The Next Cool Place

by Dave Balcom

  I rolled away from him and hopped to my feet.

  “Stand right there. Don’t move.”

  Miguel Santiago, with what appeared to be a big bore pistol in his hand, was all business. “Geez Louise, that was slick,” he said as he waved me away from White, who sat whimpering as he cradled his broken left elbow in his right arm. He was hunched over as if his elbow was cold rather than just shattered and in pain.

  “I heard Ray and Mickey tell that story about you over and over again. Every time those juicers hung out the old stories would come out, and every time I’d hear Ray remind Mickey that scaring Jim Stanton is a bad idea, and then they’d laugh and laugh. You were part of the legend, you know?

  “Where’d you learn that shit anyway? In ’Nam?” He kept talking as he approached White who was sitting on the floor, his left leg folded under the right which was extended in front of him.

  I said nothing, and when he waved his gun at me, I took a step back. He waved again, I stepped again. My mind was working to overcome my shock at the attack. I checked on my center. It was in place, and my fear and anxiety ratcheted down with my breathing.

  Miguel was talking again, chatting, really. I figured it was behavior he’d seen watching movies. “Yeah, you’ve nosed into our business as far as you’re going to go, buddy. We’re going to clean up this mess with you and the newspaper bitch and then we’ll just hunker down and let it all play out.”

  “You’re gonna stop a newspaper?” I asked. “A Michigan State Police investigation? You really think you’re gonna stop anybody? You stopped Mickey, and this is what it won you, right?”

  His grin was lopsided, his voice full of wonder and regret, “You figured Mickey out, then? Geez it’s worse than even Charlotte thought, and she’s just paranoid that you’re going to ruin everything. Yep, we need to be cleaning.”

  And with that he switched his gun from his right hand to his left as he stepped over to White. He brought his right hand up at a 90-degree angle from his upper arm and with a sudden sound that was half shriek and half grunt, he brought the rigid edge of his hand down in a classic chop, just below the back of the young man’s skull.

  White arched his back, but it was a reflex. Santiago didn’t even look back at him as White shuddered, his extended right heel making a staccato on the floor for nearly a minute after he died. It just rattled on, a macabre moment unlike any other in my past. I couldn’t help but shudder.

  Miguel straightened up, his full attention on me. “See, the thing is,” he continued in his chatty tone, “I don’t know how your bullshit t’ai chi – oh yeah, I’ve watched you dance those pussy forms – I don’t know how that is going to stand up to real fighting.

  “Karate is not supposed to be a dance for old men and women, and I’ve been a black belt since I was twelve.

  “We originally figured we’d break in here, secure all your files and your computer, steal a bunch of stuff, leave Ronnie there dead from when you surprised the burglars. You, of course, would be shot by the accomplice. No evidence, no clues, just mystery.

  “Now Ronnie’s killed by you in hand to hand combat and you’re still shot. It’ll play.”

  I eyed the gun, back in his right hand. It was pointed at my chest, unwavering. If he was psyched at the prospect of shooting me, he hid it well. “Sounds like you’ve figured it all out here, but what about Michigan?

  “Means and my Dad are headed to take care of the newspaper bitch in another accident. I think the clean up is in good shape so far.”

  I found I was completely focused. I had my center in complete control, but I wasn’t sure what I could do. At this distance I couldn’t rush him and survive. At this distance he couldn’t miss. Being completely in control of your fear and anxiety doesn’t automatically make you able to think your way out of an impossible situation.

  “One question?”

  He smiled. “You stalling? You think the cavalry is going to come save you? All you old timers, you think it can’t happen to you.” He shrugged. “Go ahead, ask.”

  “My dog?”

  “From the look of things, he died with a lot more guts and dignity than I think you’re going to show me.” And with that, he tossed his gun onto the sofa. “Let’s see just how much good you think that dancing will do for you...”

  He assumed a classic martial arts stance, one foot ahead of the other, both knees flexed in what Americans call the “athletic position” with his weight balanced above the balls of his feet. His hands were up and flat, ready to knock aside any punch I might throw while he was prepared to strike with a foot, knee, elbow or hand. I had seen the power he could generate with that hand, and I had no illusions about my ability to take on a murderous black belt 30-odd years my junior.

  I backed away, circling slightly to the right, and he advanced in breath-taking quickness to cut me off from the porch doors. I grabbed the drop-leaf oak table I used for company meals, and slid it between us.

  Without a word, he kicked one leg off the table, then kicked it again as it tilted, shattering the oak like match sticks.

  I backed up again, and he advanced, cornering me. A smile flickered across his face and I felt a fear I had forgotten existed, a numbing kind of fear that foreshadowed my next move. He was still out of range for kicking me as I reached my right hand under my rain jacket and pulled the 7-shot, .357 magnum Taurus out of the holster on my left hip.

  He relaxed and straightened a bit. “You kidding me? You think that’s going to save your lard ass? I’m about to kill you, sucker.” And as he spoke he moved in like lightening.

  In that same instant, I shot him twice, a double tap, just as I was taught back when I was learning the forms of t’ai chi ch’uan.

  His right hand went to the twin entry wounds in his chest in an involuntary reaction. He watched his blood pumping through his fingers, then he shot question at me with his eyes, but he didn’t say a word. He was dead before he hit the floor.

  I holstered the weapon and rushed to the phone in the kitchen to call Jan’s cell number. It went directly to her message so she was either out of service or she had it was off. I left a message without thinking it through: “Jan, there are people looking to hurt you, they came here, too. They didn’t hurt me. Don’t pack or anything, just hurry to Lawton or Fish, whoever is closer. Don’t delay, do it now.”

  I called Lawton’s office, heard the message, and hung up. I dialed 411 and let Qwest complete the call to the Michigan State Police barracks in Cadillac for an additional 75 cents. I didn’t have time to dial.

  There was a trooper on duty, and I told him a real abridged version of who I was. “Listen, this is really important. I need you to call Detective Lawton at home or on his cell right this minute, and tell him I’m at home and need him to call me. It’s urgent. Somebody’s going to try and kill Janice Coldwell of Mineral Valley. Will you do that?”

  “Sir, if you can just state your full name…”

  “After. You make the call. I promise I’ll wait and we can fill out the form together, but Lawton will know how to protect Jan, and I’m out here in Oregon, please,” I slowed down. “Just, please. Do it now, we’ll do the paperwork after...” I waited a heartbeat and was going to say more.

  “Hold.”

  I shifted weight from left foot to right and back again. The smell of death – bodily fluids and cordite hit me like a pile driver. I was suddenly in fear of losing my center. I practiced breathing, and started to think beyond the moment.

  “Detective Lawton answered the phone. He told me to let you hang up and he’d call you immediately. Oh, and he said Ms. Coldwell was driving to see him and she is safe. He said I’d receive the paperwork later.”

  “Thanks, trooper.”

  The phone rang as soon as I hung it up.

  “What’s going on,” Lawton said. “Did you have trouble?”

  “Ron White and a Miguel Santiago are dead in my living room, otherwise it’s just another Sunday in the Blues.”

  “You
kill ’em?”

  “Santiago killed White, called it part of cleaning up the mess he thinks Jan and I started because they killed Mickey, but that’s not the important part.”

  I told him Santiago had said his old man and Means were taking care of cleaning up the mess in Mineral Valley, how I had left an urgent message on Jan’s cell phone, and then called the barracks.

  He assured me Jan was safe; she had called him, and he thought she would arrive at his house at any moment. “She was a little embarrassed. Said you ordered her to come to me, but she wanted me to see what she had.”

  “She’s found some circumstantial connections between Mickey, Charlotte, Richard Santiago, and Ray Means… I think I’ve firmed up a lot of that. Santiago admitted to me that they killed Mickey, and he confirmed that Charlotte was part of it. The only name I didn’t hear was Crocker.”

  “Have you notified your local police yet?”

  “No, I just wanted to warn Jan that she’s in real danger.”

  “Here’s what you do. Write down this phone number,” and he gave it to me. “It’s my personal cell number; I won’t be far from it until I hear from somebody.

  “You call your local sheriff or, do you have a local OSP command near you there?”

  “Yes, in both Pendleton and La Grande, I think the real commander is in La Grande; it’s about forty miles away.”

  “You call one of them, and then sit there until they’re on scene. You’ll be tied up the rest of the day, but when you meet whoever is in charge, not the first responder, but the investigator, you know, like me or Sgt. Fish, then you give them that number. Oh, wait a minute...”

  Jan had arrived, and he gave me a chance to talk to her for a minute. I assured her that I was unhurt and I expected her to follow Lawton’s directions without question so she’d be the same.

  He bumped back onto the call. “Time’s up, we need your local cops on the scene before the delay becomes to be too big a question for us to answer. Move it.”

  44

  When OSP Lieutenant Stan Liske finally arrived at my house, the EMTs, crime scene guys and the Medical Examiner were gone with the bodies, and there were a bunch of sheriff deputies and state troopers hanging around protecting the scene. My living room was taped off as a crime scene, so I was sitting in the kitchen.

  A spectacular sunset bathing the Columbia basin in a golden hue was going pretty much unnoticed when the tall, ruddy guy in shorts and a tee shirt with his gold shield hung around his neck on a shoestring let himself into the kitchen from back porch.

  “Mr. Stanton?”

  “I am he.”

  He introduced himself, explained that he needed to review my story one more time. I had recited it, unadulterated, twice before, once for a tape recorder.

  “Why would he throw his gun aside?”

  I shrugged. “Youthful arrogance?”

  “He didn’t know you had a weapon?”

  “He never asked.”

  “So you think he wanted to rough you up a bit with his karate before shooting you?”

  “I guess. I really don’t know.”

  “So why did you shoot him rather than kick his ass?”

  I checked to see if he was going to laugh at his own joke. He didn’t seem to be trying to be funny. I shrugged again. “Mature judgment?”

  That earned a flicker of a smile. “Look, Mr. Stanton, I busted my ass down here from my family’s camping trip up at Wallowa Lake in Joseph. I don’t want this to drag on any longer than it has to, can you shed any light on this investigation?

  “Is this your investigation?”

  “That’s correct.”

  I handed him the paper with Lawton’s number on it. “I think if you’ll call this guy – he’s a detective with the Michigan State Police – you’ll have a better picture of this than I can give you. It could save your evening around the campfire.”

  “Sit tight. I’ll use the porch.”

  Some 20 minutes later, when Lt. Liske came back into the kitchen, I offered him an iced tea, which he accepted. “Lawton says this is all part of a case he’s working in Michigan, and he’d appreciate my giving you all the support I can. He thinks you’re one of those rarest of breeds at a murder scene: A true victim.”

  I just shrugged again. My mind wouldn’t let go of the picture of Santiago looking at his own blood or the sound of White’ heel drumming on the floor. My thousand yard stare roused Liske’s attention. “You hanging in there?”

  “I can’t come to grips with the feeling that this and everything else is just an overreaction, way beyond necessary.”

  “In any event, what can I or the OSP do for you?”

  “Clear up this crime scene so I can clean this mess up before the stink gets worse.”

  “We’ll be gone in just a little while, but you might want to consider staying with a neighbor or in town.”

  I knew the Nelsons would put me up. “Do I have one of those, ‘This is a murder investigation, don’t leave town’ leashes on me?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I’d like to have you read a transcript of your statement and sign it – that’ll be ready by noon on Tuesday, and then you think you’re heading to Michigan?”

  “Eventually, but first I think I want to go to Salem.”

  “Salem? Is it connected with this?”

  “It could be, but I’m not sure. There’s an attorney with an office there, a guy named Willis Crocker. He represents the people who I think are behind this violence, and in all that talking, the Santiago kid never mentioned him. But I really think he’s involved, and I just want to talk to him.”

  “I think you should let me and my people do that. Perhaps you could help with the questions.”

  I thought about that, and again felt that old, sitting-at-the-desk-while-younger-studs-are-out-living-it feeling. Something must have flickered across my face because Liske was quick to pick up on it.

  “You’re not one of those amateur cowboys, are you? Please, employ that mature judgment and let us handle these guys.”

  He told me to be at the La Grande office after lunch on Tuesday and I could sign the statement. He also gave me an email address and asked that I submit some questions I might ask if I were lucky enough to sit down with Willis Crocker. He told me the sooner I sent that email on Tuesday, the better.

  I called the Nelsons and Shirlee told me to come on down, she had stuff to grill, but they were waiting to see what I needed after all the cops left. “All afternoon, all they’d tell me was that you were unharmed and that there had been some kind of home invasion,” Shirlee complained. “I knew you’d need us, so we’re just waiting… what… Oh, Jack says he has a great new gin and lots of ice, so c’mon.”

  If Boodles gin is cold enough, the juniper flavor almost makes the taste of burnt gunpowder go away… almost.

  45

  The sun was just making a glow in the eastern sky above the mountains as I completed my exercises on Memorial Day morning.

  All the official cars were gone from the property. There was no crime scene tape outside, and when I tried the door, it was locked.

  The screen door to the porch was locked as well. I went to the woodshed and found the emergency key hanging under the roof, used it to open the front door.

  Inside, the first thing I noticed was the absence of odor and yellow plastic ribbon. I switched on the overhead lights.

  The Persian-style rug was gone from the living room, and so with it went all the blood and other stuff. The hardwood floor had a slight pinkish tinge in places, but all in all, the clean-up had been better than I expected.

  Upstairs in my workroom, I started writing an email to Liske. In it, I pointed out that as far as we knew, the senior Santiago and Means were still on the loose and hunting for Jan. My morning thinking was if we were to roust Crocker, and he was part of the criminal enterprise, he’d be sure to warn those two, and then they might be difficult to apprehend.

  I suggested he have his people in Salem j
ust determine if Crocker was in town, and if so, to keep an eye on him.

  I also told him I thought it would be a good idea if whoever responded to my house on Sunday would decline to identify the victims by name or even the address, if they could stall it, to keep from having Crocker or anyone else know that the attempt on my life had failed. If they had to report because of open records law, they could “withhold identities of the victims pending notification of next of kin.”

  With a jolt, I realized that the next of kin would include Kathy, a woman who was as much a part of my past as Mickey had been, a true friend whose son had died in my living room. I knew I would have to tell her about it at some point, and the very thought sent a chill to my soul. I shook myself back to the present and continued to write.

  I then told him I was planning on going to Michigan right after we concluded our business on Tuesday, so I hoped he’d make sure it was ready before noon.

  I sent the email, and then called Jan’s cell.

  She answered and I realized she had been asleep. “I’m awake now, though,” she said, having seen where the call was from.

  “Where are you?”

  “In the spare room at Lawton’s house in Cadillac. We went to the cemetery for the military colors and salute, and then to the parade... I got sleepy, so I grabbed a nap before we go to the park for salt ‘n’ butter chicken – did you ever have salt ‘n’ butter chicken?”

  “Remember, I was a reporter in Cadillac. Of course I had salt ‘n’ butter chicken. It’s right up there with Dave and Jim’s Pizza, but you can make the chicken at home.”

  “I’ve never had Dave and Jim’s Pizza. Is it special?”

  “Sandy never forgot their phone number. Twenty-five years after we left there we were driving from Traverse City to Lakeville on a summer day, and she dialed the number and ordered a pizza from memory. It was still the best ever.”

  “Wow. Will you take me for pizza someday?”

  “Fine, how about Wednesday?”