The Midtown Murderer (25 page)

Chapter 59

Radcliff
tugged on Trent’s shirt and eased him back into the dark. “Sherlock,” he said, “it ain’t the CVC pharmacy. Those fifty-gallon drums are extremely volatile acid.” He pointed at the industrial stoves lining the far wall where several men were adding drain cleaner and the decongestant power to steaming pressure cookers. “The slightest mistake in temperature, or capping those pressure cookers too tightly will cause them to explode.”

“They even rigged an industrial air-conditioning unit with duct work,” Trent said.

“Cooking meth is dangerous,” Radcliff explained. “The vapors alone can kill you. And scores of cooks have blown themselves up.”

“They must jet the fumes through the sewer lines,” Trent said. “What do you figure they do with the toxic waste?”

“Well, you get about seven pounds of sludge for each pound of speed,” Radcliff said, caressing the plastic funnel of the leaf blower. “Bet they drop that scum in the underground river you saw in the blueprints.”

“Bastards.”

Radcliff snorted in disgust. “For sure.”

“The door to the kennel is to the left of where Triple is standing,” Trent said. “That’s where the
Apostles and the Kings will drop in. When the dogs start barking, get ready.”

“Fuck th
ose gangsters; fuck their meth.”

“I need
ten minutes to get out of this hellhole.”

Radcliff
looked at his watch. “Ten minutes,” he said. “Then give me another ten. That’s when you call Garcia.”

“Did you tip the FBI to the MANPADS?”

“I did. All the weapons are accounted for and in federal custody except for one M4 shotgun and one MANPAD. Got another emergency lined up?”

“No
t yet; but I’ll dream one up.”

Radcliff eyed Trent suspiciously.
“The weapons were on the floor, and the wooden boxes were gone. What did you do?”

Trent shrugged. “
I did my part. Now where is she?”

Radcliff’s
stony features softened a bit. “The Lilly Orphanage down in Macon,” he said, handing Trent some slips of paper.

Bewildered, Trent
asked, “What are these for?”

“Gas receipts paid in cash. You’re gonna need an alibi. I’d just got back from checking on Chloe when I caught your sorry ass snooping through my garage.”

Trent handed Radcliff the Mossberg and said, “This is bullshit. You don’t have to fight this battle. Let’s withdraw. Leave it for the cops.”

“And what?
Spend the rest of my life in prison?”

“
But you’re guaranteed to survive the night.”

“
Has a nice ring to it. But I have to finish this.”

“W
hy?”

“
My daughter. And my wife. And all the other victims of violent crimes.” There was an awkward silence and he said, “Before we both drown in a sea of tears, you need to hike back to the construction site.”

“Then g
ive me your shield.”

“Don’t think I’m coming up?”

“I know you’re not.”

Radcliff
slipped his badge-clip off his belt and handed it to Trent. He sighed. “You’re a good egg, a bit nosey for my taste, but on the square. Now get outta here.”

Trent started back down the pipe. “
Radcliff, no hard—”

“Don’t say it,
Cowboy. Tell Maya that Chloe was treated swell.”

“Will do.”

A minute later Trent heard the whine of a leaf blower.

#

Trent climbed out of the tunnel into the night. Snow was falling, and low clouds drifted over the city; only the bottom halves of the skyscrapers were visible.

He walked
back to the FOX Theater and stopped in a tiny jazz club he’d frequented since he moved to Atlanta. It was time to unwind with a stiff drink.

The club was crowded
. As he elbowed his way to the bar, a few people who knew him said hello. A pretty woman he’d wanted to ask out was seated at a table with her friends. He sat at the bar and decided to see how things panned out with Rikki.

Trent
got the bartender’s attention and said, “A double brandy. Nah, make it two.”

After the bartender withdrew,
Trent called Garcia on Butler’s cell phone. He told him where the meth lab was located and that the majority of Triple’s thugs were inside. He also asked him to tip the King’s to the location. With a little luck he might be able to kill two birds with one stone.

Then
he called Jake and told him he had the object and that he and Elwood should hurry to the corner of Ponce De Leon and Peachtree to watch the fireworks. He sat for a few minutes sipping the brandy. The amber liquid slid down like velvet and warmed his insides.

A blues band was assembling onstage. A smartly dressed black man with a feather in his cap sat at an organ. An upright bassist and a lead guitarist rounded out the trio.

Trent listened to a few Grant Green standards then walked outside and smoked a cigarette. The soft sound of something thumping the brick wall by his leg got his attention. He glanced down. A medium-sized dog barked softly and wagged his tail. Lucky! Then he looked in the street. A yellow dog rushed a car and snapped at the rear wheel. Be damned! Radcliff let the dogs out!

A
t one-fifteen exactly, Trent looked at the Heineken sponsored digital clock on the side of a skyscraper, a converted soda truck rounded the corner and slewed to a stop across from Lynn’s. Two dozen gangsters dressed in black poured from the truck and scaled Lynn’s security fence.

Trent dropped
Radcliff’s star-shaped gold badge to the pavement and ground it with his heel. When it was sufficiently scuffed, he put it back in his pocket. Then he made an anonymous call to the police and pitched Butler’s phone into the gutter. He was turning for the bar when he saw Jake and Elwood’s BMW idling at the curb.

Inside, t
he trio had launched into ‘Smokestack Lightning’ and several clean-cut college kids rocked on the small dance floor. The intoxicating music was full of twists and turns and took his mind away from the bad business with Lynn, Radcliff, the crooked cops, and the gangsters.

Trent glanced at a muted television behind the bar.
The local programming had been interrupted for a news flash. A redbrick house engulfed in flames filled the screen. White caps scrolled across the bottom: BREAKING NEWS! A RAGING FIRE HAS BROKEN OUT IN MIDTOWN BETWEEN THE FOX THEATER AND THE SOUTHERN BELL BUILDING . . .

Right then the front door
of the jazz club flew open and a man yelled, “The house next door is on fire!”

Chapter 60

Trent d
ashed outside with a swarm of revelers and was greeted by a din of confusion.

Four red fire trucks were pulled along
side the curb. Even at idle power, the massive diesel engines vibrated the sidewalks. A sea of police cars were parked at odd angles in the street, blue lights pulsed, and the sirens merged into an ear-splitting wail. Blazing headlights sliced through the snow and excited figures ran back and forth between the vehicles.

The explosion hit Atlanta like an earthquake. Then there was an
ear-splitting sound akin to a train wreck and jets of colored flames shot out twenty or thirty feet from the sidewalk gutters. The windows of Lynn’s house turned cherry red, and the force of the explosion blasted them outward, showering the yard with glass. Then the front door blew off its hinges and cart wheeled across the yard. Ribbons of blood-red flames danced from all the openings.

The firestorm
forced the firefighters and police and onlookers to pull back.

Jake and Elwood were leaning against their sedan watching the action
. They were dressed in the same dark shoes, dark suits, and dark glasses. A thin old homeless man in a great coat stood next to them; he was waving an empty wine bottle and yelling, “Burn baby, burn!”

The
raging fire howled like a locomotive and punched through the roof. Groaning and creaking, the house crumbled and then vanished with a tortured scream into a deep crater. In its wake, an immense sulfur-red tornado shot with acid-yellow streaks leapt toward the leaden clouds. The deafening sounds of the explosions were carried in compression waves that echoed off the surfaces of the buildings.

“Trent,” Elwood yelled, pointing with a cup of Starbucks.

“Huh?”

“Behind you! Look behind you!”

Trent turned from the flames and spotted a plume of fizzy smoke rising from a manhole cover; then the lid slid aside and black smoke gushed skyward. A man’s head and shoulders rose up from the hole and rotated toward the fire.

Trent
knew what to do; he immediately picked up a medium-sized rock and heaved it fastball style. The rock bounced off the man’s head. He screamed, shifted his stance, and glanced at Trent.

Trent examined his sooty face and smoldering clothes
. “Butler!” he yelled.

The man dropped into the sewer
pipe.

Trent
raced to the manhole and peered inside. A string of illuminated lights swayed from the roof; they blinked on and off, flooding the sewer pipe with smoky yellow light, then bathing it in darkness.

Unable to see more than
a few feet through the satanic landscape, Trent lowered himself into the pipe. He found the metal ladder by feel and descended; at the last rung he dropped and twisted his ankle on a piece of wreckage. Now it was his turn to scream and he winced in pain.

Hundreds of feet to his left
and down the narrow pipe he could see a vague cherry-shaped lobe of roaring fire where the house had collapsed into the meth lab. Strange fans of red and pale blue flames like so many random blowtorches stabbed violently in his direction. He could feel the heat from the fire and coughed wildly from the acrid smoke.

He
hobbled away from the blaze; every step on his bum ankle was painful as he waded through ankle-high water and debris. Then the lights went out. He strained to make out any shapes at all in front of him.

It was then h
e bumped into an upturned metal wall-cabinet whose door had been wrenched open by the blast. When the lights flickered on, he saw several weapons scattered inside.

F
alling to his knees, he retrieved a pump-action shotgun and racked the slide. The big gun felt like a dream-come-true in his hands as he hurried down the pipe.

From the street
above, the wailing of police sirens abated as Trent moved further into the pipe.

We’re at the bottom of
Hell, Butler, he thought. You can’t hide now . . .

A few minutes later he
stood at the junction of the two pipes he and Radcliff had passed. The newer section leading to the construction site was to his right. To his left, the walls were covered with slime and water dripped from the ceiling.

Which way? He
had no idea. Then the lights went out again. Suddenly a brilliant flare lit the interior of the pipe to his left. A shrinking shadow danced on the wall where the pipe made an abrupt turn.

As he
hobbled after Butler a burst of brown water and detritus sloshed into the back of his legs; he waded through the oily river and spotted Butler climbing a metal ladder into a vertical passageway.

Trent leveled the shotgun. As his finger tightened on the trigger, a
rushing stream of sewage knocked him off balance. The gun discharged, and the pellets swirled off the walls. He toppled forward into a river of trash as the sound of the gunblast reverberated through the pipe.

Butler
turned and fired at Trent. The shots fountained the water as the current carried Trent rapidly on. He held fast to a wooden pallet and surfed past Butler. In desperation he threw up his arm; somehow he hit Butler’s wrist, and the gun fell from his hand.

The
terminus of the pipe came up fast. Like a battering ram, the swift-moving river slammed into the cap, sloshed back, and knocked Trent from his raft. He floated on his back, using his hands on the string of overhead lights to pull himself away from the cap. The water continued to rise. Trent found the bottom rung of a ladder and started climbing.

He
squeezed into the vertical tunnel and had taken two good breaths when the cavity flooded.

I can’t drown, he thought frantically, pushing upward with all his strength against
a cast-iron manhole cover. His awareness dimmed; he made a last effort to open his eyes, but saw only darkness.

He was almost un
consciousness when the water pressure popped the hatch from its housing and deposited him on an empty sidewalk. Gasping for air, he staggered to his feet.

A
n old woman in shabby clothes was standing at the corner cranking out Christmas music on an upright bass held together with duct tape.

Trent turned and
realized where he was. Tenth and West Peachtree Street! I’m still in Midtown!

A
cross the street was the MARTA underground. Taxis flowed from the station entrance. Knots of people came and went from banks of escalators. A city policeman chatted with a vendor turning hotdogs on his cart. A garbage truck paused at the corner.

Time to think.
Time was running out. Trent limped, and half jogged, toward the escalators. “Excuse me, miss,” he called out to the old woman. “A man ran by here. Did you—”

She pointed her bow
at an open service door in a dark corner of the MARTA station.