The Midnight Caller (Jack Widow Book 6) Read online

  At this moment, he couldn’t remember any of them. Not one face. He couldn’t remember the official title of New York and, for a split second, he couldn’t even remember why this guy was punching him in the face.

  Widow took the second punch to his right cheek, not as strongly as he had the first one. Which he had taken straight on to his chin. That was the blow that rocked him.

  The jaw and the chin are weak areas of the body. Get punched in the jaw hard enough and you will go out. Every man has this weakness. It’s only a matter of pressure and resistance, but get hit hard enough and it’s lights out.

  If being punched in the jaw could be measured on a number scale of one to ten, Widow guessed his number might’ve been a weak eight. But this guy’s punches made him believe that he had met a guy who could throw a punch that was a ten.

  The only reason that the guy had hit him in the chin was because at the last second, Widow managed to move his face upward to avoid getting hit in the nose. He didn’t want to get it broken.

  Now he was thinking it might’ve been better than taking one of Map Face’s monster fist punches on the chin.

  Map Face had gotten him on the cheek next. A second blow that Widow hadn’t agreed to.

  FIVE MINUTES EARLIER, Jack Widow had turned a corner in high spirits until he walked straight into this mess.

  He turned the corner of Carbon and Seventy-First Street. It was nighttime. Late. But the city always had enough light that he could still hear baby birds chirping in one of the growing trees planted near the sidewalk.

  The leaves were still hanging on in the beautiful fall weather, but they had turned yellow about a week ago. Soon they would turn brown. This was one of the reasons that he had chosen to come to New York in the first place.

  What better place to spend his birthday?

  He walked around the corner, when he came across a man and a woman standing outside a closing Irish pub, which was abnormal on its own because Irish pubs didn’t normally close before sunup and that was far away.

  He had noticed it because he was immediately sucked into the argument in front of him.

  The woman was decked out in a leather half jacket, the kind of garment that barely stretched down to the small of her back. She had big brown hair, not in the eighties big perm kind of way, but not far off either.

  She might’ve been about twenty-one years old. Although, eighteen wouldn’t have surprised him.

  She was tall, too. Much taller than the man that she was fighting with. She looked to have an entire foot on him. To his credit, she was in large heels.

  She wore a tight skirt, not quite a mini, but Widow figured it wasn’t far off either. She held one of those small, shiny purses that was meant only for a cell phone, cash money, credit cards, and keys, and nothing else.

  Her top was a sequined, silver thing. It showed her midriff was the kind that was more out of starvation over exercise. The girl’s stomach wasn’t the only thing on display. Her cleavage was out and she wasn’t shy about it.

  The man had been wearing a three-piece suit, blue and wrinkle free and dry-cleaned so crisp it looked right out of a flat press.

  He wore more rings than he had fingers, which wasn’t metaphorical. The guy was missing his pinkie finger on his right hand.

  The rings were the size of Super Bowl rings, but were more than likely bought from a class ring manufacturer because this guy would’ve never played in any sport. Ever.

  From the looks of him, Widow would’ve thought he was too small to make it on a JV team in any sport.

  The jewelry didn’t stop at the rings. The guy had two gaudy necklaces on. They were gold, probably plated, and thick. Nothing hung from them. He wasn’t as blatant as one of those pimps from the seventies. He didn’t have his name hanging from the end of one of the chains. Or anything like that.

  Widow heard the guy screaming at the woman. All kinds of expletives and obscenities and invectives. Nothing that he hadn’t heard before. And nothing that he had ever stood for before, not when directed at a woman. Even if she wasn’t dressed in the most innocent way. Not that he didn’t approve of how she was dressed. As a man, he certainly liked it. More importantly, as a citizen of the twenty-first century and America, he believed in live and let live. If she wanted to wear a wet trash bag and nothing else, it was none of his business. Naturally, her choice in clothes didn’t warrant the kind of treatment that she was getting.

  On the other hand, this was New York City and people were mean to each other in all kinds of horrible ways on the streets and in public.

  Widow couldn’t stop and reprimand them all. It wasn’t his place. He wasn’t the manner police.

  After turning the corner, his natural instinct was to assess and move on. No need to make a big deal out of it, as long as the guy wasn’t physically abusing the woman or as long as she didn’t request help. Then it was none of his business.

  She makes her own choices.

  Widow kept on walking in the direction that he had planned to walk, which was toward them and past them.

  The girl had been standing with her back and left side to him, nearly a profile view.

  Her face had pointed toward the man’s.

  The moment that changed Widow’s assessment from one of live and let live was when the woman’s profile changed and she looked in his direction.

  So far, she hadn’t said a word back to the gangster-looking wannabe. Instead, she had just taken the verbal abuse, like it was expected of her.

  That changed when she heard or felt Widow’s presence. She turned and looked right at him.

  Her face was a mess of tears, muddy running mascara and bandages and swelling. She had white medical bandages on her nose. Her eyes were puffy like she had been punched in both eyes. Her cheeks were so veiny that they looked like blue and red and yellow electrical wires running underneath her skin.

  There was so much redness in her eyes that Widow wasn’t sure if they were red from her crying for a week or if it was blood.

  Something told him it was the latter.

  Jack Widow had always had a laissez-faire attitude, but there was a limit to that. His attitude had a second phase.

  His first phase was to live and let live. His second phase was do unto others.

  The woman had a face that was virtually broken. Obviously, this current situation had only been a follow-up to a worse situation that had required her to go to the emergency room for a broken nose and swollen cheeks and probably two bruised eyeballs.

  Widow saw this. Assessed the situation. And immediately cranked into his second phase, do unto others.

  The short guy had done something to another. And now it was time for Widow to do back unto him.

  The gangster wannabe turned and looked at him and stared.

  Widow was a tall man and a dangerous-looking one at that. He hadn’t known low self-esteem since he was in junior high and back then it was only when it came to women. He had never known self-doubt when it came to fighting. Not anyone. Not anywhere. Not at any age.

  But this guy’s self-esteem must’ve been incredible because he looked up at Widow’s face, which must have been ten plus inches higher than his own.

  And he asked, “What the hell you gawking at?”

  Widow could’ve said something witty in return. He could have. But he didn’t.

  Instead, he stepped right up to the guy and with his left hand grabbed the dangling, gold chains. He racked them down with enough pressure to hold the guy still and then he threw a right jab. Hard and fast.

  The bones in the guy’s face including his nose and probably his cheeks CRACKED!

  The gangster wannabe let out a cry that was louder than most dying animals.

  Widow held onto the gold chains around the guy’s neck, tight. He reared his right hand back, slow this time. He wanted the guy to see it coming.

  After a calculation of power, because he didn’t want to kill the guy or knock him out, Widow started to throw the second blow to
the guy’s face. He had not really made a plan. There had been no time for that. In that moment, he figured why not make the guy’s face look like the girl’s?

  Eye for an eye was basically the same as do unto others.

  Before Widow could execute a second horrific blow, the woman screamed, “What the hell are you doing?”

  She latched onto his bicep, nearly hanging off it. She had moved so fast that she came out of her shoes.

  “Let him go! Let him go!” she begged and pleaded.

  Widow let the guy go.

  He dropped like a tossed cinder block at a construction site, only he didn’t crack open when he hit the sidewalk. That was only because he hadn’t been tossed hard enough.

  The gangster wannabe said something, inaudible because his nose was broken and his cheeks were shattered.

  He grabbed at his nose with both hands. Blood seeped out between his fingers and ran over his pale white knuckles.

  The woman said, “What the hell are you doing? Why? Why?”

  Widow looked at her, confused. It seemed pretty obvious why. This guy was beating on her. Treating her like a dog.

  He said, “What do you mean?”

  “Why are you attacking us?” she shouted at him.

  Attacking them?

  “I don’t like men who beat women.”

  “He wasn’t beating me. We were arguing!”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t beat me!”

  “Not this time. But what about in the last twenty-four hours.”

  She looked up at Widow, as she knelt, rocking the gangster wannabe. He was starting to cry like a baby.

  “What the hell are you talking about, asshole?”

  Widow looked at her. He was so confused. Was she this blind? Did she have Stockholm syndrome or something?

  He had heard of abused women like this before. They defended the men who beat them. Some of them even let them do it. But he had never seen a woman who pretended that it wasn’t happening, not when there was barefaced physical evidence.

  Not like this.

  She said, “Well?”

  “Your face. Look at your face. You look like he’s been beating you with a bat.”

  The girl stood up, walked right up to Widow.

  She said, “These bandages aren’t from being beaten! This is from plastic surgery! I’m a model! I had a nose job! And collagen injections!”

  Widow looked at her, dumbfounded.

  He had made a big mistake and it was only going to get worse.

  Right at that moment, a group of men walked out of the Irish pub. The door shut behind them like it had been attached to a squeaky, metal door spring.

  The four men who walked out were all big guys. They were dressed almost comically the same. Scruffy, threadbare casual suits. No ties among them. Some had vests. Some had dress shirts and slacks with suspenders.

  Then the biggest guy stepped forward. He had been in the back, like he was the anchor, which Widow figured he had been.

  He was the guy with the map for a face.

  The woman said, “You just beat up Vinnie the Irish! Big mistake!”

  Widow didn’t know Vinnie. He had never heard of him. And Widow hadn’t been the smartest man to ever live, but he did have better than average common sense.

  He knew that this was New York City. He knew that he had been strolling through the only upper-class Irish neighborhood. And they were standing in front of an Irish pub that closed early on a Saturday night.

  One of the only ways a business like that would close on a Saturday night, early, was if the staff had been given permission to by the owner.

  Widow looked up, past the big guys and stared at the sign.

  It read: Vinnie’s Irish Pub.

  His face geared an expression of worry.

  Turned out that Vinnie wasn’t a gangster wannabe.

  He was a gangster.

  CHAPTER 5

  WIDOW FELT BAD FOR HIS MISTAKE.

  The map-face guy wasn’t the spokesman for Vinnie. That job title turned out to belong to the third-biggest guy. He was also the only one who had all of his teeth, Widow had noticed. And he did have the best facial features as far as being easiest to look at. He wasn’t the ugliest one by far.

  He stepped forward and asked, “Irene, what the hell is going on?”

  “This idiot knocked Vinnie out. He thought he had been hitting me. ‘Cause of the bandages.”

  The spokesman stepped up to Widow and two of the other guys stepped around Widow in a circle. They didn’t get within grabbing distance, which Widow also noticed. He noticed it because it meant that they weren’t amateurs. Like he had assessed them. They had also assessed him. They knew right off the bat that he was no normal guy they might try to rough up.

  Widow had a lean build, but he was hard like a rock. He had long arms and big hands that had more in common with sledgehammers than human fists.

  The four guys all knew to stay out of his reach. Even the map-face guy stayed clear of it.

  They had the number advantage and by the look of them, they had the experience advantage as well. Especially the map-face guy. He was the one who worried Widow.

  He worried him because not only did he look like he was their best fighter, he also looked a little familiar.

  It took Widow a moment, but he was almost positive that he had seen the guy’s face before. It was hard to forget after all. Then it hit him. The map-face guy had been a bit famous. Once the guy had a decent record as an Irish MMA fighter.

  But he had retired from fighting in the ring. Widow wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because Vinnie paid more. Then again maybe it was because he’d nearly killed a guy.

  Whatever the reason, Widow didn’t want to find out.

  The spokesman stepped into Widow’s view and asked, “You got a name?”

  “Don’t you?”

  The spokesman smiled and said, “My name is Geoffrey.”

  He waited and Widow stayed quiet.

  He chuckled and said, “I know. It sounds like the name of an Irish butler. But that’s my name. Real name too.”

  Widow nodded, kept his eyes on Geoffrey, but watched for motions from any of the other guys. If they moved, he moved.

  Geoffrey said, “This is Big John. That’s Little John.”

  He pointed at one of the other guys and then the next one. Widow didn’t turn to look.

  He said, “Guess we know which one is popular with the ladies then, don’t we?”

  Geoffrey smiled and said, “This one is called Laurie. Which is short for Lawrence. Which is short for Lawrence Holyfield. No relation to the famous boxer. Obviously.”

  Widow nodded.

  “But you know why people often make that mistake?”

  Widow said, “No clue.” Although, he did know.

  “It’s not because he’s white. Clearly. It’s because like Holyfield the American boxer, Laurie is a famous boxer. Kickboxer actually.”

  Widow stayed quiet.

  “Do you know what a kickboxer is?”

  “A boxer who kicks?”

  Geoffrey smiled and said, “Yes. That’s it. But ole Laurie here can’t kick for shit!”

  Right then, three of them laughed a big, hearty laugh. All except for Laurie. He looked at Widow with a death stare like he wanted to kill him, which was probably true.

  “Know why it doesn’t matter that he can’t kick?”

  Widow said, “No. Why?”

  “Because he never had to. He’s more into the boxer part. And boy, let me tell ya. He can box.”

  Widow asked, “Why does it feel like I’m going to find out just how well?”

  Geoffrey ignored that. He asked, “Now, what’s your name, mate?”

  “Tyson. Know what he did to Holyfield?”

  Silence.

  And then Geoffrey smiled and said, “Funny.”

  He looked around at the other three and then at Laurie.

  “That’s funny, Mr. Tyson. That’s real fu
nny. I can see that you’ve got some brains. So, I’m just gonna level with ya. This here is Vinnie the Irish. We’re all Irish. Vinnie here is not the boss or the boss’s boss, but he’s kin to the boss’s boss.”

  Widow stayed quiet. Kept his fists down by his sides, but ready to go when action was called.

  “See. Really, he’s a pain in the ass. None of us like him.”

  Irene said, “What’s taking so long? Kill him already!”

  Geoffrey turned in a slow movement like he hated being interrupted and he said, “Shut up, Irene! No one is talking to you!”

  She froze like she was more scared of Geoffrey then she was of any of the others. This told Widow that he had been wrong.

  Geoffrey wasn’t the spokesman. Vinnie wasn’t their boss. They were his babysitters. Which meant that Geoffrey was some sort of top lieutenant since he was the one doing the talking. He was probably charged with the protection of Vinnie.

  “Now, where was I?”

  Widow decided to try a new approach. The silent stranger act that normally worked for him wasn’t going to work here. It was going to lead to him beating up four mobsters. And an ungrateful, crazy woman wasn’t worth having mobsters on his back while he was in New York to enjoy himself.

  He said, “Look, guys. I don’t want no trouble. This is obviously a misunderstanding. I thought there was trouble here. Look at her face. Simple mistake. I am truly sorry for busting up your friend. You’re free to call the police. I’ll stick around. Talk to them. I’ll explain it to them.”

  Widow looked down at Vinnie, who was completely passed out at this point.

  “And when your friend wakes up. I’ll apologize to him. Maybe he’ll want to press charges. I’ll stick around for that. I am in the wrong here.”

  “No pigs!” Irene shouted.

  Geoffrey shot her a look. Another way of telling her to shut up. And she did.

  He said, “Like the girl said, we can’t have the police involved. We’re not those types of guys. We practice more of a street justice philosophy.”