8. Bradley
brADLEY
“Eight masks in total. The Bauta’s the only one on the receipt with a name, and this one at the end I think is the Arlecchino mask.”
Raven, Joker of the Suit and the smartest woman I know, sits next to me in the car, reeling off all the information she’s dug up about the masks since I entrusted all the information to her. She tucks some of her muddy brown curls behind her ear and glances up at me.
“I’m impressed you even found these,” I say, staring past her shoulder to her laptop.
“I have my ways.” She smirks. “And by ways I have to call in a few favors with some mask experts as well as a friend who could guestimate what the masks were made of. After that, it wasn’t hard to track down the voice changers you described and find people talented in crafting masks with that feature. From there it was—”
I hold up my hand and she stops talking. “Raven. Your skills never cease to amaze me, but you don’t have to justify your path to me. Your work speaks for itself.”
“But I want you to be informed,” she says. “Just in case.”
“In case of what?”
Her eyes drop to my chest where my healing wounds are hidden under a black muscle shirt and several bandages.
“Raven, I’m not going to get shot again.”
“You don’t know that,” she replies sharply.
“She has a point,” comes Frank’s voice from the front seat. “No one can predict that.”
I warm my smile and pat her forearm gently. “Okay, let me put it this way. If I get shot again, it won’t have anything to do with how much or how little information you’ve given me, okay? It will be Frank’s fault for not keeping me safe.”
“Hey!”
Frank's indignation draws a smile from Raven and she sighs. “Sorry. You’re right. It’s just easier when I’m in a computer, y’know?”
“I know. Stay here with the guards. We won’t be long.
” Satisfied that Raven believes me, I step out of the car with Frank and into a dusty alleyway that stinks from the garbage left to bake out under the sun.
Before us, a set of short wrought-iron stairs leads to a black door, through which we find a man leaning against a counter, picking at his teeth with a toothpick.
The store itself is relatively small with all kinds of masks hanging from hooks on the wall and decorating the tops of display cases.
There’s everything from presidential and biblical to animal and clown, with the display cases holding a range of more unique monster masks and some expensive-looking masquerade ones covered in stones.
Frank leads the way to the counter and immediately walks around it, much to the alarm of the owner who abandons his toothpick and straightens up.
“Hey, you can’t be back here, what the fuck?”
Frank’s on him in an instant, grabbing him by the back of the shirt and slamming him down on the counter so hard that the glass displays below crack slightly.
He presses his gun to the back of his head and leans down.
“Take your fucking hand off the shotgun and place both hands on the counter next to your head,” Frank instructs with a growl. “Or I’ll start shooting toes off.”
The owner whimpers and his eyes roll back in his head as he tries to get a better view of Frank. Unable to, his wide eyes snap to me as I finally reach the counter, and with a hoarse whimper, he lifts both hands and slams them down on the counter.
“Take what you want! I ain’t got much cause I already been t’the bank, but take it! Take it, just don’t kill me, man!”
“I’m not here for your money,” I say calmly. “Or your life, unless you tell me something I don’t want to hear. Is that clear?”
He nods frantically.
“What’s your name?”
“J-Jules!”
“I have one question for you, Jules.” Glancing around the store, I glimpse the shining lens of a security camera, partially hidden behind the mask of an old woman with crazy hair. “I’m looking for someone who purchased eight carnival masks. Do you think you can help me with that?”
“I-I don’t sell carnival masks!” Jules gasps, then he yelps as Frank presses the barrel of his gun harder against the back of Jules’s head.
“Don’t lie to me, Jules. You make them, don’t you? Custom.”
Jules is about to tremble apart from the looks of him, and after his eyes roll back to look at Frank, he nods. “Yeah. Sure. I make ‘em. You want ‘em? I can do it for free!”
“You already made eight. Six Volto masks. One Arlecchino mask and one Bauta mask with gold trimming and a white diamond in the center of the forehead. Who did you sell them to?”
Jules tries to shake his head. “I don’t know, man! I make and sell a lot of masks, okay? You think I keep track of them all? I got no idea, no idea at all!”
Frank shoves Jules harder against the counter and he whimpers.
“I swear! I don’t know! But-but I can look it up, okay? Just ’cause I don’t remember don’t mean I’m lying! I can look it up. I keep records, I swear!”
“That’s what I like to hear.” Leaning on the counter, I lightly drum my fingers against the glass. “Does your camera work?”
Jules follows my eyes to the mask in the corner and does his best to nod. “Yeah! Yeah!”
“Good. Find who you made those masks for, Jules, and show me on the CCTV. If your information leads me to what I want to know, I’ll come back and buy all of your masks.”
Frank steps back and Jules, despite the tremble in his lower lip, gives me a greedy look as he lifts himself up. “All of them?”
“All of them. Only if your information is good.”
“I’ll find it, I’ll find it! Just please…” He glances over his shoulder at Frank. “Keep him away from me.”
Twenty minutes later, I follow Frank back down the steps with a purchase order in hand and CCTV footage on a pen drive.
“Are you really going to buy all of his masks?” Franks ask as we reach the car.
“Sure. We can hand them out at a children’s hospital and let them have fun.”
“All of them?” He opens the door for me and our eyes meet.
“Maybe not the clown ones.” Entering the car with a smile, I hand the pen drive to Raven who immediately shoves it into her laptop and gets to work.
“Got a date?” she asks, not looking up.
“Here.” Passing her the purchase order with the date and time of the transactions, it’s mere minutes before she has all the answers we’re looking for. The idiot who purchased the mask used his credit card and once Raven has his address, Frank drives straight there.
As we drive, my mind wanders back to the woman, Zira.
I left her in the store, utterly terrified of me, and my later conversation with Valentina about how she acted cemented our belief that she’s either being threatened or blackmailed into helping this group.
There remains a small chance she’s part of this willingly, but if that’s the case, she has the nerves of a wet paper bag and really isn’t built for a world of crime.
Frank pulls up outside the apartment building listed on the credit card information and we climb from the car.
“Apartment four,” Raven calls from her seat, then she buries herself back in her laptop.
“You think they’re all in there?” Frank asks as we climb the steps with several guards at our back.
“It’s never that easy,” I reply, and I motion for a few of my men to take the lead. “But I want either the location of the gems stolen from the ship or the name of their leader.”
“And then?” Frank’s brow lifts slightly and I flash him a smile.
“Then we clean up just like old times.”
Rambunctious laughter and music pour out of apartment four as we get closer. With three men in front and four behind, it shouldn’t take long to apprehend whoever is inside. I unholster my weapon and watch the lead guard approach the door and knock lightly.
“Pizza!” yells multiple voices from inside.
Footsteps thunder toward the door and it’s ripped open, revealing a topless man holding a bottle of beer in one hand and a grin born from far too much alcohol.
It takes him a few slow seconds to realize we’re not the pizza, then he throws his beer bottle at one of my guards and tries to slam the door shut on all of us.
“COPS!” he bellows back into the apartment. “It’s the fucking cops!”
My men surge into the apartment with a single goal in mind—apprehend with zero casualties.
As they pour into the apartment, Frank makes me hang back so we’re the last ones in.
What follows is utter chaos. The apartment is pretty small, but all four men inside scramble like feral cats to get to their weapons and defend themselves or make a beeline for the fire escape which is quickly closed off by my guards.
One man sprints the length of the hallway in only his boxers, blond hair trailing behind him, and tries to take out one of my men with a bedside lamp he grabbed from one of the rooms.
He’s quickly disarmed and thrown onto the floor so hard that the snap of his ribs echoes in the air.
“You fuckers!” one yells as he’s tackled over the back of the couch. “You’ll never take me alive!”
“Fucking pigs!” snarls another as two of my guards thrust him up against the wall and pin him there.
The third man with the broken ribs remains on the floor in a daze with two guns pointed directly at him and the fourth man, the one who opened the door, wrestles against the two men holding him until a sharp blow to the back of his thigh brings him to his knees.
“That’s him,” Frank says, pointing to the broken rib man on the floor. “That’s Clark from the store.”
Clark groans and gazes up at me with fogged eyes. “The fuck, man?”
“Clark Johnson?”
“Fuck off, I ain’t telling you my name.”
I step forward and place my boot on his crotch, then lean a good portion of my weight forward onto my knee. He wheezes and groans, then a thin whimper rushes past his lips.
“Yeah, I’m Clark, I’m Clark. What of it, man? You ain’t fucking cops, are you?”
“Shut the fuck up, Clark,” snarls the kneeling man a few feet away. “Don’t say shit!”
I glance at him and Frank moves closer, showing me the screen of his phone. On the display is a picture from the docks security footage showing the one idiot who took off his mask on the way out.
“And you’re the man from the docks,” I say. “We don’t need the other two.”
The words are barely out of my mouth when my men shoot the man pressed against the wall and the one pinned behind the couch. Both men flinch as their teammates are killed and I return my focus to the man on the floor.
“Where’s the rest of your group?”
Clark wheezes and shakes his head. “I ain’t tellin’ you shit.”
“Fine.” Pointing my gun down at him, I slide the safety off with a sharp click. “I only need one of you.”
“Wait—” Clark throws one hand up as if his palm can stop the bullet and groans in pain as his ribs protest. “The fuck, man, who are you people?”
“That’s not important. Now tell me where they are.”
Clark begins to cough and yelp as I increase my weight against his crown jewels.
“Don’t tell them, Clark. They won’t kill us all,” snaps the kneeling man. Frank’s by his side in an instant and punches him square across the face.
“We’re not talking to you yet.”
“If–If I tell you, you won’t kill me, right?” Clark begs.
“It improves your chances,” I agree.
“Fine, fine! Listen… I don’t know where they are.”
“Then why are we talking?” Leaning up, I aim the gun down, but Clark continues to babble at my feet.
“Listen, man! We were just fucking around, y’know? Cops ain’t supposed to act like this!”
“Cause they ain’t cops, dipshit,” snarls the kneeling man through a mouthful of blood. “What are you, hired mercenaries?”
“No.” I fix my attention on him. “You stole from very powerful, very angry people, and I’m being kind by telling you that dying here is a mercy, do you understand? No one steals from the Mafia and gets away with it.”
His face turns ashen in a blink and he glances down at Clark who’s still babbling over and over about how he doesn’t know where the other members of their team are. His panic and my reveal seem to unlock something in the kneeling man, and he looks back up at me.
“Shit, man, shit. Shit! We didn’t know, alright?
We didn’t… shit. This is… listen, we don’t know, okay?
We really don’t. We all split after the robbery and we’re just waiting on a call from Harris.
When things cool down, we’re supposed to split everything, I swear. That’s all I know. That’s all I know!”
“You fucker!” Clark yells. “I was gonna tell them that!”
“Well, I ain’t waiting around to die because you can’t get your fucking words out,” he snarls back.
“Harris,” I repeat. “Who is he?”
“Harris Bolton. He’s a friend. Well, sort of. He needed some people and we were available. But he moves around, lives out of his truck, so I don’t know where he lives, but we’re waiting on a call, I swear. I swear!”
Frank and I exchange a look. “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”
“So, you’ll let me go, right?” The kneeling man glances around with a nervous smile while Clark wails on the ground. “I told you so you’ll let me go, yeah?”
“I said it would increase your chances,” I reply coldly. “Not guarantee them.”
Turning my back, Frank and I exit the apartment to the sound of two final gunshots that silence Clark’s babbling for good.
“Harris Bolton,” Frank murmurs. “I’ll get Raven on it.”
“Good.” If we find Harris, then there’s a very good chance we’ll run into Zira again, and if I’m right, she’s the weak link that’ll resolve this whole mess.