Sarge
Chapter 24

Copyright© 2018 by MysteryWriter

I hated to make the call to Martin, but I needed a favor.

“Martin, you said I would come crawling when I needed a favor. Well here it is. There is a family in Atlanta Georgia, a woman and her two kids. I need for you to pick them up in the middle of the night and make them disappear. We are going to name the operation ‘Sanctuary’. We need to set them up somewhere in Mississippi, in a rural area with a rental house or mobile home. We need to do it quick. They also need completely new identity papers,” I explained.

“Don’t tell me, or anyone else where they are. Make sure she knows not to ever mention her old life, or her husband. She will have enough money to take care of herself eventually. Just set her up with three months rent and grocery money. After that, her retirement income should start flowing.”

“And what do I get?” Martin asked.

“One free week at Tasha’s Spa and Resort in beautiful Siler City,” I explained.

“What is the value of that trip?” he asked.

“Three grand and it includes a never ending supply of groceries, and other necessities from local sources delivered to the door.”

“Done,” Martin said. “I assume you will reimburse me for expenses.”

“Of course,” I agreed.

That one phone call did a few things. I got the SJL what they wanted, Martinez’s testimony. It got Martinez what he wanted, his wife and kids out of the Atlanta barrio. That part came with new identities. Those papers should be close enough to the real thing to fool anyone. It would also give Martin a free trial of the new ‘Tasha’s Spa and Resort’.

Finally I would get the resort into the market without any paper trail Well, no trail leading to Martin’s bunch or the government. Payments would be in cash most of the time or made through one of Martin’s shell companies. I preferred the shell companies, so I didn’t have to wash money.

After that one call, I was forced to begin work on the club in earnest. I called Ed and had him schedule a walkthrough with me. Then I went up to inspect the work that had been done while I was gone.

The downstairs heating and air was handled with ducts in the suspended ceiling. I didn’t like that look, but I wouldn’t be staying there. The occupants of the bottom level would be Martin’s thugs mostly. He tried to get the dumbest possible guards for the job. He wanted men with no imagination, just huge muscles and big guns. His OIC (officer in charge) would have a reasonably good IQ I assumed. One or two people should be able to handle the assignment. The big advantage to my resort was the off duty operatives would be sleeping in the building. Reinforcements were seconds away in case of attack.

The three grand a week did not include my services for anything, other than to make routine shopping runs. The townspeople of Siler City were used to seeing me on my scooter pulling the small cargo trailer around, so that should be cool.

I noticed right away that the stove and refrigerator had been moved upstairs by Tasha leaving me nothing for Martin’s employees to store food in or prepare it. I made a note to purchase appliances.

I made note of the six new windows on the sides of the building. Each window was the size of six concrete blocks. The opening in the solid brick and block walls had been cut with a masonry saw, then shored up. The front two windows had been larger, only because the building had once been an appliance store, or so I had been told. The plate glass had been removed and replaced with metal windows, the brick work had been replaced at that time. It was done by the last occupant of the building.

My man fitted bars over the glass areas of all the downstairs windows The bars were courtesy of Jasper’s junk yard. They were bolted through the walls with huge ugly washers on the inside. When I painted the bolts and the huge ugly washer black, they would fit nicely with the Dungeon decor. I could always call it Tasha’s dungeon and appeal to the S&M crowd when it was not booked as a safe house.

I bought enough camp style beds for ten men, and moveable partitions for each space. I bought and had two picnic tables delivered at the same time. They each seated six people. A quick once-over with Ed’s belt sander, then a coat of pecan colored polyurethane finish in semi gloss, and they were ready to go. After window treatments, lamps, small desks, and a couple of cheap sofas, I called the place ready to go.

The appliances I bought were not of the same quality that Tasha had upstairs, but they were highly rated store brands of kitchen appliances. What had once been the men’s room got converted to a laundry room, complete with washer and dryer, sold and delivered by the same hardware store as the kitchen appliances. Tasha’s temporary bathroom became the bathroom for several men. I had also left one toilet stall in the laundry room. It wasn’t going to be a luxury apartment, but it was better than a tent in Afghanistan, I told myself.

On my inspection of the second floor, I found that Tasha’s design called for an exposed heating and air conditioning duct. It was one large duct which ran down the center of the large room. All the wiring was run though exposed steel conduit. The water pipes ran at the edge of the walls just above the floor. I did not like that at all. I knew something had to be done about those before I opened for business. The pipes running up the brick halls were secured with steel pipe clamps and screwed into the mortar of the brick work. I didn’t consider that a problem.

I went to Tonya’s Diner for lunch. I needed to tell her I was home. I didn’t warn her that I might be ordering takeout orders in great volume in the future. I had to pin down the cover story first.

In the afternoon of my first day back, I arranged for Ed to finish the odds and ends, which were always the finishing touches needed to complete any build. All during the rest of that week deliveries were being made. Ed’s men stayed to assemble the movable partitions. There were also a few flat pack pieces of furniture to be assembled for the upstairs apartment.

Ed and his guys built me some free standing closet bars onto the partitions. Those were for our thugs to hang their clothes. I bought several plastic storage units from Walmart to hold such things as T shirts and underwear. I hoped I had thought of everything by that Saturday. I wanted to be ready to go on Monday. I didn’t have a client, but they wouldn’t be giving me much notice either.

I sat down Saturday night and realized I had dropped almost 25K in the last week. It gave new meaning to Saturday night fever. I just bit the bullet and chalked it up to my dad’s old saying. ‘It takes money to lose money’.

Martin called me Wednesday. “Sarge, what kind of video equipment are you planning to install in your new place?” he demanded.

“To be honest, I thought you might have something in mind, and bring it with you,” I offered.

“I have your floor plans and picture of the place now that it is finished. I like the open space. The access points for the upstairs are a nice touch. One exposed staircase with several angles of fire. The staircase into the downstairs crew space is a good touch. It’s an easy place to defend. It isn’t perfect, but not even Alcatraz was perfect.

“We are going to need four CCTV cameras upstairs and two downstairs. Do you want me to take the five grand out of your charge for the first job, or do you want to have it done locally?” he asked.

“Send me a copy of your placement schematic and I’ll get them installed this week,” I said. I had the schematic on my phone five minutes later. The CCTV installation company offered me an installation with an in house monitor station for three grand and change. I had them put it in. I could activate the cameras from the first floor of the building, or from my house next door via the net.

I was sorry to do it, but the four camera’s upstairs gave views of the kitchen, dining room, and the three bedroom areas. I just wanted to be thorough. A teenager sneaking in a member of the opposite sex could be harmless, or a murderous mistake. I had to know. The six cameras had turned into eight when I agree to add two more for a three-sixty view of the building’s exterior.

I had three days off. since no one wanted to do anything during the dog days of summer. Okay it just seemed that way. Since I was under no pressure to get anything done, I took the rest of the week off. I did still ride my bike, but I did nothing to ‘Tasha’s Spa and Resort’. That isn’t quite true. I bought a can of black enamel, so that I could paint the hardware black. Those big ass bolts, nuts, and washers holding things in place through the brick walls, needed painting. I did that in about two hours, then I went to Tonya’s for lunch. I was so bored by dinner time that I took the mountain bike on a long ride. I went to the Haw river canoe launching spot beside the old footbridge where I had the trouble before. Nobody knew I was there, so I didn’t expect any trouble.

It was a relaxing ride and my big sloppy burger was really a nice dinner. I enjoyed watching the sun set not over the river, but beside it. Before I knew it I had to pump hard to make it back before dead dark. Traffic on the road seemed to be picking up. I expected it was because the kids had returned to the three colleges inside the higher education zone. That area was designated as the Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham triangle.

I made it back home and was still bored so I watched a couple of episodes of the Top Chef Canada show. I have no idea why I liked that better than the US show, but I did. It was 10 PM so I decided to check the new CCTV cameras. I was still learning their capabilities. I spotted a car broken down on the street in front of ‘Tasha’s Spa and Resort’. I called 911 then forgot about it.

Since I was bored I watched the screen as the cop pulled up behind the driver. When he got out of the car, I saw every police officers nightmare in living black and white. The man in the broken down car shot the officer. The officer went down. The shooter should have jumped in his car and beat a hasty retreat, but he walked toward the officer laying in the street.

I had jumped up at the sight of the gun. I had the 1911 and was headed out the lock shop door before the shooter reached the cop. I didn’t have time to take aim, or to regulate my breathing. I just had time to toss two shots at the shooter’s back and take out his back glass as he pulled away. I called 911 and placed my pistol onto the hood of the police car.

The officer was a stout woman who had taken the slug in her torso just below the vest. I kept pressure on her gut using my tee shirt. The second cop car and the ambulance arrived at almost the same instant. The male cop took over for me with the woman who had been shot.

The paramedics took over from both of us. The cop “hooked me up” even before he began asking me questions. He recovered the 1911 and held me at the scene for a while. It took that long to get a ranking policeman on scene.

“We need to talk to you downtown,” the Lieutenant said.

“That’s fine, See the lock shop over there,” I pointed with my head. “I live there. When I ran out to help, I didn’t close the door. Would you do that or have someone watch over the place for me. If you need to search it, be my guest. If you know how to do it there is CCTV footage of what happened. If not I’ll be happy to access it for you. Oh yes and get me a tee shirt please.”

Six hours later, I was no longer bored, I was exhausted. I told my story over and over. I knew the drill, so I didn’t lose my temper at all. I was still in the interview room, when they brought in the guy who shot the lady cop. I recognized him by the red sweatshirt he wore. It had a hood, but the asshole was too stupid to pull it over his head. I had described him as best I could. That description and the missing rear window in his car was enough for the highway patrolman who stopped him. The CCTV footage assured him of a long stay in the state pen somewhere.

They allowed me to leave, but without my beloved 1911. It was being held as evidence in the shooting. Yes the 1911.45 automatic was obsolete, but then so was I. It was clunky and a little heavy, but so was I at the moment. It other words it suited me just fine, and I wanted it back.

The local cops did return my old Mossberg 12 gauge trench length pump shotgun. I had it since I was a kid in my twenties, so yes I was glad to get it back. The 1911, they were still holding the next day. They wouldn’t even give me hope that I would get it back any time in the near future.

I began to wonder if it was just bad luck, or was there a plot to keep ‘, Tasha’s Spa and Resort’ from opening. I didn’t have any means to check that out other than the guy who shot the lady cop.

“Martin, this is Sarge. Put everything on hold. The safe house may been compromised. It may be just a coincidence, but a small town cop was shot last night right in front of the Spa. They picked up the shooter, but I don’t know anything about him. If I get a name, I am going to want to run him by you,” I said into the voice mail. “I’ll call back then.”

After my morning ride, I celebrated making it home in one piece by stopping at Tonya’s for their breakfast special. I really had wondered if I would be run down by some terrorist or someone else seeking retribution. I was glad that so far, I hadn’t needed the 1911. I decided that I needed to start the paperwork to buy a second pistol.

 
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