Lucky Town

by Peter Vonder Haar

  I laughed. “Well, I just had to check. Thanks for your help, Dot.”

  “No problem at all.”

  “And give my best to Mr. Dot. There is a Mr. Dot, isn’t there?” Please let there be one, I thought.

  “Not anymore,” she said. “But you never know.”

  “Well, thank you again,” I said as diplomatically as I could and ended the call. I knew private eyes were supposed to use every means at their disposal to solve a case, but I wasn’t prepared to go down that particular road just yet.

  I exited I-45 and turned east on Cavalcade, heading back to my office/house. The drab, cement landscape gradually opened up to trees and decently kept-up houses as I passed the Anderson YMCA. Like many areas near the Loop, this neighborhood was transitioning from working class to something developers refer to as “professional,” which was real estate code for increasingly and punishingly expensive.

  Our office isn’t a teardown by any stretch, but is still “distressed” enough to earn disapproving looks from the new transplants in yoga pants doing their morning power walk or looking for a poorly maintained yard in which to let their Corgis take a shit. If I was home and feeling particularly saucy, I liked to wave at them from the porch, holding a Pabst tallboy and rocking my Korn tank top.

  Oh, like your teenage musical tastes were any better.

  Anyway, I have nothing against property taxes, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to make it easy on the bastards.

  The steps creaked under my feet as I walked up to the front door (distressed indeed) and entered. The front door was unlocked, which at this point was more annoying than alarming. I wasn’t taking the call from “Boris” all that seriously, but the Neanderthal DNA in me (1.2%, according to one of those spit-in-a-tube tests) doesn’t like thinking about Charlie sitting in an unlocked house. I resolved to give her a stern talking-to as soon as I’d fortified myself with —

  I tripped over an umbrella lying across the foyer and saw the entire stand, in the shape of a tasteful reconstruction of an elephant’s foot, was overturned. I let go of the door and stepped over the stand’s contents, taking in my surroundings.

  Nothing else in the entrance area appeared out of place. Old mail and magazines eventually destined for the recycling bin on the front table, while the picture of Charlie and me in front of the short hallway wall were undisturbed. That didn’t keep the hairs on my neck from rising as I peered farther down into the kitchen at what looked like a foot, attached to a leg, presumably attached to a torso lying just out of sight.

  I rarely carry a gun. I know: Isn’t this Texas? Aren’t there people with sidearms walking around day care centers? Well, yes and no. The Lone Star State does have some of the most ludicrously permissive gun laws in the Union, and it’s jarring but not unusual to see someone in the checkout line at Kroger open-carrying, just in case the Cubans decide to parachute in while they’re buying dog food, I guess.

  But even though I carried a service weapon on the job and have a CHL for a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson, the damn thing usually sits in my underwear drawer. Most gigs don’t require the use of deadly force, something the presence of a firearm always increases the chances of, and even on those occasions when I’ve found myself in a fight, I’m generally grateful not to have the gun as a fallback option.

  In case you hadn’t heard, I have anger issues.

  Moving down the hallway as quickly as I dared, I saw more of the leg. It was indeed attached to a body, this one belonging to a Caucasian male, mid-30s, balding, and dressed like he was going to the gym (or returning after doing nothing but calf raises). His gray moisture-wicking exercise shirt was marred by a single entry wound high on the left side of his chest.

  He lay on his back, and just beyond the reach of his outstretched left hand was a pistol I didn’t recognize fitted with a new modular optic system. Expensive rig, though it didn’t look to have done him any good.

  I stuck my head in the entranceway for a quick sweep of the kitchen, prepared to duck back until I saw Charlie sitting in one of the breakfast nook chairs. It was an incongruous sight, her calmly swiping through a phone while a dead guy (or one doing a decent corpse impression, at least) was sprawled on our kitchen floor.

  “You’ve had a busy morning,” I said.

  She looked up sharply, reaching for what I recognized as her .38 until she saw it was me. Never let anyone tell you I can’t be stealthy when the need arises.

  She put the pistol down and returned to the phone. “Nice of you to show up.”

  Chapter SEVENTEEN

  Far be it from me to interrupt someone’s electronics-related reverie, but I felt I must. “We gonna talk about the elephant in the room?”

  “Hmm?” Charlie was still scrolling as fast as her eyes could register info.

  When I didn’t respond, she looked up. I met her gaze, looked pointedly at the corpse on the floor, then back to her.

  “Oh, that guy,” she said. “Self-defense.”

  “I hope you have more than that when the police get here.”

  She smiled with what would have passed for innocence if I hadn’t known her since we were in the womb. “Are we calling the police?”

  Sitting down, I said, “Unless you’re planning on burying him in the backyard, then yes.” I nodded to her pistol. “Did you use a silencer? Why aren’t they here yet?”

  “Gunshots aren’t that unusual in this neighborhood,” Charlie said. “Or maybe the neighbors are getting revenge for having to see you in your tank top all those times.”

  I tapped my biceps. “Now that you mention it, possession of these guns should be considered a capital offense.”

  “I ought to shoot you for that joke,” Charlie said. “Fine, call the cops. I’m almost done going through his phone anyway.”

  “Anything interesting?” I dug my own phone out, considered calling 911, then just hit the contact for Roy DeSantos. It didn’t take my hard-won private investigator skills to figure our “guest” was related to Mike’s case.

  She said, “I’m downloading his contacts, email, notes, and texts onto an external hard drive. There weren’t any photos or videos, and I didn’t find a cloud storage account connected to his ID.”

  Roy wasn’t answering. “What about music? Did he have any decent tunes?”

  “Like ‘Dead Man’s Party’?”

  “Anything from Dead Can Dance?”

  “The Grateful Dead?”

  I inclined my head at him. “Think he is?”

  Before she could answer, Roy finally answered. “Clarke, what an unpleasant surprise.”

  “It’s not a social call, Roy, sorry to say. We’ve got a dead guy in our kitchen.”

  “What have I told you about letting Charlie do the cooking?” When I didn’t take the bait, he said, “Wait, are you serious?”

  “Afraid so. How far away are you?”

  “Ten minutes. Have you called 911?”

  I said, “No, but I can.”

  Roy said, “Don’t bother, I’ll send for the meat wagon. Emergency responders are for emergencies and … you did say he was dead, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then what’s the rush?” He hung up.

  “Cavalry on the way?” Charlie asked.

  “If by ‘cavalry’ you mean Roy and a couple of bored paramedics, then yes.” I pocketed my phone. “Want to tell me what happened?”

  She set the phone down. “I heard the door open and thought it was you, but when nobody yelled, ‘Wazzup, Sis!’ I got suspicious.”

  It’s my calling card. “And the umbrellas?”

  “You remember that one umbrella, the one I stole from the country club?”

  The story involved a wedding, a typical Houston spring deluge, and a maître d’ who made the mistake of questioning Charlie’s fashion choices. “Oh yeah.”

  She went on, “You know how that big ass crook handle sticks out and you always have to walk around it?”

  I nodded. “But our intruder didn
’t.”

  “Right. As soon as I heard that, I went for my gun.”

  “Where was it?”

  “My backpack.” She scanned my belt. “Where’s yours?”

  “Sock drawer.”

  “Lucky for you I was the one at home.”

  There was no argument from me. “Then what? He comes running into the kitchen?”

  Charlie said, “Yep. Once the element of surprise was gone, I guess he figured he might as well bum rush the show.”

  I looked at the body. “Was his gun out when you shot him?”

  “What does it look like?”

  My silence was probably more accusatory than I intended.

  “I didn’t plant the gun, Cy.” Then, pointedly, “You’re the ex-cop, not me.”

  “That’s why I asked,” I said. “Have you checked him for ID?”

  She held up the iPhone. “I stopped when I found this, but be my guest.”

  The guy on the floor was big. Not tall, but solid. I’d put his weight at 180 and maybe a few inches shy of six feet. He was white, with hair that might have been blond or gray but was cut so close it was hard to tell. No distinguishing marks or tats that I could see, meaning none on his hands or face.

  His outfit was perfect for nighttime shenanigans but seemed a bit out of place in broad daylight: black pants, black sneakers, dark gray hoodie over a gray T-shirt. It was an ensemble that was both nondescript and somewhat attention-grabbing for a neighborhood walk.

  There hadn’t been any out-of-place cars in view as I drove up, meaning he must have parked a few blocks over and walked past a bunch of household surveillance cameras on the way, or someone dropped him off.

  I went through his pockets without much enthusiasm; unless we lucked out and he was as stupid as he was clumsy, then he didn’t bring his wallet on a hit. Sure enough, there wasn’t anything in the way of identification on him. He had an extra magazine for his pistol and a Zippo with the silhouette of a bat on it. I left the former and pocketed the latter.

  “Stealing evidence?” Charlie asked.

  “Not many people know this, but the law says anyone who is killed after breaking into your home with the intent of killing you immediately forfeits any personal property on their person to the intended target.”

  “That sounds more like post facto rationalization than actual law.” Charlie thought two semesters of Latin in college qualified her for an honorary law degree, apparently.

  I said, “It’s one of the fringe benefits they don’t tell you about, like full pensions, free gas station coffee, and skimming profits from drug dealers.”

  Charlie shook her head. “Maybe Dad was right about me wasting my potential in the Peace Corps.”

  “Buck up, sis,” I said. “You must have learned something useful from all those government databases you broke into over there.”

  “I was just scraping financial records. But they do look at a lot of porn.”

  “That’s every government.”

  If Charlie was going to argue with my well-researched reply, the knock at the front door stole her thunder.

  I heard the front door open, followed by Roy saying, “Police! We’d appreciate it if you didn’t shoot.”

  “That was for you, killer,” I said.

  Charlie held her hands up in mock penitence as I got up to meet Roy.

  He was standing in the foyer with two EMTs looking at the umbrellas I hadn’t bothered to pick up yet. “How’s my girl?”

  “Not dead,” I said, “which is more than I can say for you if you call her ‘my girl’ to her face.”

  Roy’s continuous flirtation with my sister was a source of mild amusement to her and low-grade annoyance to me, which of course is why he kept it up. I doubted he harbored any serious feelings for her, and as for Charlie — whatever her other flaws — she had better taste.

  I hoped.

  “Where’s the body?”

  “Kitchen,” I said, and turned to lead them there. Roy pulled out a pair of nitrile gloves and put them on.

  We entered the kitchen. Charlie was standing by the table, the gunman’s phone nowhere to be seen — presumably returned to his pocket. She was wearing what she apparently assumed was an expression of contrition but looked more like the face of a person who’d just shot someone and knew she was going to get away with it.

  “Charlie,” Roy said, his usual sleazy half-smile on his face.

  “Detective DeSantos,” she replied.

  Roy nodded to one of the EMTs, who performed a few necessary formalities like verifying the corpse was deceased. He and his partner then returned to the ambulance to prepare for transporting the body.

  Roy knelt down and inspected the corpse. “Recognize him?”

  “No,” Charlie and I said in unison.

  “And he just walked in and started blasting away?”

  Charlie gave an abridged version of what she’d told me, leaving out the fact she’d downloaded all the useful info from the guy’s phone and also that I’d lifted his lighter. The family that steals together, something something. …

  Roy listened with what I assumed (or hoped) was less attention than he paid to a regular homicide investigation, considering he’d known me for ten years and Charlie for nearly that long, all while going through the body’s pockets in the same manner I’d just done. Sure enough, he retrieved the phone.

  He picked the pistol up by the barrel. “Nice rig. European?”

  “Russian,” Charlie said. “Makarov.”

  We both looked at her. “What?” she said. “The Angolan army used pistols like that. I saw plenty of them in my Peace Corps days.”

  “I didn’t know the Peace Corps operated in Angola,” Roy frowned.

  “They don’t.”

  Roy wisely abandoned the conversation, and instead dropped the gun in another evidence bag and zipped it up. “Now can I see your weapon?”

  Charlie broke open the cylinder and dropped the five remaining shells into her palm, then handed it and the bullets to Roy. He took it, smelled the barrel, and nodded.

  “This seems pretty cut-and-dried,” he said. “And while I appreciate the convenience, I have concerns about what this means for the investigation into your brother’s disappearance.”

  I said, “It can’t be a coincidence, especially after that phone call.”

  “Unfortunately,” Roy said, “this guy can’t answer any questions. Might have been useful to see if he had an accent.”

  Neither Charlie nor I said anything. I had my doubts about any Slavic connections, but nothing more than a gut feeling to back them up.

  The EMTs returned with a gurney. Roy took enough pictures of the corpse, the room, and Charlie’s .38 to fill two rolls of film, if anybody still used that, and then they zipped him up and loaded him out.

  Roy removed his gloves. “I don’t see any need to make an arrest for this. Like I said, cut and dried. As long as I’ve got your assurances you’re telling me everything,” He glanced at Charlie’s now-closed laptop as he said this. She just smiled.

  “It happened just like I said,” Charlie told him.

  Roy said, “Be that as it may, I need to get a statement.”

  “Uh-huh.” He was right, I knew. Even in Texas, and even when it was clearly a “clean shoot,” as the cops called it, a formal interview had to be conducted.

  Charlie grabbed her phone and her jacket, and the expression on her face told me Roy should probably lay off the flirting for a while.

  So something good was coming out of this, at least.

  They turned to go, then Roy paused. “Something about this doesn’t add up. I don’t know what it is, but until we find your brother, I want you both to stay close.”

  “Is that an official directive?” I asked.

  He looked at me. “I’m assuming I don’t have to make it one.”

  Roy left, and I exhaled. I don’t think I realized how tense we’d been.

  “You heard the man,” I muttered to myself. “It
’s time to go to Dallas.”

  Chapter EIGHTEEN

  No, I really had no intention of going against the barely veiled warning of my very good police friend. That’s because “Dallas” is the name of one of my former CIs.

  The relationship between so-called confidential informants and the police is a perverse form of symbiosis: the former receives compensation or leniency for past (or future) crimes, while the latter receives information that will hopefully help them solve a case.

  But the cops hold all the leverage in the relationship, and their satisfaction with the info provided can be the only thing keeping the CI out of the joint. For their part, the danger to the informant if they’re tagged as a snitch is very real, and they can often grow to resent the arrangement.

  I assume it’s the same with most marriages.

  Which brings me to “Dallas,” real name Irving Phelps, a wannabe concert promoter who ended up on the radar of some unsavory types over mounting gambling debts. When I had just been promoted from patrol to detective, I ended up collaring him at a raid on one of Houston’s numerous illegal casinos. Faced with three to five for what was his third arrest at an “illegal gaming establishment” — poker in a private dwelling is legal, in most cases, but poker in the back office of a closed Mexican restaurant is not — he elected instead to give HPD dirt on the folks running the games.

  I know what you’re thinking: You’re not a cop anymore, dude. That is very true, and 999 times out of a thousand, an ex-cop doesn’t maintain contact with his old informants. It crosses all kinds of murky ethical territory, and it doesn’t make sense from the CI’s standpoint, because there’s no longer anything for him or her to gain.

  But Dallas was that rarest of three-time losers in that he was the kind who improbably straightened up and flew … well, let’s not call it “straight.” Suffice to say, he stayed on the good side of the ledger for the most part these days. He was married, with a kid and a job in real estate. I wouldn’t say we were friends, necessarily, but I would still shoot him a text from time to time.

  I hadn’t told Roy about Steranko yet. I still (mostly) trusted him, but Houston’s police department is as prone to corruption as any major city’s, and I couldn’t risk the possibility someone else in his detail might let word slip to the guy, whoever he ended up being.