Blood Abandon (Donald Holley Book 1) Read online

  BLOOD ABANDON

  By Avery Stites

  Kindle Version.

  Cover Design by Melody Simmons of eBookindiecovers.

  Copyright 2014, Avery Stites. All rights reserved.

  Chapter One

  The scotch went down warm, a welcome reprieve from all else in the world. I looked at one of the silent televisions over the bar, a news reporter standing in the thick snow that layered the ground outside the airport I was in. The other television was silently tuned to Sportscenter, light flickering as the hyper quick-clips of sports highlights shone. In the background, faint instrumental Christmas music played.

  My cellphone rang.

  “Yes.”

  The voice on the other end was familiar, but I did not recognize the number. "Big brother, I've really screwed up this time."

  I pulled the cellphone away from my ear briefly and looked around. The airport bar was empty aside from the bartender at the other end drying some glasses. I listened to the bustle of the people making their way to the terminals, a thick sound muted by the awful carpeting underfoot. I put the phone back to my ear.

  "I'm in Chicago," I said. "Can this wait?"

  "I don't know, Donnie," he said. “I have a really bad feeling." The fear in his voice was something I was unused to hearing from him.

  Rarely a creature of panic, I considered my glass of scotch before speaking. "You do understand this is a conversation to have in person, not over the phone."

  "I know, but I'm scared, Donnie. I hit the wrong place. Me and my guys-

  “Stop!” I cut him off. “Not on the phone. Can you go someplace safe for a few hours?”

  He paused for a moment, and sighed. “I think so.”

  “Good.” I thought through my plan quickly. “What is this phone number?”

  “It’s a throw away, pay-as-you-go phone. Trying to fly clear right now.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Here’s what we are going to do. You go where you think you are safe and lay low until I get back in town. Keep the phone with you, and on. I’ll be back in about six hours. I’ll call when I’m in the car, and I’ll let you know where to meet. Until then, keep your nose clean and stay out of sight.”

  “Okay, Donnie; you got it.”

  “Alright, Bit, gotta go. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  I hung up the phone, looked at the remaining scotch in my glass and then downed it. The warming sensation wasn’t as pleasing now. I threw down a twenty dollar bill, thanked the bartender, and walked out.

  ***

  On the flight back to Raleigh-Durham International from Chicago O’Hare, I thought about what my younger brother had said. I decided trying to deconstruct the bare minimum I let him get out of his mouth was pointless. The number he called me on was my business number, and I didn’t need anything interfering with business. As it was, I’m not naive enough to believe my phone isn’t tapped; that would be smart of my employer, and goes with the territory of my work. What I did takeaway from that phone call is that he was in trouble, and the tone of his voice made that apparent. He robbed someone he shouldn’t have, and now there was hell to pay, which is why he called me; he wanted me to fix it for him. Never mind that we are both grown men, responsible for our own actions. That wasn’t lost on me, but he is my little brother, and I would do what needed to be done. That’s what I’m good at after all: fixing things.

  Chapter Two

  My name is Donald Holley. My brother’s name is Gerald, but everyone has called him ‘Bit’ for as long as we can remember, as in ‘two-bit’, because he’s been a criminal for the better part of his life and he’s not great at it. It’s all he’s known, and we grew up in an environment that was conducive to crime. Our father was a no-good mean sonofabitch who beat our mother and us, robbed banks, left home forever when we were in our teens, and was found murdered in a burned automobile in Nebraska when we were in our early twenties. Our mother was disconnected; she shut down emotionally when we were children, turned to drinking and pills, and died of an overdose a few years after our father. That lovely family history isn’t a plea for pity, but all my brother and I had were each other, and it's remained that way ever since.

  I’m thirty-five, and Bit is two years behind me. He never finished high school, and his biggest shortcoming is that he has no long-term vision, and his planning for the short-term is snap decisionmaking, which has often led to trouble. It’s been my belief that he would have actually been a decent criminal if he planned his jobs better. He never has, though, and because of it he has been in-and-out of prison several times throughout the last decade. I figured that this particular problem, whatever it was I was delving into, was probably due to a lack of proper planning and foresight. His ex-wife Kate had long ago left him, unable to deal with his drug use and criminal activity. His daughter Marie loved him to the ends of the earth, as only a little girl could, but he was in no position to care for her. He saw her every other weekend and when her mother couldn’t keep her, yet even that relationship was very damaged. Even though Bit had kicked the drugs a number of years back, there was no family to rebuild.

  Five hours after I had hung up the phone with him, I stopped at a storage unit I rented near RDU airport to retrieve a few items. I was back on the road in short order, headed toward Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where I lived. I took Interstate 40 west, which is a straight shot there. Bit lived the next town over in Durham, and I figured he was laying low somewhere there. I retrieved my phone from my coat pocket, and dialed my brother. He answered after three rings.

  “Hey Donnie.”

  “You alone?”

  “I am. I’m in an hourly motel over near seventy.” He sighed. “I couldn’t go home; they’re probably sitting on my apartment.”

  “What’s the motel called?”

  “The Bluebird, room 103.”

  “Okay, be there soon.”

  I hung up the phone, looked up the address and punched it in my phone’s navigation. Twenty minutes later I arrived at the motel. The Bluebird Inn was exactly as my brother had described it, a decrepit hourly motel, a cinder block v-shaped mass painted a depressing hue of blue. Refuse littered the parking lot, and several of the doors to the rooms stood open. Despite the winter temperature, an old black man in a white undershirt and boxer shorts stood in a doorway, eyeballing my black Chevrolet Tahoe as I pulled into the space outside of my brother’s room. He watched me closely, and I him. He went inside and closed the door when I exited the vehicle.

  “Donnie, thank God you are here, bro,” Bit said upon answering the door. He looked the same as he usually did, tall and lanky; handsome, and younger looking than he really was. The drugs had not aged his face much; I was thankful he had never gotten into crack or methamphetamines. He held a cigarette in his left hand, his sandy blond hair in disarray. He looked more like a bumming surfer or underwear model than petty criminal; I’ve often thought that was interesting. He had received the good looks, but my average appearance had suited me well in my line of work. I’m about six feet tall, going bald, wear a fairly close-cropped beard, and I am slightly overweight. I’ve shown up on no one’s radar, which is perfect.

  I closed the door behind me. “Fill me in.”

  Bit smiled, weakly. “No small talk, I guess, then.”

  “Not for now.”

  He walked over and sat down on the corner of the bed and put his hands in his lap, clasping his fingers. I watched his body language; he had really fucked up. I stood next to the door.

  “This dude I know, Derrick, got word from one of his boys that the Parasol gentleman’s club over off of Miami Boulevard was stacking a lot of cash in a huge safe in a cellar under the club,” he said
. “Derrick said he heard a crew of Crips was going to rob this place, that one of their boys was a bouncer there who had tipped them off to it. He found out they were planning to hit it on Sunday night, right at the end of the weekend.” My brother licked his lips. “He said we should hit before they do, on Saturday.”

  I frowned. “Who is Derrick, and how do you know him?”

  “He’s a dude I served time with in Central. He’s a stand up dude, and he was in for the same type of shit I was. Our sentences were up at nearly the same time, and he’s from Durham.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “Derrick said he knew some other guys that could go in with us; they had guns, and were experienced and trustworthy. I said okay, and he brought in two other guys, Melvin and Tee. We talked it over, and got our plan together. Tee also knew the bouncer, and was willing to pay him more for the info out of the haul than the Crip set would. The bouncer instructed him on entry and exit, after they had hashed out the details.”

  I nodded. “Continue.”

  “Tee was the driver; Melvin would push in and line up the security. Derrick and I would get the club manager and bartender, force them to the basement. We planned to go in at about three a.m., that way most all people would be out other than the necessary personnel.” He smiled, and then looked at his lap. “Surprisingly, it went somewhat like we thought it would.”

  “But?”

  “But, we weren’t prepared for what we found.” He looked up at me. “There was far more money in the safe than we expected.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Don’t know exactly, but Derrick said it was close to two million.”

  “Two million in a strip-joint safe? That’s certainly not lap dance money.”

  “I know,” Bit said. “None of it was singles. All larger bills, at least twenties.”

  I nodded. “Anyone hurt?”

  He put his head in his hands. “The club manager’s dead. He kept saying ‘You don’t know who you are fucking with’ over and over, so Derrick shot him after he opened the safe.”

  I shook my head. Bit looked at me like a little brother would, seeking approval or forgiveness where there was none to be given.

  “Have any of you been to the club before?”

  “Tee’s friend was the bouncer, and he has been there a bunch, but like I said, he was driving the car so no one saw his face.”

  I sat down in a ratty paisley chair next to an ash stained circular table. An old cream-colored rotary phone sat on the other side from me. I observed it absentmindedly for a moment, thinking about the information my brother had just given me.

  “Bit, you have created multiple problems.” I sighed. “I’m not going to mince words; we need to go through the known issues now.”

  “Okay.” He slumped over further.

  “First, you robbed a strip club that had way, way too much money in it for it to be earnings from the club. Whether its guns, drugs, or something else, it’s bigger than what you were expecting, and a pile of cash that large someone is going to come back for, very strongly.” I looked at him. “Second, you killed someone who didn’t need to die. Now the police are going to be heavily involved. If it had been just the money, whoever had it surely wouldn’t report that to the police. But now the cops are a component of this.

  “Third, the bouncer is going to talk. The gang is going to realize he sold away their hit, come for him, and then you guys when he squeals. That’s just the way it is.” I shook my head. “This is a major fuckup, Bit. I’ve seen bad, but this shit...this is deep.”

  He looked at me fearfully. “What do we do?”

  I thought for a moment. “Where do we find the bouncer?”

  Chapter Three

  In 2003, at twenty-five years old, I was sentenced to ten years in state prison for manslaughter. I killed a guy in a bar fight with a broken bottle. I stabbed him the carotid artery with the shards of the bottleneck. It wasn’t premeditated, so a jury only found me guilty of manslaughter. I served four years in Nash County Correctional Facility, and was released early. As a felon convicted of killing someone, there were not many opportunities for me. While I was inside, I heard about this guy who taught combat and survival classes up in the mountains. Guys said he was good with former inmates, helped them gain skills, and got them employment sometimes as security guards for private firms. Rumors floated that he was former C.I.A., and then hit man, who had gone civilian and legit, teaching his skills, stuff like that. Whatever the truth was about his background, I didn’t know. But he did exist, and his school did too.

  His name was Jeremy Manor, and his training academy was located just inside the border of Tennessee from North Carolina. I found out when his next session started, sold all remaining possessions I had, bought a bus ticket, and went up there unannounced. He met me as I got off the bus, as if he had been expecting me. I wasted no time explained to him that I had nothing; no money, was fresh out of prison, but was as hard working of a guy he would ever meet, and I was eager to learn from him. A tall, stoic, muscular man that I took to be in his late forties, he just listened as I pleaded with him to let me stay and go through the courses even though I had no money for tuition. He smiled.

  “I’ll work my way through, Mr. Manor,” I said. “Dishes, laundry, whatever it takes. Just give me a shot to learn. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “I know you will, Mr. Holley. I know you will.”

  ***

  The Forward World School, as it was called, was paramilitary in nature; everything ran and functioned like a small military base. Lessons began at five a.m. each day, with physical conditioning, which consisted of running, push-ups, sit-ups and weightlifting on alternating days. After this, we ate breakfast and had classroom book lessons on combat, weaponry and nutrition until ten a.m, at which time we were trained in close quarters and hand-to-hand combat. What I lacked in physical presence I made up for with intensity and by being a quick study. In the afternoons, we had more classroom training related to preparing ourselves to be employable in the security industry, followed by real firearms and weapons training. The knowledge was incredible; Manor was an expert in fighting and warfare, and the education was more valuable than anything I had ever received in my entire life up to that point. As the weeks went on, I began to feel as if the things that had transpired in my life had been for a reason. I was quickly rising to the top of the class in terms of effort, leadership and abilities. Even slightly overweight, I was the best fighter and shooter among the ten students at the school.

  In a strange way, the Forward World School was an alternative job-readiness education and training program for students with a different set of circumstances than most. At the end of two months, our training was over, and we were each prepared and set up with the opportunity to interview with different security employers. Each student was given a list of employers whom Manor believed would be a good fit to interview with. He then contacted them, arranged tentative interviews, gave us our diplomas, and set us up with bus tickets home.

  On the morning we were to leave, Manor stopped by my room in the dormitory and asked me to hang around; he said he wanted to talk to me and would drive me to the bus station himself later. I wasn’t sure what this meant, but I agreed. He nodded his head.

  “Good,” he said. “I’ll be back after breakfast, and we can talk then.”

  There are moments in life when things change forever, irrevocably, and what followed was one of them. And that is important because what happened next at the Forward World School made me into what I am today.

  Chapter Four

  Bit and I hurtled down the road to Mangum Street in Durham in my black Tahoe. Tee had told us where we could find the bouncer, whose name was Damon. Damon hadn’t answered the call when we had Tee call him, so he gave us the address. I had figured the odds were good Damon had skipped town after getting his share of the money, but Bit hadn’t received any money, and Derrick said he hadn’t distributed any. If a man were going to ri
sk everything for some cash, he probably wouldn’t leave without his share even if it was stupid to stick around.

  We arrived at Damon’s house, a single story brick bungalow on Mangum. I parked on the street, and Bit and I each tucked our weapons inside of our coats. Mine was a SIG Sauer P220 handgun with a custom silencer; Bit carried a Glock 37 pistol, which was a .45 caliber firearm. I surveyed the house before we walked up; everything seemed quiet; too quiet. There were no cars in the driveway, and the yard was past-due for a mowing. The darkened orange-red brick looked old and dirt-smudged, and the porch had chairs scattered about haphazardly. Bit and I looked at each other, and I motioned for him to follow behind me.

  Once on the porch, I realized we weren’t the first people to visit Damon. Partially obscured by the metal storm door, I noticed the door jamb was split, and the door itself was damaged, but had been pulled closed. I opened the storm door, looked around, drew my weapon, and pushed the door open slowly. I hoped it would make noise, and the door hinges did not disappoint. If there were someone in the home now, they were aware we were there, also.

  I fanned through the house, Bit behind me covering, going room to room, but there was no sign of Damon, or anyone else. We went out on the back deck, looked at the yard, and again saw nothing. If not for the door, it would have seemed that nothing was amiss.

  “What do you think?” Bit whispered.

  I exhaled quietly. “He’s dead, or someone has him.”

  “Shit,” Bit said. “This is bad.”

  I looked at my kid brother for a minute, and didn’t say anything; I just nodded lightly. There wasn’t much to say. He was correct, this was a bad situation. I tried to wrap my head around how he could have been so stupid, but taking it out on him now was pointless. Bit needed my help, and turning my anger and sarcasm on him wouldn’t make me feel better. I turned and went back in the house. As we passed into the kitchen, I caught something on the floor out of the corner of my eye. I had almost missed it; a speck on the floor, a small dark spatter. I kneeled down, pulled a set of rubber gloves from my coat pocket and put them on.