swelling with each passing moment.”

Carscadden opened and closed the hand a few times. “It's getting tight but it still moves. Maybe I dislocated it and it popped back in.”

Nastos leaned back, closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. “So let's go to the office right away. You probably want to take out files —”

“Yeah. I can grab everything pretty quick. Hopkins can take it all to Viktor's place. She can pick up Josie on the way.”

Nastos put the car in Drive. It hurt to learn forward and crane his neck to check for traffic. “I should never have dragged you into this.”

“Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Let's get the hell out of here.”

Nastos took King Street eastward and waited for a chance to get northbound to circle back to the office.

A dull ache began to spread over the back of his head. He wondered how tight his body was going to be the next day.

“I just had a thought.” Carscadden grimaced as he slowly pumped his hand open and closed. “The two cops. Maybe we need to communicate with them before the bikers. We need to get back on the offensive here.”

“In what way?”

“If the bikers tell them that we are close to exposing them, it might convince the cops to do something rash when they see us.”

“You really think so?”

“Two young scared caged animals with a lot to lose.”

Nastos had to think for a moment, “Us or the cops?”

“My point exactly. Look, Hopkins can clean the files and get Josie. Maybe we need to get the cops on our side. We can't do this alone.”

Nastos envisioned calling Jacques, who would storm the hotel room and find no trace that anything had happened there, just a fake name in the registry. If he was going to call in the police he needed more than ghost stories. “I'll call Radix and Morrison to meet us somewhere.”

Carscadden replied, “They'll want to meet someplace neutral. You've said it before, cops are paid to be suspicious.”

Nastos started to dial Jacques on his cell, then hung up, remembering that they already had all of the contact information for Radix and Morrison stored in the glove compartment. He opened it and flipped through the pages.
Looks like Radix was calling the shots. May as well call him.
He checked his watch. They would be working the afternoon shift and might not answer an unknown caller. He dialed the number and on the third ring a man answered.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Radix? This is Steve Nastos calling. I'm a private detective.”

“Perfect. What do you want?”

“Listen. I have good news and bad news. I know you're working right now but it's important that we meet up within the next half hour.”

He heard wind noise and muffled speaking before Radix replied. “I don't know, man. We're kinda in the middle of police work here. Is this some kind of insurance thing?”