A Hard Place: A Chauncey Means Novel Read online

  A Hard Place

  A Chauncey Means Novel

  By Sean Lynch

  This work is respectfully dedicated to those who answer the call.

  A Hard Place

  All Rights Reserved © 2017 by Sean Lynch

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Sean Lynch

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  He never saw it coming. Which was surprising, since as the doorman he was presumably the club’s bouncer. He was certainly big enough. He had at least four inches and fifty pounds on me, and he grabbed my lapel with a hand the size of a Frisbee. But he was soft, and slack, and apparently slow. It would seem all he had was size. That was probably enough to keep the drunks and yokels at bay.

  I trapped the hand gripping my coat with my right and stepped back. It pulled the big man towards me, off balance, and straightened out his arm. Pivoting, I slammed my left palm into his elbow against the joint. I was rewarded with a howl of pain. I stepped back even further, still retaining the offending hand. I threw a left hook which connected along his jawline, and smashed my elbow into his face on the return. He let go. I didn’t.

  I stepped back once again, which pulled him to his knees. Still holding his now limp hand, I side-kicked him in the ribs. I pulled the kick at the last instant to take the edge off. I wanted to put him down; not into a coma. The air whooshed out of him and he slid from his knees to the ground. He wrapped both hands around his chest and went fetal, his eyes pleading.

  “Stay down,” I told him. “You’re only hurt. If you get up, I’ll cripple you.”

  The bouncer grimaced and nodded his assent. I looked around, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light.

  The interior of Club Rialto was deceiving. From the outside it was indistinguishable from any other gay nightclub in the heart of San Francisco’s Castro District; an innocuous four-story commercial building on 19th Street, only a couple of blocks west of Mission Dolores Park. The downstairs served as the restaurant, bar and dance floor. The upper floors, like most buildings in the district, were divided into apartments.

  The inside of Club Rialto, however, looked like Andy Warhol’s version of a Miami Vice set. Too many mirrors, pastel colors, and neon lights. I felt overdressed wearing socks.

  I’d entered the club from the alley in back, through the kitchen, when a heavy-set Hispanic man in a dirty wifebeater emerged to toss a bag of garbage into the dumpster. He didn’t see me go in. Unfortunately, by the time I navigated the kitchen and entered the bar, the bouncer did.

  Behind the bar was another Hispanic man prepping for the club’s opening. A bow tie dangled from his unbuttoned collar and his sleeves were rolled up. The club wasn’t scheduled to open for another hour. He watched, wide-eyed, what transpired between me and the doorman. When I approached he flinched.

  “Take it easy,” I said, withdrawing one of my business cards and setting it on the bar. “I’m here to see Mister Demaris.”

  “The club is closed,” he said nervously, taking my card as if it would bite him.

  “I know. I also know Mister Demaris is upstairs. Go get him.”

  For a second it looked as if the man was going to say something else. Then he nodded and walked around the bar across the dance floor to a stairwell, where he disappeared. I went behind the bar and got what was supposed to be a clean glass. I filled it with cold water from the tap, grabbed a bar towel, and walked back to where the bouncer was squirming his way to a sitting position.

  “Drink some,” I said, extending the glass. The bouncer took it and sputtered some water down. I tossed the towel in his lap.

  “You a fighter?” he hissed, still wrapping his midsection with the hand not holding the glass. He wiped a smear of bloody snot on a forearm.

  “Something like that.”

  The stairwell door opened and three people emerged. The first was the Hispanic bartender. He scurried into the kitchen, his eyes to the floor. The second was a woman. The third was presumably Demaris, the owner of Club Rialto. I kept my eye on the woman. It wasn’t hard to do.

  She was Caucasian, with a thin, not un-pretty face, and could have been anywhere between twenty-five and thirty. She was also tall; only a couple of inches shorter than me. She was clad in faded denims, scuffed combat boots, and a battered leather jacket with the words ‘Moto Guzzi’ running the full length of one sleeve in yellow lettering. She wore very little make-up under a blond buzz cut. No jewelry that I could see except a pair of dog tags. Also no bra. Not that she needed it. The woman was as lean as a panther, and moved with a cat’s coiled grace. Martial arts maybe, or gymnastics. Her hard brown eyes were fixed on me. She took two steps to Demaris’s right.

  Demaris was everything the woman wasn’t. Pushing sixty, he was short and fat, with a dyed mustache and hair plugs that were losing the battle with his greasy scalp. One hand was in the pocket of his bathrobe, the other holding my business card. He looked like Ron Jeremy after a three-day bender.

  “Chauncey Means,” he said, reading my name off the card. “Is your name really Chauncey?” His puffy eyes appraised me.

  “Like the card says.”

  Demaris sniffed. “That’s truly a fucked up name,” he declared. “I’m Donnie Demaris. I own this club.”

  “I know. I came here to see you.”

  “How did you get in?” he demanded. “We ain’t open yet.”

  “Does it matter?”

  Demaris grunted at his bouncer sitting on the floor. “No, I guess it don’t.” He shook his head. “Get off the floor, Gary. Go clean yourself up.” Gary the bouncer slowly got up, gave me a sideways look, and limped off to the men’s room.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to the girl with the dragon tattoo?” I asked. The woman’s eyes narrowed, and her right hand slowly moved to her belt, where she hooked her thumb nonchalantly. One of the first things I learned as a rookie cop was that anyone trying to look nonchalant, isn’t.

  “You don’t need to know who she is,” Demaris said.

  “Sure I do,” I replied, producing my old black Sig Sauer .45 from under my coat. I rested it along my thigh.

  “What the fuck?” Demaris exclaimed. “What is this?”

  My eyes were now locked on the woman’s. “This was originally going to be a conversation b
etween you and me,” I answered. “Merely a business transaction. But if the Suicide Girl moves her hand any closer to the pistol under her jacket it’s going to become a crime scene.”

  The woman grinned without mirth. “You gonna shoot me for moving my hand?” she asked in a cigarette-polished voice. She made no other movement.

  In answer, I raised my pistol one-handed and aimed the front sight on the space between the top of her upper lip and the bottom of her nose. The distance between us was no more than ten feet. I thumbed the hammer back. Her eyes tightened to glaring coals.

  “Why don’t you move your hand and find out?”

  “Hey! Hey!” Demaris barked, showing his hands. “Everybody calm down! We don’t need no guns. Let’s take this down a notch. Kathy! Stand the fuck down, will ya?”

  Kathy was not the name I expected. Bonnie maybe, or Darlene, or perhaps a one-word moniker like ‘Razor’ or ‘Spike.’ Certainly not Kathy. Kathy was kittens and yarn. This lady was palm-heel strikes and pistols.

  “No need to get yourself worked up, Donnie,” Kathy said. She dropped her hand from her belt to her side. “We were just getting to know each other. Ain’t that right, Hard Guy?”

  “Sure,” I said, de-cocking the Sig and returning it to the Milt Sparks scabbard behind my hip. “That’s me all right; harder than woodpecker lips. Nice to meet you, Kathy.”

  Kathy didn’t respond, but if looks could kill I’d be feeding worms.

  Demaris exhaled slowly. He gave Kathy a disapproving glare and turned his attention back to me. “You a cop? You look like a cop to me.”

  “Not any more. Private.”

  “What the fuck do you want with me, private cop?”

  “Scott Fleischer,” I said.

  “Huh?” Demaris said.

  “You heard me. Scott Fleischer. Skinny kid about eighteen. Stands about five-foot-five. Wears his hair like David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust. Not hard to spot in a crowd. He’s in your stable. Lives upstairs.”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I don’t know nobody named Scott Fleischer, and I don’t run no stable. I run a legitimate nightclub, Jack.”

  “My name is not Jack,” I said. “It’s Chauncey. And you’re about as legitimate as a department store Santa Claus with a boner.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Demaris puffed out his chest.

  “It means, Donnie,” I said, “you’re a lying, dope-dealing, extortionist, pimp who uses this shitbox of a dance club as a front for an escort service and porn studio. And upstairs, in one of the rooms you rent by the hour for hotdogs and doughnuts parties, is an eighteen-year-old kid named Scott Fleischer.”

  “You his boyfriend?” Demaris snorted.

  “Not likely. I’ve been retained by a certain party who would like to see Scott gets home and doesn’t darken your doorstep again.”

  “Maybe he’s here,” Demaris shrugged, although his eyes were beginning to show a nervous glint, “and maybe he ain’t. Lots of young studs come and go. I ain’t a goddamned chaperone. I don’t keep track of nobody. Besides, you said he was eighteen. That’s legal age. It’s a free country, Jack.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve called me Jack. If you call me anything but my given name again, the next words you speak are going to be through porcelain teeth.”

  “Pretty bold talk from behind that gun,” Kathy interjected. “How tough are you without the hardware?”

  “Why don’t you ask Gary?”

  “Shut up, Kathy,” Demaris scolded. He paused before speaking again. “I don’t like people telling me how to talk in my place. I sure don’t like people roughing up my employees. I damn sure don’t like people pulling guns on my friends. And I don’t like you at all, Chauncey Means. This is a protected club.”

  “I don’t give a shit what you like,” I said. “And I don’t give a shit who’s holding your chain. I came here to do a job. Which is to find Fleischer. He’s here all right; I’ve been watching the club for several days.”

  “Then why don’t you grab the little asshole off the street?” Demaris asked. “Why come into my club and ruin my day? Why does this have to involve me?”

  “Fair question,” I said. “I’m actually being paid to do two things. The first, is to find Fleischer and bring him home. The second, is to see that he never comes back to Club Rialto. Ever.”

  Demaris laughed. “How you gonna accomplish that? Put him on a leash?” He laughed some more. “You can’t keep an adult from coming and going as he pleases. Believe me, Scotty likes it here. He’s real popular. You gonna camp out and check everybody’s I.D.? See if Scotty Fleischer is trying to sneak into Club Rialto? Besides,” he chuckled, “we’ve already got some outstanding video of Scotty on a leash, by the way.”

  “I won’t have to make sure Fleischer doesn’t come back here. You’re going to do it for me.”

  Demaris stopped laughing and his face turned sour. “How’s that?”

  “You heard me. You’re going to bring Fleischer to me. Then you’re going to tell him not to return. Finally, you’re going to look me in the eye and give me your word that if he comes back you’ll call me.”

  “I’m gonna do all that because you say so?” Demaris asked incredulously.

  “Because I say so.”

  “You’re a piece of work, Mister Chauncey Means, you know that? A minute ago you said I was a pimp, remember?” Demaris scoffed. “You called me a dope-dealing extortionist. Now my word is suddenly good enough for you?”

  “Not really,” I answered truthfully. “But once you give me your word, it’s no longer just business between you and me. You break your word to me, it becomes personal.”

  “Then what?”

  I flashed my first grin of the day. “You want me to tell you or show you?”

  Demaris took a step back. “You threatening me?”

  “Does Pinocchio have wooden balls? Yeah, I’m threatening you, Mister Demaris. I’m telling you flat-out if you don’t do exactly as I say, I’m going to come back here with a gas can and a road flare and turn this place into a meteor crater. And if you, or Machine Gun Kathy over there, get in my way I’ll put a bullet in your brain-pan and piss down the smoking hole. Same goes for her.”

  “You’re crazy,” Demaris said, mostly to himself. Kathy was motionless, but veins were bulging on her muscular neck. I kept my hand near my own belt.

  “It’s been said before,” I said flatly, my grin gone. “You don’t like to be threatened? Do something about it. You’re a taxpayer; call the cops.”

  We both knew he wouldn’t. Demaris sure as hell didn’t want the San Francisco P.D. snooping around inside Club Rialto. That I knew he wouldn’t call the police infuriated him. His face went red and his bloodshot eyes swelled in their sockets.

  “It ain’t cops I’d call,” Demaris said through clenched teeth. “I told you, this is a protected club.”

  “You said that already,” I reminded him. “The kind of trouble I make is expensive and messy. It’ll drive away customers and draw unwanted attention. Soon your ‘protection’ will start asking themselves if there’s not somebody better suited to running this club. When that happens you’re out of a job. Maybe out of air, too.”

  “Maybe these guys will air you out,” Demaris retorted. “You thought about that?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Donnie. You don’t have that kind of juice. What makes you think anybody is going to take on heavy-duty trouble like me on your account? You can be replaced faster than Scott Fleischer.”

  Demaris’s face slackened. That point hit home.

  “Besides,” I went on, “people been trying to punch my ticket since I was seventeen. If the Taliban, or Al Qaeda, or fifteen years of gangsters and gunfighters couldn’t get it done, what makes you think you could?”

  “You’re invincible, is that it?” Kathy smirked.

  “Didn’t say that. I’m saying there’s nobody here can do it.”

  “So you say.”<
br />
  Now it was my turn to narrow my eyes. I turned slightly, taking a forty-five-degree angle on Kathy.

  “Damn right I say. You had your chance to get the drop on me and you ended up eye-fucking my pistol. You feel froggy for another shot at the title, girlfriend, jump. But this time, you better know I’ll drop the hammer. Whoever you bedded down with last night is going to wake up and find your picture on the back of a milk carton.”

  Kathy’s entire body tensed, without her moving, if that was possible. For a second I thought she was going to go for her piece. Time stopped. My mind was in the zone; that place I always go in my head before the balloon goes up.

  “Enough,” Demaris blurted, moving between us and into what might well have been the line of fire. “Step off, both of you.”

  Kathy relaxed minutely, but it was enough. The moment passed. I turned my attention back to Demaris.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” I said, switching tactics. My voice transitioned to a conciliatory tone. “We’re both businessmen, Donnie. I didn’t come here to fuck with you. I’m on a job. All I want is Fleischer and your promise he can’t come back. Just because I’m ready for war doesn’t mean I want it. Give him up and I go away. Your bosses are none the wiser, and you can continue to sell all the roofies and coke you want, run your stable of party boys, and peddle internet porn to your heart’s content. You just can’t do it with Scott Fleischer.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you want?”

  “That’s all. Be reasonable, Donnie. It isn’t like you can’t replace him.”

  “If I agree I never see you again?”

  “Not if you keep your word,” I said. I held up my hand in a three-fingered salute. “Scout’s honor.” Demaris rolled his eyes.

  “And if I don’t?” he asked.

  “I already told you; no better friend, no worse enemy.”

  “You’d really go to war with me over one lousy boy-toy?” Demaris asked.

  “Been to war for less than I’m getting paid today,” I told him candidly. “A lot less.”

  Demaris rubbed his chin as if deciding, but I could tell by the sag of his shoulders and his deflated chest he’d already concluded the path of least resistance was the safer route.