Chapter 5
Dixon was standing at the windows in his office overlooking downtown Dallas, going over his notes for the little speech for the new opening and memorizing the name of the manager so he could include him in the kudos, when he heard shouting in the hall outside his office and then his secretary screaming.
He heard Whistler curse, but before Dixon could react, there was a hard thud against his door, and then it opened inward.
Whistler was unconscious and handcuffed on the floor, and his secretary was making a run for the ladies’ room. And an exceedingly tall man was walking over Whistler’s body with care, as if he was dodging dog shit.
“I’m calling the cops!” Dixon shouted and leaped toward his desk.
“Already here, you son of a bitch!” Gunner said and flashed his badge.
“Who the hell are you?” Dixon shouted.
“You know damn well who I am, and I’m here to tell you this crap stops now! You just put a fifty-thousand-dollar bounty on my head for nothing. You also killed an old man for nothing.”
Dixon bolted toward his desk, and Gunner pulled his weapon. “That’s not happening. You’re going to hear me out or I’ll shoot you where you stand. Sit down in that chair. Not behind your desk, and keep your hands where I can see them.”
Dixon was in shock. Kingston had laid Whistler out like it was nothing. He sat.
Gunner started talking. “The old man from the warehouse heard nothing. Knew nothing. He was fifty yards away on the second floor of a warehouse with no power. It was pitch black in there and pouring rain in the dark outside. He saw nothing but shadows. His only offense was taking shoes and socks off a dead man because he had a sore on his foot and needed new shoes. But you had him killed. I can’t prove it, but I know it.
And you put a hit out on me because you think the old man told me something, and you’re all about tying up loose ends. ”
Dixon blustered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Bullshit. I just sideswiped a hit man on a purple Yamaha about an hour ago and watched him skid sideways on the concrete for taking a pot shot at me on the Loop. He’s not dead, but he’s broken in enough places he’s not going anywhere, and according to him, the bounty on me has to do with tying up loose ends.
I don’t have loose ends, you sorry shit, so that leaves you, and you screwed with the wrong man.
My boss knows where I am. Anything happens to me, he’ll tell the FBI the last place I was headed.
And I suspect by now, your dirty cop knows where I am, too.
The whole Dallas Homicide Division knows where I am.
Anything happens to me from this day forward…
the cops are coming after you. Even if someone else is responsible, they’re coming after you.
It is in your best interests to stop this now.
The FBI knows about the hit and run, and I will be making a call to the Texas Attorney General’s Office about a bounty on my head.
So, if someone takes me out now, your ass is grass.
Call your dogs off now, or there won’t be enough left of you to bury. Do we understand each other?”
Dixon’s gut knotted. He had misjudged this man, and when the detective pointed a finger in his face and then turned his back and walked out, stopping long enough to remove Whistler’s cuffs, Dixon knew he’d met his match and then some.
That son of a bitch wasn’t afraid to die, and he had to stop the landslide he’d started before it buried him under it.
* * *
Gunner was shaking inside when he got to his car.
That bald bodyguard was the size of a bull, with a funky scar on his eyebrow that cut the eyebrow in half.
He also knew that man was the kind who was going to hold a grudge for being decked, but that was for another time.
Right now, he had to get somewhere fast until word got out that the bounty was off, and he needed to let Samuels know.
Lieutenant Samuels was gathering up some files for a meeting with the deputy chief when his phone rang. “This is Samuels.”
“This is Gunner.” Then he proceeded to tell him what took place and what he said to Dixon. “Bottom line, Boss, I’m still a target until the word gets out that the bounty has been voided.”
“What makes you think he’ll pull it?” Samuels said.
“Because he doesn’t want the Dallas PD, or the Feds, or the State Attorney General’s office in his business again, and I made it clear that there was now a target on him, as well. Anything happens to me, they’re coming for him.”
Samuels shook his head. “I hope it works, but I still want you off the streets and in your house for the next week.”
“I’m going one better, Boss. I’m going home. To Crossroads. You know how to contact me if you need to. Tell the team what happened and why I’m gone, but don’t tell them where I’m going. And it wouldn’t hurt to drop a hint about somebody leaking info.”
“Are you and Cliff on the outs?” Samuels asked.
“I don’t know what we are, but from the second we took Yankee Dan in for his statement, Cliff has challenged everything I’ve said and done.
Acting like the old man gave us information during his interrogation that we didn’t share, and all that makes me wonder how Dixon ever found out the identity of the old man, or that I was the one who took his statement, when the only people who knew worked in our department. ”
“Understood,” Samuels said. “I’ll let all of them know about the bounty and why you’re gone. I’ll also do some checking on my own. Be safe, and let me know when you get there.”
“Yes sir, will do,” Gunner said. Then he drove straight to the body shop, stripped his car of his personal effects and left it to be repaired, and called an Uber to take him home.
It was only after he was sitting in the back seat with the sun in his eyes that he realized he’d left his sunglasses in the Mustang.
* * *
Samuels picked up his files and walked out into the Homicide department. He could tell that they were all curious about what was going on with Kingston.
“Detective Kingston will not be with us for a while. Someone has put out a hit on his life with a fifty-thousand-dollar bounty to go with it. He found out the hard way this morning when a biker rode up beside him on the Loop and took a shot at him. He missed Gunner and hit the car in the other lane. Kingston reacted with precision and ran the biker into the concrete wall and sent him flying. That was why he came into the precinct pissed and bloody.”
There was a communal gasp, and then everyone started talking at once.
“Damn it! Who did that? Who ordered the hit?” Cliff asked.
“Kingston suspects it’s the same person who ordered the hit and run on the homeless man who found the body of the Feds’ missing witness.
When Gunner left here, he was on his way to Burgess Dixon’s office to confront him.
I was not privy to the confrontation, but Dixon kept claiming his innocence until Kingston told him it didn’t matter, and that if anything happened to him now, the cops were coming after Dixon.
Even if someone else is responsible, Dixon is going to be their first suspect, and the Feds are just itching to have another reason to arrest him.
He’ll either call off the hunt or go down for it. ”
The silence that ensued was telling.
Finally, it was Cliff who spoke up, and his voice was noticeably shaking. “I knew Gunner didn’t pull punches, but even I didn’t know he’d have the balls to do that. Damn. So, what happens next?”
“He is officially off duty until we are confident that the contract on him has been pulled. You’ll be working with Detective Rowdy until he comes back.
And nobody goes to see him. Nobody calls him.
Everybody minds their own damn business.
I don’t want to think that I have a dirty cop in our midst, but Kingston is convinced that Dixon had far more information about our business than he should have.
I have a meeting with the deputy chief. I will be filling him in on all of this and updating it with the Feds as well.
He’ll be back when we see him walking through the door and not before. Understood?”
“Understood,” they echoed, and as soon as the lieutenant left the department, the guesses started flying, until Detective Frankie Adams bolted up from her desk.
Her sunglasses were on top of her head, half-buried in a nest of magenta-colored curls, and there was a visible coffee stain on the leg of her pants.
“Shut it! Shut it now! Unless you have an actual fact that you wish to share, we do not tear into our own!”
The room went silent and then returned to a barely audible murmur.
Cliff Beale and Tom Rowdy looked at each other and shrugged, then Cliff began filling him in on the case they’d been working and gave him Gunner’s notes he’d just received to refer to.
* * *
Dixon was in a rage, but there was no one to blame but himself. He’d gone overboard on his desire to tie up loose ends, and it had backfired in a very big way. Not only were the loose ends still hanging, but things were beginning to unravel.
He sent his secretary home, threw a glass of water in Whistler’s face, kicked the bottom of his boot, told him to get up, and then left him on the floor in the outer office, gasping for air and wiping water out of his eyes.
Dixon went back into his office and closed the door, then got on the phone and called off the hit.
“End this today. The hit is off. No money will be forthcoming. Make the calls now, and don’t go to bed tonight until every last one of them has been notified.”
Two words from the voice on the other end of the call: “Message received.”
Dixon ended the call, laid down his phone, and then went to the wet bar and poured himself a double shot of scotch, downing it in one gulp. It had been a long time since he’d been bested, and it was a bitter pill to swallow, but he wanted nothing more to do with Gunner Kingston.
* * *