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“Welcome to the club, partner,” Brenda told Mack as an old police car driven by a corrupt cop sped up the street and slid to a stop.
“Hey, Mack, you alright?” a hypocritical voice asked. “Just got the call, got here as fast as I could. Man, someone really tore up your car!”
“Yeah, man. That su
re was fast! They left what? A few days ago?”
Brenda shook her head in disgust but said nothing. Yeah, Joey Curanto's poison arms extend real far… and he's not going to stop reaching for me until I'm filled with bullets.
Chapter 6
A faded yellow cab trudged past a string of wooden warehouses that sat as dead skeletons lining a filthy river laced with chunks of ice. Some of the warehouses were still operational—drug fronts mostly—while the rest were deserted except for homeless drug addicts and alcoholics looking for a place to haul up in. Joey Curanto owned the East River Bakery warehouse. The bakery was nothing but a drug lab that sat at the end of a long road that dead-ended into the river.
“Stop,” Brenda ordered the driver. “There,”
she pointed at a rotten warehouse blighted by broken windows and peeling paint.
“Okay, so you’re attending your funeral,” the cabbie told Brenda, easing the cab up to the warehouse.
Brenda and Mack studied the area with sharp eyes. No vehicles were present, but that didn't mean no eyes were watching. Brenda was counting on someone seeing the cab. Curanto’s warehouse was closed, supposedly due to the winter weather.
“We need to hurry. Curanto will be around.”
Mack tossed the cabbie two twenty dollar bills. “Get out of here and stay out. You saw nothing, okay?”
“I never see nothing,” the cabbie told Mack, accepting the money.
Mack saw a sad expression appear on the cabbie's wrinkled face. He told the old man, “Thanks for caring, but it has to be this way.”
“Everybody knows this place is a death trap,” the cabbie told Mack. “Well… this is the way it is around here.”
“Afraid so.” Mack opened the back door of the cab, stepped out into the hard snow, looked around, and then jogged to the front door of the warehouse. Brenda followed, holding her Glock 17 at the ready.
“Let's get inside—”
“My way,” Brenda replied, motioned him to stand back, and then used her right boot to kick open the flimsy wooden front door. “I want him to know we're here.”
“Works for me.” Mack checked his pistol and then glanced down the row of ice battered warehouses. How many dead bodies? In the warehouses, in the river, and for what? That's what the drugs and guns represent. Human life sacrificed on the altar of money and power…
“Mack?” Brenda asked, looking into Mack's troubled face.
Mack shook snow off his face. “These warehouses have become tombs. Even the bums holed up in these warehouses are sitting in a tomb...”
Brenda eyed the row of warehouses as hard snow battered her face. “We're never going to make a difference, Mack. I guess that's the way God said it would be… the days of Noah, you know?”
Mack glanced at Brenda. Brenda never talked much about her faith—and neither did he—but when Brenda did mention the Bible, he paid attention. “Good guys still wear white, though, right?” he asked.
“I try to be part of the wheat and not part of the tares,” Brenda nodded her head. “I know I'm no saint, Mack, but someone knows my heart. Well… we better get inside.”
“I'll go first,” Mack told Brenda, pushing his mind into a sharp bullet. “Let's move.”
Mack cautiously pulled his eyes away from the line of warehouses and eased into a small front room filled with cold darkness. The front room smelled of old cigarette smoke, slimy vodka bottles, and drugs. Mack pulled a small pen light from the pocket of his trench coat. He fished the pen light around the front room, spotting a wooden desk, a rusted filing cabinet, and a cigarette-stained brown carpet connected to wood-paneled walls that were badly warping.
“Clear.”
Brenda pointed to a wooden door in the back wall. “Let's get in.”
Mack turned and looked at Brenda with stern eyes. “Brenda, I know you can handle yourself, probably better than I can, but here's the deal: We stay together. We fight as a team. No hero stuff.”
