Murder Corporation Read online

  MURDER CORPORATION

  A crime thriller by

  VICTOR METHOS

  Copyright 2012 Victor Methos

  Kindle Edition

  License Statement

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy.

  Please note that this is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All events in this work are purely from the imagination of the author and are not intended to signify, represent, or reenact any event in actual fact.

  BY VICTOR METHOS

  Jon Stanton Thrillers

  The White Angel Murder

  Walk in Darkness

  Sin City Homicide

  Arsonist

  Thrillers

  Plague (A Medical Thriller)

  Murder Corporation (A Crime Thriller)

  Creature-Feature Novels

  The Extinct

  Savage: A Novel of Madness

  Sea Creature

  Science Fiction

  Clone Hunter

  Star Dreamer: The Early Science Fiction of Victor Methos

  Humor

  Earl Lindquist: Accountant and Zombie Killer

  Philosophical Fiction

  Existentialism and Death on a Paris Afternoon

  To contact the author, learn about his latest adventures, get tips on starting your own adventures, or learn about upcoming releases, please visit the author’s blog at http://methosreview.blogspot.com/

  For the wicked seem to be everywhere…

  -Psalms 12:8

  CHAPTER 1

  I had never been shot before and as the round whizzed by my ear and buried itself into my neck, I thought this must be what it feels like to get raped. To feel powerlessness, pain, and shock.

  The warm blood drenched my collar and I pressed my free hand to the wound, my other hand holding my Desert Eagle. I was ducked down behind an old Mercedes inside a large mechanic shop and I could hear the two men laughing from somewhere in the dark.

  “Yo,” one of them shouted. “Yo, motherfucka, I know you hit, boy. Come on out and we take care a ya.”

  The other one laughed. I pressed my legs into the floor and tilted my head just enough to look over the hood. There were stairs leading up to the second floor and I could see the dim outline of the woman, chained nude to the railing. A cop’s girlfriend—a prize to the Trece Locos.

  “Yo, you wanna tap that ass? Is that what you here for? You can have her, pig. I’m sick a that nasty ass anyways.”

  I fell back down. I was getting dizzy from the blood loss. With only a few lights on in the shop, I couldn’t see where they were hiding. The door leading to my car was somewhere out there, past the darkness. I reached down and made sure my badge was still clipped to my belt. I took it off and tucked it under the car. If they downed me, the badge would be a trophy. I’d be damned if I let that happen.

  I took out my clip; three in the barrel and one in the chamber. Four shots. Four shots in the dark. I may as well just throw the gun at them. I placed the weapon against my forehead and closed my eyes, wondering how I got myself here.

  “Yo, pig,” the other one yelled, “come on out, man. We ain’t gonna do shit. Just come out and let’s talk. I ain’t kiddin’, yo. We ain’t tryin’ to light you up. I ain’t wanna kill no cop. Let’s shoot the shit for a minute.”

  For a brief moment, I actually considered it. He sounded sincere. But it was the type of sincerity learned from a lifetime in and out of prison. Swimming in a tank full of sharks without any fish did that to you.

  I pushed the clip back in. “All right, I’m coming out.”

  The best advice I’d ever gotten about emergency situations was from my drill sergeant when I was in boot camp. The advice was: Fuck it. Just fuck it.

  I stood up, my firing arm held stiff and aligned with my right eye. I saw the first flashes of the Uzis. One was to my right. I aimed at the flash in the darkness and fired two rounds as I felt the bullets tear into my flesh. Chunks were flying off me and I felt the spatter of blood against my face. I swung around, aiming at the second flash. I fired one round and heard a groan.

  “Fuck me, motherfucka, motherfucka!”

  I closed my eyes and followed the sound lower to the ground. I fired the last shot. I couldn’t hear if it hit its mark but after the shot there were no other noises. My ears were ringing and I stood still, pressing against my neck. Eventually, I heard the quiet sobbing of a woman from above. Before I could look up, my vision swirled and I hit the ground, drifting off into pleasant euphoria as my life poured out of my body onto the dirty floor.

  CHAPTER 2

  I sucked in breath like I had been drowning and my eyes opened wide. Bright lights made my eyes close again. I fell back down onto a soft bed and tried to breathe; it was like I was inhaling through sand. I tried to slow my breathing when I heard a noise. It was a newspaper folding.

  I squinted until my eyes adjusted.

  I was in a hospital room. There was a single window to my left and I glanced out at the morning sunlight. The window was closed but I could tell a breeze was blowing outside because a nearby tree was swaying.

  “How you feelin’?”

  I looked over. In a chair on the other side of the room was a man I vaguely recognized. He was wearing a brown leather jacket and had enough bling to make somebody think he was a rapper though he was white and looked like he could’ve been a biker.

  “Do I know you?” I wheezed. It hurt to talk and I couldn’t tell where it hurt because the pain shot throughout my body, into my eyelids, and heart, and balls.

  “No, you don’t know me. But I bet I look familiar, don’t I, Officer Boyd?”

  “I’m sure you’re a sweet guy but could you do me a favor and get the fuck outta here? I ain’t feelin’ too hot.”

  He shifted in his seat and I saw the gleaming Las Vegas Metro Police Department badge clipped to his belt. Recognition screamed at me now.

  Captain Ty Reeves. Known in the precinct as R. There were more rumors about him than about bigfoot. It stemmed from the fact that the unit he ran, SIS—Special Investigation Section—was the most secretive unit in the squad. Go to the Sheriff’s Department’s website and you won’t find a link. You can’t track down any names or a history of cases. Only a few newspaper articles and a couple of law journal entries written by criminal defense attorneys, discussing their violent reputation.

  “Yeah, you know who I am now, don’t you, Officer Boyd?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Good.” He folded up the newspaper and threw it in a trash bin near him. “Somethin’ ‘bout the way a newspaper feels in my hands—I don’t wanna trade it for readin’ online. Would you agree?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t read the paper.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s mostly bullshit.”

  He grinned. “It is mostly bullshit but you can learn a lot from people’s bullshit. Maybe even more than when they’re bein’ honest with you.” He stood up and walked to the side of the bed. “Saw your service record. Front line infantry, my kinda record. How come you didn’t pursue a military career?”

  I lifted the sheet covering my legs, revealing the metal attachment just underneath my knee where my calf and shin should have been. It led to a mechanical foot with thick metal cords acting as tendons.

  “That’s what the Purple Heart was for, huh?” Ty said. “Didn’t mention that in your record.”
>
  “Doesn’t affect me. I can still keep up with anyone on the street.”

  “So I’ve heard.” He turned and walked to the window, staring out onto the parking lot below. “How much pussy you get, Tommy?”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Pussy. How much of it do you get?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Pussy, pussy! You know that thing between a woman’s legs? It’s a simple question, son.”

  “I do okay.”

  “You’re what, twenty-seven? You should be out every night getting pussy. That’s one thing you can’t have too much of. No matter how much you get, when you’re on your death bed, you’ll always wish you’d had more.”

  “Sir, I don’t understand.”

  “I’m sayin’ I know you. I know what you do. You clock out and go home and read and watch TV and fall asleep in that shitty rented duplex of yours. That ain’t no life for a good-lookin’ twenty-seven-year-old.” He turned and looked at me. “You know my unit?”

  “Yessir.”

  “I talked to that girl. She said you stood there and took hits while you calmly fired and killed those two fucks in the shop. The doctor told me they shoulda downed you. What were you thinkin’ going in there without backup?”

  “She was an officer’s girlfriend. Trece Locos thinks it’s a badge of honor to rape a cop’s girl. I didn’t know if they were going to kill her, so when I found out where they were, I just went in.”

  “Bullshit,” he said, coming up next to my bed again and looking down at me, “calling a 402 only takes ten seconds. It took you less than that to call in your location. Your ass is lucky; when you didn’t call back, dispatch sent a unit to check on you.” He leaned in closer to me. “Now tell me the real reason.”

  I hesitated and glanced away. When I looked back, his eyes were still boring into me. They were steel gray and large and he looked like he was seeing through me. “I wanted to do it myself.”

  “Do what?”

  “Kill ‘em.”

  He paused. “Why?”

  “They need to know our people are off limits.”

  “And you thought that if a bunch of units were there, they might surrender rather than fight, is that it?”

  I looked away. I had just sealed the end of my career. There would be an investigation by Internal Affairs and then a dishonorable discharge and firing; the difference being that a discharge keeps your pension and a firing takes it away. The most humiliating part would be turning over my badge and gun to a captain that had trusted me to do the right thing.

  I heard something in the room and didn’t recognize it at first; it was laughter.

  Ty was laughing, his hands on his hips as he straightened up. “Revenge. It’s pure, isn’t it? What I told you about pussy also applies to revenge.”

  “I broke procedure and it resulted in two deaths.”

  “You saved the life of an innocent woman and the lives of every poor bastard out walkin’ their dogs that those fucks woulda killed for no reason. You’re a hero, son, but those fairies in command will never recognize it. They’re going to do an IAD investigation. They’ll clear you, but you may get a slap on the wrist for not waitin’ for backup; they won’t recognize what balls it took for you to do what you did.” He leaned down close to me again so I couldn’t look away from his gaze. “But I do.”

  He began pacing the room, looking at the posters, adjusting a few out of place Q-Tips, pushing the chair he had been sitting in against the wall.

  “What do you know about SIS?”

  “Not much, sir. Nothing, really.”

  “We don’t write parking tickets at malls or bust jaywalkers. We go after the big fish and we use the little fish as bait. My unit’s racked up two hundred and seventy-three arrests of high profile perps and a ninety-three percent conviction rate in the four years we’ve been around. That averages to one arrest every four days and one conviction every couple of weeks. Those numbers are our job security. We keep those numbers up no matter what. In exchange, we get left the hell alone. Not even IAD can touch us. We’re who the police call when they need help.”

  I hesitated and then said, “I’ve heard rumors.”

  “Oh? What’ve you heard?”

  “I heard you guys get perps into situations that they have to shoot themselves out of.”

  “Like you did?” I didn’t respond and he came by my bed and looked down at my mechanical leg. “It’s true, we got a high number of officer involved shootings. Thirty-nine in four years. And those thirty-nine involved the baddest, most evil fucks this country’s ever produced. Pedophiles, serial killers, drug lords, slavers…you name it, we got it. I don’t regret a single one of ‘em. And if you look at our record, which doesn’t officially exist, we were cleared by investigative command on all thirty-nine.” He folded his arms. “It’s up to you, son. You want in, I may have a spot. You want out, you won’t see me again.”

  “No, I wasn’t…I’m in. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Get better first.”

  He turned and began walking out of the room.

  “Wait,” I said. “How do I get a hold of you?”

  “I’ll call you,” he said as he left the room, shutting the door behind him.

  I took a deep breath and leaned back in the bed, my fingertips running along the smooth steel of my leg. I had heard other rumors about SIS as well. That they spent days without sleep to conduct surveillance, staying awake on diet pills, that they go down to Tijuana and get in bar fights and sleep with hookers for their shits and giggles.

  But I also knew that the nine officers that have come out of SIS were made detective and two of them are captains or higher. Three were recruited by the FBI and the remaining went with the Secret Service or the Department of Homeland Security. I just needed to put in my time and I would be the one living in those big houses away from the strip in quiet neighborhoods, a big-titted wife waiting for me when I get home, a BMW in the garage.

  CHAPTER 3

  I was in the hospital for three days. Luckily, Uzis have small rounds and they only cause death with multiple wounds in vital areas, unlike a .45 or .357 that can cause death with one, massive wound. The small rounds hadn’t hit anything vital, but did leave a lot of scars. The doctor offered to refer me to a plastic surgeon and I turned him down. I had enough scars already that it didn’t matter.

  When I went home to my duplex on North 28 Street I felt weak, but well enough that I drove myself. I now had six new scars over my abdomen, shoulders, neck, and arms. I got out my cane and the single gym bag the hospital had given me, and hobbled up the steps to my door.

  Inside it was just as hot as outside. It was over a hundred degrees today and dry. I opened the windows and was amazed by how much dust had already collected over my hardwood floors. I put the gym bag down in the kitchen, took out a Corona from the fridge, and sat down on my imitation leather couch in the living room. I felt achy over my entire body, a consequence of intense fatigue. The remote was lying next to me and I turned on the television and flipped through a few reality shows before turning it off and taking a long sip of beer. I felt my iPhone vibrate in my pocket and I took it out. I was getting a call from a number I didn’t recognize.

  “Hello?”

  “Tommy, how you feelin’?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Your mama. How’s my Baby Boy doin’?”

  “Who the hell is this?”

  “Captain Reeves.”

  My heart beat faster. “Sorry, sir. I’ve received some hang ups on this line.”

  “You feelin’ up to comin’ into the office?”

  “Yessir,” I lied.

  “Bullshit, but I like the balls. You goin’ to roll call tomorrow?”

  “Yessir.”

  “No you’re not. SIS doesn’t go to roll call. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Meet me at the Mirage tomorrow mornin’. In the lobby, 9:00 a.m. If you’re late, don’t bothe
r showin’ up.”

  “Yessir, and I just wanted to thank you for trusting me with—”

  I heard the line click and go dead. I hung up and placed the phone down next to me. I lay back on the couch, wondering how the hell I was going to use the bathroom or take a shower or make something to eat, much less run around the city with Ty Reeves.

  The next morning I woke up and realized I had slept in my clothes. I sat up and checked the clock: 7:27 a.m. I took off the clothes I was wearing and used the bathroom, squatting only halfway on the toilet, and then showered and changed into jeans and a black button-up shirt. I clipped my badge to my belt and placed my Desert Eagle in a holster on my hip, covered by my shirt. I gave serious thought to taking the cane with me but didn’t know how Ty would react so I left it behind as I grabbed a protein bar out of the cupboard and made my way outside to my Jeep.

  It was easily over a hundred again. The wind was blowing but it was hot too and wasn’t a relief. I got into the Jeep and turned on the air conditioning, Alice in Chains blaring over the stereo as I backed out into the road, and headed for the strip.

  As I drove, the hot wind in my face, drying out my mouth and nostrils, I wondered why Ty wanted to meet at the Mirage. It was the dirty little secret of the Vegas PD that we didn’t really enforce the law on the strip. The casinos owned that part of the state and didn’t tolerate us interfering unless they called us out. There were no patrols for drunks or prostitutes, no cops on the corners directing traffic or keeping an eye out on the crowds. Every once in a while we might send two uniformed patrols through the mall or a casino or up and down the strip on the sidewalk but it was all an act. A device used to trick people into thinking there was a police presence when there really wasn’t.

  I pulled onto Las Vegas Boulevard, and for a brief moment, was awed like a tourist from the sheer spectacle. Actors in pirate dress were battling out a scene at Treasure Island while the fountains were running at the Bellagio. Crowds swarmed the streets, many people still up from the night before rather than just getting up.

  I drove to the Mirage and parked in the public parking in the back and went inside.