Chapter 4

When I took time to think about what was coming up, I figured that I needed more convenient firepower. The watchman had said that 14 men showed up to punch in for the morning shift. I realized that 14 was too many to take on with just my stick, and I didn't really want to kill them, so I needed a different way to fight. That was when I remembered the Uzi in my car trunk. I dashed out to grab it before the men showed up and just barely made it back before the first worker showed at the dock.

The general practice was for the men to gather just outside the door and wait until the last possible minute to come in to punch the time clock. They would generally smoke and bull shit until the magic hour showed up. A bell chimed and they had five minutes of grace to record their presence, and that was plenty of time for 14 men to punch in.

I gagged the watchman so that he could not shout a warning and went to my selected ambush point. I waited until all of the men were lined up to punch in and turned loose with a blast from the Uzi. They were in a line and perfectly placed for me to catch every one of them with at least one bullet. I was aiming for the knees, and that Uzi was so steady in my hands that almost everyone of the men was actually hit in the knee. The 9mm bullet was much less destructive than the one from the Glock .45 caliber pistols that I carried, so I wanted to use it for this job. This particular Uzi was equipped with the 100-round drum magazine, so I had plenty of bullets to use if I needed them. The range was only about 12 yards, so I had no trouble hitting my targets.

Most of the men went down and didn't move; however, there was one fool who tried to fight back with a common .38 revolver. He was shot in the arm, and that ended all thought of retaliation from the wounded men. I collected their guns, and most of the pistols fell into the class of cheap Saturday Night Specials in .38 caliber, though there was one PPK in 9mm that looked like it might have been a presentation gift of some sort.

None of the men were in imminent danger of bleeding to death, though they did need medical attention if their legs were to be saved. I scattered some of my business cards and went back into the office. There, I used my stick to break the knee of the nightwatchman and left a card on his chest. The call to 911 was made from the office phone, so the operator knew immediately where the call originated. I explained that there were 14 men wounded by gunshots and one man with a broken knee from a blow with a staff; therefore, she should dispatch both EMTs and cops. I told her my name was Paladin and hung up.

I watched from my car as the first EMTs arrived, but I was getting sleepy, so I did not wait for the full contingent of ambulances and cops. I drove home feeling very good about my night's work and the blow I had struck to the Carnoli family. This was really getting to be fun!

I slept until 2:00 PM and had to hurry to make my class at the dojo on time. I really hated to be late as a matter of principle. For one thing, I considered it to be disrespectful of my teacher, who was doing a damned good job.

By the time I got home, Mrs. Jones had seen the first news reports on the dust up at the warehouse. The Paladin name was featured and they did a closeup of my business card. I could not have asked for a better advertisement if I had been in the job for money. This time, the TV anchor was careful to say that Paladin had not killed anybody, and had actually seemed to make a point of avoiding fatalities. The man shot in the arm was used as the example. He did make one last editorial comment, "Too bad the police could not seem to do as good a job of fighting crime."

I thought that was a cheap shot, because the police were held to such tight strictures on what they could and could not do. Having been a cop, I knew what a struggle it was for an honest cop to do the kind of job the public thought it was paying for. Certainly, if cops had done what I had done, they would be in jail more quickly than the people they had shot! Oh, well, that was why I had a job to do. I just had to be careful that no innocents were hurt in the crossfire.

I went on patrol that night, but I didn't find anything that needed my attention. It wasn't because of a lack of crime, it was because there was no crime where I happened to be when I happened to be there. Luck played a big hand in whether or not I had a situation to look at.

The next day, though, was to wake me up to my main purpose. Jake "the Snake" Carnoli walked on another court case. This one was also for murder during an armed robbery. This time, there were no technicalities involved—the jury simply failed to reach a unanimous conclusion on his guilt. There was talk on the street that a couple of the jurors had been intimidated, but nothing could be proved.

This case was not a trivial one. An armored truck carrying the payroll for the biggest employer in Sola Vista was hijacked, and all three guards were murdered with a bullet to the back of the neck. The take was $173,000, and there was no way to trace the money except by serial numbers, and that was not going to do much good, if any.

This didn't look like a Carnoli family job. It was too brutal and amateurish. The Snake probably planned this on his own, and he probably caught hell from his pop for getting caught. Well, that was enough—I was now going to make Snake my prime target. The first thing I had to do was to find him. Word from the street was that Snake was hitting the family's whore houses in a nonstop spree to celebrate his release. He was spending a few days at each house, hitting every one of the women at least once before moving on to the next house on his list.

OK, my job was to find out which whorehouse he was currently using. That was going to take some detective work, but I used to be a detective, so I should know how to do that. I had an advantage now over my previous stint as a detective: I could spread bribes like there was no tomorrow! People on the street were so afraid of Snake and his siblings that it took me three days of diligent questioning before I found out what I needed to know.

I didn't want to go blasting into a whorehouse because of the danger to the women, so I needed to catch Snake on his way from one place to another. That was also relatively easy because he was currently being chauffeured around. It seems that the family wanted to be sure that he didn't do anything any more stupid than usual. All I had to do was to stop the car in transit and pull Snake into mine.

Snake had already been at a certain whorehouse for two days, and, based on his recent history, he would be moving on to the next one sometime late this afternoon or tonight. The exact time depended on when he woke up.

My car had tinted windows, so I could sit inside in full uniform and not be bothered by people seeing me. Therefore, I parked in a convenient place and waited for the limousine to show up. Snake was using nothing less than a stretch version, so it would be easy to spot and not be very maneuverable. Sure enough, the stretch limo showed up about 7:00 PM, and two men went in to get Snake. He came out a few minutes later, staggering somewhat from what looked like a lack of adequate sleep. All three men piled into the car and it headed out.

I followed at a discreet distance until we reached a quiet neighborhood. At that point, I raced ahead of the limo and cut it off in the middle of the block. Before the driver could get the limo to back up, I was out and covering them all with the Uzi. I sent a short burst through the windows, hoping not to hit anyone, but not caring all that much.

The windows shattered and I could see the three men in the back seat, as well as the driver. I ordered all of the men out into the street and lined them up against the car. I shot the three insignificant men in the knees with the Uzi and scattered a few of my cards. I jammed the Uzi into Snake's back and marched him to my car. The judicious application of a few plastic ties had him immobilized in the back seat. All of this happened so fast that nobody else got involved, though I expected the 911 lines to be heating up with all of the calls.