Play It Again by Gregory Payette

Author:Gregory Payette [Gregory Payette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 8 Flags Publishing, Inc
Published: 2022-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Joe drove in circles for at least a couple of hours looking for the black Town Car, with Dickie in the trunk. He’d had no luck at all, knowing it might have been a bad idea taking off from Mickey Cho’s before the cops showed. But he knew he couldn’t wait around for them to decide what to do, either.

He left Bart a couple of messages on his phone but hadn’t heard back. He didn’t know who else to call and felt Bart was the one who would tell him what to do. If he’d only call back. Of course, Bart would say the same thing he already had: Dickie knows more than he’s letting on.

The sun had started to go down, and Joe pulled off the road into an empty parking lot, with an old Walmart building that had closed a year earlier, leaving a gargantuan concrete coffin behind in the middle of a parking lot the size of a football field. Joe saw this happen a lot, an eyesore of a building left abandoned, while the same store, tripled in size, would open a few miles away.

When he reached inside his pocket for Pastor Buddy Creane’s business card, he realized it was gone. He thought it must have fallen out of his pocket, like his keys and wallet, when he was tossed into the dumpster by the oversized goon who took Dickie. He looked down at his clothes and sniffed his shirt. It still smelled like rotten fish mixed with the sweat from his own body. A shower wouldn’t be a bad idea.

He shifted the car into drive but kept his foot on the brake when his phone rang. He looked at the screen and saw it was Bart.

“Where are you?” he said, answering before it rang twice.

“Where am I?” Bart said. “I was going to ask you the same thing. And I’m not the only one wondering.”

Joe wondered if Bart had already gotten word the cops were likely looking for him. “I’m at the Walmart parking lot, in Midtown.”

“Midtown? The old one or the new one?”

“The old one.”

“Yeah, well, Woody just called me, said they were called over to Mickey Cho’s. Shots were fired and—”

“Dickie was kidnapped,” Joe said.

“Dickie? What the… Woody didn’t say anything about—”

“He might not know. I took off and went after the car Dickie was inside of. He was in the trunk.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bart said. “What the hell happened?”

“I wish I knew. It all happened so damn fast.”

“But you were there?”

“Yeah, I was there. I fought the guy. At least I tried to. Dickie ended up in the trunk and this guy, this monster, he was twice my size.”

“Twice your size? What’s that mean? You’re not a little man, Joe.”

“He had at least six inches on me. Maybe fifty pounds. I’m telling you, he was like a bull. He threw me off of him, tossed me like a bag of garbage.” Joe picked at something stuck to his shorts and flicked it out the window.

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