Warlord

TWENTY-THREE

FLASHY BLONDE WITH A HUGE RACK was gunning for him, huh? Great. He'd been thinking about her, the chick with the MAC-10 at the beach and in the black Charger, wondering if she'd come calling. She knew he'd seen her face and she seemed like a woman not out to meet new friends. He'd given Miami-Dade and the feds her description. And he'd been keeping his eye out for her, ever since the little shoot-out over on South Beach four days earlier.

Now he wished he'd said something to Eddie about keeping an eye out for her too. But he hadn't been that smart, and now Eddie had paid for Stoke's own stupidity and he cursed himself for it.

The beach bimbo was right now waiting for him up in his apartment. Had to be. Why else would a woman stab an old security guy and demand his master key? He hit PH and leaned back against the elevator's marble wall, trying to see how this was all going to go down. Picture the thing in his mind.

There was a big black leather chair in the living room. His personal chair. An Eames chair, the wispy decorator had called it. Chair faced south, out toward Biscayne Bay and the Keys; it had a matching leather footstool. His "watch the Dolphins get their asses kicked again" chair, he called it. It also swiveled.

It would be the most likely place for her to wait. Sit in that chair, swiveled around, directly facing the front door, cradling your nasty little black machine gun in your lap, your finger on the trigger, the lever set on three-shot bursts. Yeah. Maybe make it fun. Pour yourself a nice glass of wine from the jug of Almaden in the fridge, sit there all afternoon and wait for the big black dude to come home. That's the way he saw it going down anyway, and he was pretty good at visualizing this shit.

The elevator stopped on 60 and the doors slid open.

To the left was the corridor leading to his apartment. To the right was a door with a stairway leading to the roof. Stoke knew it wasn't locked because painters had been up there for the last couple of days, painting all the air-conditioning and heating equipment with some kind of rust-proofing paint. Shit got rusty fast in Miami, he'd learned from Eddie.

He quickly climbed the steps to the roof, trying to remember if he'd left the main sliding glass doors to his terrace open or shut. Open, he thought. But today was hot as hell, so he may have closed them and let the AC cool the place down while he was out. If they were open, he had an idea.

The entire rooftop, big as a football field, was covered with tiny white stones and the glare of the sun was painful. He crossed over to the eastern side of the building and calculated exactly where his terrace would be, right below the southeastern edge of the roof. He knelt down, looking below, suddenly very conscious of the amazing height sixty stories high in the sky.

He dropped to his knees and placed his hands carefully, shoulder width apart, gripping the raised four-inch steel rim sheathed in aluminum that went all the way around the four-sided building, took a deep breath.

Then he stretched out flat on the roof, digging the toes of his shoes into the stone, edging his body out into midair till his belt was almost to the edge. He could now lean out and down, take a quick peek at his terrace doors.

Please be open.

Closed.

And locked, he remembered. Shit. He always locked those sliding glass doors, even though it was ridiculous up here in the sky. Old habits die hard. He pushed back, heaved himself up, and got to his feet, thinking. Can't go in the front door and the terrace is locked up tight.

Es un grande problema, hombre, as Fancha would say. But big men solve big problems. He lifted his shirt, pulled the SIG 9mm out of the holster in the small of his back, checked his weapon. One round in the chamber and a full mag.

Now what?

The terrace. Yeah. The terrace was the only way. She'd have her back to it, eyes focused on the doorknob of the front door. The good news: the terrace behind her was just about the last place on earth anyone would be expecting company to drop in unexpectedly.

But once you drop in, then what? How the hell do you get through the sliding glass doors? Knock twice and smile? Mouth the word Domino's with your hands behind your back? Pizza man?

He looked around the rooftop, pulling down on his right earlobe. Old habit. Back in the day, thinking of some damn way or other to get his SEAL platoon out of a fucking VC ambush without anybody else getting killed, he'd started the ear-pulling thing. Nervous tic.

The doors were the problem. Glass too thick, terrace too narrow to get any force behind a surprise kick. So you're out there, she hears a thud and spins the chair, sees your ass, fires a short burst, and you're punched back over the railing, lost in space, already deader than the deadest damn doornail in the history of doors.

He looked around the rooftop for inspiration.

Paint cans. There were a shitload of Rust-Oleum paint cans everywhere, some used, some full, all scattered about a big spattered canvas tarp the painters had laid down around the perimeter of the HVAC shit. Brushes in old cans full of paint thinner. So, the cans, Stoke. Something with the cans, okay? What?

He picked up a long piece of rope, one end tied to some unused scaffolding, the other end coiled up, about fifty feet of it. Good strong half-inch nylon. Rope. And a full gallon of paint tied to one end. That could work.

He smiled at the whole damn thing. Funny how your mind worked sometimes. Came up with some crazy shit you'd never even dream of. Over the years, he'd learned to just go with it, go with the flow, see where it would lead. Instinct. Why he was alive today. Snap decisions on the fly, right or wrong. Bet on yourself, like his mama always told him.

You jes bet on your own self, Stokely Jones. You hear me? Your own self. That's all you got.

Secret of life.

He tied one end of the rope to a standpipe near the southeast side of the roof, a double bowline. Tied the other end to the big can of Rust-Oleum. Heavy as shit, as paint goes, most probably full of lead.

He swung it in a gradually increasing arc a few times, just to get the heft of the can. Felt good out there, the Rust-Oleum, at the end of his rope, so to speak. Like it might actually work.

So.

How does this go down?

Girl down there in his apartment, patient, even sipping chilled vino maybe, waiting for him in that comfy black leather Eames chair, fingering the trigger of the MAC-10 in her lap, eye on the door, thinking, Come to mama, Mr. Jones.

Meanwhile, the potential victim is standing up here on the damn roof right over her head, sixty stories up in the sky, half-blind and scared shitless by the acrobatic feat he was about to attempt, contemplating a surprise appearance without falling sixty stories to the ground or getting his crazy ass shot all to pieces.

He swung the heavy can in a tight circle, really hard a few times in ever increasing arcs, finally flinging the can way out into the sky and bringing it back toward the terrace to complete the arc, can coming back hard, right up under the eave of the roof, right into the glass of his doors, hearing it smash through, making a huge noise, and then grabbing the rim of the roof and just doing a Tarzan flip over the edge, hoping to Jesus he'd land on his feet inside the railing of his terrace, not outside.

He heard the phut-phut-phut of an automatic weapon equipped with a noise suppressor just after his feet hit the terrace. Rounds taking out what was left of the glass. He ducked, grabbed the SIG, and dove through the nearest jagged glass door, rolling behind the heavily upholstered leather sofa to his right. Silent rounds thudded repeatedly into the sofa as he crouched behind it, struggling to come to grips with what he'd seen in those few seconds before he went for the floor.

It wasn't the blonde sitting in the chair.

No, it was some bald-headed fat guy, stark naked from the waist down, shooting at him. And the blond chick? She was on the floor, topless, kneeling between the guy's legs. As Stoke dove, he'd seen her crabbing bare ass toward his front door, reaching up for the knob. It didn't take much imagination to figure out this cozy little scenario. Chick gives guy head while they're waiting for the shooting to start.

What the hell is it with these people?

He heard the door slam and knew she was gone.

He crawled around the edge of the sofa and quick-peeked. Chair was empty. The guy was backing toward the door, difficult because his pants were still down around his ankles, swinging the gun side to side at waist level. This wasn't turning out right, his look said. He saw Stoke's face appear for a split second and put another burst into the sofa, shredding Stoke's beautiful leather furniture to pieces.

You can mess with me, Stoke thought, but not with my furniture. That really pisses me off. He shouted at the guy from behind the sofa.

"Pull your damn pants up, asshole, and tell me why you were getting a blow job in my favorite chair without even being invited in."

Another burst, high and into the ceiling. Stoke peeked around the side. Saw the sweaty three-hundred-pound guy frantically reaching around behind him for the doorknob still at least five feet behind his fat ass, waddling backward like a goddamn duck with his pants down. Wasn't pretty.

Stoke called out, "Here I come, chubby, ready or not."

He popped up at the opposite end of the couch and put two rounds in the guy, one in each knee. Fat Boy screamed and collapsed to the floor. Hearing the MAC-10 clattering on his beautiful parquet floor, Stoke, seriously angry now, yanked his ruined sofa backward toward him and leaped right over the thing. He was squatting on top of the fat man with his gun in his face in less than two seconds.

At that moment two cops in black Kevlar outfits took the door down, putting their guns on Stoke, saying, "Police! Freeze, asshole! Drop the gun! Now!"

Stoke accidentally dropped his SIG on the fat guy's face and backed away. The cops looked at the half-naked limp-dick white man on the floor, then up at the huge black guy in the New York Jets sweatshirt.

"This ain't exactly what it looks like, Officers," Stoke said, putting his hands up.

"This is Miami, asshole," the older cop said. "It's always exactly what it looks like."