Grass Read online

  Copyright © 2011 Steve Williams

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1461044847

  ISBN-13: 9781461044840

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-4392-9660-8

  To Amy.

  You are Mya, and then some.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  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

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 1

  1

  It was a difficult shot. But he had hit difficult targets before. His rooftop vantage point put him in excellent position. He also had the element of surprise on his side. No one would be expecting such a bold stroke.

  He felt the comfort of the custom grip. The matte finish on the forged carbon steel would not reflect the sun, giving away his position. It was an important detail, because he would only have one shot.

  The roar of the motorcade rose in the distance. A sudden change in the pitch of the engines told him that the four police Harley-Davidsons had rounded the corner and were now headed down the street toward his location. He assumed a stance that would give him the best angle. Relaxation was the key. He had done this so many times before it was second nature now.

  The sun flashed off the Ray-Bans of the motorcycle officers. In the back of the convertible limousine, his target was waving with both hands, hamming it up. Not for long.

  Instinct told him how much to lead the target. The sound of the shot was obscured by the din of the motorcade. He lifted his head to watch the drama unfold.

  In the limo, the man in the back seat pitched forward in agony and all hell broke loose. The driver stood on the brakes, leaving streaks of expensive rubber on the asphalt. The man in the back was doubled over, clutching his testicles. The men with him searched the rooftops in vain.

  A large, slightly paunchy man riding shotgun surveyed the situation behind him. Then he reached back and pulled the projectile from the leather seat. He examined it briefly and burst out laughing. The other members of the special security detail looked on, astounded at his laughter.

  The driver, a serious, muscular young man with a brush cut that could scour a cast-iron fry pan, reached over and snatched the projectile from his passenger’s hand. It was white, dimpled, and clearly identified with the manufacturer’s name: Titleist—the preferred golf ball on the pro tour.

  “Fuckin’ Mitchell!” the man said.

  Every police department has a pistol range. The Eighth Precinct was the only one in the world with a driving range. Detective Sergeant Sal Mitchell had cultivated a sizable plot of turf on the roof. He mowed, fertilized, and weeded the grass as conscientiously as any greenskeeper would.

  Two years before he had convinced the department that the turf would provide the Eighth with a “green” roof—-environmentally friendly, but also insulating the building and reducing maintenance. The request went through channels, and much to Mitchell’s surprise, city hall had provided a $310,000 grant as part of an environmental pilot program. The mayor had even shown up for a photo opportunity, and he said a few words about how “every blade of grass represents another minute for the planet.”

  What he didn’t know was that Sergeant Mitchell and three other detectives had in fact created a private rooftop golf practice facility. Mitchell had mused about applying for another grant, under the guise of helping the “handicapped,” but his pals told him it might be pushing it.

  Fortunately for the residents of the city, there was a large park across the street. A pond in the park provided a safe landing zone for the golf balls and allowed them to be retrieved. It also kept Mitchell from knocking a lunching park patron unconscious with an errant shot. Normally his target was a small duck decoy tethered in the middle of the pond. Today, however, the limousine had been too tempting an option.

  The recipient of the ad hoc vasectomy was a fellow sergeant, Randall Tewks. Mitchell hadn’t been aiming for his groin. In fact, he would have been satisfied just to hit the car. Tewks was in charge of security preparations for an upcoming visit to the city by a billionaire Russian industrialist, Pyotr Ptushko. The visit was built around a hero’s parade to commemorate a daring rescue Ptushko had masterminded.

  Five months prior the Russian had smuggled eleven American soldiers out of a hot zone in south-central Asia. The soldiers had been cut off in mountainous territory controlled by opium-funded warlords. The warlords’ treatment of prisoners contravened just about every tenet of conduct established since the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Videos of torture and execution were uploaded onto the Internet with shocking frequency.

  Ptushko was in the mountains inspecting a large mining operation being developed by his resources company. When the American soldiers fled into the mining camp, he promptly provided them with sanctuary. All their weapons, uniforms, and identification were buried under a concrete pour for a helicopter pad. The men were outfitted in miners’ garb and given fake company IDs. They had even gone so far as to learn a few sentences of Russian to complete the masquerade.

  When the warlord and sixty of his men attempted to storm into the camp a day later, Ptushko had met them head on. Bracketed by his own security detail—battle-hardened former special forces—he told the warlord that he could look around for a half hour and then he had to leave. The warlord and his men made a cursory inspection of the camp, looking for any sign of the US troops. There was a brief moment of anxiety when the warlord asked one of the “miners” a question in English, hoping to trick him into answering. But the soldier replied with a Russian phrase that he had been hastily taught.

  Uncomprehending but satisfied, the warlord and his men moved on. Once they were out of the camp, the Russians collapsed in laughter. The Americans asked what was so funny, only to be informed that the phrase translated to “My daughter is pregnant, and I’m going to kill the son of a bitch who did it.”

  After a week of lying low in the mining camp, the soldiers were rotated out on one of the regular mining company transports, landing safely in the western Russian city of Samara. From there, they rode in style on Ptushko’s private Sukhoi Superjet 100, landing quietly in the eastern US port city of Salento. After a detailed debriefing—and allowing forty-eight hours for the soldiers to get over the effe
cts of drinking Ptushko’s private in-flight stock of nineteen bottles of horilka—the President called Ptushko and thanked him on behalf of the country.

  Arrangements were made for a parade to honor his selfless act of courage. Rather than New York or Washington, Ptushko had requested the parade be held in Salento, the city where he had returned the soldiers to freedom.

  Five months later, the motorcade was a dry run to get an idea of timing and optimize the route. When Mitchell heard that the Russian would be riding in a convertible, he decided to take up the matter with Tewks, approaching him with his usual tact.

  “Tewks, you dumb fuck,” Mitchell started in.

  Immediately a vein on Tewks’s forehead had started to throb the “William Tell Overture.”

  “In case you’ve forgotten, the last VIP to ride in a convertible limo became the subject of an Oliver Stone film.”

  Tewks eyed Mitchell warily, “Yeah, well this guy’s a hero, Mitchell. Nobody wants to off him. In case you didn’t catch the papers, this guy single-handedly saved a bunch of our Force Recon soldiers.”

  Mitchell was not impressed with Tewks’s thinking. “It’s not whether I read the papers that matters, Tewksy. There are citizens of our fair city who think the Cold War is still on. And with sleeper cells popping up in American suburbs, they don’t need much encouragement. So giving a Russian such a warm welcome would make these boys see red—no pun intended. They’d love to write some headlines of their own. And a hollow point bullet would do it.”

  Tewks had persisted. This, in Mitchell’s mind, left him no choice. An extremely well-struck pitching wedge had made his point quite nicely: security for the convertible sucked.

  By the time the motorcade personnel made it back into the squad room, Mitchell was sitting innocently at his desk, typing a report. As Tewks came limping in, hand over his crotch, Mitchell looked at him with mock horror.

  “Shit, Tewksy, what happened to you? You didn’t have another fight with your wife, did you? Man, she puts ’em between the uprights better than a field goal kicker.”

  Burke, the young cop who drove the limo, glared at Mitchell as he passed by. “He almost became the first man in history with three balls. Some asshole hit him right in the pills with a golf ball during our dry run. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you Mitchell?”

  “I think I made my point, Burke. You’re lucky that it came from a pitching wedge and not a Winchester. Ask Tewks how he’d feel about that.”

  Burke went to his desk grumbling something about revenge. The large man who had retrieved the golf ball sat down at Mitchell’s desk. He was still smiling. Eddie Sandovan, Mitchell’s best friend and his partner on the force, was a golf nut as well.

  “Mitch, you outdid yourself with that shot. Do you know what the odds are of hitting a target as small as Tewksy’s nutsack?” Sandovan smirked.

  “Yeah,” Mitchell replied, “About the same as you passing the pistol exam without my help.”

  “Oooh, that stings. Hey, I’m starving,” Sandovan continued, “Wanna go to Emilio’s for lunch?”

  “Sure,” Mitchell said, putting on his jacket. “I can taste that smoked meat sandwich now.”

  Mitchell and Sandovan were two of five thousand police officers in the port city of Salento. Like any large metropolitan area, it had a seedy side, which kept them busy.

  They tooled along the Broadhurst Expressway, watching in amusement as the normally frenetic traffic—called “the Broadhurst 500” by locals—slowed as it recognized their unmarked police car.

  “So, Sal, any plans tonight?”

  Aside from being Mitchell’s best friend, Sandovan was also the only one on the force who knew his first name. Mitchell didn’t care for it much. Everyone—even his girlfriend—called him Mitchell or Mitch.

  His mother had named him Salvador because she went into labor at a Salvador Dali exhibit in Montreal. She delivered him right there in the museum. The curator said, “We are a monument to the creative process, and you have honored us with the ultimate act of creation.” Then he gave her a lifetime museum pass to commemorate the event.

  Salvador wasn’t a bad name for a writer, a painter, or a chef. Those were the types of creative occupations that his mother, an accomplished artist, had hoped he would embrace. But for someone of mostly Scottish ancestry, the name looked a little out of place on the family tree. He used to tease his mother that she had actually had an affair with a bullfighter, and that he was the unintended result.

  For a cop, the name was a definite minus. Especially considering the types of jokers Mitchell worked with. There was a standing bounty within the department for anyone who could find out Mitchell’s first name and make it public.

  “Nah. I got nothing planned really” Mitchell replied. “I told Mya I’d meet her at her place and make dinner. It’s the only way I can make sure she’s eating something other than those crappy instant meals.”

  Mya Laing had been seeing Mitchell for just over two years. It was an interesting pairing—one that their friends felt would never last. She was a troubleshooter at a big downtown advertising agency. When the company felt an account was in jeopardy, they put her on the business, and she performed a bacon-saving maneuver that would cement the relationship for another year and raise her compensation accordingly. She had done this often enough that she was now making roughly ten times as much money as Mitchell did. But neither of them seemed to mind the income disparity.

  Mitchell pulled the sedan into Emilio’s parking lot. The place was in a rough neighborhood. The residents grew up street savvy and could spot an unmarked police car before they got the training wheels off their bikes. But Mitchell and Sandovan weren’t the slightest bit on edge as they walked to the door.

  The familiar tinkle of the bells hanging inside the door did not elicit the usual welcome. The normally ebullient Emilio was nowhere to be seen. The detectives walked toward the counter. A young man came out of the back room tying up the strings of a deli apron. He shuffled behind the cash register.

  “Can I help you?”

  Mitchell felt the hair on the back of his neck start to prickle. Sandovan picked up the same vibe and hung back, surveying the store interior as his partner approached the counter. “You must be new here,” Mitchell said with a smile. “Where’s Emilio?”

  The kid smiled back. “I just started this week. Emilio told me to mind the store while he went on a bank run to get some change for the till. Can I get you a coffee, or maybe a cannoli?”

  Mitchell nodded and looked around. “Is Franco here?”

  The kid shook his head again. “Nope. Franco called in sick this morning.”

  Mitchell reached into his jacket pocket for his wallet. “That’s strange. I’ve been coming here for five years. Nobody named Franco works here.”

  The young man froze for a second. Then he swiftly pulled a butterfly knife from his back pocket. He twirled it impressively and the blade snapped into place. “You got me there asshole,” the kid sneered, “But don’t let that stop you from getting out your wallet.”

  Mitchell produced a wallet and tossed it on the counter. It landed and popped open to display his gold shield. The kid’s eyes got big. They got even bigger when he looked up into the muzzle of Mitchell’s Glock.

  “You’re under arrest, dumbass. Where’s Emilio?”

  Before the kid could answer, three more young men burst from the stock room, heading for the front door. Sandovan turned, raised a size twelve and kicked over a four-foot shelf of canned goods. The lead guy tried to stop, but his buddies slammed into him. They careened into the fallen shelf. Sandovan drew his sidearm and covered the men. A groan came from the bottom of the pile-up. Sandovan took two sets of cuffs from his belt and restrained two of the guys. Mitchell cuffed the kid behind the counter and tossed Sandovan his second pair of handcuffs.

  The man on the bottom of the pile had a large bump on his forehead and a cut on his right elbow that was bleeding into his shirtsleeve. Sa
ndovan cuffed him and they sat all four men up against an ice machine.

  Mitchell checked the stock room and found Emilio tied to a skid of olive oil with duct tape over his mouth. He took the butterfly knife from his pocket and cut Emilio loose.

  Emilio grimaced as he removed the duct tape. “Mitchell, thank goodness you came when you did. Those bastards! Rosangela will be here any minute and who knows what they would have done to her!”

  Mitchell did his best to calm him down. “You never know Emilio, Rosa might’ve beaten them into submission with her rolling pin. You okay?”

  Emilio wiped the sweat from his forehead. “I’m fine. Damn punks jumped me.”

  Mitchell told him to go behind the counter and take a seat while they called it in. The back seat of their prowl car wasn’t made to seat four. And Sandovan and Mitchell weren’t about to take risks with a suspect not wearing a seatbelt. The year before, a suspect who hit his head on a squad car’s Plexiglas divider had successfully sued the department. The city’s coffers were now one point two million dollars lighter thanks to that incident.

  While they waited for the paddy wagon, Mitchell and Sandovan enjoyed a smoked meat sandwich, courtesy of Emilio. He was heaping praises almost as high as the pastrami.