As soon as the little-used street in front of it was entirely clear of both pedestrian and motor traffic, Graves ambled across with perfect nonchalance, making a low-key beeline for the building’s front door. He drew a leather wallet that bristled with lockpicking rakes from his trenchcoat’s inside pocket, meaning to admit himself to the so-called Silent Tower on his own recognizance. He was aces at getting in where he hadn’t been invited. But then the only tension bar in his entire goddamn pick set broke off as soon as he leveraged it against the lock’s sturdy tumblers, and that was it for the subtle approach. Graves snarled a curse, glanced around, then just kicked the door right the hell in.
He dove for the deck when a startled thug stationed in the front hall reflexively unloaded a shotgun in his direction, and a burst of jamb shrapnel filled the air.
The wild blast tore the fedora from Graves’ head, but he managed to tackle the gunman around the knees (aided greatly by gravity and luck), and took him down to the polished parquet floor. The scattergun discharged a second time, causing jagged chunks of ceiling plaster to rain down on the guard’s undefended head. He was knocked senseless.
Graves stood up and dusted off his coat, taking his good luck in stride. He claimed his adversary’s plaster-dusty hat to replace his own, shook it off, and put it on his head. Then he picked up the man’s shotgun, cocked it, and pushed forward before nerves could get the better of him. He knew full well that he wouldn’t get another chance at this. Not now. But he had reason to believe that a lady of his acquaintance was being held here against her will, and that was the sort of thing Dex Graves wouldn’t let slide.
He heard footfalls and ducked behind a potted palm situated outside a fancy set of double-doors at the end of the hall. A bare instant later three new thugs in big-shouldered suits burst through them at a full run, but failed to see him.
Graves was grinning when he darted through the swinging doors, wholly unnoticed by the trio of Johnny-come-latelys-only to run smack into a man he recognized as Juan San Martin, Miguel ‘Mickey Hardface’ Caradura’s chief enforcer. Big Juan, as they called him, was an ugly mountain of muscle overlaid with flab and wrapped in dark blue pinstripes. They’d never met before, but Graves knew better than to mount an assault on somebody else’s turf without doing his homework.
Big Juan grabbed hold of Graves’ shotgun before he could bring it into play. With his other hand he hoisted Graves up by his shirtfront and hurled him back through the double doors, separating him from the weapon. Big Juan raised the gun as Graves tumbled ass over tits back down the hallway he’d just escaped. The doors banged off the walls and bounced shut again, catching Big Juan’s shotgun barrel between them. The noise made the troop of lackeys who were almost out the front entrance realize they’d missed their quarry, and they came running back in Graves’ direction at full tilt.
Graves hurled himself against the double-doors, down near floor level, pinning Big Juan’s gunbarrel between them. He clamped his hands over his ears (as well as over the brim of his fedora) a split-second before Juan let off a deafening, double-barreled blast, scant inches above his head.
Big Juan’s blind shotgun barrage splattered the fastest of the three returning goons right out of commission. Graves winced and the other two men dove aside, out of the line of fire.
He reached up, grabbed hold of the trapped gunbarrel with both hands, and yanked on it viciously, with all the force he could apply. He felt an unbalanced Big Juan topple face-first into the closed doors, and heard him bellow when his nose made solid, crunching contact with the heavy planes of polished wood.
In the instant after he felt the impact and heard Juan’s resultant shout, Graves was able to rip the shotgun right out of the big man’s hands with a second, well-timed pull. San Martin grunted, stumbling to his knees as the doors swung open before him.
Graves kicked one of them hard, whacking Big Juan square in the face with it for a second time. The human mound fell backwards into the foyer as Graves whirled, cocking the shotgun he’d recaptured from his oversized adversary, and fired twice after the two henchmen who were caught in the front hallway.
The swinging doors fell shut.
An instant later they banged open again and Graves strode into the foyer. Big Juan looked up as Graves loomed over him and trained the shotgun’s long barrel right down between his eyes.
“Where’s Caradura?” the detective asked, getting to it without preamble.
Juan, dazed, his nose bleeding freely from its two collisions with the door, reluctantly pointed upwards. Graves looked across the foyer. There were three elevators and a door marked ‘STAIRS.’ He nodded, and then looked back down at Big Juan. “Good talk, amigo,” he said.
Graves flipped the shotgun upside down and whacked Juan San Martin decisively in the face with the stock. The fat henchman’s eyes rolled back to the whites, and then he lay still. Graves didn’t like to kill people if he didn’t have to (although if he did have to, he could make his peace with it). He’d figured gunplay might be a part of this deal-he just hadn’t expected so much of it so soon.
Graves lit another cigarette while his elevator car noiselessly ascended, using his silver Zippo with the gold US Navy insignia on its side.
Now this, to say the least, was not how he would’ve chosen to spend his day. His PI work tended to be staid and predictable. Embezzlement, infidelity-those were his normal bread and butter. Cheating husbands and crooked beancounters. Stakeouts and papertrails. A snore sometimes, sure, but frankly, Dex Graves had worked the need for thrilling heroics out of his system back in the war.
The only thing was, he’d recently shared a cup of joe at an all-nite diner with a woman he knew, an occasional singer at his local watering hole, and she’d chosen that moment to confide in him. At least in part. It seemed she’d had an affair with a shadowy underworld character named Mickey Caradura, given birth to his baby in secret, and then put the kid up for adoption to keep it safe from its psychopath father. After all the regrets and second thoughts settled in, however, she’d gone and tracked her baby down again, through whatever orphanage had taken it in, and Hardface had somehow gotten wise. Now that he knew the kid existed, Caradura meant to claim and raise it as his heir. Ingrid (that was the mother’s name) told Graves she was planning to go and talk with her former fiance, to try and convince him to leave the child alone. Then last night she hadn’t shown up for her set at the joint where Graves liked to listen to her sing, and it didn’t take a mathematician to put two and two together. He didn’t even know this Ingrid person all that well, but he’d grown up an orphan himself, and he’d be damned if he was going to let any kid get snatched away from a mom who cared about it.
So here he fucking was, despite all his better judgment.
Still, he was in it to win it now, as somebody once said. Not in the name of action or glory or any other idiot ideal, but because he was the only person in any position to clean up this shit. The proper authorities wouldn’t even try to touch the mysterious man called Hardface, and that was a fact.
In it to win it, then, Graves reminded himself, and to hell with the goddamn odds. That philosophy might not’ve been designed to maximize longevity, but it had somehow carried him through the Pacific Theater just the same. The guys he’d served with had even come to call him ‘Death-Proof Dexter,’ in honor of his uncanny ability to dodge the Reaper time and time again. It was as though he were drawing from a Tarot deck with no Death card, only Jokers. And now he was gambling on that odd imperviousness once again. He could only hope he hadn’t played his lucky streak out yet.