City Under Siege by Charles Ray

Author:Charles Ray [Ray, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-03-27T22:00:00+00:00

9

Ten minutes later, Adam sat on an upturned wooden crate facing Jake Hopkins who sat on a small box behind another packing crate. The Shark leader was scowling at Adam who had come in alone—at his insistence—leaving Monroe and Westminster with the vehicles.

“Man, what kinda jive shit ya tryin’ to blow up my legs? Ain’ no such thing as a rat bigger’n a damn dog,” he said.

“I assure you, Mr. Hopkins, I am not blowing anything up your legs, as you say,” said Adam. “Your two men have disappeared. I can take you to both sites and you can see for yourself. They were viciously attacked by something, but it wasn’t another person. There’s a lot of blood, but absolutely no sign of the bodies.”

“Shit, whoever done it coulda moved the bodies.”

“Think about it,” said Adam. “Who would go to all the trouble of moving the bodies and leave so much blood evidence? A simple hosing down would have eliminated most of it, yet there was no effort to do even that.”

Hopkins shook his head. He pursed his lips and regarded Adam through narrow slits.

“Okay, okay, that make sense,” he said. “But a damn rat that big. That sound impossible.”

“I have lived in this city for many years. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in our sewers, but I once investigated a homicide where the killer dumped his victim down the sewer. Believe me, the stuff that’s down there makes a giant rat improbable but not impossible.”

“Ya sure ya ain’ just tellin’ me this to keep me from goin’ after the gangs here in Cherry Hill?”

Adam made a mental note of the fact that Hopkins had almost confessed to what he and his gang were about. That, though, would have ot wait for later. Now he needed to focus the man away from revenge.

“I am trying to avert a gang war,” he said. “But if I was going to make up a story, don’t you think I would come up with something better than that?”

Hopkins laughed.

“Yeah, I reckon ya could at that,” he said. “Say, ya talk different than the rest of the brothers I met since we come here. Ya ain’ from here are ya?”

“No,” said Adam. “I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. My folks and I came to this country when I was younger.”

“Okay, my African brother, let’s just say I go ‘long with this story of yours. What’s in it for me?”

“It avoids a costly war. And now that you know the danger, you can warn your men and maybe prevent any more of them from getting killed.”

Hopkins leaned forward and rested his elbows on the crate and balanced his chin on the back of his hands.

“I don’ know, man,” he said. “I wanna b’lieve ya, but ya askin’ me a lot.”

Before Adam could respond, Monroe came bursting into the warehouse pursued by the rat-faced man who had let Adam in earlier.

Hopkins looked up scowling.

“I’m sorry, Ice Man,” the rat-faced man said. “But this pig just pushed past me.

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