Private Eye Four-Pack, page 61
I looked at the dogs and Vance. They were very quiet. It wasn’t easy to stand close to them. Certainly was a good thing drugs didn’t hurt anybody but the people who used them.
Chick came back with a man who wasn’t Simmons. Wasn’t Spider-Man, either. It was Special Agent Morrison of the FBI. He was wearing a dark jumpsuit, a black baseball cap with the letters FBI in gold, and a pair of referee shoes, mud caked on them. He looked at the dogs and the dead man. His eyes were large.
“Damn,” he said. “I owe you.”
“You need to take a remedial sneaking up course,” Chick said. “They’ve been watching you ever since you entered the property.”
“I followed Candless here.”
I nodded.
“I think he’s compromised.”
“No shit?” said Chick.
“What are you two doing here?”
“No more talk,” I said. I checked the 9-millimeter, slid the action back. Cocked and loaded. “You going in with us, Morrison?”
“We are investigating this affair. There are procedures that—”
“Procedures!” I said, between clenched teeth. It hissed from me like steam. I leaned into his face. “Your adherence to procedure cost Tempestt her life.”
“You got nothing on Roberts,” said Chick. “The woman agent was your only hope. He’s outsmarted you at every turn and your buddy from the DEA’s been helping him stay out front. If Roberts walks, the sheriff and your agent die for nothing. And I’ve had about enough of that. Worse, if he’s alive at the end of the day, he’ll kill Wyatt. Or have it done. Someday. For sure. And,” he paused, his eyes boring in on Morrison, “that ain’t happening. I won’t let it. You gonna let them get away with killing her?”
Morrison’s eyes looked into mine, then back at Chick. Something was going on inside the G-man’s head. Something nearly audible as he wrestled with it before it clicked into place.
“No,” he said. “I’m not.”
I put on Vance’s hat and coat. The coat was bloodstained. I reslung the shotgun over the coat. Picked up his radio and keyed the mike. “House,” I said, then clicked the mike on and off as if there were interference on the line. “…got one of…” Hit the key. “…two ran into woods north…”
“You’re breaking up, Vance,” came the answer. “You say there were others?”
“Right, they…into the woods…dogs after them. Send…after them to make sure.” I didn’t speak directly into the microphone. “I’d go but…got a prisoner.”
“You think it was that football player and the other guy?” Chick mouthed the words “the other guy,” soundlessly.
“Could be. I’m out.”
I tossed the radio on the ground. “I’ll take the guy on the balcony,” I said. Chick discarded his shotgun.
“Okay,” Chick said. “I’ll come in from the back side and penetrate…ah…get inside the house.” He left. Disappeared, actually.
“What about me?” Morrison asked.
“You’re my prisoner. When we get close we either get the guard to let us in or we drop him. His choice.” I pulled the collar up on the coat to conceal the shotgun and pulled the hat down over my eyes. Morrison walked in front of me. I followed behind with Vance’s rifle pointed at him. Morrison walked with his hands on the back of his head, his .38 revolver shoved down in the collar of his coveralls where he could reach it easily. I marched him up to the house, keeping to the shadows whenever possible.
Two guys carrying shotguns came out of the house. They didn’t look at us, just headed for the north woods. They hadn’t gone twenty-five yards from the house when I heard the .22 spit. Two shots and both men fell without making a sound. Never saw Chick.
“Your buddy is scary,” Morrison said.
When we reached the house, the rifleman on the balcony was gone. Probably back in the house. We were greeted at the door by a smallish man with a shotgun lying across a white-encased arm—my old buddy Luke. Mr. Shit Happens. He was relaxed, not expecting anyone but Vance.
“Hey, Vance,” he said. “Let’s see what you got there.” He took a step forward. “Mr. Roberts sent Breck and Skeeter out to check—” He stopped. “Hey, you’re—”
He tried to level the scattergun, but the cast slowed him. Besides, Morrison already had the .38 pointed at him. Not bad.
“FBI!” said Morrison. “Put the gun down or I will shoot you.”
“And if he doesn’t, I will,” I said. “There’s already three of you down. Put the piece down, nice and easy. Not a sound.” He complied. Maybe I should go into sales. “Now, turn around, with your good hand in your back pocket. If I see your hand at any time, you’re dead.” I put Vance’s rifle down, reached back, grabbed my sawed-off shotgun, and shrugged out of the blood-stained coat.
“Now, open the door with one hand,” I said. As he did so I brought the stock of the shotgun down across the back of his skull. He dropped. I eased him to the ground with my free hand and Morrison cuffed him with a pair of plastic throwaway cuffs. I took a handkerchief from my pocket, balled it up, and stuck it in his mouth, securing it with a length of nylon cord. I made sure he was breathing okay.
“Ready?” I whispered, heart pounding. Morrison nodded and we stepped inside. The door opened into a huge, cathedral-peaked living room. No one there. A staircase in the foyer led to the second level. On the far side of the living room was a large entryway leading to a drawing room or den. Guns ready, we walked in the direction of the opening. Morrison watched my back.
We were about a third of the way through the living room when a big guy wearing a shoulder holster over an expensive shirt walked in. He had coal-black hair and eyes and a thick neck. He wasn’t expecting company. He saw the shotgun in my hand and quickly tugged at his gun, crouching and moving left as he did. I tripped the trigger on the Savage/Stevens double and he was slammed backward against the wall, like a quarterback jolted by an inside linebacker. I heard the loud report of Morrison’s .38 and was moving for cover when I heard the dull thud of a body tumbling down the staircase. I crouched behind a heavy davenport.
Morrison moved under the staircase and trained his gun on the opening. I broke the shotgun open and inserted another shell. I unholstered the 9-millimeter and put it in my right hand. Held the shotgun in my left. The smell of cordite was thick.
The living room was masculine, burled wood and thick carpet. There was a ship’s clock on the mantel of the stone fireplace, and there was a leather-padded wet bar. The house was still. A clock somewhere deep within the house chimed six times. The bell tolls for thee, Willie Boy, I thought.
I waited. The hunter’s advantage. I watched the entryway. Chick was probably somewhere in the house by this time. I didn’t doubt his ability to break in, somehow. Where was Roberts? And Cugat? And Candless? The guy I killed looked like mob. One of the K.C. shooters. He had come to kill me, and now I had done so for him. How many had the guy killed? Never again. I had killed a man now. The first in nearly two decades. But not the one I had come for.
Tempestt was dead. The sheriff was dead. There was blood on the walls and on the coat I had been wearing. I was calm. Strange to be calm. Strange to be in a foreign house with the stink of cordite in the air, a defiled relic shotgun in one hand, having killed two dogs and a man in less than a week. Blood on the walls.
I waited.
The stillness pressed down on me.
“Storme,” yelled a voice from the next room. The voice belonged to Roberts. I said nothing. “I know it’s you out there, Storme. Come along in here, boy.” I raised the pistol and gripped the shotgun tighter. “Got somebody in here wants to see you.” I looked at Morrison. He moved closer to the opening.
“You got that piece of paper we talked about, Storme? Y’all a lot more resourceful than I give you credit for. Not afraid to stick your hand in the gator’s mouth.” Then he slipped into the Cajun accent. “Dat gator just sit dere, him, with his mouth open and his eyes closed, and you just stick dat fist down his throat.”
My thighs ached from squatting. Morrison was at the corner of the entryway. Anybody coming through that opening would be cut to pieces. Roberts spoke again.
“’Cept this ol’ gator, he got bait in his mouth, him. Just wiggle it where you think you can take him and then he snaps dem ol’ jaws shut, him.” Did he have Chick?
“Got a lil ol’ gal here, wants to say something for you.” There was a muffled sound and a female cry of pain. “Why don’t you come in here, Storme, and say hello to this reporter friend of yours.”
Jill Maxwell. Why didn’t she ever listen?
“You bring that shooter friend of yours in here, too,” said Roberts, confident. “You both welcome. I’m a reasonable man. Businessman. We done business before. I know how you are. How you don’t like to see the little girls hurt. Come on in here, now.”
I thought about my options. Chick either was in place by now or soon would be. So what? My options stunk. If we didn’t go in, Jill died. If we went in, we died.
“Beauchamps, this is Agent Morrison of the FBI. Give yourself up.” Well, great. Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. Just what the situation needed. “Let the girl go and walk into the living room with your hands behind your head.”
Roberts’s laugh boomed from the next room. “You have it wrong, podna. I’m a friend of the federal government. Protected witness. And I got a friend of yours with me.” Then the friendliness left his voice and the bayou accent went with it. “Both of you get in here—now! You have ten seconds, then we start working on the girl. If you want a war I’ll give you one. Time starting now.”
“You’ll kill her anyway,” I said. “First let her go, then we’ll come in.”
“You come in and I’ll let her go,” he answered. “You have my word.”
“What good is the word of a man without an identity? A cop killer and a poisoner of women? The word of a man without honor?”
I heard mumbled voices and then a familiar voice.
“Ollie, Ollie, in free,” said Chick, from the other room. “C’mon in, Stormey. I got ’em covered.” I stood up and walked around the couch. I heard Chick again. “God. Got ’em covered. That’s great. Always wanted to say that.”
THIRTY-SIX
Chick was waiting for us in a large library that doubled as an office. There were wing-backed chairs and low coffee tables. Decanters of bourbon on a large bar with a giant mirror behind it. The room smelled of pipe tobacco. Besides Roberts, who was seated behind an oversized walnut desk with a leather desk pad, and Chick, who was standing behind Roberts, there were three other men in the room. One was Candless. He was standing to one side of Roberts’s desk, his tan face drained of blood. Cugat stood in the middle of the room with Jill Maxwell in front of him. The wrestler’s big paws were on either side of Jill’s throat. Her hair was disheveled and she had swollen lips and a black eye. Her eyes pleaded with me, like those of a frightened fawn caught in the jaws of a wolf. The third man I didn’t know. He had a beef-and-bourbon face, black mustache, black hair, pockmarked skin, and a large diamond pinkie ring. He wore a suit that cost about what I spent a year on clothes. The other K.C. hitter.
The dawn was growing through the large window wall behind the dark man, washing the room with a rose cast, painting faces bloody where it touched them.
Morrison and I walked in with our guns pointed. I kept the Browning trained on Cugat’s ugly bald head, the shotgun pointed at the belt of the K.C. guy. There were a couple of guns on the floor: one at the feet of the guy with the wardrobe and one near Candless. There were probably more we couldn’t see, but their hands were in plain sight. When I thought about Tempestt I wanted an excuse to shoot Cugat in the middle of his smirking face.
Chick had the long-snouted .22 pointed at Roberts’s back, his .357 pointed at nothing in particular in his right hand. Morrison had Candless covered. The renegade DEA man looked surprised and defeated. Roberts was wearing a cream-colored satin robe over silk pajamas. On the desk in front of him was coffee service on a silver-filigreed tray. He had the appearance and demeanor of a man about to drink coffee with his friends.
“Chicory, Storme?” said Roberts, nodding at the silver coffeepot. “I’ve never gotten over my love of its taste, strong and dark. Reminds me of beignets and mornings in New Orleans, the smell of gulf salt in—”
“Shut up, Roberts,” I said. “For two Cheerios box tops and a Captain Marvel decoder ring I’d empty my gun in you and your pet gorilla’s heads.”
Roberts twisted his head, as if perplexed. “You’re mad about something? Why are you taking this personal?”
“You killed Tempestt.”
He laughed. “First you accuse me of killing the sheriff, and now it’s Miss Finestra. You are wrong both times. I did not—”
I ignored him. “Morrison, take the girl and leave. This doesn’t concern you.”
“If it starts happening,” said Chick, “kill the Sicilian first thing. He’s the most dangerous. Cugat doesn’t have a gun, and Candless just thinks he’s tough. I’ll shoot Roberts immediately.”
“You are all under arrest,” said Morrison. “Kidnapping, conspiracy, and—”
“Forget it, Morrison,” said Chick. “They’re not leaving here with you. They know it and you know it. Take the girl and get outta here.”
Cugat tightened his grip on Jill’s neck. Her body stiffened and she raised up on her toes.
I snapped back the hammer on the Browning. “Don’t do that, Cugat,” I said.
“I’ll break her neck,” he said. Cugat was the wild card in the deck. He had the manic, moon-shaped eyes of a hard-core speed and steroid freak.
“You do, and you’ll never hear the referee count three.”
“Seems we have a stalemate, gentlemen,” said Roberts. “I’m willing to forgive and forget, though.”
I kept my concentration divided between Cugat and the wise guy.
“How you figure?” said Chick. “I’m gonna kill you right off, and all your buddies got their backs to me. Ducks in a pond. Storme’s itching to kill something, and me, I do it for the sport of it. After me, you’re the most dangerous man in the room and you’re already dead. Storme’d rather die than watch you hurt the girl, and that’s straight up. This time,” he said, his eyes glinting with the pain behind them, “this time, nobody hurts the girl. That’s the way it is.” I felt my teeth grinding.
Chick continued.
“Storme’s willing to die for the lady, Morrison’s willing to die for his oath, and I’m willing to die for the hell of it. Who’s willing to die for you, Willie? Cugat? Maybe. Candless? Never. And what about you, pasta-breath? You ready to die for Roberts?”
The hood said nothing, just stared at Chick, dully, with hooded eyes. But I think he objected, on an intellectual level, to pasta-breath.
“What’s it gonna be, Antonio?” asked Chick. “You want to walk out of here straight up, or die for Roberts? You call it.”
“My partner,” he said, in a monotone, his black eyes flat, unemotional. “Dead.”
“Not your fault. Roberts forgot to tell you about another copy of the formula he wants to sell to your people. He didn’t cover you. Roberts’s fault, not yours. Bad business decision to die if you don’t have to. Capisce?”
He nodded.
“Then leave the gun on the floor and walk out. The one in your boot, too. We got no argument with you.”
The dark man reached down, rolled up a pant leg, and removed the small, flat automatic from the ankle holster and laid it on the floor next to the other one. “What about the fed?” he asked.
“Let him go, Morrison,” Chick said. “Just keep an eye on him until he’s off the property. Don’t arrest him, okay?”
Morrison nodded. “He can go.”
“Get the girl and go, Morrison,” I said. Morrison took a step in her direction.
“Don’t let her loose, Cugie,” said Roberts. Cugat’s grip tightened again and Jill squealed. Morrison stopped. Cugat glowered at me.
“Better let her go, Roberts,” said Chick. “Honest to God, you better.”
“I think not,” Roberts said, a smug smile on his face. “I think I will test your—” Chick’s target pistol sneezed and Roberts’s right shoulder shivered.
“Damn,” Chick said. “Never know when this thing’s gonna go off.” He prodded Roberts in the back of the head with the gun. “Need another one?”
“Let her go, Cugie,” Roberts said, his head down.
“No,” said Cugat.
“Dammit!” said Roberts, breathing heavily. “I said let her go!”
Cugat’s face twisted into a mask of hate. He shoved Jill at me. When he did, the Sicilian bent over to pick up his gun. I tripped both barrels of the 12-gauge, cutting him in two. The slap of buckshot against flesh was heavy, obscene. The glass wall behind him shattered with a loud crash. Chick shot Cugat with the .22, but it didn’t stop him. Later, I realized Chick couldn’t use the .357 because the big gun’s bullets could go all the way through Cugat and hit Jill or me.
Candless ripped at his jacket to free his gun. Morrison hollered at him to hold it, but Candless drew the gun and snapped off a hurried shot that caught Morrison in the hip just as the FBI man shot him high in the chest.
I dropped the shotgun, grabbed Jill by the front of her blouse, threw her behind me, and tried to get the Browning up to shoot Cugat, but it was too late. With a yell of rage and hatred, the huge wrestler backhanded me. The world tumbled around me and I fell over a straight-backed chair. I felt Cugat’s weight on my chest and his hands reaching for my throat. I dug my chin into my chest to keep him from strangling me or snapping my neck. Instead, he lifted me from the floor by the front of my fatigue sweater and threw me against the glass door, which had not been touched by shotgun pellets. My head cracked against the unforgiving glass and I fell to the floor. I tried to clear my head, remembering to hold on to the gun. A reflex. If you’re going to get hit anyway, don’t let go of the ball.
