Chapter 56

56

With its sturdy brick walls and wooden floor, the inside of the two-story factory-turned-antique-shop we had retreated into had the look of an old firehouse.

Having kicked in its front door, I quickly got everyone straight to work barring the entrance. Just inside was an incredibly ancient and heavy weighted dime-store scale and with the help of my new friends, we lifted it up and maneuvered it into place behind two sideboards, a chest of drawers and half a dozen chairs.

When we were done, Mario ran off and came back bearing a massive concrete driveway lion that he had found somewhere. He heaved it up with a yell on top of the sideboards. There was a crash of glass as it slipped off the top and smashed out the little window in the center of the door.

"Try to get through that, you stupid pieces of shit!" Mario yelled.

"That's the spirit, bro," I said, high-fiving him. "I like it!"

Mario grinned at me from ear to ear. He seemed happy that we were finally doing something. I was, too. He went over to the pile and cupped his hands at the broken window in the door.

"Screw you!" Mario yelled out of it, getting pumped up. "You picked the wrong bar! We're going to make you bastards sorry you woke up this morning. We won't give you an inch!"

"You finished?" Mathias said to Mario. "What now, Mike?"

"Let's go upstairs with the others and take a look at the street and see what they're doing," I said, leading them for the stairs.

Atop the stairs, the second floor of the old factory was open and had high ceilings almost like a school gym.

One that was in the midst of hosting a massive flea market, I thought as we walked for the south of the building through a narrow corridor between the collectibles.

The whole building was remarkably cluttered. To the right and left were a hoarder's dream come true of antiques and bric-a-brac separated by dividers into little room-like sections.

No way was this to fire code, I thought.

Despite the craziness as I walked past these staged rooms piled with old toys and disco balls and chess tables and old suitcases and packed-to-bursting China cabinets, I smiled as I remembered my neatnik deceased wife Anna's zero tolerance policy for clutter.

She wouldn't have set foot in here even with a gun to her head, I thought.

We found the rest of our crew at the south end of the building. Colleen, who was sitting on an old steamer trunk with Jodi, leaped up and hugged me as I came in. I could see she'd been crying.

"Hey, it's okay. We got this," I said as I guided her over to a corner and hugged her back.

"I know, I know," she said. She stared at me. She was shaking.

"C'mon, really. It's going to be okay," I said.

"I'm sorry, Mike," she said, sniffling. "This is just so fricking crazy. I never imagined anything like this when I started this investigation into Olivia's death. Now all of us, especially Jodi, are in real trouble."

I smiled at her. Then found myself giving her a kiss on her forehead.

Why I did that, I wasn't sure.

"Check it out. Our first kiss," I said. "My bucket list checkmarks are piling up now."

I winked as she chuckled at that.

"And if you think these jacks are crazy, ain't nothing crazier than me, Colleen. Remember the old neighborhood? I've only gotten crazier since then."

"Hulk," she said in my ear.

I laughed. I hadn't heard that nickname in...wow. A long time.

"You do remember."

I let her go and looked around.

The seven of us looked pretty shook up but we at least were all still in one piece. And with Mario's new attitude, we were actually in better shape than we had been before the blast.

And it wasn't just the attitude adjustment that was in our favor.

What was also truly looking up was that we were armed now. Armed quite well, in fact, as the fallen tactical guys had all been carrying MP5 submachine guns with four thirty-round magazines apiece. With these came sidearms—three nine-millimeter Glocks, a SIG Sauer, and a .45 Smith & Wesson—as well as several flash-bang grenades and two fragmentation grenades. We even had two ballistic shields.

One negative was that the battery on the drone had died so we had no more eye in the sky. Now we just had to rely on our own eyeballs.

I stepped past Scotty, who was sitting in a rocking chair next to an old slot machine, to take a peek out the window at Route 4.

"Anything?" Mathias said as I turned back.

"No," I said. "All quiet on the Western Front. They're still licking their wounds, I guess."

"Why are there no fire trucks?" Scotty said. "People across the river heard this. The authorities would have been here by now. Why the hell has no one come?"

"Are you kidding me?" Mario said. "You still haven't figured it out? Wake up! Your local cops are corrupt. They let your buddy Big Joe get killed and now, because we witnessed it, it's time for us to get greased. They blew up your restaurant!"

"I can't believe Chief Garner is involved in this," Scotty said. "I've met him. He's eaten at my place with his wife. How can he be out there? How?"

"No one can be this naive," Mario said. "Dude, no one ever lied to you before? You've never heard of a corrupt cop? We're fighting for our lives here, bro. This is the Alamo and you're inside of it. Get a grip."

"Mario, calm down," Mathias said.

"Tell him to wake up," Mario said. "I'm not taking a bullet in my head because this numbskull refuses to put two and two together."

"Fine!" Scotty yelled as he jumped up. "Fine! Chief Garner is a psycho. I got it. Happy now? But so what? How are we going to get out of this, huh? What are we going to do?"

"We hold them off until the morning," I said. "In the light of day when more regular people show up, they're going to have to change their plans."

"Mike's right," Mathias said. "That big bang has rattled some windows across the river. People have to be asking questions."

"Exactly," I said. "This bullshit story has an expiration date. Too many crazy things are happening for them to keep the cover-up going. We're not some goofy religious group in a compound they can lie about. We're a bunch of construction workers and Joe Six-Packs who were in a bar watching a hockey game. Justifying all of this in the light of day isn't going to be difficult for them, it's going to be impossible. We just have to hold these scumbags off until dawn."