Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3)

leather of my driving glove. Left cheek lacerated, he stumbled into the man on his right. The man on his left caught my backhand with his right cheek, which also spurted blood. Then, in an overhead arc, I brought the baton down on the baseball cap of the third man, who was trying to keep the leader on his feet. He blinked and went down, taking Tattoo with him. I glanced at the man still standing. He was screaming, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” and clutching his cheek with both hands. Then he dropped to his knees. I turned back to Tattoo as he stuck a hand into his jacket pocket and fumbled to pull something out. I stomped his hand. Crouching beside him as he writhed and cried out, I wrenched a revolver from his pocket, tearing the stitching. A loaded Ruger GP100 with a three-inch barrel, the serial number scraped off. If he’d had small hands or the hammerless model, he might have got it out in time to pull the trigger.
“I guess this was supposed to put me out of my misery after I felt the pain.”
“Cocksucker!” he said.
“What did you do to my face, fucker!” the second man screamed.
Breathing heavily and still blinking, the man I’d whacked on the head said nothing.
I stood and leveled the gun at them. Collapsing the baton against my thigh and sliding it back into my pocket, I glanced over my shoulder at Phoenix. Face flushed, she was clutching the shearling collar of her tan leather coat and leaning back against a tree thin enough to have been part of Buffalo’s beautification program ten years earlier. Eyes wide, she too was breathing hard. She pushed a shock of black hair back into place.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Fine.” She let out a long breath and opened the purse hanging from her shoulder. “You watch them. I’ll make the call.”
B-District was on Main Street at the beginning of the Theater District, a couple of blocks away. Two cruisers arrived within minutes, a new black-and-white and an old white-and-blue. A wiry, thirtyish uniformed officer whose nameplate said McKelvey got out of the newer car. A hefty cop about fifty—Moss—climbed out of the second. Both were Black, but I recognized neither. The tableau, however—an armed Black man standing over three bleeding white men—demanded both draw their .40 caliber Glocks and order me to put my gun down.
Crouching a heartbeat before they gave the command, I laid the Ruger on the sidewalk and raised both hands as I stood.
Phoenix waited until McKelvey had bagged the gun before explaining she had made the nine-one-one call. “These men attacked us.” She handed her purse to Moss. “I’m a lawyer. My identification is in the lavender wallet.”
“Yours?” he said to me.
“Front left pocket,” I said. “Okay if I pull it out with my thumb and forefinger, or do you want to get it yourself?”
With Phoenix’s purse in one hand, he had stepped out of his two-handed shooter’s stance. After a glance at the men on the ground, he tightened his grip on the Glock. “Slow.”
Keeping my right hand up, I complied with my left—more slowly because of the glove. Moss stepped forward to take the wallet from my outstretched hand, which I then raised. While his colleague covered all five of us, the older man holstered his sidearm and examined our ID cards. After a moment he returned Phoenix’s purse but held onto my wallet.
“PI?” He narrowed his eyes. “License. Concealed carry permit. You working here?”
I shook my head. “We had dinner at the Chophouse.”
“That your piece?”
“Nope. I took it off the one without a hat.”
“Lying bastard!” Tattoo said. “He hit us with a steel thingie and pulled a gun on us!”
I shook my head again. “So much for a day of rest.”
“We didn’t lay a finger on the sumbitch!” the other man with a gashed cheek said. He started to rise but the young cop motioned for him to stay on his knees.
“They knew my name and said they had a message from a guy in Attica, a killer I put there when I was a campus cop. They said he wanted me to feel pain first. Then Tattoo here drew back his fist to swing on me.”
“Steel thingie?”
“Mini-baton, in my right jacket pocket.” I pointed.
Moss stiffened. “Keep your hands up. If I want it, I’ll ask.”
“I’ll take it out slow, thumb and forefinger.”
“A legal carry for someone in security,” Phoenix said. “With court decisions on nunchucks and stun guns…” She took a breath, to steady herself. “Officer, these three men threatened us and began to attack. So my…” She gazed at me as if uncertain what to call me. I wasn’t her husband and was too old to be a boyfriend. Friend? So much more. Lover? Too intimate for present company. Partner might have worked if she weren’t a lawyer. “Gideon stopped them.”
The cop narrowed his eyes at me again. “By yourself, with a baton.”
“Yes.”
“These men threatened violence and advanced on us.” Phoenix’s professional voice had begun to find its footing. “Mr. Rimes responded quickly, to protect himself and me. We will be pressing charges.”
Tattoo looked at Phoenix, lip curling into a sneer. “Your word against ours, bitch!”
“Only your fingerprints are on the gun, dipshit.” I twisted my upheld hands so he could register I was wearing driving gloves.
“Don’t mean nothing,” he said. “I tussled with you to keep from getting shot.”
Tussled? Who was likelier to be believed? A decorated veteran ex-cop and a lawyer in good standing with the Bar, both persons of color, or three good old boys, one of whom seemed to know Jasper Hellman and might even have done time with him? So far the cops on the scene seemed to be leaning toward our side, but their words wouldn’t be enough to verify what had happened before their arrival. I glanced over my shoulder, in both directions, and across the street for CCTV cameras or camera bubbles that might have recorded the sequence of events.