Revenge School (A Pay Back Novel Book 1) Read online

  “I guess.”

  Delgado frowned and looked at Rhodes, “He had plenty of time to get out of the building.”

  “Better check his ID.”

  “We need to make sure this is your apartment.”

  Richard pulled his wallet out and sorted through credit cards until he found his driver’s license.

  Delgado scanned it and made some notes in a spiral notepad. “Remember anything about this fat guy?”

  “No. I just remember black hair and a T-shirt with some kind of printing on it.”

  “C’mon. You can do better than that. What color was he?”

  Richard closed his eyes, twisted his face into a grimace and rubbed it with both hands, trying to visualize the attacker. “Um, white? I’m pretty sure he was white.”

  “Short?”

  “He was tall.”

  “How tall?”

  “When he picked me up over his head just before he slammed me into the wall, I kinda bounced off the ceiling.”

  “So about six-foot.” Delgado smiled. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Age?”

  Richard closed his eyes, breathed deep, “I don’t know.”

  “You know he was white, tall, and had black hair. Picture that.”

  “Maybe mid-thirties. And one big fat mother.”

  “How big?”

  “Like one of those TV wrestlers.”

  “Like a football player?”

  “Bigger than that. Way bigger than that.”

  “What color were his eyes?

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you see any tattoos or scars?”

  “It was just seconds. And then he slammed me into the wall.”

  “So this,” he referred to his notes, “Mary Ellen is your girlfriend?”

  “No. She’s my neighbor. I was kind of thinking about asking her out or something, but it just never seemed like the right time.”

  “How’d she get into your house?”

  “She’s got a key. I gave her one to feed my fish and bring in the mail when I’m out of town.”

  “Any idea why anyone would want to do this?”

  “I wish I did.”

  “She looks like a hooker or a stripper.”

  “Never. Not Mary Ellen. Couldn’t be.”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “She’s a student. Lives upstairs. To make extra money she takes care of people’s pets and stuff. That’s about it.”

  CHAPTER 9

  As the 2 AM alcohol cut off passed at the North Beach hot spots, lucky clubbers paired off. Others, wallets shrunk from a night of ten dollar imported beers and fifteen dollar martinis, straggled home where the drinks were cheaper.

  By the time the police were done with him, the partying crowds had been replaced by immigrant workers sweeping up storefronts and piling trash bags in the alley for early morning pickup.

  One thing Richard knew for sure, even if the cops had been willing to let him—and they weren’t—was that he wasn’t going to stay in a bloody apartment, or sleep in that bed.

  Never again. Never.

  Exhausted, numb, feeling like he was going to vomit, all he wanted to do was go somewhere safe and sleep. He stuffed some clothes in his backpack along with his Mac and headed for the Hyatt. It was a little pricey, but he could afford it…and he hoped he’d feel safe there.

  Richard collapsed into the hotel bed tossing and turning, until a nightmare where a hairy black hand jammed the barrel of a pistol into his right eye scared him awake.

  Great. I got an entire fifteen minutes of sleep.

  Would the monster that beat him and Mary Ellen come back? Maybe he’d rethink his exit and decide he should have killed them both. Could he have followed him to the hotel? Was he waiting downstairs to kill him right now?

  God, I’m scared.

  Fear was nothing new for Richard. He’d lived with it for so long it felt normal. Like a small anchor dragging behind a sailboat, fear made doing everything harder. The wind blew and the boat moved. Then the anchor snags and everything slams to a stop. Richard’s fear was like that. It made him tired, it made him careful, and when shit happened, it paralyzed him.

  Richard knew why he was afraid. He was a man, but not one who could take care of himself. At least not when it came to stuff like this. His Berkeley anti-war activist mom had told him over and over, “There is always a better way to solve things than fighting.”

  So while other kids played football or practiced martial arts, he spent his afternoons with the chess club.

  Guns of any kind were off limits at his house. No BB guns. No cap guns. Not even a water pistol was allowed. His first spanking came the day he chewed his peanut butter and jelly sandwich into the shape of a gun and “shot” his little brother.

  Richard knew he had to do something about the fear. He also knew, deep inside, the way you know there is a God and your mother loves you, he had to find whoever beat Mary Ellen. Otherwise, he was going to be a scared little boy forever. But he didn’t know how. So he sat at the Hyatt…scared. Was that freak going to come back and kill him? Why? What did he ever do to anyone?

  Maybe that fat bastard was after Mary Ellen. Or maybe it was some horrible, random, slap-in-the-face from the universe.

  For the last three weeks, every morning over his herbal tea he’d been using Anthony Robbins’s positive visual affirmation techniques to conjure a beautiful girl into his life. His new mantra was, “I live a wonderful life. I am full of health and happiness and joy. I am sharing it with a lovely woman.”

  Maybe I needed to ask for a woman who wasn’t beaten half-to-death in my bed.

  The only thing he was sure of was it had been pretty brave and very foolish to stay in his apartment armed with nothing but pepper spray. For the first time in his life he’d been brave. And what had it got him? He’d heard the cops describe him as “bruised and confused,” but it was the only thing he’d felt really good about for a long time.

  The fat man could have killed them both and didn’t. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t. He could come back any time and finish the job.

  If he decides to kill us and I don’t get some help I’m dead, and so is Mary Ellen.

  Deciding sleep was impossible, Richard powered up his laptop and Googled: “I’m tired and scared.”

  The top results offered:

  “I’m tired of being scared all the time”—Anxiety Message Board

  anxietyissues.com

  I’m tired « Parent Who Writes While Others Sleep

  sleeplesswriter.wordpress.com

  I’m really tired but I’m scared to go to sleep? - Yahoo! Answers

  answers.yahoo.com

  Forty minutes of searching led to nothing useful. Frustrated, he typed in exactly what he wanted: ‘I’m scared; I don’t know how to protect myself. A monster beat me and my friend up and I need to get him before he finds us.’

  The result definitely caught his eye.

  When You Need Help Getting Even:

  www.RevengeSchool.com

  There wasn’t much to the site. No pictures. No links. No FAQS. Just a single page. In the center were two boxes. In the first, blood red words read:

  You or someone you know has been wronged. Like most adults you don’t know how to protect them or yourself. Fill in the box below with a short description of your problem. We don’t need your whole damn life story. If we want to help you, we will contact you. If you don’t hear from us in seventy-two hours look somewhere else.

  Richard filled out the second box and hit ‘Send.’ He had nothing to lose but fear.

  CHAPTER 10

  Just before dawn, Pay was sitting at the team’s second floor worktable putting an edge on his Blackie Collins switchblade when the security system announced: “Chase has entered through
the front door.”

  Fifteen seconds later a six-foot-ten-inch two hundred and ten pound, forty-one-year-old black man with a shaved head and a brilliant blue sapphire pierced in his left ear, wearing red Italian motorcycle racing leathers, stepped out of the elevator. “Figured you’d be in bed.”

  Pay tested the knife’s edge on a sheet of newspaper. “Had a busy night. Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Came by to pick up the Ducati from downstairs and these new bone conduction headsets.” He grabbed a fist full of black wires off the table and waved them in Pay’s direction. “I reserved time this morning to try them out at Sears Point Raceway. If I can talk on my cell doing a buck sixty on the straight away, they’re good enough for us. You being busy mean there’s work coming up? There are a couple of toys I’ve got my eye on.”

  “You made millions playing in the NBA. You can buy anything you want except maybe a Gulfstream.” Pay knew Chase lusted for his own private jet.

  “I never spend my capital on toys. I use the money I earn with you for that. Looking at a new Victory Vision.”

  “What the hell do you want a big, slow motorcycle like that for?”

  “My Ducati’s great for the track, but the seat’s hard as a rock, and with legs as long as mine there’s no room for a passenger.”

  “Ah, those big Harley clones all ride like a Winnebago.”

  “Girls like the cushy heated seats, and my jazz-filled soul loves the built in audio.”

  “Get a Goldwing. Rides better and women love them.”

  “Not my style, big man. So you need me for anything?”

  “Nothing right now.”

  Chase frowned. “Damn. It’s been kind of boring around here. I was hoping for some excitement. Well…I’ll be back for the staff meeting.” Punching the elevator button, he was gone.

  Pay shook his head, thinking about how much he hated people standing around waiting for him to somehow magically create work. In his business you couldn’t make work. It wasn’t like he could hire a bunch of salesmen and have them knocking on doors, cold calling, and spilling martinis on their ties.

  In order for the Revenge Team to have work, something truly awful had to happen to somebody.

  CHAPTER 11

  Chase got back from Sears Point; bug guts on his leathers, smelling like grease and hot tires, he barely made it in time for the 11 AM staff meeting. A Saturday ritual where Pay, Brooke and Chase, divvied up the following week’s work.

  Pay settled down with a double espresso, while Brooke sorted through her notes and Chase opened his laptop.

  To say Brooke was the best looking member of the team was like saying Michael Jordan was a ‘pretty good’ basketball player. Long, lithe and lovely—a svelte redhead, with green-gold eyes just slightly darker than Pay’s, Brooke carried the beauty and mystery of a mature woman. Usually standing almost five-ten in heels, she’d tossed the chic garb away, choosing instead her comfortable white Gap T-shirt, light gray slacks, and blue-gray Nikes. She sent a smile in Pay’s direction. “What have we got on schedule for tonight?”

  “Pretty quiet. Just my turn with Sam Hong.”

  Sam was a reclusive inventor who claimed his best ideas came during the middle of the night as he walked around town. For years he had wandered the city streets unmolested. A slight, quiet, elderly Asian, even panhandlers ignored him. But a couple of months ago his picture had appeared in Fortune magazine, with the caption: “The World’s Most Anonymous Billionaire.”

  Some punk then realized Sam was the perfect kidnapping victim. The guy was loaded, defenseless, and had a loving wife, kids and grandchildren. His wife would cave with the first ransom call. …Which is exactly what happened.

  Sam had been out half a million the day Pay met him on the waterfront near Red’s Java Hut. “Hear they took you for a big ransom. You want help getting it back?”

  Sam shook his head. “I’m not sure. Haven’t decided yet.”

  “Then why’d you call me?”

  Sam smiled and quietly explained his need to wander.

  “That’s it? Just follow you around?”

  “For right now. But I’ve got to come up with a better option. It isn’t wandering if some big guy is always following you wherever you go. You’d probably want to share coffee and donuts or beer, and talk about something.”

  “Sure you want to leave $500,000 on the table like that?”

  “Losing $500,000 won’t change my life much.”

  “I could teach you to use a knife.”

  “I learned how to use one in the military. The men who took me were big and young.” Sam frowned. “There is no way I could take them with just a knife.”

  “How about a gun?”

  “I’m a slow old man. They’d just take it away and use it on me.”

  “How ‘bout pepper spray…or a Taser?”

  “That might work if it was only one person. I was jumped by two.”

  Ever since then, several times a week Sam went walkabout, but the only way his wife would let him go was if someone from the team provided security.

  “Where’s he going tonight?” Brooke asked.

  “Just said meet him at 11 PM at the usual spot in the Marina.”

  Chase looked up from his laptop, “Pay, you had a long night. All I’ve done the last couple of days is race my bike. Let me take Sam.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll be ok. Just need a nap. Plus, Blade needs the exercise.”

  “Let’s move on to some potential new business.” Brooke glanced down at her notes. “There might be something going on at my club.”

  Like all of the team’s members, except Pay and Chase, Brooke had a regular job. Nights she worked at San Francisco’s most exclusive private club. Not a strip joint, but a businessman’s social club so private, it didn’t have a sign or even an official name. The members just called it “The Men’s Club.” It was the kind of place where the entry-level bottle service scotch was an eight hundred dollar bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, with French La Pouvade champagne starting at a thousand. The place where billionaire CEOs and investment bankers cut deals.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Several of the men are acting strange. They’ve been hiding, whispering in the private VIP rooms.”

  Chase shrugged. “What’s unusual about that?”

  “Without girls? I’m talking about the players. The ones who think monogamy is only for wives.”

  “Are these guys normally happy to see you?” asked Pay.

  “Yes, and that’s what’s strange. Members who would normally be delighted to see me are now upset if I don’t knock before I enter. Knocking is mandatory if someone’s in a VIP room with a girl, but when it’s just three or four guys sitting there with the door closed drinking more than normal and looking morose, I have to think something is going on.”

  “They figure out you’re not single?” Pay asked. Brooke had recently gotten engaged to Denny, a popular local bartender and the team’s newest member. “They find out you’re off the table, might make ‘em act different.”

  “No. Nobody knows. And it’s not everyone. Just the mega-rich, mega-players. The guys on their second or third wives. Members who would never think of showing up without arm candy are suddenly arriving and leaving alone. Two of the guys have started spending their regular date nights at the club—alone—mistresses not welcome. There’s definitely something that’s not right.”

  Chase had closed his laptop and was dismantling one of the bone conduction mics. “If somebody’s bleeding them, there could be millions of dollars at stake. What do you think, Pay?”

  “Let’s check it out; maybe offer to help. Quietly, in a way the cops can’t.”

  “Publicity is the last thing my members want.”

  “Anybody I could talk to?”

  Brooke’s face showed her concern. “Is there
a more discrete way? I could lose my job. Getting another one that pays like this isn’t going to happen without me moving to someplace like New York or Dubai.”

  “Don’t want that.” Pay hated it when a team member moved away. It took forever to find someone with the skills they needed. But it would be worse if Chase or Brooke left. They were his closest friends and the only two people he trusted to know about everything.

  “I can get Chase into the club tonight as a guest, maybe he could hang around, get to know a few of the guys?”

  “Not me?”

  “Please don’t take this wrong, but at my club you’d stand out like a destruction derby car at the Concourse d ‘Elegance.”

  “Chase is six-ten and bald. I’m gonna standout?”

  “He’s also a rich, educated, urbane, retired NBA champion. He doesn’t have to blend.”

  “And don’t forget exceptionally good looking.” Chase laughed.

  “Ah, hell. So I got Sam tonight and tomorrow if he wants to go out. Chase, who you gonna take to the club? You might need someone to watch your back. Maybe Amy?”

  “Amy would be fine. How many girls do you think we need?” Chase’s eyes flicked to Brooke.

  “You’re a first time guest so I’d suggest discretion. Two nice young women would be ideal.”

  “Two adoring females sounds good to me.” Chase chuckled. “If Amy is one, I don’t need anyone else to watch my back. We just need another lady who is young, beautiful and, of course, interested in being attendant to me.”

  “How ‘bout Amy’s friend, Keira?” Pay suggested.

  “I don’t think I know her.”

  “Sure you do. First time you saw her, your eyes all but popped out of your head. Tall, slender girl. Long strawberry blonde hair with the great—”

  “Moves?” Brooke jumped in.

  Now it was Pay’s turn to laugh. “Yeah. At least…it kinda, sorta rhymes with ‘moves.’ That Irish girl.”

  “She’ll fit in just fine. And something tells me she won’t have to work too hard to play a party-girl out for a good time.”