Layla's Score Read online

  Layla's Score

  a crime novel

  Andy Rausch

  Contents

  Inspired and influenced by:

  Note

  Prologue

  1. Love And Happiness

  2. Tulsa City Limits

  3. Brooks Barker

  4. The Story Lefty Heard

  5. Partners In Crime

  6. The Road To Oklahoma City

  7. The Champagne Room

  8. A Worthy Adversary

  9. He Is Risen!

  10. Up Jumps The Devil

  11. Shit Happens

  12. Blood Alley

  13. Places To Go, People To Kill

  14. The Don Quixote

  15. Going To War

  16. When Doves Cry

  Dear Reader

  About the Author

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  Copyright (C) 2019 Andy Rausch

  Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

  Published 2019 by Terminal Velocity – A Next Chapter Imprint

  Cover art by Cover Mint

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

  For Jordan, Jaiden, Jalyn, and Josslyn, who were all

  Layla at one time or another.

  Julian, you might have been a boy, but you're

  Layla too.

  Inspired and influenced by:

  Quentin Tarantino

  Elmore Leonard

  S. Craig Zahler

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Max Allan Collins

  Shane Black

  Richard Stark

  Don Pendleton

  Note

  The character Orlando Williams previously appeared as the protagonist in the novel The Suicide Game. However, this should not be seen as a sequel, but rather a completely separate story.

  I look at the helpless bundle in the crib and she looks up at me and I wonder what I would not do to protect her. I would lay down my life in a second. And truth be told, if push came to shove, I would lay down yours too.

  Harlan Coben, No Second Chance

  Hell is never far away.

  Lorenzo Carcaterra, The Wolf

  Prologue

  Lefty Collins made his way quietly through the mark's crib, his silenced Glock 23 in hand, ready to be used should the need arise. The mark's stereo was playing loudly, and music filled the place. It was Eric Clapton. As Lefty walked, he paid no mind to the lavish interior of the mark's home, a big mansion worth a couple million easy. Lefty had neither the time nor inclination to gawk at the man's possessions. Other people who'd grown up in the neighborhood Lefty had would have stopped and taken note of this assemblage of expensive crap, but not him. He was here to do a job. Beyond that, he didn't want to know a damned thing about this man. He didn't want to see the mark as an actual human being. Doing so would only make his job more difficult.

  He passed the stereo and turned slightly towards a hallway. He sensed the mark was somewhere down there, in the bowels of the mansion. Lefty moved slowly into the hallway, prepared to shoot at any moment. He came to the first room, which was filled with arcade-style cabinet video games from the 1980s. Lefty had enjoyed these games as a kid—he could see Galaga and Frogger there, just to name two—but he paid them no mind. He continued down the hall. He passed framed photographs of the mark posing with friends, family, and celebrities like Michael Jordan and Barack Obama, but he didn't look at them.

  As he came to each bedroom, he looked in and found them empty. After passing several rooms, he came to one at the end of the hallway. The door was open just a bit, and there was light inside. Lefty could hear the shower running. He leaned his head in towards the door, listening for additional sounds, but heard only the shower. He slowly pushed the door open with the silencer of his Glock. As he did, waves of steam from the hot shower came cascading out. Lefty made his way towards the shower, which was along the wall at the back of the room. There was a shower curtain closed, and Lefty could see the figure of a man inside. Luckily the shower curtain was beige, so neither he nor the man inside the shower could get a good luck at the other.

  He moved closer to the shower, his raised Glock a few inches from the curtain. This was when the man shut off the water. Lefty tensed up, and the man pulled the curtain back. Lefty saw a black man and a black woman standing there, naked, startled by his presence. Lefty recognized the man as his mark. Before anyone could move or say a word, Lefty squeezed the trigger. The first shot struck the man in the eye, and the second caught the woman in her left cheek. Their brains painted the white tile wall of the shower and they dropped into lifeless piles of skin and bones. Lefty was pretty sure they were dead, but he shot each of them once more to be sure.

  He turned and made his way out of the bathroom. He was just turning into the hall when he heard a sound coming from inside one of the dark rooms he'd passed. It was the unmistakable sound of a small child crying for its mother. The realization that came with this horrified the hitman. He made his way towards the sound, and entered the room he'd previously believed to be empty. There was a small child, probably about two, standing beside a Mickey Mouse toddler bed. It was dark, so Lefty used the gloved hand carrying the Glock to switch on the light. He looked at the little girl, unsure what to do next. The thought of shooting the child crossed his mind, sickening him.

  The little girl stopped crying and looked up at him. She made a nonsensical baby noise that sounded gleeful, probably happy someone had come to save her from bedtime.

  “What's your name, little girl?” asked Lefty.

  The toddler had no idea what he was saying and stared at him blankly. Eric Clapton was singing “Layla” in the next room. And so it goes.

  One

  Love And Happiness

  They were close to St. Louis, midway through the eleven-hour drive from Chicago to Tulsa, when Layla had to go potty. Lefty told the little girl, “Gimme a couple minutes, Tator Tot. I gotta find a spot for you to pee.” As he went to work scanning the road for a suitable place, Layla blurted, “You'd better hurry! I gotta go bad!”

  Lefty looked at her in the rear-view mirror. Her face was contorted and she was twisting uncomfortably. “How bad?”

  “Real bad, Daddy.”

  “You need to tell me when you first feel it coming on,” said Lefty. “You gotta give me time to find someplace to take you. You can't just wait until you're about to explode and then expect me to find a gas station in two seconds. There aren't any gas stations around here.”

  “But I didn't know I had to pee until just now,” she said, her voice shrill and whiny, as urgent as he'd ever heard it.

  Lefty's eyes continued to scan the road, occasionally glancing at the little girl in the back seat, writhing uncomfortably. Finally, after a couple minutes, he came to the conclusion that he had to do something immediately or the seven-year-old was going to have an accident. He pulled off onto a small county road. Seeing there weren't any businesses beyond the highway, he stopped the Caddy on the side of road, its frame leaning into the ditch.

  Layla said again, “I gotta go pee, Daddy. I gotta go real bad.”

  Lefty unbuckled his seatbelt and made eye contact with her in the mirror. “I know, Tator Tot.” He opened the door and climbed out, making his way back to Layla's door. He opened it and found Layla unbuckling her belt. He let her out, looking down t
he road to make sure there were no vehicles approaching.

  The little girl looked around. “Where's the bathroom, Daddy?”

  “There's no bathroom, Tator Tot.”

  She looked at him quizzically. “Then where should I potty?”

  Lefty nodded toward the ditch. “Right here.”

  She looked at the ditch, confused and unsure. “I don't wanna pee outside.”

  “I understand that, kid, but if you don't pee now, you're gonna pee your pants. That's a no-no. Think how yucky it's gonna feel wearing cold pee pants. So—”

  “So what?”

  “You gotta pee outside.”

  She wasn't pleased about this development, but she took it in stride. Layla was smarter than the average seven-year-old and Lefty had found that most of the time he could simply explain things to her as though she were an adult. There were of course exceptions, but for the most part this was true.

  She made her way down into the ditch. “How do I do it, Daddy? I never pottied outside before.”

  Lefty looked to the heavens, taking a slow breath. Showing a little girl how to pee outside without getting any on her clothes was not something he'd ever imagined he'd be doing. “Pull your pants down, to your socks,” he said. To his surprise, without much resistance, Layla slid her tiny blue jeans down around her ankles. “You gotta pull down your panties, too,” he said. “Really?” she asked. This made him chuckle. “Unless you wanna pee through your undies, then yeah, you gotta slide those down, too.” Again the little girl accepted his word and slid her panties down, now standing there with her privates exposed to all of Missouri.

  She looked at him. “Now what, Daddy?”

  “You just gotta pee, right?” he asked. “No poop?”

  “No poop.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You gotta squat down and stick your butt out so when you pee you won't get any on your pants or your shoes.”

  “I don't sit on anything?” she asked, unsure. “I just pee with my bottom in the air?”

  “That's how you do it.”

  “Why?”

  Having no sufficient answer for this, Lefty replied, “That's just the way it's done. There's no reason why, that's just how it is.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, starting to strain to make the urine flow.

  As she did this, Lefty glanced down the road and saw a white car approaching. He squinted his eyes, trying to see it better. It came closer and he realized it was a cop.

  “Shit,” he said, unsure what the best course of action might be.

  He looked at Layla. “It's starting to come out now,” she said.

  “I'm sure it is,” he muttered. There was no way out. The cop was approaching, slowing as he did. Lefty could just imagine how this looked, a black man standing on the side of the road next to an expensive car, hovering over a little girl pissing in a ditch. And considering how close they were to Ferguson, where the cops had famously killed an unarmed black man named Michael Brown, Lefty wasn't overly excited about the prospect of being stopped here.

  Maybe it would be a black cop, he reasoned. They weren't much better, Uncle Toms really, but that would dramatically decrease his chances of being gunned down in front of his little girl. The cop pulled up, and Lefty could see his face. He was as white as a paper plate blowing in a snow storm.

  Here we go, he thought.

  The cop was staring at Layla through the window of his cruiser.

  Lefty looked down at her squatting there. “You about done, Tator Tot?”

  “Almost done, Daddy.”

  The cop stopped and got out of the cruiser. Luckily he didn't have his hand anywhere near his pistol. As he walked around the car, the cop said, “Little girl had to go pee, huh?” There was a big smirk on his face.

  “She did,” Lefty said, nodding.

  Layla heard the cop but was completely unfazed by his presence. She remained there, squatting, focused on the task at hand.

  Lefty looked at the cop, trying to look as nice and smiley and white-people friendly as he could.

  “I got three daughters of my own,” said the cop. “I been down this road before.”

  There wasn't anything in the cop's voice that led Lefty to believe there was gonna be trouble. Not yet, anyway.

  Lefty started to respond, but Layla spoke first. “I'm done, Daddy. What do I do now?”

  Lefty looked at her, and then back at the cop, unsure what he should do.

  “You got any napkins?” asked the cop.

  Lefty hadn't even considered this. “Yeah,” he said. “I'm pretty sure.” He climbed into the car and opened the glove compartment, but couldn't find any napkins. He considered pulling out the Glock, but he didn't want to do any gangster shit in front of Layla. “Dammit,” he said.

  “Ain't got no napkins?” asked the cop.

  “It doesn't look like it.”

  “What were you gonna use to let the little girl wipe with?”

  “I hadn't really given it much thought,” said Lefty. “We hadn't gotten that far. She had to go, so we stopped. This was our first go-around with this type of thing.”

  The cop went back to the cruiser. “I'm pretty sure I got some Dairy Queen napkins in the car. I'll go look.”

  Good lord, thought Lefty. What have I gotten my black ass into?

  “What do I do now, Daddy?”

  “Just a second,” said Lefty. “The nice policeman is gonna get some napkins so you can wipe, just like you do when you sit on the toilet.”

  “Good,” she said. “I was hoping I could wipe.”

  Lefty looked over at the cop, reemerging from the cruiser with a handful of brown napkins. He brought them to Lefty, who then carried them to Layla. “Here you go, Tator Tot,” he said. “Wipe with these.”

  She took the napkins. “What do I do with the napkin after I wipe my pee on it?”

  Lefty didn't know. He looked at the cop, who was on the verge of real laughter. “Just throw it on the ground,” said the cop. “Someone gets paid to pick up the trash around here. Leaving trash behind, that's job security for those fellas. I wouldn't recommend throwing out your trash all the time, but this once ain't gonna hurt nothin'.” He looked at Lefty. “Who wants to carry around a napkin with piss on it, am I right?”

  Lefty nodded, glancing over at Layla wiping.

  “I'm done,” she announced. “Now what?”

  “Drop the napkin on the ground and pull up your pants.”

  Layla looked at him, a serious expression on her face. “I can't litter.”

  “What?” asked Lefty.

  “I can't litter. Because it's wrong.”

  “Who says?”

  “My teacher told us it destroys the environment.”

  The cop chuckled. “A napkin lying on top of the ground won't hurt the environment. It might irritate the person who's gotta pick it up, but that's about it. It really won't do too much of anything bad.”

  The little girl looked at him. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course,” said the cop. “I'm a policeman. Would I lie to you?”

  “I don't know,” said Layla.

  Lefty looked at her. “Just throw the napkin on the ground, Layla. It'll be fine.”

  Layla didn't approve, but she finally dropped the pee-stained napkin in the ditch. Lefty looked back at the cop, whose demeanor was gradually shifting to one more business-like. “You the little girl's father?”

  Lefty nodded.

  The cop looked at Layla, now standing, pulling her pants up around her waist.

  “Hey, little girl?” said the cop.

  Layla looked at him innocently. “Yes?”

  “What's your name?”

  “My name's Layla. What's yours?”

  The cop laughed and looked at Lefty, then back at Layla. “My name's Jim.”

  She smiled. “Hi, Jim.”

  “Hi, Layla,” the cop said. “I gotta question for you. Is this man your daddy?”

  Layla's face brightened. “Yep, he sure is. He's
my daddy alright.”

  The cop looked at him, sizing him up. “He a pretty good daddy?”

  She nodded. “He's the best daddy in the whole wide world.”

  The cop nodded. “Glad to hear that.” He looked at Lefty. “Where you headed?”

  “Tulsa.”

  “What's in Tulsa?”

  Lefty wanted to be a smart ass and say, “Tulsa residents,” but thought the better of it. Instead he said, “I haven't been in there in years. I thought it might be fun to take the little girl there. When I was a kid I used to spend summers there with my Auntie Mae. She used to take us to this big amusement park they had there, was open every day. I loved that place, and I think she's gonna love it, too.”

  “You know they got an amusement park up the road in St. Louis?” asked the cop. “Six Flags. I used to take my kids there every summer.”

  “I've heard that,” said Lefty. “But I ain't never been.”

  “It's pretty good. But it ain't cheap.”

  “Nothing is. Not anymore.”

  “You said a mouthful there,” said the cop.

  “The one in Tulsa is called Bell's Amusement Park. They got a big roller coaster there and me and my brother Marky used to ride on it all day long, over and over,” said Lefty. “And there was this Mexican restaurant there my auntie used to take us to…”

  The cop was confused. “There was a Mexican restaurant inside the amusement park?”

  “No,” said Lefty. “It was somewhere else in Tulsa. But it was good. It was called Casa Bonita. Auntie Mae used to take us there all the time to get enchiladas, and those were some good-assed enchiladas.”