Chapter 11

Chapter 11: One Hell of a Ride.

There were of course questions, but nothing too tough as the wounds and the fact that no less than five officers saw him heaved from a moving car seemed to hold his story together nicely. He answered all of the lieutenants questions stone faced. He wasn’t asked to supply too many details which was good, because he didn’t have many. He sat in the uncomfortable chair in the lieutenant’s office, playing gingerly with the tape on his nose when there seemed to be quite a commotion coming from the detail room. “I’m frigging rich!! I quit!!” Skinner didn’t recognize the voice, but apparently someone had won the lottery or something. “What the hell?!” Lieutenant Minter stood up from his desk. The man reminded Skinner of the chiefs in all of the police movies. Gruff, a little bald, and never seeming to wear his suit jacket. Though with all of this he was much better than the lieutenant that was here a couple of years ago.

“Jackson won the lottery” One of the faceless beat cops spoke up. “Well isn’t that nice. Jackson get over here.” “Fuck off Minty. I’m rich, I’m outta here!!” “Damn straight you are. Clean out your locker and get outta my station. NOW!” Everybody seemed to shrink back into their chairs between the evil eye that Minter was giving the lucky beat cop. Stories went around a week or so before Lieutenant Minter started that he was so mean that he stared hard at his plant one day and it turned black and died right there. Of course this was total fabrication, but it still was an entertaining way to address the hard as nails, burning stare he got when he was thoroughly angry. He stomped back into his office and sat down once again at his desk with a huff. He looked up at Skinner, with his battered and bruised face, blood crusted, crumpled, and torn dress shirt almost as if he’d forgotten about him. His face softened a bit. “Go on home Skinner. Take a couple of days off. I’ll send an officer by with some more questions later. We’ve already gone through your apartment, so feel free to clean up.” After he’d been dismissed, the Lieutenant went back to his paperwork like the morning hadn’t even happened yet. “What, you’re still here? Get home and rest up. That’s an order.” This was the second time that he’d been given time off by a lieutenant, thankfully this time it wasn’t for anything he’d done wrong.

An officer had stopped by later that day with more questions. Though he just seemed to rehash all of the questions that the lieutenant had asked, and were answered in the exact same way as he laid on his couch with an icepack on his face. When the officer left he got up and grabbed a beer from his fridge and took a swig. It tasted horrible with his broken nose. There was absolutely no taste to it at all. Perhaps the Viper had been right about his choice of beer. He lay back down on the couch and napped for a bit. It had been a hell of a ride for the last couple of days.

The next two days passed much like that one had. The pain killers that the doctor had prescribed him had kept him out of it for most of the time. Thankfully the roaring ache that seemed to consume all of his face had died down. Between the pills and the beer he’d drunk he was pretty fuzzy most of the time. He decided to get off the couch though, there was something trying to claw itself to the front of his mind, but he couldn’t quite place what it was. He tried to claw his way through the fog, but found it was much easier to simply lay there with his eyes closed.

As he lay there, drugged and half drunk the thought he was clawing for minutes before sidled its way into his mind. The guns…of course! He jumped up from his well worn couch and swayed from the head rush. When he got his head about him he walked over to his computer and looked up the EBay listing that he had been given a few short days ago. That damn web page that had started all of this mess. The auction had ended by then and he found that they had been sold for just over three quarters of a million dollars. Skinner reeled at this information, though he couldn’t be sure it was from surprise or the drugs. He looked at the buyer information and found that someone named “Ghost_Widow” had bought them. “Damn, don’t any of these people use grown up names?” Skinner murmured out loud.

There was something trying to make a connection in his head, but he didn’t know quite what to do with the information. There was evidence here he was sure of it, but much like with his attempts to catch the Viper all that time ago, he just couldn’t bridge the gap between what he saw and where it needed to go. He tried to look up information on both the seller and the buyer, but all that could be revealed to him were that both lived here in New York City. The other thought that occurred to him was that he had a funeral to go to tomorrow. A funeral for a killer. He imagined the group of people who would show up to such an event. The rogue’s gallery of crooks, killers, and thugs standing around solemnly around the grave of a fallen legend. If that was what they did that was. He wasn’t sure how that would work or what happened with something such as that. He then thought about being a cop at such an event. The thought made his skin crawl, but again couldn’t be sure if it was something to do with the pain killers coursing through his blood.

He made the decision to sober up a bit. If any more of Tanaka’s men decided to knock on his door he’d be an easy target in his current state. He looked down and saw the .45 ACP that Shin Lao had given him in the bar. The thing hadn’t even been fired yet. He checked the clip and slid it back into place with a loud click. He checked the locks on his door to make sure that everything was still in place and returned to the couch after making a quick pouch of ramen noodles. He would definitely need something in his stomach. There were things he needed to be awake for in the next twenty four hours and events that must be attended.

The night wore on for detective Leonard Skinner. Aside from his nose hurting he’d become a little paranoid in the last few nights. Officer Warren had driven home the point that he wasn’t safe from anybody in this new string of events. He gripped the handle of the pistol until his knuckles were white every time a car passed or someone knocked on the door down the hall. By the time the sun rose the next morning his eyes were red and watery and he was physically exhausted. He rose stiffly in bed and looked around the room as sunlight flooded in from the window across from his bed. It was looking to be a gorgeous day out. He only wished he felt better than he did. The alcohol caught up with him after the last few days as well and he felt like his head was going to explode if he didn’t get up out of bed.

He swung his feet out of bed and met the cold hardwood floor. His whole body seemed to go into a convulsing shiver as he drew a robe around him and walked to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. The long minutes between turning the coffee maker on and when it would produce enough coffee to be useful left him standing in nervous silence. He knew that he could count on at least one visitor today. At least he hoped he could. He had made up his mind in the long hours of the night that he was going to attend the funeral for the fallen hitman.

Skinner nearly jumped out of his skin when in fact a knock came to his door. He’d barely finished his second cup of coffee and hoped he’d at least have enough time for a shower. He walked to the door, the .45 ACP firmly in his hand as he put his eye to the peep hole. Thankfully it was Shin Lao and he relaxed his gun arm and slid the bolts and locks out of the way. “Nice robe” She said with a wry little smile and walked into his apartment.

She looked absolutely stunning. The black dress went to just above her strong calves and was slit up to the knee. It clung to her hips and had a deep “V” cut in the top that left just a hint of cleavage. The image of lounge singer came to mind. All that she seemed to be missing was a piano and a smoke filled room. Skinner looked down at himself in his sweat pants and open, well worn robe. Suddenly he felt self conscious and sucked in the gut he’d been trying to get rid of for years. “I’ve just got to jump in the shower. I’ll only be a minute. It was something of a rough night so it’s been hard for me to get motivated.” “OK, everything starts in two hours and we’ve got to swing by Edgar’s before we go to the... to the “event”” She seemed to be having a hard time coming to grips with things as far as the Viper’s death went. He thought back to the picture in her safe house of her and the Viper and decided that they must have really had something. In her line of business you couldn’t afford being mopey about losing a “co-worker”.

It only took Skinner a couple of minutes to shower and shave. If there was one person in this world he didn’t want to keep waiting, it was certainly a professional killer. While he was shaving he thought on how he got so deeply involved with the pair of killers. He hadn’t met Shin Lao but once or twice in the past before this, but he had talked of her a lot, and so knew that she could be trusted. All of this led back to his daughter and the combined thought of the Viper and his daughter almost caused his eyes to mist up a bit. The man was going to find his daughter if he let him operate, and now it seems that even that hope was dead along with the hit man.

He quickly dressed in his best suit, which still made him look like a cop unfortunately. The cut wasn’t stylish like the Viper’s had been, in fact if he remembered correctly he bought this suit at a bargain basement sale. He looked at himself in his bedroom mirror and sighed. The dark suit fit him like any other suit, loose in the shoulders and tight around the waist. He made a note to himself that he was gonna have to pick himself up a nice suit one of these days. He noted the bruising in his face, particularly around his nose and picked up his cheap Ray Ban shades off of the dresser and fitted them the best he could over the tape

“Very nice detective.” Shin Lao said simply as he walked from the bedroom, grabbing his overcoat off of the hook on the way towards the door. “After you” He said as they turned to leave. They walked down the several flights of stairs to the ground floor and he looked at the contrast between them and the graffiti scrawled walls. Once outside he looked for the Aston Martin and didn’t see it anywhere. “You have the AM today?” “No, I didn’t think it would do to show up around so many people in the dead man’s car. Might give the wrong idea about why everybody’s assembled.” It made sense to Skinner, and so he wasn’t surprised when he looked at the dingy cars lined along the street and noticed the pristine Cadillac Escalade parked amongst them. “That one yours?” “Yep, one of several actually. These things make great vehicles if you need to bring a small arsenal with you. That “Stow and Go” seating makes for a great place to hide weapons if need be.” Skinner thought about how many of the stylish vehicles he ran across in his daily travels and wondered how many people were using them for the same reasons. This didn’t help his paranoia now as he envisioned every SUV that rolled by to be a potential hit man.

Pulling out into traffic he looked at the neighborhood through the tinted windows. The artificial darkness seemed to bring to attention the dinginess and drab of his own neighborhood. Looking at it like this he decided that the darkness suited it. It wasn’t that it was a bad neighborhood, but it looked like every other low rent area in the city and came fully equipped with its own share of druggies, prostitutes and gangs. His reverie was cut short when he noticed that they had parked and looked up at Edgar’s apartment building. You could scarcely tell the difference between his neighborhood and Edgar’s. The whole city seemed to be like this for him now. One row of shoddy brownstones was very much the same as the other until the whole city took on the appearance of the run down, grimy neighborhoods. Even the pristine downtown business area seemed to be aged and grimy to him now. Perhaps he’d become a little too jaded over the years and he just hadn’t had time to think on it until now.

They jogged up the stairs to Edgar’s door and knocked. The grumble from inside told him that he wasn’t the only one that Shin Lao had roused pre-maturely this morning. He opened the door muttering all the way. “Good morning Edgar.” She seemed to be cheery on purpose and the old man grumbled louder as he unchained the door. “You’re lucky; I just finished them about two hours ago.” The old man let that sit for a moment in an attempt to make someone feel guilty. Obviously it didn’t have the desired effect and he stood aside to let them both enter. “What the hell happened to you detective? Looked like you met the wrong end of a baseball bat.” He chuckled a bit and then resumed his gruff look and turned to his back room. “Your pistols, rifle and all the ammo you could want. All with gas vent and matching holsters. I got a hard case for the rifle; I seemed to remember that you favored those. “Indeed I do. Thank you very much Edgar. You’re a consummate businessman.” “I always aim to please Ghost.” He sat down at his desk and counted the large roll of bills that Shin had placed on his desk. He knew he didn’t have to count it but liked to keep up appearances.

“We’ve got to take off now Edgar, the service is in just over an hour. I’d like to see who’s going to show up before I step foot among those people.” “Very wise of you. I wish I could come personally to give my regards, but I don’t think it would be wise.” “I understand Edgar. I’m sure that he would as well.” She slung the bag with the pistols and ammunition over her shoulder. Skinner, feeling useless picked up the case with the rifle and they both left the apartment. The case he was carrying seemed to weigh much more than he thought it would. By the time they got back to the Ghost’s Escalade his shoulder was a little sore, adding to his discomfort. Shin Lao popped the rear on the mammoth SUV and slid the duffle bag in. She got the case from Skinner and slung it inside like it didn’t weigh a pound. Skinner felt a little silly and walked towards the passenger side of the truck.