Doors were made of solid metal, windows were netted by protective antitheft grilles, walls and chain-link fences were topped with strands of razor-barbed concertina wire. After dark, the legitimate establishments were locked up tight, alarm systems switched on, and their personnel made fast tracks for points elsewhere.
A lack of residential properties and a broad-minded local zoning board had encouraged the rise of a number of leisure-time entertainment venues generally not welcomed in more finicky neighborhoods: a head-banging heavy metal music club, an adult emporium peddling triple-X-rated magazines and DVDs, some gin mills, and a couple of strip joints.
One of the latter was being dogged by Steve Ireland. No mere hole-in-the-wall dive, it aspired to a certain kind of gritty grandiosity. A one-story, shoebox-shaped structure with a flat roof, it and its adjacent parking lot occupied most of a city block. One of its narrow ends fronted a four-lane boulevard; that’s where the main entrance was located. Above it, a red neon sign bannered its name: The Booby Hatch.
Unlike most of the other buildings in the area, the club’s parking lot was not fenced in. It didn’t need to be. The management was wired into the territory’s organized crime syndicate and paid for protection. Muggers, thieves, vandals, and other malefactors knew better than to ply their trade here. Crooks being what they are, though, every now and then one would be too dumb or greedy or strung out to obey the prohibition; swift retribution was sure to follow, and another corpse would be found in a vacant lot, to be labeled by police and press as a “gang killing” and just as swiftly forgotten by officialdom, if not by the lawbreaking elements at whom the object lesson was directed.
A parking lot attendant stood on watch during operating hours, mostly to make sure that no hooker tricks or drug deals were consummated on the grounds. The syndicate had an in with the cops, but there was no percentage in allowing the kind of action that gives the vice squad and liquor-licensing authorities a pretext to hike the going payoff rate.
Some hustlers were allowed in the club, as long as they were reasonably discreet and presentable and took their johns off premises to do their business. That okay came with an obligation to kick back a certain percentage of their fees to the management. They were a draw, too, bringing in male clientele and getting them to spend plenty on overpriced, watered-down drinks. Club dancers weren’t allowed to date customers as a matter of policy, to keep management from catching heat from the vice boys. Although back rooms were maintained for select dancers to intimately entertain special friends and associates of the owners.
The street outside was well traveled day and night, mostly by cars and trucks in a hurry to get somewhere else. Police cars cruised back and forth at regular intervals, pausing to roust street hookers and pick up falling-down drunks and cart them off to the city jail.
When prowl cars came rolling along, Steve Ireland faded a few paces back from the alley mouth where he was keeping vigil, melting away into the inky darkness that dwelt in the narrow passageway between two buildings. They were commercial buildings, closed for the night, with narrow slitlike windows set high in brick walls, pale oblongs wanly glowing from dim lights burning within.
The boulevard was lined with heavy-duty street lamps that flooded it with a harshly unnatural, blue-white-tinged glare. But it penetrated no more than a few feet into the alley, which was stuffed thick with black darkness.
The wall on Steve’s left was lined with a couple of trash bins filled with cinder ash and metal scraps and shavings from the machine shop within. He ducked behind them when patrol cars came making their slow, sharklike glide along his side of the street.
His car was parked nearby where he could get it into action fast. He could have kept watch from inside it, but he preferred to be out here, where he could move around and stretch his legs. A lone man sittting behind the wheel of a parked car in this neck of the woods would attract too much attention from the law and street people.
Besides, until recently, he’d been cooped up for months in a small room in a private clinic, recuperating from critical injuries sustained during an overseas mission. He’d had enough of that to hold him for ten lifetimes.
It felt good to be outside in the fresh air, such as it was. Washington is built on what used to be swampland, and flaunts its origins throughout most of the year with heavy humidity. This late June night, the air was so thick and damp and hazy that it plastered haloed rings around street lamps and headlights.
There were dark bands of wetness under his arms, and his shirt hung limp with sweat. From long habit he went jungle-fighter style, wearing no undershorts beneath his pants and hanging free and loose.
The occasional street hookers who went strutting along the sidewalks took advantage of the sultry night air to peel down to the minimum, tube tops and short-shorts, the better to flaunt what they had. The turf was more or less off-limits, but a steady stream of them trolled the pavement, gambling on getting picked up by a cruising john and getting in his car and away before attracting the notice of a cop. They were on fairly safe ground as long as they kept moving and didn’t linger in doorways or on street corners.
Other denizens of the nighttime world made the rounds: winos, crackheads, lush rollers, bone thugs, penny-ante drug dealers, homeless derelicts, and crazies. Now and then, they would wander into the alley, nearly stumbling into Steve before becoming aware of his presence. When they did, they got out fast. One look was all it took to realize he was up to serious business they wanted no part of.
His vantage point gave him a clear sightline on the club’s front and parking lot. The front entrance was the only way the customers entered and exited the building. There were fire exits in each of the long side walls, and a back door that opened onto a loading platform, but they were off-limits to all but staffers, to prevent any deadbeats from trying to beat the house after running up a hefty bar tab. The oversized, hulking goons that served as bouncers and club personnel weren’t being paid to let anyone pull a fast one on them.
The parking lot had a single entrance/exit that accessed the street. Steve knew the layout of the club; he’d been in there earlier tonight while dogging his quarry, and he’d made sure to survey the layout of the joint. Not that he expected his man to execute any evasive maneuvers; Quentin simply wasn’t the type. He didn’t know he was being followed and even if he did, he wasn’t built for any kind of action that might scuff up his expensive, Italian-made tasseled loafers.
Durwood Quentin III, to give him his full monicker. A multimillionaire with a kink for the down-and-dirty side of the street. With his money, he could have been playing around with high-fashion models or high-line, five-thousand-dollar-a-night call girls.
Instead, he prowled the low-down side of the capital’s nighttime world, making the rounds of strip clubs, titty bars, and hustler dives, the raunchier the better. He also had a tendency to top off the evening by picking up street hookers and knocking off a quickie in his car. With some of the hard skanks he’d been dallying with, he was lucky one of them hadn’t cut his throat for his wallet and watch. Which would have saved Steve Ireland some trouble.
Steve had become an instant expert on Quentin’s wayward ways because he’d been tailing him on his forays for the last few nights, after first drawing the assignment to neutralize the financier.
Know your target, learn his pattern to find his point of maximum vulnerability, and strike. That was how Steve Ireland operated, and he was very good at his job. Or at least, he had been, before the hazards of war had put a serious hurting on him and laid him up in a recovery ward for the better part of six months. He was just getting back into harness with the Quentin sanction.
It wasn’t until tonight, though, that he’d learned that someone else was also on Quentin’s trail. A combination of luck and skill had caused Steve to spot the interloper before the stranger had spotted him. It takes one to know one, and Steve had tagged the other as a hunter, too.
Earlier, when Quentin had first exited his expensive Georgetown townhouse and pulled away in his car to begin his nightly prowling, Steve had been surprised to notice a second car take off after Quentin’s Cadillac and start following