To Bring My Shadow

by Matt Phillips

  A hushed flurry of gunshots came through the door and smacked the wall between us. I felt the wind from the rounds rush past my face. I looked at Slade and his eyes told me what I needed to hear. I threw my shoulder into the door and it collapsed. I fell with it, all the wood crunching beneath me like balsa—I landed on my right shoulder, felt something sharp enter my knee. There were more of those soft-popping gunshots and I realized my gun was beneath my bulk. I shifted to my other side and, as I lifted my head, I saw Slade slide into the room like a shadow.

  He fired two shots from his 9 mm, torch-like blasts that rung in my ears.

  Mayfair Jenson fell against the bed, all his red-black blood coloring the white bedspread. He looked at me when he toppled over, his beady eyes dead-black even in the bright afternoon light coming through the window. I got to my knees and Slade moved deeper into the room, pried a Glock from Mayfair’s hand and slid it back toward me. He looked out the large open window and shook his head. “She’s running,” he said. “Stay here, Frank.” Before I could protest, Slade ran out of the room and I heard his footsteps fading down the stairs. I got up and double-checked that Mayfair was gone. I put my fingers to his jugular and he had a slight, irregular pulse. Slade plugged him three times in the center of his chest—all textbook kill shots. I noticed the bathroom door and quickly opened it, my gun drawn. The woman with the pinched-up face was in the bathtub, dead from a bullet in the right temple. I closed her eyes with my palm and, in the bedroom, walked to the open window.

  I saw Finney Portray sprinting across the green blanket of the golf course. She must have slid down the house’s red tile roof and hopped onto the grass. She wore blue panties, but nothing else. In her right hand, she carried what I now know was a shotgun. About thirty yards behind her, his gun trained on Finney, Slade jogged and shouted for her to stop and drop the gun. She stumbled and fell, climbed to her feet without looking back at Slade. On the fairway, a golf cart with two old men stopped and they got off, stared at the near-naked woman running with the shotgun. She passed in front of them without stopping. Slade kept shouting. About twenty yards past the golf cart, Finney Portray stopped and turned to face Slade.

  He stopped running, but kept walking toward her, his gun raised and steady.

  Finney’s face looked dark with the sun starting to sink low in the west—that big source of natural light right behind her. Her naked breasts rose and fell with her rapid breathing. She held the shotgun at her side, and I knew if she pointed it at Slade he’d kill her. Like he did Mayfair.

  But Finney Portray didn’t point the gun at Slade.

  Instead she bent to her knees, flipped the gun with cool and effortless precision—the barrel came to rest directly against her chin—and Finney Portray squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter 38

  I spent the next day installing my new toilet, an American Standard.

  It felt good to sweat and get something done for once.

  And I was sick and tired of pissing into a hole. When I finished, I sat in my living room drinking cold bottles of beer and thinking with some joy about my dead wife. I was waiting for the evening news report—Slade sent me a text message saying I should watch it. My bladder got full and I pissed in the new toilet.

  I was proud of the way it flushed and refilled with water.

  I had another beer and the news program started. A good-looking brunette with too much makeup did most of the talking. The gist: A couple high society types wound up dead over the weekend, a prominent political gatekeeper and his stunning wife. It looked to detectives like the wife went nuts and killed the husband, a trusted security colleague, and a domestic employee. Lead detective on the case, one Slade “Skinny” Ryerson, approached the woman at her country club estate—oddly, not named in the report—and she killed herself in spectacular fashion. Detectives believed the wife, with an accomplice, was also responsible for the murder of two other people in her husband’s employ—Enrico Frederico Pablo Castaneda and his twin brother, José Carlos, affectionately known on the streets as Chato. Not a mention about the Jacoby family. The wife’s motives had to do with her husband’s sexual indiscretions.

  That was it.

  Nothing about Applewhite or the FBI either.

  They followed with a brief story about a veteran city police detective getting suspended on suspicion of assault. They showed the brief clip of me smacking Johnny with my pistol. No charges filed—just the video for proper embarrassment.

  I drank two more beers and popped a third. That’s when I called Slade.

  He didn’t sound happy. “They fucking lied about everything.”

  “Not everything,” I said. “Some of it’s true.”

  “Just enough.”

  “Did you know that’s how they’d do us?”

  Slade groaned. “Nope. Should have figured though.”

  “We still don’t know why Portray killed the Jacoby family. Or why she had it done.”

  “I can’t imagine she did it herself,” Slade said.

  “But Mayfair Jenson—he knew how to kill.”

  Slade grunted agreement. “We still don’t know the why. Why kill them? I know it has something to do with the stadium plan and—”

  “A plan that’s now dead.”

  “Right, but did that kill it?”

  “If not, it’s sure as shit dead now.” I thought for a minute and finally said, “We know anything about Finney Portray’s family?”

  I heard Slade shuffling some papers and opening his notebook. He searched for a minute and said, “Mother, RN at Mercy. Works on the pediatric floor. Father, let’s see, ooh. Too bad about all this. Man’s a pastor here in the city. Runs a church off Broadway. It’s called—”

  “New Life Church,” I said. It hit me then—I remembered Slade ripping the flier off the telephone pole. The night before they did Chato in the same part of the city. “We were supposed to run over there, Slade. You remember that flier?”

  More shuffling and Slade said, “Fuck me. I got it right here.”

  “I bet, you take a close look, the man’s church is in the part of the city was supposed to get bought and sold. Where they were going to sell the property to P&J Associates for pennies on the dollar.”

  Slade chuckled. “And there it is…”

  “Finney Portray killed herself—and had the Jacoby family killed—to protect mommy and daddy.”

  “And New Life Church,” Slade said.

  I pushed air through my teeth while thinking about it. “Could be the lawyer for Mark Jacoby figured out who killed his client. Decassin got nervous and—even though it was his wife’s doing—tried to remind the lawyer what was at stake. He was sending a message through Celeste Richards.”

  “Telling the lawyer to keep quiet, or his little girl was on the hit list.”

  “But killing the two brothers…”

  Slade said, “Not Decassin. No—I’d bet a month’s pay that it was Applewhite’s idea. Him and Finney Portray. The brothers probably knew about the Jacoby killings. Or, hell, they were in on it. Just another example of the evil eating their own. Applewhite and Portray cleaning up a fucking mess.”

  “Forget the murders,” I said. “Fuck—they got to an FBI agent. A city police captain. And Applewhite is baby-ass clean. The fucker is going to be the DA.”

  “And nobody will say shit after all these bodies. Man, you think about it like this and it runs together. In a crazy way, it’s logical.”

  “But senseless. And we don’t have it all. We still don’t know who it is pushing Applewhite to the DA spot. I mean, who’s the gangster in the tailored suit?”

  Slade said, “I don’t think we’ll ever get it.”

  We hung up and I thought about the case for a long hour. It was appalling how fast one act of hatred—trying to take something that doesn’t belong to you—spiraled into a series of murders and betrayals. Appalling, sure.

  But not surprising.

  That
night, when I was good and drunk, I wandered down to a tattoo parlor on the corner. The place smelled like reefer and gun oil. Hip-hop played on invisible speakers. I went up to the front desk and a burly guy with big silver gauges in his earlobes shook my hand. “What can we do for you tonight? I’m Robin.”

  “Hey, Robin,” I said. “I’m looking to get a little work done—my first tattoo.”

  “No shit. What are you thinking?”

  I removed my shirt and traced the outline of a necklace across my chest. The folds of my belly jiggled as I talked. “A rosary,” I said, “all the way around my neck. Like it’s real.”

  “I can do it tonight,” he said.

  “But I don’t want the Virgin. No. What I want to know is, can you do Santa Muerte?”

  Robin smiled and gold inserts glinted between his teeth. “Can I do Santa Muerte? I fucking love to do Santa Muerte. If we start now, I can finish before midnight.”

  My chest and neck burned with pain as I walked downtown toward Market Street. I stopped in a corner store and bought some small bottles of whiskey, slugged them down to dull the pain. It didn’t work. I pulled out my cell and dialed my daughter’s number. The phone rang three times and I heard her voice.

  “Daddy?”

  “I can’t wait,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “The baby.”

  “Me neither,” Kimmie said. “Will you be here? When it comes?”

  “You’re goddamn right I will.”

  “Good night, Daddy.” Kimmie hung up.

  “Good night,” I said to the dial tone.

  Another cool, dry night in the city. I listened for sirens, but heard none. I turned south and, after a block and a half, reached the gray building where I planned to honor and pray to Santa Muerte. I walked across the parking lot with long, lumbering steps. I shuddered with pain as my shirt rubbed against the ink injected below the surface of my skin. When I got to the security door I didn’t have to wait like I did the previous night.

  Vera trusted me.

  She gave me the code.

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wish to thank my family for their continued support of my writing and art—thanks to my wife, Lesley, and my little son, Charlie. Sorry for spending so much time at the keyboard! And thanks, as always, to Chris Rhatigan and the publishing team at All Due Respect and Down & Out Books. So proud of this one!

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  Matt Phillips lives in San Diego. His books include The Rule of Thirds, You Must Have a Death Wish, Countdown, Know Me from Smoke, Accidental Outlaws, The Bad Kind of Lucky, and Three Kinds of Fool. More info at MattPhillipsWriter.com.

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  BOOKS BY MATT PHILLIPS

  The Rule of Thirds

  You Must Have a Death Wish

  Countdown

  Know Me from Smoke

  Accidental Outlaws

  The Bad Kind of Lucky

  Three Kinds of Fool

  Redbone

  To Bring My Shadow

  Back to TOC

  Here is a preview from Trigger Switch, a crime novel by Bryon Quertermous, published by All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books.

  Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.

  Chapter One

  I met Dutchy Kent at a bar in Long Island City an hour after I flew in from Detroit. It was nasty, the kind of place I didn’t know even existed anywhere in the twenty-first century anymore, let alone somewhere as overpriced as New York City. He led me into a narrow wood paneled alley where two people could barely stand next to each other facing the back wall. We took the two seats at the end furthest from the door and ordered beer. I half expected to see the bartender draw our drinks from a tap with a generic black and white handle that just said BEER.

  Instead, he opened two cans of PBR, poured them into mason jars, and slid them down to us. It didn’t take long after that to realize we were in a hipster bar and it looked like this on purpose. I took a long gulp of the beer and enjoyed the ironic flavor until Dutchy gave the bartender a twenty and didn’t get any change back.

  I’d been to shitty bars around Detroit where that could have bought an entire round. Not these days. And not downtown anymore. But a few years ago someplace like Taylor or Melvindale where they still had guys who worked in the auto plants making okay money. What the hell did anyone do around here that they could pay ten dollars for a beer but had to live in a shitty apartment building on a street that smelled like toasted garbage and electric pee?

  Dutchy sucked his beer down in one long gulp and ordered another. And a shot of whiskey. And a cheeseburger. He never asked if I wanted anything. I never wondered what I would have said if he had asked. I just sipped my beer and waited for Dutchy to say something to make this all worthwhile.

  Dutchy had been an asshole to me in high school, as he was to most of us in the class who didn’t quite know what to make of someone appearing on our televisions Saturday mornings and then showing up for homeroom on Monday. But by college his brief career as a child star had come to an end and we’d bonded over pulp novels and our disdain for the rest of our classmates. We maintained something of a friendship, even though he had a nasty temper, a penchant for mean-spirited—and often dangerous—practical jokes, and the tendency to get us both into heaps of trouble. We lost touch over the years until our relationship was reignited over the internet. He’d read my first novel and loved it and emailed me to find out if it was really me, because he never believed I had any talent. We emailed back and forth, became Facebook friends briefly, and then a week ago he’d emailed me a script based on one of my published short stories. He said he wanted to put it on in New York City to help revive his acting career.

  The whole thing sounded too much like one of his epic shitstorms, but I was desperate to get out of Detroit, out of Michigan, and away from my ex-wife’s family who claimed they didn’t hold a grudge for me murdering her, but I wasn’t exactly sold on their change of heart.

  “It’s been ages, man,” he finally said. “I can’t believe we’re still here. You know?”

  “Still alive you mean?”

  “Still alive, man,” he said, pushing the plate away from him. “Alive in the spirit. Alive in the arts. Alive in our dreams.”

  “Oh, right. I guess.”

  “Look around, man. Look at the saps out there going to a job. Cashing a check. Riding the train. Living their bullshit.”

  “Ten-dollar beers, man,” I said, holding my mason jar high. “Gotta do something to keep ’em coming.”

  “I don’t know. It all seems so…I just don’t know man. I couldn’t do it.”

  I nodded and bit my tongue. I didn’t want to argue. I just wanted another beer and a sign that things weren’t as shitty as I suspected they were.

  “Which makes this all even harder,” Dutchy continued.

  “All what?”

  He pushed the rest of his dishes down the bar so there was nothing in front of him but a wet napkin. He balled the napkin up in his hand and held it out to me.

  “All of this.”

  “Is this a metaphor?”

  “It’s a reality. It’s all we have left.”

  “You gotta give me a little more here. I’m not—”

  “We’re busted. Broke. Done.”

  “The show?”

  “The theater. All of it.”

  “Well shit,” I said. “That would have been good to know before now.”

  “Probably.”

  He looked away from me and stared down the other end of the bar for a while.

  “So what are we going to do?” I asked. “My flight doesn’t leave for another week and I don’t have the money to change it.”

  “I do have some ideas.”

  The way he said it, the tone, put me off. It wasn’t right. It was planned. It was rehearsed. He was
playing me. I waited for him to keep talking. I wanted to see how far he was willing to go.

  “Are you in?”

  I nodded, sort of. I still didn’t say anything though. So he kept talking. I used to have a problem keeping my mouth shut, and it never failed to come back around and kick me in the ass. Dutchy rambled for almost half an hour before he said something that made sense.

  “There’s some money,” he said. “Some money that went missing from the theater that I’ve been looking for. If we can find that, and I’m close, I just need a…I need a partner, someone with some life experience in this stuff, if you know what I mean, but if we can find this cash, we’ll be set up right.”

  “This is bullshit,” I said. “I’m out.”

  “That’s no way to look at this,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “You’re missing the opportunity in it all. The chance to—”

  I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and stood up. “You’re an asshole. You dragged me all the way out here under this bullshit notion of my New York theater debut but all you really need is a stooge.”

  “This isn’t just about you, Dominick. This is about me. We’re both on our last outs here and I don’t have anybody else I can bring in from the bench.”

  “I’m sure you think you’re tapping into an emotional vein with that baseball talk,” I said. “What with you and me being old college buddies and such, right?”

  “It’s the truth, man.”

  “The truth,” I said, squatting down to his eye level and leaning in as close as I could to his face without touching it, “is that the last guy I buddied up with was a serial killer who murdered at least three people before my ex-wife blew him away in an alley. So excuse me if I don’t tear up at your fucking nostalgia trip and jump headfirst into this stupid scheme that is likely to get both of us killed.”