Nickel City Crossfire

by Gary Earl Ross

  “No. This SOB’s old school, straight-up Dirty Harry.” Piñero held up the plastic evidence bag containing the long-barreled Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum he had found under the front passenger seat. “Least you didn’t shoot him when you had him on the ground.”

  “The temptation was fierce,” I said. “If I had, maybe Keisha wouldn’t have run off.”

  “Well, you did break his nose.” Piñero smiled. “You’ve been doing a lot of that lately.”

  We had to duck under the crime scene tape to reach Locust, which was blocked by a fire truck, two ambulances, two police cruisers with lights still flashing, and Chalmers and Piñero’s unmarked car. A uniformed officer stood beside one of the cruisers, directing traffic exiting the expressway to the next available right turn, two blocks ahead on Maple. Cuffed and bandaged, the man whose wallet identified him as Delano ‘Butch’ Madden was in the back of the other cruiser, a short distance away. Phoenix sat on the rear step of the other ambulance, talking to Chalmers as a paramedic finished wrapping her right arm in bandages.

  Passing what was left of my Ford Escape, Piñero and I went to the ambulance first.

  “You okay?” I asked Phoenix.

  “Scrapes, nothing deep.” Her voice was strangely flat, detached. I wondered if she was in shock. She stared at me before speaking again. “You’re the one still bleeding.”

  The paramedic turned to me. A tall Latina with threads of gray in hair pulled back into a ponytail, she had put Betadine and a fabric bandage on my chin when her unit first reached the scene. Now she looked at me for a moment. Then she pulled on a fresh pair of nitrile gloves and removed the bandage, which I had bled through. “You may need a stitch after all.”

  “Let’s try another bandage,” I said. “Maybe surgical glue if you have it. I don’t have ER time today.”

  She scowled at me, a look that clearly rebuked me for telling her how to do her job. “What is it with you two? Too busy and important to get checked out by a full-fledged doctor?” But she got to work.

  Chalmers and Piñero moved away from us. Presumably, they were comparing notes. Chalmers had decided to interview Phoenix himself because of her prior brief relationship with Piñero, who had talked to me. Both men knew Phoenix and I had plenty of time before their arrival to coordinate our stories if we had been inclined to lie. But we had told the truth about the Caddy’s pursuit and gunfire—omitting, as we agreed, that Phoenix and Keisha had both handled my gun. While we focused on Madden, Keisha apparently took off on foot.

  “They must have been on us for a while,” I said.

  “On you, probably.”

  “Maybe using cell phones to hand us off from one car to another. Waiting for Keisha to make contact.” I remembered how cocky I’d felt after we located Spider Tolliver’s GPS tracker. Maybe I’d have to start sweeping for trackers every day. “Something else I missed.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Phoenix said. But she sounded uncertain.

  “Now I have to find Keisha again,” I said as the paramedic smoothed a new bandage over my cut. “Home’s just blocks away. If Terry sends a car, I doubt she’ll open the door.”

  “Someone tried to kill her.” Phoenix’s voice was so matter-of-fact it almost made me shiver. “They might think she’s hurt. Exigent circumstances.”

  “If Terry orders them to go in, she might run again. I don’t want her to run.”

  “She’s run enough. She needs to be somewhere she feels safe.”

  “Okay,” the paramedic said. “A drop of glue and a different type of bandage, but if it keeps bleeding you’re gonna need a stitch unless you want a scar.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Sorry to be a pain in the ass.”

  “Early afternoon on a twelve-hour shift,” the woman said. “If I let every asshole get to me, I wouldn’t make dinner without killing somebody.” Smiling, she stepped up into the back of the ambulance and started securing the supply storage compartments for departure.

  Phoenix stood, slowly and deliberately, her silence and faraway look unsettling. I took her arm and led her away from the ambulance. Before I could ask her what was wrong, Chalmers and Piñero walked over to us.

  “You both declined transport to a hospital,” Chalmers said. “But I still need you to come downtown and make a statement. Afterward, we’ll see that you get home.”

  “Sure, but I need some things from my car first,” I said. “Nothing relevant to your investigation. Just some personal things and tools I don’t want to disappear between here and the collision shop.”

  “Make it quick,” Chalmers said.

  I ducked under the yellow tape and walked around my Escape before gathering things from inside. At the time of the crash, I had given no thought to the extent of damage or cost of repairs. Now that the threat of being shot was gone, I could scarcely believe what I saw. Yes, a bullet had obliterated both rear passenger windows, but the collision had cracked or shattered other windows as well, in ways that would take an expert to explain. The liftgate window was gone. The front passenger window held only jagged chunks of safety glass—likely the source of Phoenix’s abrasions. The windshield was buckled outward, a maze of cracks. Other external damage was easier to decipher. From its contact with the Caddy, the driver’s side had a thick strip of scratched, peeled paint that ran almost the full length of the car. The corner signposts were not round but stainless steel U-lines that gouged the roofline, the rear door, and the rocker panel as they were sheared off. I knelt to examine the underside. In addition to causing two sidewall blowouts, slamming into and over the curb had bent the rear axle. I had a sinking feeling my insurance company would cut its losses.

  “Shit,” I said, getting to my feet and brushing snow off my knees. “Totaled.”

  “That’s no way for a lucky guy to sound,” Piñero said. He had come under the tape and was standing by the open driver’s side door. “Let me show you something.”

  I joined him.

  “Check this out.” He pointed to a large bullet hole in the edge of the front door. Then he opened the door and pointed to the next leg on the bullet’s journey, a semicircle in the front edge of the post between the front and rear doors. Finally, he popped my seat forward and put a fingertip into a hole in the edge of the seatback.

  “I felt it go in,” I said. “I didn’t have time to stop and think about it.”

  He leaned in and felt the other edge of the seatback. “No exit, so it’s still in there and will send this SOB away for a long time.” He withdrew and straightened up. “Which means a .44 Magnum slug passed within inches of your spine. A little bit this way or that—and you’re pissed about the car? Shit, bro, you’re alive and walking on two legs, so fuck the car.”

  “Fuck the car,” I said, without enthusiasm.

  Just then the ambulance with Tito’s body started moving up Locust, no lights, no siren. It was followed a moment later by the second ambulance, also running silent.

  “Okay,” Piñero said. “Get your stuff so we can go downtown. Then maybe we can talk about how all this fits together.”

  I kept a reusable grocery bag in the glove compartment. I filled it with insurance and registration papers, loose coins, maps, and a zipper pouch that held spare eyeglasses. Then I went to the rear compartment and dug out my auto tool kit, a plug-in compressor, an auto battery charger, and the leather case that held my lock pick gun. Apart from the soft-sided tool satchel, everything went into the grocery bag, with the lock pick gun near the very bottom.

  I walked over to Chalmers, Piñero, and Phoenix. Chalmers was speaking on his cell phone. He ended the call and put the phone in his pocket a few seconds after I set down my bag and the tool satchel.

  “Everything you’ve told us is consistent with what we’ve been able to determine so far,” Chalmers said. “The shootout matches what dispatch heard from drivers behind you who got off and called nine-one-one. One guy said it was like the OK Corral.”

  “It was nothing like the OK Corral,” I sai
d. “Except that asshole had a revolver.”

  “Which didn’t hit your ungrateful ass,” Piñero said. “All you got was a cut that might leave a scar.”

  I thought about my cut for a moment and looked across the street at the squad car in which the shooter sat. Then I remembered yesterday’s photos. “Something I’d like to know.”

  “Who sent him?” Chalmers said. “Gotta wait for that till we get him in the box.”

  I took a breath. “Can I sit in on the interview?”

  “No,” Piñero said. “You’re a civilian.”

  After a moment, I walked across to the squad car and jerked open the back door. “Okay, asshole, who the fuck sent you after me?” Hearing footsteps rushing toward me, I reached inside and pushed Butch Madden down on the seat with my left hand, as if I were going to hit him again with my right. His hands, cuffed behind him, came into view. “Who was it, Butch? Dante Cuthbert?”

  Just as the young uni seated in front climbed out to intervene, Piñero reached me, grabbed my right arm, and pulled me out of the car. “G, don’t do something stupid to get him kicked on a technicality! Especially when you’re not even on the force.”

  I offered no resistance as he pulled me away. He let me go when we were back across the street. I took Phoenix’s hand, which felt strangely limp.

  “He’s wearing a ring on his left hand,” I said to both detectives. “I think I’ve seen it before and I think it’s what cut me.”

  “You’ve seen his ring but not him,” Chalmers said.

  “A ring like it,” I said. “Check it against those gashes on Veronica Surowiec’s body.”

  40

  To my relief, the statement took less than half an hour to dictate and sign. Then Piñero drove us the few blocks to Phoenix’s condo. He promised to call me after Madden’s interrogation.

  “Well, I need to go sit in a chair and open a bottle of wine,” Phoenix said, shaking her head as we stood in the foyer of her building. She sounded exhausted, maybe exasperated. Maybe afraid. “If I know you, you’ll want my car to look for Keisha.”

  “And to drop this stuff off at home,” I said, gesturing toward the grocery bag and tool satchel at my feet. “I’ll try to bring it back tonight.”

  She took the Toyota fob off her key ring and handed it to me. “Keep it tonight. I think I’ll crash early if you don’t mind. I need some time alone.”

  “All right.” Something caught in my chest but I tried not to let it show.

  “In fact, it’s okay if you keep it a couple of days. I’m close enough to the office and the courts it won’t break me to use Uber. Just try not to get it shot to pieces.” She did not smile.

  “Thank you.” I hesitated. “I am sorry about all this.”

  “No need to be sorry.” She gave me a quick kiss as the elevator doors chimed open. “You didn’t start it. But do whatever you have to do to finish it.” Then she stepped inside, and the doors closed behind her.

  For a long time, I just stood there, wondering if events of the past couple of hours would comprise the straw that snapped the spine of our relationship. All relationships carried risk, but most such risks did not involve gunplay. Since we’d been together, I had been shot and now Phoenix herself had been shot at. How long would it be before she decided the physical and emotional hazards of being with me outweighed the physical and emotional delights of our being a couple? But none of that could be sorted out just yet. She was right. I had to finish things.

  Taking a deep breath and picking up my belongings, I took the elevator down to the parking garage under the building. I opened the back of Phoenix’s RAV4 and put everything inside, except the lock pick gun.

  I didn’t need the lock pick to get into the Simpkins home. I still had the key Keisha’s parents had given me. I went through the house quickly. Keisha was neither downstairs nor up, but the stoppered malbec bottle on her counter and the glass tumbler in her sink, rinsed but still holding a splash of water tinged with crimson, suggested she had been there not long ago. Stoppered wine was also a sign she hoped to return.

  Synching my phone with the car’s Bluetooth, I called Jen on the way to my next stop.

  “We haven’t heard from her yet,” she said when I gave her a synopsis of what had taken place. “But we know all about the shooting on the expressway. Burned up my scanner for a while. Now it’s on the department’s telephone gossip tree. I understand the driver died in a crash and they got the guy who pulled the trigger on you.”

  “Yes,” I said. “The driver was Tito, the janitor from your wife’s old church.”

  “Jesus!” She hesitated. “Are you and your lady friend okay?”

  “We weren’t hit so—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Jen said. “I could tell by the way she looked at you in Tim Horton’s, she’s so into you. I could see you’re gone on her too. Bianca could too. But bullets hitting the car you’re in can change things. Civilians—”

  “Her father was a cop,” I said. “She knows.”

  “Knowing and handling are two different things.” She paused. “You’ve gone over and above for my wife’s best friend—and her family—when technically you’re not even on the job. That means a lot to us. If you and—Phoenix, is it? If you need somebody to talk to, a sounding board like a couple where one partner has to worry whether the other one will come home, we’re here for you, Rimes.”

  For a few seconds, I said nothing. “Thanks, Jen. You’ve got good instincts and good intuition. There’s a detective shield in your future.”

  “Kind of you to think so,” she said. “I’ll let you know if we hear from Keisha. Now I have to go tell Bianca about this guy Tito.”

  We broke the connection just before I reached my destination on Masten Avenue.

  41

  The house was a small single-family dwelling, with white clapboard, brown trim, and leaded glass in the front door. The old F-150 sat in the driveway. With no parking spaces left on that stretch of Masten, I turned the next corner and found a spot on Edna Place. Climbing out, I ducked into a yard and hopped two fences. With Tito dead and having no family, I figured it was as good a time as any to look through his place for something useful.

  Watch cap pulled down and driving gloves still on, I gazed about to make sure I was not being observed. Then I went to the side door. A small window likely over a kitchen sink was to the right, the front of the house to the left. Through the sheer curtain covering the leaded glass in that door, I saw a short flight of stairs just inside the entrance.

  The pick gun made quick work of the lock. I slipped inside, closed the door behind me and pocketed the pick. I heard the chime alert of an alarm panel but not the beep of an entry code countdown. Either Tito had not set his alarm or someone was here. For several seconds I just listened, waiting for any sound of movement. Hearing nothing, I went up the steps and into the living room. Afternoon sunlight streamed through the sheer curtains over the windows in the sun porch and the glass in the front door. The alarm panel was beside the door, its green light indicating it was in READY mode.

  The place was clean but belonged to another time. The wall beside the stairs showed Tito had inherited not only his parents’ home but also their ancient plastic-covered furniture and faux-antique lamp tables. The opposite wall was his concession to modernity. A seventy-inch flat screen was mounted above a glass-doored media cabinet that held an assortment of electronic devices, including a closed laptop. Rocker-style gaming chairs flanked the cabinet, with X-Box and PlayStation controllers on the floor between them. No shelves or books, no desk or file cabinets. I had come in with only vague ideas of what I was looking for. Now I had no idea where to start. I turned toward the dining room, thinking it might hold something with drawers that needed searching. I went into it, stepping off the worn carpet onto a wide-planked hardwood floor. On my third step, a board squeaked under my weight.

  “Is that you, baby?”

  I froze.

  The voice, a woman�
�s, had come from above. Upstairs. Next, there was a yawn, followed by shuffling footsteps.

  “I got so tired waiting for you I fell asleep. If we’re gonna fuck at all today, you better get up here and get busy. I’m horny as hell but we gotta go soon.”

  I said nothing. Having recognized the voice, I drew my gun. Had I overlooked her car outside? Or had she parked on a different side street?

  “Tito?”

  She started down the stairs, her bare feet and legs coming into view just below the upper landing, the hem of a blue man’s bathrobe flapping about the knees. She came down two more steps, the landing blocking everything above her torso. Then she stopped.

  “Tito? If that’s you, say something.”

  I said nothing.

  She began to crouch, to peek—perhaps, I thought, questioning whether she had heard anything after all. Her face came into view and her eyes widened with surprise when she saw me, the gun in my left hand trained on her.

  “Don’t even try to go back upstairs,” I said.

  Loni Markham came the rest of the way down the stairs, resting her hand on the finial atop the railing post at the bottom. The robe she wore was loose enough for the swell of her breasts to be visible but tied enough to hide the specifics of the nudity beneath the terrycloth. She did not try to close or remove the robe. She just stood there, looking at me, hazel eyes dancing, calculating.

  “Mr. Rimes, you’re the last person I expected to see here today.” Briefly, she looked down, offering a nervous smile. “I guess I’m the last person you expected to find.” She hugged herself then, peach-colored nails standing out against the blue of the robe. But the gesture came across as pure performance, as did her subsequent attempt to smooth her hair. “I should be embarrassed by all this, but I can’t help feeling a little relieved. Sneaking around isn’t really my thing.” She looked at the nearby sofa. “Do you mind if I sit?”

  “Go ahead.”