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29 April 2014

A Las Vegas Past

Part 1


Chapter One


    Sunlight poured through the doors pinning my silhouetting to the entrance hall floor. Stepping into the hall I found myself standing in sticky fresh blood, which had splattered haphazardly over the grimy wooden floor. The whole scene looked like the set of a cheap horror movie. I closed and locked the doors behind me, using the key Taylor had left for me. This plunged the hallway back into its natural state of half-darkness.

The place was one of those fifty year old office blocks that are forever waiting to be torn down giving it an air of unloved feel. Once inside I could smell the under washed bodies who now inhabited the interior, and the all-pervasive smell of dope. Switching on my flash light I found more blood splattered around the walls of the first staircase. More had sprayed over the ceiling leading that lead to the ground floor stairwell I had to dodge around it to avoid the blood dripping earthwards from the newly formed stalactites. I drew out my Glock from under my left arm and holding the torch well away from my body started slowly up the slimy stairs. 

Reaching the first floor I found more blood smeared over the opposite wall and floor. The source of all this blood lay beneath a shattered naked light bulb. Pausing, I wrenched the empty revolver still tight gripped in his dead hand and tossed it back down the stairway. No sense in leaving unattended guns lying about. I edged forward along the dark passage sweeping the beam of my torch over the floor before me. I moved steadily toward the only other source of light apart from my own flash light it was there that I found Taylor. Staring up at me with glassy eyes, he lay on the filthy floor with his long legs out stretching out before him in a small pool of his own blood. Having positioned himself, not altogether wisely in my view, directly under the broken window he seemed about as spent up as an empty gun. One of the window drapes had been torn down so that rays of Las Vegas sunshine streamed over him, giving me the impression of a renaissance religious conversion painting. All that was missing was a halo around Taylor’s bullet head.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he hissed at me through his cracked lips. 

“You left a charming message for me to come and bail out your sorry ass,” I replied putting my gun back under my arm and inspecting Taylors wounded leg.

“Only pussies carry Glock 26,” he countered, adding, “they’re for babies.” Satisfied with this abuse he turned his attention back to the closed door just up the passage way ahead of us.

A while back I had paid Taylor to get in touch with me if he came across any missing females in the age range of the girl I was being paid to find. At the same time, as a sort of favour, Taylor had put me in touch with the Organization. They had also hired me to locate a missing young hoodlum named The Kid. I was to return him as unharmed as possible, so that they could ask him some searching questions about a suitcase of their missing dough. Taylor had taken a cut for finding me work that I didn’t want, so I had ended up paying the bastard twice over. I hated working for dirty cops or gangsters, but as I needed to eat and generally keep the wolf from the door I couldn’t afford to be fussy.

Looking Taylor over again I found him OK apart from a nasty cut on his right cheek that had bled out running down to his shirt collar and the bullet wounded in his right thigh. This oozed Taylor’s blood away on to the passage ways fifthly carpet, and was a cause for concern. I reckoned that he had been lucky not to have taken the bullet higher up into the main artery of his leg. That would have meant curtains for Taylor and probably a wasted journey for me. I couldn’t run around the place shouting ‘Police open up!’ I had to leave that part of the job to Taylor. Despite all his childish bravado Taylor was suffering from shock he lay before me sucking up gulps of oxygen through his mouth, which made him sound like an overweight panting dog. The veins on the sides of his shaved head stood out vivid purple against the paleness of his white clammy skin. It was only now that I now understood his strange positioning under the passage way window he needed all the fresh air he could get. The stink of dope was much stronger up here than downstairs on the ground floor.

“I being paid to get the Kid to the Organisation and give my missing girl back to her kin, not to save you from your screw ups” as I spoke I opened my knife and cut vertically up the right leg of Taylor’s blood soaked pants until I got to the blooded area of the bullet entry. It hadn’t mattered what I said to Taylor at this point, I just wanted to say anything to stop him from thinking to clearly. I cut a strip of cloth out of the silk lining of Taylor’s suit jacket, telling myself that he could afford a replacement. Wrapping this around his leg, I tied it tightly around his upper thigh to staunch the flow of blood. All the while Taylor had kept his eyes on the door just ahead of us.

“Jesus”, he said, “You’re hurting me than that bastard down the hall did.” He flipped a hand out towards the dead man at the top of the stairs. Then he gave me the game changer. “That girl you’re looking for is inside that room up ahead.” This pronounced with a complete sense of detachment.

I took out my hip flask and gave him a nip of brandy then had some myself. Taylor of course was nothing without Butter Boy. When his partner had taken a bullet in the head people said that all the life seemed to have gone from Taylor. All that had been left was an old man who needed to find a new line of work but quick, real quick. It had been Butter Boy who had done all the strong arm stuff and Taylor had sat back to counted their money. If Taylor really had found the girl maybe he wasn’t as past as had been suggested. For a moment or two neither of us said or did anything. Each one had been taken over by his own thoughts.

“How is it,” Taylor said at last, visibly brightening after the brandy. He looked down at his blood stained right leg.

I wondered if he was talking about the wound to his leg or the leg of his pants. “Taylor if you’re lying to me I’ll shoot you myself.” At this stage I really needed to believe him about the girl, because I had put in four months on this case and come up with zip, adding, “You’ll live.” I put my knife back into its sheath that rested snuggly against the small of my back. 

“How many are in the room?” I said, getting the Gluck out again and switching the safety to off, adding, “Apart from the girl.”

He smiled and nodded towards the closed door while reaching up for my hip flask, I didn’t offer him anymore. Although still not sure whether my lost girl was in the room or not, I did know that Taylor had made a mess of his ‘rescue’ attempt, if that was the only reason that he should be in this building. I certainly didn’t need him drunk on my brandy because he just might decide to shoot the place up with me in it. 

“I got the big one down the hall though, “ he poked a blooded mitt again towards the body of the fat man laying at the top of the stair, “I had to shoot the mother fucker four times before he’d go down,” he added, scowling up at me because I’d replaced the brandy back in my coat.

“That fucker was dragging your girl with him trying to make for the back way into the building on the ground floor,” he said this while trying to stand up so that his words ran into one another. 

“When he saw me he changed his mind and started to drag then carried the girl back up the stairs.”

That explained the blood splattered by the main door. The fatty must have been just about made for Taylor. Anyone fitter would have taken the old bastard out of this game. I tried to help him to his feet and he winced when trying to put any weight on his injured leg.

“You’re going to help me,” he groaned suddenly looking his age again as the effects of my brandy had worn off. But apart from the smell of blood and alcohol on Taylor there was something else too, fear.

“Taylor, I’ll do what I can.” I said, adding, “We’ll manage as best we can.”

That said, he visible pull himself together again, checked his own gun, and after sucking in some more oxygen, he hobbled over to that closed door bringing his fist down hard on its grimy surface.

“Police,” he bawled, “open this fucking door.”

We both stood either side of the door and waited for their response to such a polite invitation.

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