Deep Kill (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “That’s my baby,” his mother declared. “No use talking to him, he don’t hear you. My baby dead. You got something to say, you say it to me.”

  I started to turn around, but the hands still held me.

  “You through?” Taylor Augustine hissed in my ear. “You finished now?”

  Before I could answer he jerked me around and, with the help of two others I couldn’t really see, pushed me across the room and through the doorway. I reached the steps and a foot came out of nowhere; I lurched headlong toward the sidewalk, landing on my right side and rolling, judo fashion. As I got to my knees a keening wail cut the air behind me and then died away into sobbing. I stumbled back to my car, hands and arms bruised, wondering why I had chosen such a lousy job.

  Nine

  It was early yet, not quite four, but I didn’t feel like going back to the office, so I made my way uptown in the swelling traffic to Katherine’s place. I let myself in and put the bottle of wine in the kitchen. I couldn’t remember whether it was supposed to be chilled or not, so I left it on the counter and opened a beer.

  I should have told Autry’s son I was off the case. I should have told him to tell his old man that when Calvin skipped out, all bets were off. It was the sensible thing to do.

  So why hadn’t I done it?

  Because I had the clown, the wire in the garage, the secret he didn’t want to mention, and a wife who’d split after twenty years of marriage. I had Arthur Augustine, who was nothing now but a picture in his mother’s house.

  I had too much.

  I don’t know how to describe the feeling. It comes from the gut, and sometimes you listen, because you know it’s composed of all the nuances and logical connections your mind senses but doesn’t know how to explain. But at other times it’s wishful thinking, and it can lead you into a morass. Anybody who says your gut is an infallible guide to the truth is a fool, or else he never came back from a trip that started in the sixties. The real truth is that you often never know the truth until too late.

  My gut was telling me something now, but I was damned if I knew whether I ought to listen. I was still mulling it over an hour later when Katherine came in. Her son Scott was with her, and we shook hands after I gave his mother a kiss and a hug. I’d met Scott during the investigation that had introduced me to Katherine, while he was in the throes of a sophomore identity crisis. Now he was a senior biology major, with good grades and a level head. I liked him, not least because he’d managed to survive with only one parent, his mother, and would have done anything he could to protect her.

  “So what happened today?” he asked, nodding at my soiled pants and shirt. “You get mugged by spies or just plain run-of-the-mill murderers?”

  “No business talk tonight,” I said. “I just want to enjoy your mother’s cooking.”

  “Come on.” He held up a copy of the Picayune. “They’ve got the boy’s picture and everything.”

  I shot Katherine a glance and she shrugged. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Look, I’ve heard you talk about old man Autry: You even sent me there once,” Scott explained. “When I saw his name in the paper and that he was wanted in this killing, I figured you must have something to do with it.”

  I smiled wearily at Katherine. “Can’t fault your son on his brains. Well, maybe I’ve got something to do with it. Let’s just leave it at that.”

  Scott went to the kitchen and came back with a beer of his own. “So why doesn’t he turn himself in?”

  I groaned, and Katherine smiled.

  “Scott,” I said, “would it surprise you to learn that not everybody trusts New Orleans’ finest?”

  “No. You mean he’s seen ’em beat people at Mardi Gras?”

  “Let’s just say he comes from a subculture that distrusts authority,” I said.

  Scott nodded and took a long swig of his beer. “Probably a pretty good thing.”

  My eyes went to the clock on the wall and I went reluctantly to turn on the television. It was five, time for the local news.

  “I thought there wasn’t going to be any business,” Katherine chided with a smile.

  “I just want the news,” I said. “That’s harmless enough.”

  Scott and his mother exchanged amused glances. The station logo came on and then the face of one of the anchors, a blond Miss America type in her twenties.

  “Charges of racial discrimination and corruption were leveled today by a black minister in the case of a murdered youth,” she said airily, and I felt my heart sink.

  Suddenly the room was very quiet. Katherine and Scott sat down, eyes on the television.

  There followed a chain of commercials, and I cursed the ads for their slowness. What seemed hours later, the blond anchor came back on, seated beside a slightly older black man with a mustache.

  “Well, Adam, the big news of the day has to do with charges leveled by a prominent minister,” she bubbled.

  “Yes, Karen. It has to do with the murder yesterday of a thirteen-year-old youth, Arthur Augustine.”

  The camera focused on the blonde’s face. “The Reverend Gabriel Condon of the Church of the Deliverance said just minutes ago at a news conference that a private detective employed by the man police are accusing of the murder attempted to buy Condon’s silence with money from the suspect.”

  “Oh, shit,” I breathed. Now I knew what the last-minute offer by Condon had been about. I saw a black-and-white videotape of myself standing there handing an envelope of bills back to Condon, who flipped through them for the camera.

  “The minister,” the breathless anchorwoman went on, “claims that what you are seeing was secretly videotaped during a visit to his offices by Micah Dunn, a local private investigator. Dunn, he said, represents Calvin Autry, who police are looking for in a case involving torture, child abuse, and murder. Condon accused local police of dragging their feet and said their failure to find Autry was due to racial bias. He suggested that police know Autry’s whereabouts and are protecting him.”

  “Christ Almighty,” Scott swore. Katherine, instead of silencing him, only stared ahead, numb.

  I got up and switched off the set. “Well, I guess I don’t have to describe my current case,” I said as lightly as I could.

  “Micah, what are they trying to do?” Katherine asked.

  “That’s easy enough,” I said. “Condon’s trying to get me out of the way and make some headlines at the same time. And I was stupid enough to make it easy for him.”

  “Autry didn’t give you that money, though, right?” Scott said. “I mean, was that tape spliced?”

  “It wasn’t spliced,” I said. “What you just saw was real: a fourteen-carat fool letting himself get set up.” I knew it didn’t matter now; they wouldn’t be satisfied until I told them everything, and besides, I could use some sounding boards. When I’d finished, Scott whistled, and Katherine looked frightened.

  “The hell of it is that station didn’t have the integrity to talk to me first,” I said. “Condon set them up too—and close enough to airtime to make them have to fish or cut bait.”

  “I know the news director over there,” Katherine said. “I dealt with him when I was working at the Middle American Research Institute. He’s an asshole.”

  Scott shot a look at his mother and his mouth opened; then he smiled and looked away.

  “Look,” I said, “I didn’t mean to drag you both into this.”

  “It’s too late now,” Katherine said, nodding at her son. “The question is how you’re going to drag yourself out of it.”

  “Actually, I was thinking,” Scott said. “Always dangerous, my teachers tell me, but it’s a habit. This business about the Spider-woman: you really think the boy might have been doing this a lot?”

  “It’s just one of the possibilities,” I said. “I’ve got to admit, it can cut both ways, but if the boy turns up in their files, at the very least it shows the kid was troubled and so maybe he wasn’t credible.”

&nb
sp; “Or maybe just victimizable,” Katherine said tartly.

  “Yes, of course.”

  She turned to face me on the sofa. “Micah, when we talked about this, we were just talking child abuse. Now it’s murder. Do you still think Cal’s innocent?”

  “I hope he is,” I said. “That’s about all I can say.”

  She got up without replying and went into the back to prepare the meal. Scott crushed his empty beer can and leaned forward in his chair.

  “I know that wineshop,” he said. “The woman you’re talking about is named Francine LeJeune.”

  “What?”

  “Sure. It’s a popular place, especially with Tulane faculty and students. Lots of people go there.”

  “Presumably for wine,” I said, but the joke didn’t sound funny, even to me.

  “Who knows. But I could help you, Micah. You know you’re burned now, your face all over the TV and everything. But they wouldn’t suspect me.”

  I considered the earnest face in front of me. “What are you trying to say, Scott?”

  “I’m saying I’m tired of the books, and all the outlines and the chapters to read. I need a break. So why can’t I try being a pervert for a while?”

  “You’re the least likely pervert I ever saw,” his mother said suddenly from behind him. “What are you two concocting?”

  “Look,” Scott went on, undeterred. “I could go to the wineshop and tell her I’m looking for a kid. I could get her to show me whatever files she keeps and—”

  “No you couldn’t,” Katherine said firmly. “You’re a student, not a detective. Let Micah handle this.”

  “Well, I just thought …”

  “That Micah isn’t doing such a great job,” I finished ruefully.

  Katharine shot me a fiery glance. “Micah’s a grown-up,” she said. “He can take care of himself. He doesn’t need my son to do his work for him.”

  “I’m grown up, too,” he said. “I’ll be twenty-one in a few months. I’m old enough for the army, and I’m old enough to get married. And all I’d have to do is find out if the boy is listed.”

  Katherine started to protest, but I cut her off. “There’s a problem with that,” I said. “If she hasn’t destroyed any file on him by now, she’s stupider than she ought to be. And you don’t even know what he looks like.”

  “You could get me a picture,” Scott said.

  Katherine’s eyes narrowed. “But he won’t,” she declared.

  “Well,” I began.

  “No,” she pronounced. “That’s final.”

  I looked over at Scott and shrugged. “You heard her. Sorry.”

  Scott started to say something, then changed his mind and went back to the kitchen for another beer.

  “I mean it, Micah,” his mother said.

  “Okay,” I said. “It wasn’t my idea, remember.”

  “I know. But I also know how you get involved in your cases. I don’t want Scott caught up in this kind of thing.”

  “You mean the kind of shabby work I do,” I replied.

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” Her voice softened. “I just mean—”

  “I know what you mean,” I said.

  She reached for my hand. “Micah, he’s my son. You’ve got to understand. He’s only twenty years old.”

  “He’s asking for a chance to grow up,” I told her. “He wants to get out from under. It’s natural.”

  “It may be, but you’re twenty years older than he is. You can handle yourself. You know the streets.”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “I know the streets. But I didn’t always.”

  “No. But you chose to find out. You needed to, for your work. But not everybody has to. Not everybody has to get involved in the slime out there. Is it so bad for me to want my son to keep away from that?”

  “It’s not bad,” I said. “You’re just being a mother. I guess my mother would’ve felt the same way.”

  “You’re good at what you do,” she went on. “But Scott doesn’t have the background.”

  I knew what she was talking about. My training hadn’t been in the urban jungle but in the real one, with mortars and machine guns firing at me. When I got back home, I figured nothing they could do to me in a city could be any worse.

  “No,” I agreed. “He doesn’t. But you never can tell when it will come in handy.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But I’m hoping that it won’t come to that in microbiology.”

  I started to reply but then shut my mouth. We’d met because her former employer, a university professor, had been unwittingly involved in artifact smuggling and murder. I’d learned then that a college campus can be as big a snakepit as the ghetto.

  Scott came back with his beer, and a few minutes later we sat down to eat. But conversation was muted, and what should have been a pleasant occasion was an exercise in strained civility. Katherine knew she’d stung me by attacking my profession; it was the same attitude my father, the Captain, held, and it drew the same response. I kept telling myself that if I was truly reconciled to what I did, I wouldn’t be so sensitive. But I couldn’t control the feelings.

  Not that I’d intended to use Scott; it had been his idea. But I thought he’d had a right to express it. Then again, I wasn’t his mother. I wasn’t even his father. His father had died in Nam. I was only his mother’s lover, and right now I wondered what that counted for.

  At just after ten Scott rose to make his good-byes. I shook his hand, and he gave me a wink as he went through the door. Katherine and I watched him go down the walkway toward his car and I felt her hand creep into mine.

  “Don’t be angry,” she said softly.

  “I’m not,” I said, but my words sounded hollow even to me. “Look, I’d better head back myself.”

  “You don’t want to stay.” It was an observation.

  “No. I’ve got some things to do.”

  “Sure.” She looked suddenly smaller, more vulnerable. “Micah …”

  “Look,” I told her, “I don’t know why I do what I do. Sometimes I don’t like it. I meet a lot of lowlifes. Sometimes I wonder if there’s any way it won’t rub off. But I can’t go back to the marines, and I wouldn’t be worth a damn working in an office. I try to be as honest as the next guy, and there are some cases I won’t take. But most of them I do, and when everything works and things come together at the end, I feel good about it. Sometimes the feeling lasts for hours and sometimes for a couple of days. Most of my work I do at my desk, and I don’t carry a gun very often, because most cases are pretty run-of-the-mill. But once in a while I run up against something different, and then, if I think it’s worth it, I follow it no matter where it goes. This is that kind of case.”

  “Micah, you don’t have to explain. I understand.”

  “Good. Because it may be that Calvin Autry did what he’s accused of doing, and if he did, he’ll pay. But if he didn’t, he’ll probably go to prison for life anyway, unless I stay on this thing. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not powerful, I’m not a mover or a shaker. But I have one little thing that helps, and that’s what I know about the streets. And if that keeps an innocent man from going to jail, then for just a little while it makes what I do worthwhile. And I think maybe that’s something your son felt.”

  “And you think I don’t?”

  “I think you’re a mother,” I said, kissing her lightly on the lips. “And that’s no sin. It’s just not what will work for us tonight.”

  I went to the door, feeling empty. “It was a good meal,” I said, turning to her. “Thanks.”

  All the way back I had the image of her standing on the stoop, and I felt hollow.

  Once I’d thought I had a chance to rejoin the marines, but it hadn’t worked out. I’d come away feeling raw, and while I’d managed to pretty much put it all behind me, there were times when the raw feeling came back. I shouldn’t have taken it out on Katherine, but I knew if I’d stayed we’d only have quarreled. So it was best to get away.

&
nbsp; I opened the wooden gate with my pass key and shoved the big doors open so I could drive into the courtyard. The fountain wasn’t playing, and the only sound was the noise the hinges made as I pushed the doors shut again, closing out the Quarter.

  I went up the outside stairs and let myself in. It was ten thirty, but for once there was no blinking light on my answering machine. If I did the sensible thing, I’d go to bed and work through it all in my dreams. But the rawness hurt too much, and I had an urge to pull out a bottle of whiskey and, for the first time in years, drink myself to sleep.

  It was something I’d done frequently after my wife had left. I’d stopped the habit when John O’Rourke had shown some faith in me and started hiring me for some of his cases. Now I had a decent practice, enough to keep me eating, anyway, but staring at the bottle reminded me of the old days.

  I’d just poured a shot into a water glass when the phone interrupted me. I went out to the office and picked it up.

  “Micah Dunn.”

  “Mr. Dunn, this is Taylor Augustine. Look, we got to talk. Is there someplace we can meet?”

  “Can you get here?” I asked.

  “No way. There’s a bar on Esplanade, about four blocks before the river.”

  “I know the place.”

  “Be there in half an hour. By yourself.”

  “Mind telling me what this is about?”

  “Just be there.” The line went dead.

  I stood quietly for a moment, the receiver in my hand. Then I replaced it, went around the desk, and opened the top right-hand drawer. Removing a clip holster, which I stuck inside my belt, I took out the Colt Agent and checked the cylinder. I added an extra round to give it the full six-shot capacity and stuck it into the holster. Then I dropped a couple of speed loaders into my pocket.

  I didn’t know what Taylor Augustine had to tell me, but I was damned if I was going to be set up twice in the same day.