FOR TWO DAYS, I WALKED through my plan to kill Rollo. It was seared into my brain. Now it was time to see how good of a plan it really was.
Rollo Watkins ran his operation from the fourth floor of a building on Gest Street downtown. There was no parking at his building, so I parked in a lot across the street. I stepped out of the SUV and brushed the silver flecks from my charcoal slacks, the small metal file peeked out from behind my sun visor. I checked my watch. Almost noon.
My shirt and suit jacket clung to my body as I raked my forearm across my face, taking one last swipe at the sweat dotting my forehead. I’d hoped the cologne I sprayed would mask any smell my sweat-drenched clothes might offer up to Rollo and his men. Didn’t want to appear nervous.
I yanked the leather duffle from the back of the SUV and crossed the street. For a Friday, downtown Cincinnati appeared deserted, not a person in sight. They were all tucked away in their cubicles or offices, completely unaware of what was about to happen. An empty scaffold engulfed the first three floors of a dilapidated brick building near Rollo’s place. Farther down the street a large gray canvas tarp billowed in the light breeze as it failed to cover the exposed guts of a building renovation. Farther down still, faded orange barrels blocked off part of West Fifth Street. Downtown revitalization at its finest.
At the building entrance, I set the duffle on the ground, checked my right pants pocket for my car keys and wiped my hands down the sides of my pants leg. I took a deep breath, picked up the duffle and used my elbow to push through the glass door into the lobby. No prints.
The lobby was a tight squeeze. No doorman, reception desk or building directory—just an elevator and a potted plant that needed water. Two surveillance cameras stared through me. My head down, but not obvious, I reached out and called the elevator with my knuckle. The door opened with a ding.
The elevator jerked back and forth, and I thought for a moment that it might be a bigger threat to my life expectancy than Rollo. The elevator coughed a sickly buzz as it passed each floor. It settled into the fourth-floor bay with a metal-on-metal squeak. I gripped the leather duffle tighter as the door opened and stepped into the lobby. Large sheets of plastic lined the walls and stacks of drywall boards blocked the windows. The chalky smell of drywall putty coated the air and there was a haze of white dust on the floor.
Three black men watched me. The two younger men—one short and the other tall—looked like they could both bench-press a Volkswagen without a spotter. They wore light gray suits. Skintight. The older man wore short salt-and-pepper hair and a Bill Cosby sweater. He sat at a makeshift desk, a piece of plywood supported by two sawhorses. The elevator door closed behind me, and the two suits approached.
“Something we can we do for you?” said the tall man.
“I’m here to see Rollo,” I said.
I barely got the words out before the tall man’s fist blindsided me. I’m not sure what hit the ground first, me or the duffle. I hadn’t been in a lot of fights, but I knew that being on the ground wasn’t the best place to be. Try to get up and I’d expose my ribs to another blow, and balling up on the ground wouldn’t improve the situation, only prolong it. This was a lose-lose predicament. I waited for another blow, maybe kicks from the four dress shoes in front of me, but nothing came. I glanced up and the tall man had retreated back a few feet. I made it to my knees, then my feet, and then picked up the duffle.
“Nobody sees Rollo,” said the tall man.
“He’ll see me,” I coughed and raised the duffle. “I’m filling in for Sam.”
The tall man looked me over. “That right?” he said. “Name?”
“Mr. Finn,” I said.
“Sorry then. Nobody told us.”
The short man approached, snatched the duffle from my hand and set it on the old man’s makeshift desk.
The man in the Cosby sweater adjusted his glasses, slowly unzipped the bag and gave it the suspicious-package treatment. He tilted it to the side, surveyed the contents and then swept his hands along the inside lining, probably looking for any hidden compartments. He wouldn’t find any.
He zipped it up and handed it back to the short man.
“This way,” the short man said. He didn’t return the bag.
He led me down a hallway. The tall man kept a distance behind us. Not far. He could close the gap in a second or two, if needed. The right side of my jaw throbbed. I checked for any loose teeth with my tongue. So far, still in good shape. We stopped at another makeshift desk. A handheld metal detector and a white plastic bin sat on top.
The short man looked me up and down. “You got any metal on you?” he said.
“You mean am I armed?”
“No, asshole. I asked if you had any metal on you.”
“Just my watch and keys.”
He held out the plastic bin. “In they go.”
I hesitated.
“In they go. I’m not going to ask again.”
The tall man took a few steps toward us.
“Okay,” I said, dropping my keys and watch into the bin.
The short man waved the metal detector around my body. It let out a low hum, but no beeps. He set the metal detector back on the desk and patted me down with his hands.
“Down the hall on the right,” he said handing the duffle back to me.
I slid the watch back on my wrist, dropped the keys into my right pants pocket and walked down the hall, counting my steps.
“Don’t fuck up,” he said.
There was a large oak door at the end of the hall. The smell suggested someone lacquered it within the last day or two. I knocked. The door buzzed, and then the deadbolt withdrew with a thud. Like a prison cell unlocking.
It took me thirty-two steps from the metal detector to Rollo’s office door. It’d take the suits five or six seconds to get here. Longer for Bill Cosby, if he came at all.
Another tall man in a beige suit opened the door and waved me in. He wasn’t as ‘roided out as the two men in the lobby, but the double-barreled sawed-off in his hands made him just as threatening. The dark metallic handle peeking out of his jacket also suggested a .45 in a shoulder holster. So far, the drop went just as Fat Sam explained, minus the fist to my face.
I walked into the office and the man in beige followed close behind. Too close. His first mistake. Rollo Watkins sat behind a thick wooden desk, a black iron safe, stacked with bills, open behind him. Rollo looked small, more because of the oversized desk, not his frame. So far, Bill Cosby was the only person on this floor who didn’t dwarf me.
Rollo didn’t look up at me. “Bishop sent you?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Where’s Lardo?”
“I’m new,” I said. “Taking over the drop for Sam.”
“You have a name?” said Rollo.
“Mr. Finn.”
“Ain’t that cute. You bring it?”
I raised the duffle. “It’s right here.”
Rollo looked up. He motioned to the man in beige, who grabbed the duffle. Another nod from Rollo and he dumped the contents onto the desk. Rollo stacked the bricks of hundred-dollar bills into four piles and looked over the printout. “You know how much is here?”
“No,” I said. “Bishop just said to bring it over.”
Rollo stared at me and then nodded. “Okay, you can go,” he said. “See you next week.”
I swallowed hard. All the saliva in my mouth ran for the hills back in the lobby, and my lips chapped somewhere in the hall. I slid my hand into my right pants pocket, rubbed my thumb and index finger against my pocket lining to dry the sweat. Then, I fumbled for the Navigator key fob and found the silver button.
Rollo looked up. “Get him out of here.”
The beige man approached and grabbed my arm. His second mistake. I pulled the key fob out of my pocket and pressed the button. The key, filed to a point, snapped out of the plastic base like a switchblade. A second later I’d shoved it into the man’s neck. I withdrew it and plunged it in again and again, finding the strategic targets of his windpipe, jugular vein and carotid artery. The blood spurted from his neck in steady streams, like water from a lawn sprinkler. I dodged most of it, but two streams painted my shoulder and arm a deep red. After the fifth jab, I grabbed the sawed-off from his tightening grip, and kicked him to the floor. It was over in seconds. To Rollo, it must have been a blur. He never had time to react.
I spun back around and trained the shotgun on Rollo. His eyes opened wide and he slid both hands below the desk, searching for something, probably a piece holstered under the desk. Or maybe an alarm trigger. I didn’t move. I just kept the shotgun trained in the center of Rollo’s head, letting my heart rate equalize.
His arms steadied. He found whatever he was looking for. I didn’t hear anyone scrambling down the hall. No alarm. Must be a weapon.
“You’re in some serious shit here,” Rollo said. “What’s your play? No way you’re gonna shoot me and walk out of here alive. If that’s what you think, you ain’t thought this through.”
“I’ve thought it through,” I said. “More times that I can count.”
“You think you’re the first person to point a gun at me?”
“No, but I’ll be the last.”
Rollo looked over my shoulder to the door behind me. “You might want to reconsider your options. If I die, you die.” Rollo’s right shoulder dropped slightly as he reached for whatever he found under the desk.
My eyes followed his hand. “You might as well try for it. I’m going to shoot you anyway.”
Rollo jerked a chrome handgun from under the desk and stood up. He hadn’t cleared the thick top before I fired the first barrel into his chest. The blast hurled Rollo into the desk chair, which rolled backward and bounced off the wall behind him, and then overturned onto the floor.
The stopwatch in my head approached zero. Not much time before the three men in the lobby got to the door. I grabbed the .45 from the beige man’s shoulder holster, tucked it in my waistband, overturned Rollo’s desk and crouched behind it. I re-gripped the shotgun and waited.
The two gym rats rushed into room. I peeked over the desk. The short man had a small black automatic, maybe a MAC-10, and the tall man had two handguns. They held them like they knew what they were doing. The inch-and-a-half-thick cherry desk might stop whatever the tall man was packing, but I had less faith against the short man’s street sweeper.
“Hang on. Hang on,” I said. “I’m not here for you guys. Just hang on a second.” I looked back over the desk. The old man walked through the doorway, a cane in his hand. He stared at the overturned chair and Rollo’s body, his blood splattered across the top of the desk.
“Whoa, son, you’re in it deep aren’t you,” he said.
“You could say that,” I said.
“Why don’t you come on out and we’ll sort this out.”
“I feel a bit safer here, thanks.” I wiped my hands across my pants, when the sharp pain from a cramp in my calf rolled up my leg. “I’m only here for Rollo. I’ve got no reason to shoot any of you.”
“That might be true,” said the old man. “But we got plenty of reasons to shoot you.”
I could get a shot off from the top or the side of the desk, but I only had one chance with the shotgun. Then, I’d have to go for the .45.
“How do you suppose we end this situation?” said the old man. “You can’t get all of us.”
“No, but I can do some damage. I’ve got one left in this shotgun, your friend’s .45, and in a pinch I can go for whatever Rollo had stashed under his desk. I figure I got enough leverage to warrant a negotiation.”
The three men were silent.
“I don’t want to kill any of you,” I said. “But I will if I have to.”
“We’re supposed to just let you walk out the door?” said the old man.
“I’m hoping that’s exactly what you’ll let me do. I’ve got twenty-five grand here, and Rollo’s safe is wide open. There’s got to be a few hundred grand in there. You can take it all and split it up however you like. How’s that sound?”
“Why don’t we just shoot you and then take the money?” the tall man said.
“Now that’s the kind of thinking that’s going to get someone killed,” I said.
“I don’t know,” said the old man. “I kind of like his idea better. Cut out the middle man.”
“No, that won’t work,” I said. “Think about your situation for a minute. I’ve got you from a fortified position. Even though there’re three of you, I’ve got the advantage. If this shotgun scatters the right way, I might be able to get two of you. Maybe take your legs out or at least put an awful lot of holes in your gut. If you think about it that way, my odds aren’t too bad.”
“If you’ve got such an advantage, why are you trying to buy your way out of this?” said the old man.
“Maybe I miss,” I said. “Maybe you get off a lucky shot. Still some bad things that can happen to all of us. I’d rather walk out of here without firing another shot.”
Silence.
“You even know how to use that thing?” the tall man said.
“It’s pretty simple, really. I pull the trigger and you fall down. Just ask Rollo here.”
The tall man stepped closer to the door.
“You just came for Rollo?” said the old man.
“That’s it. Just Rollo. It’s just business. From Detroit.” I lied about the Detroit part, but it seemed logical. “You let me walk out of here, you take the money and we all go home today with our insides where they’re supposed to be.”
“That ain’t gonna sit well with Rollo’s boss in Detroit,” said the old man.
“Or Hickman,” said the tall man.
“Hickman’s dead,” I said. “This operation is closed. It’s gone. Let’s face it. Your boss isn’t promoting any of you to the top of the chain. Think about your future. The only shot you got is to take Rollo’s money here and maybe clean out anything you can at Hickman’s place. That’s it.”
“How much is in that safe?” said the old man.
“Few hundred grand at least. Plus the bag I brought. All yours. Rollo’s out of business, and that’ll make a nice retirement fund.”
More silence. Thinking.
“Plus, if anyone asks, you weren’t here,” I said.
Hesitation.
“Okay,” said the old man. “How do we do this?”
“You all step out into the hall, and I’ll follow you out. I back down the hallway, get in the elevator and you never see me again.”
Silence.
“Okay,” said the old man.
The three men backed into the hallway.
“Keep your weapons pointed down,” I said. “I’ll do the same. No accidents.”
I peeked my head around the doorway. All three men stood against the back wall. “You all understand probability, don’t you?” I said.
“Explain,” said the old man.
“As far as I’m concerned, there’re only two of you because I’m not worried about the old man and his cane. If either of you two raise those weapons while I’m backing down that hall, I’m going to get a shot off. That means you two have a fifty-fifty probability of taking a blast to the gut. Keep those pointed down, and we’ve all got a one hundred percent chance of making it through the day. We clear?”
“Okay,” said the old man. “Come on out.”
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