Chapter 2

I had finally gotten my act together and was headed out to see one of my contacts. At this point, I had decided to expand my original agenda—now I wanted to bring down the whole Carnoli family. I figured that would make them suffer more than simply killing them, and suffering, mentally if not physically, was what I wanted for them. Of course, I would take some physical suffering on their part as icing on the cake.

I was driving my special car toward the contact point when I saw an all too common sight: a convenience store clerk was being held at the point of a gun by a petty robber. I assumed that she was after enough money for a drug session, and the clerk was in mortal danger if that was what it was.

There was no other traffic on the street at this time of night, so I made a U-turn and parked in the shadows. A parking place was easy to find at this hour. I was already dressed in my working uniform, except for my hood. I slipped that on and ran to the convenience store to try to put a stop to the robbery. The woman with the gun was acting very nervous and jumpy, so I was afraid that she would accidentally shoot at any time.

By this time, I was confident enough of my shooting ability that I was sure of hitting what I aimed at, no matter the size of the target, if the range was less than 25 feet. Therefore, I drew my gun and eased into the store through the main door. When the door was open about two feet, a chime went off. This startled the robber, and she whipped around to face me. Hell, this was no time for niceties, so I shot first. I had aimed at her upper arm and scored on the first attempt. The .45 caliber bullet roared through flesh and bone exactly where I had aimed, leaving her arm barely hanging by a few scraps of flesh. The gun fell to the floor, and she was not far behind.

I rushed in and applied a tourniquet consisting of a plastic wire-tie. I didn't think that the woman deserved to die for her transgression, the loss of an arm was surely enough punishment. I shouted to the clerk to call 911. He did and finally got around to setting off the silent police alarm that he had been too frightened to touch earlier. As soon as that was all done, I rushed out the door and back to my car for an escape. Furthermore, I still had time to make my appointment with the stoolie.

The stoolie, for a $100 gratuity, told me where to find a major drug distribution warehouse belonging to the Carnoli family. Of course, I was wearing my hood when I talked to the stoolie, since I was not yet ready for my new face to be widely known among the underworld. In fact, I planned to keep that secret as long as possible. It was too late to do anything about it tonight, so I returned home to plan for tomorrow.

The next morning, Mrs. Jones had an excellent breakfast waiting for me when I finally rose about 10:00 AM. She had become a TV news addict, so she had seen a report of my little escapade last night. She even recorded the segment for me. The reason she knew that I had been involved was because the surveillance camera had picked up enough of me that she recognized my uniform.

The news anchor was of two minds about the event. On one hand, he was delighted that a petty criminal had finally been caught before he could do some real damage or kill somebody, but, on the other hand, he thought the loss of an arm was too high a price to pay for the misdeed. Of course, he could talk like that because he had not been facing that gun held in a very nervous hand. Oh, well, there was not enough on the tape to identify me, so I didn't worry about it. Mrs. Jones thought that I had done the right thing, and that was good enough for me!

One thing it did prove to me: I was able to hit what I was aiming at, as long as the range was reasonable. I knew that I could do it on the range, but it was gratifying to learn that the practice carried over into real life.

The drug warehouse was an old home that had been abandoned in a run-down section of Sola Vista. The second floor was used for drug storage and the main floor was used for an office and a waiting room for workers and distributors. I didn't expect to find more than a token guard at the facility, since the local people all knew that this was a Carnoli family operation and gave it a wide berth. My intention was to break in and torch the building, at least the drug storage part. It would be nice if the fire and police personnel arrived soon enough to control the fire before it endangered the rest of the neighborhood.

I had no trouble gaining entry through a window that night. The crooks were so confident of their invulnerability that they didn't bother to seal the windows on the lower floor. The first thing I did was to hunt for the night watchman. I had no interest in killing him, but I did have to disable him before he could put out the fire. My plan depended on the arrival of the fire department.

I found the watchman on the main floor asleep on a cot in the waiting room. He was so easy to capture, gag, and tie up that I began to wonder if I was facing a trap. That might be true at another time, but it was not on the agenda for this night. I dragged the man out the back door and laid him on the grass far enough from the house to be safe, even if the fire department was slow to arrive.

After that, I scattered some tinder I collected from discarded packing crates and started the fire. As I said, I didn't want a raging fire, only enough to warrant the appearance of the fire department. They could call the police when they found the drugs. Not only would that deprive the Carnoli family of several million dollars in profit, but it would also focus federal attention on them. I hoped that would be enough to make them squirm.

Once that fire was started, I built a fire on the front porch. I figured that would be too much for the locals to ignore, and one of them would verify my 911 call. I made the call and gave a fictitious name, of course. I also returned to where I had left the nightwatchman and removed his gag so that he could call for help. He was not getting off easy—I am sure that both the police and the higherups in the Carnoli family would want extensive conversations with him. I just was not going to bet on whether or not he survived the conversation with the Carnolis.

The next morning, the TV news was full of the fire and the discovery of millions of dollars worth of drugs. The Carnoli family was never mentioned by name, but I knew that the police and the DEA certainly knew of their connection with the drugs.

I could imagine the frantic chaos that was percolating through the organization as they scrambled to fill outstanding orders. I knew that they had more than one warehouse, so there was no chance that I had shut off the drug trade in Sola Vista, but I sure had cut into the profits. From what I had heard over the years, I believed that there were three such warehouses in Sola Vista, so I had only touched one-third of the business, so I wanted to go after the rest of the operation before they had a chance to rebuild.

My previous informant claimed ignorance of any other drug warehouses, but, for $50, he did give me three more names to ask. There was still time that night to visit one of them, so I rushed to make the contact. This guy didn't know much about the drug trade, but he was well informed on the prostitution side of the business. I paid him and thanked him for the information which I filed for future reference.

The next night was spent in tracking down the other two individuals who might be able to help me with the drug warehouses. The first contact was a bust, but the second one had two addresses for me. He couldn't swear that both of them were currently active, but he knew that one of them was. I took the rest of the night taking a look at both places. Neither one of these was going to be as easy as that first place, since they were both in brick buildings. I was going to have to come up with a better fire starter if I was going to attract the fire department to either one of these buildings.

As Chuck King, I contacted a publicity man in the Sola Vista Fire Department with a story about doing research for a book. I told him that I was writing a mystery novel in which the hero was an arson investigator who was tracking a serial arsonist. I promised not to put enough detail into the book to enable somebody to use my instructions to start a fire, but I needed some ideas for how to make a big fire in a brick building.

After a couple of beers over a steak dinner, he suggested that thermite would probably do the job I was talking about. Of course, he didn't tell me how to obtain thermite, but I would check out the internet for that information. Over a period of a week and two more steak dinners, I got a lot of information on how to be an arsonist. I wondered if that idiot had any idea what kind of information he was giving out—probably not. After the lessons, I thanked him and promised to put his name in my book as an expert I consulted for information.