The Supremacy License Read online

  He felt other things, though. His senses thundered. Eyes ached, ears throbbed, tongue spasmed.

  Where was he? He couldn’t remember…

  Oh yes. The heroin den.

  Concrete floor. Thin rug. Blue crate in the corner, upside down, a place for candles. Exposed rafters and plumbing. Necklace hung on the wall, crucifix pendant.

  “This little bitch,” said the man above. He had friends. Looked like maybe two of them. Or…Manny blinked. Several hundred. “Los Angeles’ finest.”

  From his position on the floor, Manny said, “I’m a police detective, working for Vice.”

  It came out, Mmmtective ww’fice.

  “Oh you a detective?” The man laughed. Jewelry flashed at his neck and ears. “Big detective up in my house smoking beast. Big ass detective hooked on heroin?”

  Manny grinned. “Not hooked.”

  “Gee-sus you a pretty boy. Little pretty bitch, maybe you quit the five-oh and let me shop you around.”

  Manny twitched a photograph from his pocket. A polaroid of a beautiful Hispanic girl, his age, laughing. “I’m looking for this woman. Seen her?”

  The man holding his gun didn’t reply. Manny sharpened his eyes. The man was black. No…Asian. No…damn, it was hard to see in this basement.

  Manny said, “I heard she was here,” or close to it.

  The man spoke softly. “You looking for Raquel.”

  “Her name’s Sofia.”

  “I say her name’s Raquel? Her name’s Raquel.”

  “You Three Guns?” asked Manny. “This is your heroin den? I heard she’s at Three Gun’s.”

  The man knocked Manny’s hand away, the one with the photograph. “Bitch, in my basement, you call me—”

  Manny hit him. Though Manny had injected heroin not an hour previous, the punch wasn’t poorly thrown. Sudden and violent, lacking no conviction, and he threw with his good hand. He’d grown up a fighter and he fought still and Three Guns’s nose crunched. His upper lip burst against his teeth. The heroin dealer roared.

  With the heel of his right boot, Manny kicked the shins out from under Three Guns’s friend. Manny swiveled his hips and rose as the friend fell. On his feet, he threw a left into the third man’s stomach. This man was fat. Manny hit him a right, breaking the fat man’s teeth. Even high, Manny dealt violence fluently.

  Reality seemed to detach from itself. Music from his childhood blared in his left ear. His vision smeared like an inkblot. He was smiling and he didn’t know why.

  Oh yes, that’s why—heroin.

  What a fool he was.

  Was that it? Any more enforcers? He turned in a circle, a disorienting motion near enough to topple him. He hauled Three Guns up. Hefted him by the throat. Three Guns spit on him and swung and missed. Manny head butted him—the man’s nasal bones broke, not just cartilage.

  “Her name’s Sofia,” said Manny. “I’m looking for her. She here?”

  Three Guns made a groaning noise.

  Manny hit him again. And again. His knuckles bruised and bled. Didn’t feel it. Three Guns went insensate.

  Manny dropped him and looked for someone else to hit. They had Sofia.

  An invisible fist drove into his stomach.

  An omnipotent kick almost detached his jaw. He fell. The universe swelled and retracted. Music from his childhood shattered.

  Manny’s eyes opened. Next to him was the photograph. Drops of blood from his face. He pinched the photograph between his fingers and said to no one, “I’m looking for this woman. Please.”

  Hands picked Manny up. He did his best to help. He wobbled and swayed. Candles burned in the corner. His assailants were shadow and moonlight silhouettes.

  “You a dead detective now,” said someone from everywhere and there was laughter.

  Through the storm of coalescing emotions, euphoria and madness, Manny watched a newcomer stride into the room. A big man. His assailants didn’t see the newcomer.

  It was Mackenzie August. Manny smiled but it hurt. He knew Mackenzie August. Great guy. Worked in homicide. His friend. One of the only.

  Mackenzie hit someone. That someone dropped.

  Mackenzie pressed his pistol up another man’s nose. “I’m taking my friend. Any objections?” said August. He said it soft. Death doesn’t have to shout.

  The man with a gun up his nose whimpered.

  “You got your ear tattooed? That’s dedication. And I’ll make you a deal,” said August. “You forget my friend was here, I won’t come back for a month. Deal?”

  The man tried to nod but the pistol barrel resisted. Instead he said, “Deal.”

  Mackenzie nodded at the floor. “Tell Three Guns our deal. He forgets this happened and he gets a month to move his operation. A month of grace.”

  The world swam as Manny listened to his friend bully the heroin dealers. All of a sudden, he didn’t feel so good.

  Mackenzie retrieved Manny’s revolver and asked, “Where’s your service weapon?”

  “Home,” said Manny.

  “Put away the photograph.”

  Manny obeyed. Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

  “Can you walk?”

  Manny tried to respond—nothing happened.

  Mackenzie picked him up in a fireman’s carry. Over his left shoulder. With his right arm, Mackenzie kept his Kimber 1911 ready. He had a long walk out of the house, moving through men who hated cops.

  “Good grief, you’re fat.”

  “No’m not,” said Manny, hanging upside down. “One-seventy-five, baby. All muscle. I won the belt. But I think I might throw up.”

  “Throw up on me, I leave you here to die.”

  “August.”

  “What.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Shut up. Don’t talk. I think you’re especially stupid and I’m angry with you,” said August. He went up the stairs, out of the dark basement. The air up here felt warmer.

  “She’s not here, August.”

  “I know. And you gotta quit looking in these places. You don’t possess the fortitude. Did you kill anyone?”

  “For’nitude,” said Manny, bouncing on August’s shoulder. “Stupid word. Thought she’d be here.”

  Mackenzie August shouted something. At someone Manny couldn’t see. That someone shouted back.

  A gun fired.

  3

  “Manny?”

  Staci was on her knees next to his chair. Her hand rested on his thigh, shaking him.

  “Manny?”

  Manny blinked. Sat up straighter. Gunshot echoes in his ears.

  His plate of eggs was empty. The old woman had left.

  “Are you okay?” asked Staci. Her eyes were wide and brown. “You’re sweating and you look lost.”

  Manny grinned and wiped his forehead with a napkin. “Sorry. Bad dream.”

  “You don’t look good, Manny. Maybe I should take you home?” Her hand still rested on his thigh and she squeezed.

  “Sounds nice. Maybe so.”

  “Yes?”

  “But,” he said, neatly folding and replacing the napkin. “Another day. I’m in no shape to entertain, mamitá.” Manny stood and dropped fifty dollars on the table. For the eggs and for his embarrassment.

  The marshals office was built into the first two floors of a building off Franklin, one of those glass monolithic monstrosities with no character. Access to the lobby required passing a security checkpoint with metal detectors, and then additional retinal scanners for the marshals sanctum. The deputies kept their desks in an open bullpen, surrounded by private conference rooms and utilitarian areas. Deputies didn’t spend much time at their desks anyway. The walls gleamed with laminated posters—mandated safety warnings, federal policies, mugshots of fugitives.

  Manny’s desk was a work of art, luxury and steel, buffed to a high shine. It wrapped around his Herman Miller Aeron swivel chair on three sides, giving him a full range of work space. Neither the desk nor the chair were government issue; Manny h
ad purchased them with personal funds and carted them in one weekend, bemusing his coworkers and irritating the marshal. Most others worked on drab particleboard affairs.

  His desk pressed against Noelle Beck’s, facing one another; their computer monitors almost touched. She was an NSA computer technician on six-month loan to the marshal’s Western Virginia District. Her particleboard piece of junk had looked ludicrous next to his, so he purchased her a matching steel desk within a month. She expressed pleasure and mortification over the gift. The office called their gleaming construction the Death Star.

  Manny twisted out of his beige sports coat, slid into his Aeron, and activated the computer. The machine clicked and hummed to life. This early, most of the office was quiet.

  Unseen beyond his monitor, Noelle Beck noted, “You’re early.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Skipped the gym. Paperwork to do.”

  “Really? I thought you’d forgotten.”

  “I don’t forget.” He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and sighed. An elongated and expressive blast of air. “I just hate paperwork.”

  “I took—”

  “Hate it.”

  “But if you—”

  “Haaaaaaaate it.”

  Beck’s voice was warm and smiling. “Okay. Suit yourself.”

  Manny opened the government database software. His files should’ve been updated last night but had he been punctual with the paperwork he’d have missed cocktails at the Patrick Henry bar. He didn’t care much about the marshal’s wrath but lectures were best avoided.

  He drummed his fingers, glaring hatefully. He said, “Hey Beck.”

  “Yes Manuel?”

  Manny winced. He hated her use of his full name. She thought it clever the way their first names rhymed. “Sorry for interrupting you earlier. That was rude. And I am never rude.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “Shut up, I’m working on it.”

  On screen, his email opened and he zipped through the inbox. He needed to update the database—the very thought filled him with pain. Databases were straight from hell, so he permitted himself to sidetrack.

  At precisely eight o’clock, Collin Parks strolled in with a mug of coffee. One of the ridiculous plastic mugs from Taiwan which leaked heat. Collin was short and compact with cauliflower ears, like he did well wrestling in high school and decided to keep the body. All muscle, no brain.

  Collin made a grunting noise. “One of these mornings, Mulder and Scully, I’ll get here first.”

  Manny didn’t reply. He’d fallen deep into an email about luxury shirts from Barneys. And he’d never bothered to find out who Mulder and Scully were. A dashing duo, he assumed. Some days he fantasized about kicking Collin’s ass.

  Thirty minutes later Manny still lounged in his swivel chair, scrolling through an email about gang unrest due to Whitey Bulger’s death, and what it meant for government informants, when Sheriff Stackhouse walked in.

  The sheriff of Roanoke City was approximately fifty years old. Long brown hair showing the first streaks of silver. Excellent physique, which rumor claimed was the result of surgical enhancement. Looked great on television. She was a hard ass and a heartthrob, land-sliding the previous two elections. She wore tight khakis and lace-up Kate Spades, and a white button-down shirt, collar flicked wide.

  Manny rose to greet her. Stackhouse, ten years his senior, considered Manny the perfect specimen of man. She kissed him on the cheek and reflexively rubbed it off. “Morning, Martinez. Need to talk about your collar yesterday.”

  He arched an eyebrow and returned to his seat.

  Collin called from his desk across the room. “Occur to you, Sheriff, that all deputies would enjoy a similar greeting?”

  “You cook me dinner twice a week and we’ll see, Deputy Parks.” Stackhouse sat on the corner of Manny’s desk and nodded over his monitor. “Hey babe, how you been?”

  Noelle Beck responded, “Very well, thank you, Sheriff.”

  “You still a Mormon?”

  “Want to join?”

  Stackhouse smiled. “Thanks. I wouldn’t do well. I’m a woman of many vices. I’m sleeping with Manny’s roommate currently.”

  “And afterwards,” said Manny, returning to the prisoner database. “She walks around in a tiny nightgown. Not that I mind, señorita.”

  The sheriff asked, “I come in this morning, who do I find in my jail, Manny?”

  “My guess? Milo Wiggins.”

  Across the room, Collin set his plastic mug down hard enough to spill it. “Milo Wiggins?”

  Stackhouse nodded. “My reaction too.”

  “Shit,” muttered Collin, moping up the coffee. “Milo Wiggins, you kidding?”

  Manny said, “Milo came through Roanoke. I saw him and I cuffed him. Not a tough hombre.”

  “Milo was on my case load,” said Collin.

  “You be lazy. Took too long.”

  “You had Milo for a year, Parks,” said Stackhouse. “Just sat on it.”

  “He was out of state!”

  Manny shook his head. “You didn’t look hard enough. You, the lazy communist. Me, hardworking American.”

  “You act like these guys fall into your lap, Manny. And it ain’t that easy. Such crap.”

  Manny raised his hands, palms up. He shrugged. “I’m on the Fugitive Task Force. I ran into Milo. What’s a poor Hispanic boy supposed to do?”

  “Milo looks like hell,” said Stackhouse. “Says you beat him up. Let him go. Then beat him up some more.”

  “Sounds like Milo is a lying villain, to me.”

  “Says you shot him.”

  “With wax bullets. They don’t count.”

  Collin finished moping his coffee and chucked the sodden paper towels into the trash can. With vigor. “All Manny’s collars say the same thing. Those who live long enough to talk. Say he kicks the piss out of them.”

  Manny said, “Milo Wiggins, he hurt women and children. He put up a fight when I respectfully asked him to get in the car. So I talked sense into him.”

  Beck snickered.

  The Marshal walked in. Bert Warren, nicknamed The Bear—man looked like he could outwrestle a grizzly, even though Bert was in his sixties. He’d worked his way from being an Army MP to an FBI special agent to a Presidentially appointed marshal for the western half of Virginia. Never married, hard working, dependable, and well liked.

  Sheriff Stackhouse leaned back on Manny’s desk to regard him, a position she knew drew attention to the shirt being stretched across her chest, buttons strained. She and Bert were polar opposites—she an elected official, he a Presidential appointment; she an image conscious local celebrity, he a no-nonsense workaholic; she cared little for rules, and he followed them closely. They even voted opposite sides of the aisle, a situation with the makings of a bad television show from the eighties. Despite himself, Bert Warren had a soft spot for her. A small one.

  She said, “Hello Marshal.”

  He deliberately didn’t look at her pinup pose, instead shoving a thick finger at the group. “Milo Wiggins.”

  Manny stood and straightened his tie. “He come with a bonus?”

  “I’m getting calls from his got’damn attorney. The apprehension was clean?” He carried his phone in his hand. As always. He was pointing at Manny with the same hand.

  “Obviously,” said Manny. Then, to take the edge off, “Sir.”

  Collin Parks drifted back to his desk. The incoming staff gave the marshal a wide berth—even from behind, they could see he was in a mood.

  “My ass, it was. Yours always come with a headache.”

  “Milo’s in my custody, Marshal,” said Stackhouse. She didn’t purr the words. But she came close. “I’ll vouch his wounds are self inflicted. Manny wouldn’t hurt a soul.”

  “Sheriff, cut the sex kitten act. My office, my rules.”

  “Careful, Bert. You know I like it when you act tough.”

  “His attorney will be here in thirty minutes,”
said Bert with a glance at his wristwatch. “Hotshot from Washington. Thousand bucks an hour, politically connected. Milo’s paperwork isn’t perfect, we got a mess on our hands.”

  Manny nodded. Oh yes. The paperwork. Should’ve done that.

  Bert’s eyes hit with the force of a truck. “Tell me his workup is pristine, Deputy Martinez.”

  Manny adjusted his tie again. Cleared his throat. Yes, he thought. About the paperwork.

  Noelle Beck stood. “Pristine, sir. Deputy Martinez spent hours on it last night. I assisted.”

  Manny suppressed his surprise. Barely.

  “Is that so,” said Bert.

  Stackhouse rolled her eyes and gave her head a tiny shake. She’d been around Beck to know the NSA analyst was competent, thorough, and a professional—yet sometimes the good girl couldn’t help doing the bad boy’s homework. How trite. But she couldn’t blame Beck. She herself couldn’t work well in such close proximity to Manny. The funny thing was, the man seemed oblivious. He was proud of his fashion sense, his fitness, his discipline, but couldn’t care less about his face. And that was the best part.

  The marshal alternated his glare between Manny and Noelle. She flinched each time. Handling Manny’s paperwork was against the rules. Lying to the marshal would get her fired. Finally, Bert asked her, “You assisted?”

  “Yessir,” said Noelle. “That is, I—”

  “Zip it, babe,” said Sheriff Stackhouse. “You’re good.”

  Manny made a note to buy Noelle Beck a bottle of champagne. Or a new car. Beck’s work was always perfect and she’d saved his butt. She must’ve stayed a couple hours late.

  “Pristine. Better be.” Bert Warren dismissed it with a wave. Important matters pressed and somehow busting Manny always proved fruitless. He glanced at his watch again. “Deputy Martinez, you have a meeting. Now.”

  Manny half glanced toward his calendar, laid on his desk. “Not this morning.”

  “You do. The sheriff and I both signed off on the project.”

  “Today? Already?” asked Stackhouse, scooting off his desk. “My, my. The need must be great. Are you in uniform, Manny?”

  Bert scoffed. “He’s never in uniform. I’m out of options, other than firing him.”