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    The Beauty Kill
    The Beauty Kill
    The Beauty Kill
    Ebook244 pages5 hours

    The Beauty Kill

    By Marc Olden

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    About this ebook

    On the verge of death from two gunshot wounds, Bolt vows revenge

    They call him Black Beauty, because he is the most gorgeous thief the drug world has ever seen. Where some are content to make a living ripping off dime-bag hustlers, Black Beauty steals from big-time dealers, taking profits from international cartels to keep himself rich, well-dressed, and smiling. His latest score netted him $850,000, along with the twenty-two kilos of cocaine the money was intended to buy. To get it he killed four men, and left one narcotics agent to bleed to death in a parking lot. Before long, Black Beauty will wish he finished the job. 

    John Bolt is too tough to let a pretty boy kill him. As soon as he’s strong enough to lift a .45, he’s coming after Black Beauty—even if he has to take vengeance from a wheelchair.  

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMysteriousPress.com Open Road
    Release dateJun 26, 2012
    ISBN9781453260746
    The Beauty Kill
    Author

    Marc Olden

    Marc Olden (1933–2003) was the author of forty mystery and suspense novels. Born in Baltimore, he began writing while working in New York as a Broadway publicist. His first book, Angela Davis (1973), was a nonfiction study of the controversial Black Panther. In 1973 he also published Narc, under the name Robert Hawke, beginning a hard-boiled nine-book series about a federal narcotics agent. A year later, Black Samurai introduced Robert Sand, a martial arts expert who becomes the first non-Japanese student of a samurai master. Based on Olden’s own interest in martial arts, which led him to the advanced ranks of karate and aikido, the novel spawned a successful eight-book series. Olden continued writing for the next three decades, often drawing on his fascination with Japanese culture and history. 

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      Book preview

      The Beauty Kill - Marc Olden

      The Beauty Kill

      Narc #6

      Marc Olden

      A MysteriousPress.com

      Open Road Integrated Media

      Ebook

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Preview: Corsican Death

      Copyright page

      CHAPTER 1

      THE BREATH WENT OUT of him, and he bent over, mouth opened to suck in air. Oh God! He felt as though he’d been hit in the side with a baseball bat.

      Then pain raced through his body, reaching every part of him with impossible speed. The bullet had ripped into his left side, and now he was spinning around as if to dodge the pain.

      Too late.

      His back was to the gunman when a second bullet tore across the back of his head, a scalding agony that made him open his mouth to cry out. But he had no way of knowing he didn’t make a sound.

      Hot pain exploded throughout his brain and body. Lasting the smallest fraction of a second; then John Bolt, federal narcotics agent, fell forward on his face, not feeling anything.

      Charles Kingsley wanted his $850,000 back. How he got it back didn’t matter.

      You don’t let yourself become angry in front of niggers, he thought. You let them see you calm, in control. So he breathed deeply, relaxing himself. As his highly polished limousine rolled quietly along a New Jersey highway, Kingsley’s lips hardly moved when he spoke into the car telephone.

      One week. You settle it in one week.

      Settle it. Get the $850,000 back and kill the man who took it.

      In a Newark bus terminal, a stocky black man named Calvin Otis stood in a public-telephone booth, eyes on a short fat Italian skillfully spinning flat pizza dough in the air, then catching it on two hairy fists white with flour.

      Otis’ eyes were on the pizza man, but he saw nothing. His attention was glued to the voice coming at him through the telephone. The black man wasn’t afraid, not yet. But fear would come, he knew it. It would come soon.

      At the moment, he was sweating in July heat, dark wet circles under the armpits of a short-sleeved white shirt. He was nervous because he was the one who had brought the white man the bad news.

      The black man said, We—

      Kingsley interrupted him. "We? Calvin, let’s get one thing straight. We did not lose eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars last night. You did. You, Calvin, not me. I advanced you the money, remember? And last night somebody took it from you. From where I sit, that’s not we, that’s you."

      Damn, he thought. They’re like children sometimes. Calvin’s a good nigger, but he’s got to learn the facts of life. Kingsley’s voice was as hard as the huge purple rock walls moving past him on either side of the limousine.

      We’ve done business together in the past Calvin, and you’ve been extremely reliable. That’s why I’m giving you a week to clear up this thing. Anyone else …

      His voice faded away, but his meaning was clear. Anyone else who had been given the money, then come to the white man and told him the $850,000 had been ripped off, would have been killed within twenty-four hours.

      Letting out a long breath of air, Calvin shook his head from side to side. A fucking bitch. This whole thing is a stone fucking bitch. I borrow $850,000 from Kingsley to make a cocaine buy. Twenty-two kilos of pure cocaine.

      And a brother rips me off. Kills two of my men as well as two narcotics agents, then he grabs the $850,000. No coke, no bread. And I still owe whitey, owe him big.

      Be cool, Calvin told himself. Be cool. Don’t let the dude think you ain’t got it together. Thanks for the time, Mr. K. Just wanted you to know what really went down last night. You know me, I be dealin’ straight with you.

      I know, Calvin, I know. Kingsley smiled. Treat a man right, and he’ll do what he’s supposed to do.

      In the dope world, the sixty-two-year-old, slim, white-haired Charles Kingsley was called King Charles. King Charles the financier, a man who had never used or touched dope in his entire life.

      King Charles specialized in money. He backed illicit narcotics deals, furnishing money that dealers needed to buy heroin, cocaine, barbiturates, amphetamines. Big deals only. And only dealers who checked out with him.

      Last night, $850,000 lent to Calvin Otis, a black dealer working out of Harlem, had been ripped off in a Washington, D.C., parking lot. Otis was to buy cocaine coming in on a plane from Chile. Pure coke. Uncut. Twenty-two kilos’ worth.

      Nearly fifty pounds. Hit it, wack it, mix it with talcum powder, powdered milk, or a grain laxative, then put it out on the street. Street value: close to ten million dollars.

      A good investment for Calvin Otis, known in the drug world as Blue Star. He’d gotten that name because around each five- and ten-dollar bag of heroin he sold was a strip of light blue tape containing a dark blue star. His tradeMarc.

      For Blue Star, it had all gone wrong last night. Someone had known about the two men he’d sent down to Washington on a night flight, carrying a tan attaché case filled with the $850,000 borrowed from Kingsley. Someone had known.

      And that someone had been waiting in the parking lot. Losing two men wasn’t important. Losing the money was. Calvin also didn’t give a shit about the two federal agents who’d gotten blown away or the other agent who’d gotten shot and was lying in a hospital somewhere trying not to die. Fuck them people.

      The money. That’s all that mattered. Because unless Calvin got that bread back, King Charles was going to put out a contract on his black ass.

      Sure, Calvin was tough, and he was on the way up in the drug world. He had people working for him, hard men who jumped when he said jump. Yeah, one day he’d be big enough to stand up to whitey. One day.

      But not now. Not right now. Now he was trying hard to get established, to move from heroin into big-time cocaine dealing. Get the supply, then move in on somebody else’s territory.

      Without the shit, without the drugs, it didn’t pay to blow some dude away. Kill him, and what do you have? Nothing. You need something to sell, and Calvin had gone into debt for bread needed to make his big move into coke.

      But it had gone wrong. Somebody had known about the payoff and had been waiting down there in D.C. There had been a whole lot of banging out going on last night, and when the gunfire had died down, four men had been killed and another shot up.

      And $850,000 of King Charles’s money was missing. So was twenty-two keys of coke, but let the spics worry about the shipment, thought Calvin. They’d brought it in, and it was in their hands when the dudes pulled that takeoff. No, the coke wasn’t his problem.

      But the $850,000 sure was. Man, it sure was.

      Calvin said, I think I got a line on who did it. Ain’t sure, but my people are out lookin’ right now.

      Shit, he thought, they’d better move ass finding them ripoff bastards. I go down, somebody else gonna go down, too. Find that sucker, find that chump who took me off for $850,000. ’Cause King Charles don’t play shit. He’s had people blown away, and nobody’s tied anything to him. He’s rich and he’s got power.

      Kingsley said, Sounds like it might be Black Beauty’s kind of thing. What do you think?

      Why not be helpful, he thought. Calvin understands the rules. No sense in mentioning it again. He pays me back or he’s got the kind of trouble that ends all trouble forever.

      Calvin nodded, grateful he and King Charles agreed on something. Rubbing sweat from the back of his thick, dark brown neck, he said, Yeah, that’s the dude we got in mind. He ain’t done much on the East Coast in a while, but he gets around. That chump just the man to do somethin’ like this.

      Black Beauty ain’t exactly no chump, he thought. He’s nobody to mess with. There are dead people who could tell you that if they could get the dirt out of their mouths and the gravestones off their faces.

      Black Beauty. A lean, tall black man named B. B. Saxon, called Black Beauty because he was one of the handsomest men anyone had ever seen. Women called him beautiful and smiled when they said it.

      In the world of illicit narcotics, he too was a specialist His specialty was ripoffs on the highest scale. For him there was no hiding in urine-smelling hallways with a switchblade, waiting to take off a shivering junkie who’d just scored a nickel bag. Not for Black Beauty.

      For the superbly dressed, cunning, charming black gunman with the silver-and-nickel-plated .38, there was only the best. His targets were big money, big dope shipments, and he always had inside information. No one knew exactly how he got it, but he got it.

      When he attacked, he knew precisely what to go after, and where and when.

      Sometimes Black Beauty worked on assignment. Dealers would tip him about rivals, sharing in what he took at gunpoint. On other occasions he worked for himself. But always he knew in advance what he was going after.

      He worked with other gunmen, white and black. But he was the boss.

      The drug world was filled with stories about him, about the many clothes he owned, the many women he had, the many men he’d killed. He was half-legend, but very much alive and very dangerous.

      Much of his time was spent in New York. But ripoffs took him to major cities where drugs were shipped and sold. Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Miami, Cleveland.

      Black Beauty got around. And whenever he was around, somebody lost money or drugs. Or their lives.

      Charles Kingsley put his hand over the telephone mouthpiece and said to his chauffeur, Turn around, Alfred. Start heading back.

      Alfred, eyes behind mirrored sunglasses, nodded once in understanding. He was chauffeur and bodyguard to Kingsley.

      As far as King Charles was concerned, the conversation was just about over. He’d come out in the car because, like everyone in the drug world, he drifted between caution and paranoia. With two dead narcotics agents down in D.C., he wasn’t going to chance a meeting with Calvin. Nor did he want a telephone conversation over a wire he felt might be tapped

      Let the nigger come to Jersey. We’ll talk that way.

      He said, Yes, I think you’re wise to consider Mr. Saxon as a strong possibility. You might also look to your own organization for leaks. If our friend B.B. is involved, his way is usually to find somebody on the inside who’ll talk or who’ll be, shall we say, careless?

      Fuck you, thought Calvin. The thought that someone in his own organization had betrayed him pissed him off, and he felt like telling this skinny white fart to eat shit. Blue Star’s pride was hurt, and he didn’t like the idea that he was a poor judge of men.

      But he forced himself to say nothing about Kingsley’s reMarc. King Charles had given him a week to get the money. O.K., O.K. Thing to do now is stop bullshitting and get the hell out of this hot telephone booth and get back to New York.

      Got to find that sucker and waste his ass. ’Cause if I don’t …

      Calvin let the thought ease out of his mind. He wasn’t going to think about getting killed. He wasn’t. That’s all there was to it. He didn’t have that kind of bread, and nobody was going to lend it to him, because a lot of people would be happy to see his ass go under.

      Calvin had made enemies. In the drug world, everybody did. And if he were out of the way, somebody else could take over his piece of the narcotics business. No, he was going to have to be meaner than usual to find the dude who’d taken the money.

      And when he did, the cat was dead. Fucking dead, Jack.

      A bus pulled away from the terminal, black kids hanging out of the open windows waving at anybody and nobody. For brief seconds he envied them. They had no worries, no problems.

      Then the envy passed. And once more he was a tough man anxious to stay alive in a tough world.

      Keep in touch, Calvin.

      Sure thing, Mr. K. Yeah, whitey, I be in touch with you. You got my life in your hands, ain’t you?

      They could have been two friends being polite to each other instead of two men bound by an agreement involving the possible violent death of one of them.

      On the drive back to New York, Calvin sat alone in the back seat of a dark blue Ford, ignoring the two silent black men up front. Man, I got to beat this thing, he thought, I got to. There just ain’t no If-I-don’t. I got to.

      For a few seconds he dreamt of a day in the future when he would have the kind of deadly power King Charles held over him. One day, sucker, one day. Then I have your white ass, and everyone else’s like it. You best believe it, chump.

      But fear is stronger than fantasy. And in the damp heat inside the small car, Blue Star, Calvin Otis, felt the fear of dying fall quickly down on him.

      Sweat poured from his stocky, dark brown body. But the July heat was only one reason he was perspiring.

      CHAPTER 2

      JOHN BOLT CLOSED HIS eyes, grinding his teeth together. He sat on the edge of the bed, both hands digging hard into the mattress, and let the pain stab his brain in the darkness. It was as if he didn’t want to see what was being done to him. Shit, he thought. It still hurts even if you can’t see it.

      At least he’d gotten dressed before the pain had come on strong. Shirt, pants, shoes. No belt or socks.

      Let me rest a minute, just a minute. Then I’m getting out of this smelly place with its bony nurses who keep saying we all the time. We, my ass, thought the narc. How are we feeling today? Did we eat today? Did we have our bed changed yet?

      We. We didn’t get shot three days ago. It was me, not we. Me.

      Opening his eyes, he breathed out and stared down at the green tiled floor. Me. Me and Morse. Me and Carson. We all got shot, but they died and I’m still alive.

      His unseeing eyes didn’t blink as he looked at the shiny tile floor and thought of the two dead agents killed in the airport parking lot seventy-two hours ago. Fucking blown away because somebody wanted $850,000. Two good agents.

      And Bolt himself was left for dead. Lying face-down on black asphalt, bleeding from two bullet wounds, and not knowing then that he was the lucky one. Damn, he thought. What a crazy, fucking world when a man bleeding from two bullet wounds is considered lucky.

      But the weird truth of it all is that he was lucky. Because he was still alive.

      Even the doctor had told him that. You’re lucky you got skinned in the side, Mr. Bolt. Because that shot turned you around and prevented the second bullet from going into your mouth. As it is, you were heading towards the ground with your back toward the gunman. His second shot grazed your neck and the base of your skull. You’re a lucky man, Mr. Bolt.

      The doctor—salt-and-pepper hair, rimless glasses, and a smiling square face—had given Bolt the news of his luck as if he were telling him, you have just inherited fifty million tax-free dollars.

      At first the narc had been pissed. The doctor hadn’t been shot, so why was he so goddamn cheerful about somebody else’s bullet wounds? But Bolt calmed down. That’s when he knew the smiling square-faced doctor was right. He had been lucky.

      Well, right now he wanted out. Three days was enough. There weren’t any holes in him. The first bullet had skinned his side, peeling off flesh and scaring the shit out of him. It had knocked the wind out of him and folded him up with a lot of pain. But no holes.

      The second bullet had grazed the back of his head and neck, and he still had headaches from that one. Worse than ten years’ worth of hangovers. But the head was still in place, and that’s what counted.

      Now it was time to go. Time to get busy and find out who had blown away two agents plus two couriers working for Blue Star, then walked off with $850,000 and twenty-two keys of pure coke.

      Yeah, who the hell was that enterprising dude? He’d done his best to put Bolt in a dirt hole, something the narc wasn’t ever going to forget. That wise-ass smiling doctor had said something else, too.

      Don’t feel guilty about being alive, Mr. Bolt. Don’t.

      The narc had also gotten angry at that, because he knew the pompous old fool was right. Every man who’d been in a gunfight where somebody else got killed always had mixed feelings. You felt sorry somebody you knew died, and at the same time you felt glad you were alive.

      You felt glad that somebody had died in your place. Because the will to live was stronger than anything else on God’s earth. The result

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