Dead Man's Hand by Richard Levesque Read Free Book Online Page B

would be easy
to pull cars in and out of. Maybe it had started out as a body
shop. And then evolved into a chop shop as times got tougher and
the neighborhood followed suit. Running through what I knew about
this area, my guess was that the place had now transformed into a
drug lab, probably the one Neat Pete had been sentenced to after
his dalliance with Clancy’s dancer.
    I parked across the street and rolled down
my window, just staring at the building and listening for signs of
life. Either Pete was in there, or his phone was in there, or Pixel
had steered me wrong. I just sat there, letting maybe fifteen
minutes tick past, trying to work all the angles. None emerged as
more likely than another, and the building wasn’t giving up any
clues as to what was going on past those roll-up doors. So with a
sigh, I rolled up and got out, but not before digging my pick set
out of the car’s storage compartment and grabbing Drea’s antidote
kit from the passenger seat.
    The kit barely fit into my
back pocket, but even so I reached around twice as I crossed the
street just to make sure there was no chance of it falling out.
When I got to the gate, I looked around for a few seconds, taking
extra time to peer into the dark around the side of the building
before me just to make sure I wasn’t being watched. Two bats
fluttered around a streetlamp half a block down, maybe real bats
and maybe not. They made me stop and think. My people , I told myself, and I
almost turned around to go back to my car, thinking of a dozen
better ways I could spend my night. Then I snapped the cover on the
little leather lock pick set and went to work anyway.
    I’d learned a long time ago that working
defense on a case sometimes meant skirting the law. The other side
had an awful lot of resources, and sometimes those included rules
and regulations designed to keep me from information that I needed.
So I looked at the strategic computer hack, the occasional breaking
and entering, the well placed bribe all as just a way to level the
playing field. I could just as easily have looked at them as ways
to get myself disbarred, but that was beside the point.
    The lock popped after a few seconds. I slid
it out of the hasp, lifted the latch, and pulled the gate open
slowly, my teeth gritted against the possibility of squeaky hinges
echoing through the night. All stayed quiet, and I stepped through
once the opening was just big enough, then pulled the gate closed
and latched it, leaving the open lock hanging on one of the links
so I could get out quickly if I needed to.
    Holding my phone low, I turned on its light
and walked around the side of the building. The space was wide
enough to drive a car through, and if it had been daylight I might
have been able to pick out tire tracks in the dust, but for now I
was content to assume Pete or someone working with him had driven
Drea’s van through here and that I’d find it around the back of the
warehouse.
    When I rounded the corner, my hunch proved
itself correct, and I just stood there looking at the van. It had
been backed into a smaller doorway, this one just big enough for a
single vehicle to pass through. Its roll-up door was all the way
up. Only the front half of the van stuck out of the building. From
inside, white light shone out around the sides of the van, faintly
illuminating parts of the area between the building and the back
fence.
    Nervous that the van’s former cargo might
have gotten the better of Neat Pete, I stood still for a few
seconds, shining my light around the property at the back of the
building to be sure nothing was lumbering around in the shadows. It
didn’t take long to satisfy myself that I was the only
person—living or dead—behind the building, and I let myself breathe
again. In my sweep of the property, I saw two other cars and a
black van parked against the fence and thought about walking over
to feel their hoods to see if they were also recent arrivals.
Drea’s white van,