Con Game

by Alex Westmore

  large men, pulled out his baton and slammed it down hard on the table. Everyone in the bar stared at Brown and the two arm wrestlers. Glancing over at Jan, Delta shrugged. He had initiated contact with the men; there was no turning back now.

  Slowly, the two arm wrestlers released each other’s hand. “You ain’t got no beef with us,” the wrestler with the ZZ Top beard growled.

  Delta took a step closer to the scene and wondered why Highbaugh wasn’t joining him.

  “Del?” came Jan’s small voice from behind her.

  Turning back to Jan, Delta shook her head. “We can’t just walk away, Jan. Someone needs to save him from himself.” Delta spotted Highbaugh across the room, but he only shrugged.

  “Then,” Jan replied, “End it here, so we don’t wind up carting half these people to the hospital.”

  Nodding, Delta turned from Jan and moved slowly toward the table. If she moved in too quickly, the arm wrestlers might feel outnumbered and become aggressive. She cursed Brown for putting her and everyone else in this precarious position. With the knife still on the table, and everyone waiting for someone to make a move, Delta’s muscles tensed.

  “You guys know you’re not supposed to be carrying these knives,” Brown said, as he placed his foot on the chair and leaned on his knee. “Says so right in the parole booklet.” Brown touched the knife with the tip of his baton and grinned.

  Maneuvering to the opposite side of the gathering crowd, Delta did not take her eyes from the knife. Why in the hell was he just letting it sit there? Pick the damn thing up!

  As if reading her mind, the hairier biker lunged for the knife just as Brown sent his baton crashing onto the biker’s knuckles. As the bear of a man let out a cry of pain, he swiped the knife off the table with his other hand, while pushing Brown’s baton out of the way with the damaged hand.

  One second faster, three beers earlier, and he might have reached Downtown’s throat. Instead, the biker pitched forward, surprised by the baton blow Jan had struck against his back and kidney area. Still clutching the knife, the biker went down on one knee and grabbed his lower back with his free hand. Still huffing and puffing, he rose to his feet and reeled around, only to find himself staring down the barrel of Delta’s .357 magnum.

  “Drop it!” Delta ordered, pressing her finger lightly on the trigger. Dropping the knife with a clatter on the hardwood floor, the biker fell back to one knee and grabbed his back again, finally experiencing the full force of Jan’s blow through his beer-soaked nervous system. Suddenly, the instigator of this commotion found his voice again.

  “I oughtta bust open your stupid skull, you fucking dumbshit!” Brown yelled, raising his baton.

  With very little movement, but enough so everyone in the bar could see it, Delta turned her revolver at Brown, who stopped his baton in mid-air.

  “Don’t,” Delta threatened, glaring at him.

  The bar, now ten degrees warmer, filled with emotional electricity.

  “Put your baton away and go back to work,” Delta ordered, keeping an eye on the downed biker. “There’s nothing more for us to do here, Brown, so leave it be.”

  Highbaugh stood next to Brown, who lowered the baton to his side. Brown’s expression was a cross between disbelief and profound anger. “You’re making a big mistake, Stevens.”

  Lowering her weapon, Delta shrugged. “Why don’t you boys move along now? Jan and I will handle these guys.”

  Highbaugh grabbed Brown’s arm and helped move his reluctant body toward the front door. “Someday, Stevens,” Brown yelled when he reached the front door, “you’re gonna have to learn to lighten up and be one of us!”

  Delta shook her head as she bent down to pick up the knife. “Brown, if being one of you means acting the way you just did, then I’d rather be a meter maid.” Watching them walk out of the door, Delta holstered her weapon and motioned for the biker to stand up.

  “You pack a mean punch, little lady,” the biker said, grinning a toothless smile at Jan as he rubbed his bleeding hand.

  Delta inspected the knife more closely.

  “Nice knife, huh?” the biker said.

  Delta nodded. “Nice enough to go to jail for?”

  “Ah, man, can’t cha gimme a break?”

  Delta glanced up from the knife. “I already have.” Examining the knife again, Delta felt sure it was an antique. “What are you carrying a knife like this around for, anyway? It looks like an antique. I thought bikers kept Bowie knives in business.”

  The biker resumed smiling. “Got one of those, too.”

  “I’m quite sure you do. So answer the question.” The smile disappeared as quickly as it appeared. There were three things men on the street would boast endlessly about: their cars, their weapons, and their sex tools. They were usually pretty honest about the first two.

  “It is. I ain’t ever seen one like it either.”

  “Just the same, they’re illegal and I’m going to have to take it in.” The biker nodded.

  “But that’s all I’m taking. If I have to come back here tonight, I’m coming with a paddy wagon and plenty of ’cuffs. You understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am. And thanks, man. Thanks a lot.”

  Looking over at Jan, who was motioning to her that they should get going, Delta asked, “You need medical attention for your back or anything? I mean, I wouldn’t want you to sue me a week from now because of back problems.”

  He shrugged her off. “Nah. But you can tell that little piece of rat

  shit that just left that if I ever have the chance of meetin’ him in a dark alley, he’s gonna need more than that baton to keep me from twisting his neck like a fuckin’ turkey.”

  Smiling, Delta stared out the door. “I’ll be sure to tell him.”

  In the car, Jan shook her head and started to fill out a Quik-Form about the incident. “You amaze me,” she said. “That guy could have torn your fool head off.”

  Delta started the car and drove a few blocks before replying. “The real danger in that bar wasn’t those bikers, and you know it.”

  Jan nodded. “That’s another reason why you amaze me. After all you’ve been through, you’re still able to work with morons like Brown.”

  Delta looked out the window at the moon. “Grudges are a waste of energy, Jan. I learned that one from my grandmother a long time ago. Young cops fly out of the Academy, ready to right the world of all its wrongs. When they find out it doesn’t quite happen that way, they get a little hard-headed.”

  Jan’s eyebrows raised in question. “And Downtown Brown? Is he, too, just hard-headed?”

  “Him?” Delta grinned, thinking back to him standing there like John Wayne on rope soap. “No. He’s just a dick with a big stick, that’s all.”

  “That’s all?”

  Delta grinned at her. “Isn’t that enough?”

  They received their last call at 1:45. “S-10-12, we have a possible six oh three at 91 North Hemingway.”

  Jan picked up the mike and answered that they were less than two minutes away.

  Flipping on the lights, but no siren, Delta whipped a U-turn and barreled down 15th Street. Delta hated prowler calls. Inevitably, they would painfully remind her of the steep darkness inside the warehouse, where she had tried to escape from a man sent to murder her. A man whose light she snuffed out with two shotgun blasts, and that still woke her up at night. The same asshole that had blown Miles’s head off a lifetime ago. Since then, Delta regarded six oh threes as dangerous as “possible shots fired” or “officer down” calls.

  As they drove up, Delta remembered that 91 North Hemingway was a tiny drugstore called Troy’s. A regular drugstore, it had signs in the window announcing that it was going out of business. Like so many, Troy’s had been unable to keep up with the larger franchises.

  As they pulled into the darkened parking lot, Delta noticed that the orange neon “Closed” sign was lit, but the interior lights were on and pouring out into the barren parking lot.

/>   Delta reached over and pulled the shotgun free from its stand. The shotgun had saved her life once, and every time she grabbed its cold barrel, she remembered the blast that propelled her assassin away from her that night in the warehouse. Since then, the shotgun had become her best friend.

  “Call for backup,” Delta whispered.

  After issuing their backup request, Jan and Delta slowly and quietly made their way to the back of the drugstore. The door flapped open like a flag in a strong breeze. The call was no longer a “simple” prowler call, but a possible burglary-in-progress, and Jan quietly relayed this information back to dispatch.

  Unlatching the safety on the shotgun, Delta motioned for Jan to go in as the low shot. Delta would be over her with the shotgun. Jan nodded and pulled her sidearm from her holster. Unlike Delta, who carried the powerful .357 magnum, Jan carried a 9-millimeter automatic, newly adopted by the department. Most officers liked the automatics because they could squeeze off more rounds than the revolvers. Delta carried a 9-millimeter weapon while off-duty, but she liked the solid feel

  of the .357 and the way it kicked. She felt that the .357 required more thought when shooting, thus lowering the possibility of injuring innocent people. With the automatic, the rounds were shot so rapidly, that once you squeezed the trigger, you were committed.

  Still, she favored the shotgun for pure power.

  Jan carefully propped the door open with a brick lying nearby before entering, her automatic sweeping the room. In her effort to see further ahead into the dimness, Jan nearly stumbled on the dead body lying in the entrance.

  “Shit!” Jan gasped, crouching behind a newspaper dispenser.

  “Dead?” Delta asked, shotgun resting on her left shoulder and finger poised to stroke the trigger.

  Jan looked down at the open eyes, felt for a pulse, and then nodded. “Let’s see if our killer is still hanging around.”

  Five minutes later, after a thorough search turned up no suspect, Delta returned to the car and called for Homicide and the coroner before returning to find Jan staring down at the corpse. Real death didn’t look like it did in the movies. Corpses often looked like wax mannequins or large ventriloquist dolls.

  For a moment, Delta gazed down at the open eyes and wondered why it was that some people died with their eyes open and some with their eyes closed. Did something voluntarily happen with the nervous system that prompted most victims of murder to die with their eyes open? The thought brought goose bumps to Delta’s arms.

  “What are you staring at?” Delta asked Jan, who was now squatting and looking intently at the knife protruding from the victim’s back.

  “Get a load of the handle on that knife.”

  Delta knelt next to Jan as she listened for sirens in the background which would announce the arrival of the homicide unit and entourage.

  Bending over the body for a better look, Delta studied the knife hilt, which measured about six inches long and bejeweled with red, green and blue stones. The design on what she could see of the metal blade appeared antiquated, perhaps from another country. And the double-snake design gave it a distinctly ancient flavor. Besides the beauty of the handle, Delta noted that the knife had been driven so hard into the back of the dead man that hardly any of the blade was showing; the hilt rested squarely against the victim’s blood-soaked lab jacket. Delta wondered if the victim had seen the knife coming. Had he known he was about to die, and tried to escape the brutal death awaiting him? Did he look into the face of his murderer before he died? Was that why his eyes were still open? Shrugging off her questions, Delta turned to Jan and sighed.

  “Whoever did this is awfully strong,” Delta remarked, staring at the gleaming handle.

  “Or awfully angry.”

  Delta didn’t acknowledge the suggestion. Instead, she examined the hilt more closely. In the Academy, she had taken a couple of courses on weapons, and this particular knife wasn’t what it initially appeared.

  “It’s a dagger,” she stated.

  “You suppose those stones are real?”

  “Hard to tell.” Rising, Delta was careful to avoid touching or stepping on anything that might be evidence. “I doubt it. Our murderer would probably have taken it with him if it was worth anything.”

  “You think this is a burglar caught in the act?” Jan asked, looking around at the apparently untouched goods in the store.

  “Hardly. Look. The keys are in the drug cabinet and there isn’t one bottle knocked over.”

  Jan joined Delta at the counter. “Whoa. Whoever did this could have cleaned the place out and made a few thousand bucks on street sales.”

  “Precisely my point. They didn’t.”

  Jan nodded slowly. “Motive?” Jan had worked with Delta long enough to know of her penchant for a good murder mystery.

  “Too early to call,” Delta mused, studying the corpse, the dagger, and the pill cabinet. On the wall above the back counter, were pictures of the store’s employees. Delta didn’t need to look twice to know which picture was of the dead man. “That poor guy came awfully close to getting away, didn’t he?”

  Jan shuddered. The blood had coagulated and was already beginning to emit the stench of death. “Just what we need. Another murder in our fair city. Any more of these and the D.A. is gonna have somebody for lunch.”

  Delta grinned. “Well, it’s not going to be us.”

  In the near distance, Delta heard the approaching sirens turn the corner and roar into the parking lot. She could tell by the squeal of the tires which Homicide detective had been assigned to the case, and she cringed at the thought.

  “Those detectives, don’t they ever sleep? How in the hell did they get here before backup?”

  “You already said it. The D.A. is getting tired of people being murdered with nary a suspect to pin it on. She’s been running those homicide boys overtime. If they don’t come up with someone fast, she may just bust them down to dog catcher.”

  Delta nodded, remembering last night’s muster when the Sarge had said re-election time was coming up and the D.A. needed a suspect for the two unsolved murders in the past three months. Delta hated the politics of law enforcement. She wanted cops to catch the killers because that’s what they were paid to do, not because the District Attorney needed a solid case to try. Still, D.A. Alexandria Pendleton had been good to the cops in River Valley, and if nailing a suspect would insure her a second term, Delta was all for it. Alexandria Pendleton had put Miles’s murderers behind bars for a long, long time.

  Still looking at the corpse, Delta averted her eyes from the pool of dull red blood. “Wonder why the killer let him get so close to escaping?”

  Jan shrugged. “Maybe he knew the guy.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe our man is just a real sicko.”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  “Who? Men or murderers?”

  “Aren’t they usually the same?”

  “Why, my little partner, I do believe I just heard a sexist comment coming from the old married one.” Delta winked, but she could see that Jan found the smell of blood nauseating.

  “I’m just sick of the whole murder scene thing.”

  Delta nodded and knelt down for one last look at the dagger before Forensics showed up and confiscated it. “I may be way off here, Jan, but something in my gut is telling me that what we have here is more than just a single murder.”

  “Well, do us both a favor and keep your ideas to yourself. The last time you offered to help Detective Leonard, he nearly had you suspended. Let this one go, Del.”

  Delta withdrew her notepad from her pocket and quickly drew a sketch of the hilt. She knew Forensics would have plenty of pictures of the whole dagger by the time they were through with it, but that didn’t guarantee she would ever be allowed to see them.

  Glancing at Delta sketching, Jan shook her head. “Delta . . .”

  “I know what I’m doing, Jan. Trust me. Something tells me we’re going to see this guy’s handiwork more than just
once.”

  Jan groaned. “And something tells me that we’ve just entered the game.”

  Delta grinned. “Bingo.”

  With the stench of blood and death still lingering in her nasal passages, Delta plopped down on the chair next to Connie, a striking Mexican woman who was navigating a little, dwarf-like creature through a maze on her computer. Once the elf was safe atop a giant toadstool, Connie turned and greeted Delta with a flawless smile.

  “Hi, Con,” Delta said softly. “You and Eddie winning?”

  “Eddie” was the name Connie had given her computer years ago. Connie grinned widely as she answered, “Do ducks crap in the water?”

  Delta forced a grin. “Luckily, I wouldn’t know.”

  The constrained grin did not go unnoticed. Turning the monitor off, Connie reached over and laid her hand on Delta’s knee. “You okay?”

  Delta glanced sideways toward the women’s bathroom to signal that she needed privacy. What she wanted to say wasn’t for general consumption.

  Once in the bathroom, Delta paced over to the far wall. She had waited all night to talk to Connie about her fears of failing at her relationship—not that she wasn’t comfortable talking to Jan, but Connie really understood her relationship with Megan. Connie had been there since its onset and well knew the hurdles Delta and Megan had faced and surmounted.

  Connie folded her arms and waited. “I know that look. You’re still worrying about Megan, aren’t you?”

  Turning to face Connie fully, Delta nodded. As best friends, they had been through the best and worst of law enforcement together. Without Connie’s masterful computer genius and her incredibly analytical insight, Delta might not have brought Miles’s killers to justice. Without Connie’s wisdom and compassion, Delta would have foundered in the days after the trial. She spent hour after hour searching for some meaning to all of the death and destruction which tore a jagged gash through her spirit, like a tornado in a corn-field. Connie had been her island in the midst of tumultuous waters, when Delta struggled with the love she had for a woman who walked on the other side of the law. It was Connie whom Delta turned to when she needed a dose of common sense or a warm hug. And right now, Delta needed both.