Blues in the Night

by Dick Lochte

  A Selection of Titles by Dick Lochte

  The Billy Blessing Series with Al Roker

  THE MORNING SHOW MURDERS

  THE MIDNIGHT SHOW MURDERS

  THE TALK SHOW MURDERS

  BLUES IN THE NIGHT

  Dick Lochte

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2011

  in Great Britain and in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2011 by Dick Lochte.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Lochte, Dick.

  Blues in the night.

  1. Ex-convicts – Fiction. 2. Organized crime – California –

  Los Angeles – Fiction. 3. Serial murder investigation –

  Fiction. 4. Suspense fiction.

  I. Title

  813.5´4-dc22

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-173 6 (ePub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8108-3 (cased)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For Michael Laughlin, friend,

  bon vivant and all-round gent

  Paris

  When the gunfire began, Modi Sarif, who’d been double-timing down the Rue de la Reyne, clutched his briefcase to his chest and threw himself to the grimy sidewalk. Hearing laughter, he blinked open his eyes and raised his head cautiously.

  Several schoolboys, unkempt wraiths in baggy black, were posed at the open doors of a cafe, observing him with typical youthful scorn. Sarif saw that, in the café beyond them, others of their ilk were playing an electronic game that had apparently been the source of the ‘gunshots’. On its display panel was the animated, muscled figure of Captain Combat, the comic-book soldier of fortune who seemed to have captured the hearts and minds of teenage boys the world over.

  Sarif rose, brushed off his dark blue suit jacket and trousers and glared at the smirking youths. ‘Idiots!’ he shouted. ‘Wasting your euros on noise and bright lights.’

  The boys did not bother to reply. They merely drifted back to their game, no longer amused by the little man standing on the sidewalk hugging a briefcase, his knuckles scraped and bleeding.

  Sarif glared at them in frustration. He wanted to give the insolent little bastards a demonstration of what was in his briefcase, to wipe the sneers from their pasty faces. To show them that he, unlike their make-believe Captain Combat, possessed the real power of life and death.

  Another time, perhaps.

  He began walking again, pausing momentarily to investigate the stinging sensation on the back of his hands. Flecks of blood peeked through the scrapes. The bastards, with their fucking game. He wondered if he needed some kind of inoculation. The area was so unclean.

  His destination was in the next block, a red brick two-story building, surprisingly kempt for the neighborhood, that might have been taken for a residence or perhaps the office of a doctor with an upper-class clientele. A polished brass plaque above the doorbell read, ‘Le Galerie Honore. By Appointment Only.’

  He had an appointment.

  He pressed the bell and a reassuringly no-nonsense buzzer sounded inside the gallery. Almost immediately, the door was opened by a freshly barbered, pink-faced man in his middle years, his solid body caressed by a tailored suit of dark gray. A white shirt, canary-yellow tie and buffed, black bluchers completed his attire. ‘Yeah?’ he asked, as if the answer were of no earthly importance to him.

  A fucking American, Sarif thought. Of course it would be an American, the money they were offering. If any race were more loathsome than the French, it was the Americans. But, unlike the froggies, they had money and they didn’t mind spending it, even with their economy in free fall.

  He gave the fucking American his name. The fucking American took his time before stepping aside. ‘C’mon in,’ he said. ‘I’m Corrigan. You’re late, sport.’

  ‘A few minutes. The underground . . .’

  ‘We like to call it The Metro,’ Corrigan said as he locked the front door. ‘And it works pretty good, last I noticed. Moves right along.’

  ‘I . . . exited at the wrong stop.’

  ‘Did you, now?’ Corrigan said.

  Sarif took a few steps down the hall. To his right was the gallery’s main display room. The Bokhara on the floor. The walls filled with art. The perfect indirect lighting. The exquisitely placed vases with freshly cut flowers. The ambiance made him a bit heady.

  ‘C’mon,’ Corrigan ordered, walking past him toward the rear. ‘And try not to touch anything. Your mitts are bleeding.’

  Bleeding and painful.

  Sarif told himself this was the price one paid for venturing into a crude and unpleasant country where the men smelled of perfume and the women walked about without underwear.

  He followed Corrigan down the hallway and through a door into what appeared to be a large garage that was also serving as an office, workroom and storage space. A gunmetal gray desk was against one wall, its surface cluttered with invoices and other papers, dirty coffee cups, a cellular telephone, a computer – dark at the moment – and the machine Sarif had been expecting to see.

  Crates and packing materials were stacked in one corner. Piles of sawdust and wood shavings had been swept near a large round trash bin. A sliding, metal exit door had been built into the far rear wall. A dusty, gray van was parked facing the closed door.

  The rest of the room was unpainted drywall, decorated by framed prints. Empty frames of varying sizes and styles hung on black metal hooks protruding from the wall that separated this area from the gallery.

  As Sarif crossed the room, he stepped on a sheet of bubble wrap, the resulting pops causing him to hop nervously. This provoked a chuckle from a tall raw-boned man, younger than Corrigan, whom Sarif hadn’t noticed leaning against the wall to his left. Another fucking American, Sarif assumed, judging by the man’s crew cut and rumpled, ill-fitting conservative dark suit.

  ‘Mr Sarif seems to be a little goosey,’ Corrigan said to the other fucking American. ‘He looks like he damaged himself on the way here.’

  ‘I . . . stumbled in my haste.’ Feeling awkward and uncomfor–table, Sarif quickly opened the briefcase and withdrew an unusual-looking handgun. Small and glossy gray, it seemed toylike, even with a thick circle of flat black metal wrapping the tip of its barrel. He held it out to Corrigan.

  ‘Mr Drier will take that,’ Corrigan said, indicating the other American. ‘He’s the expert.’

  Drier pushed away from the wall and ambled over to Sarif. His unblinking green eyes continued to stare at the little man as he picked up the weapon. ‘Light,’ he said. ‘Uses a standard silencer?’

  ‘Just one of its many attractions,’ Sarif said.

  ‘Full load?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Drier took a few seconds to fit the pistol in his big hand.

  He poin
ted it at a colorful print of LeRoy Neiman’s Sinatra at the Sands that had been taped to a thick roll of pink fiberglass insulation.

  ‘Sorry, Frank,’ Drier said and fired the weapon.

  The sound it made was a subdued pop, like the opening of a beer can, accompanied by a jagged circular hole in the Neiman print removing Sinatra’s snap brim hat and the top of his head.

  ‘On the mark, Cap,’ Drier said. He hefted the gun. ‘I’d give it a ten.’

  Corrigan took the gun from him and carried it to the desk.

  Sarif watched anxiously as Corrigan moved the gun toward the device he’d noticed on the way in. Dr Abelard had had one just like it in his lab, a Garrett Super Scanner, a top of the line metal detector.

  When the weapon was a few inches away, the Super Scanner suddenly emitted a loud squeal, startling Sarif.

  Corrigan glared at him.

  Blinking, feeling a shortness of breath, Sarif looked from the metal detector to the weapon. He relaxed. Smiling weakly, he said, ‘The, ah, silencer.’

  Corrigan nodded, unscrewed the silencer. He moved the pistol toward the device again. As confident as Sarif was of the weapon’s molecular structure, he experienced a moment of panic.

  What if . . .?

  But no. This time there was blessed silence.

  Corrigan grinned. ‘Well fucking done, Mr Sarif.’

  ‘My mission is to please. If you are satisfied, then,

  perhaps . . .’

  ‘You want your lolly. Of course you do.’ Corrigan circled the desk. He rested the gun on top of the scattered invoices and bent down to retrieve an aluminum case from the floor.

  He placed the case beside the gun, snapped it open, showing Sarif that it was jam-packed with neatly bound, small denomination euro banknotes.

  Sarif’s damaged hand seemed to have a will of its own, reaching out to the bills. With his fingertips nearly touching them, Corrigan snapped the lid of the case shut. ‘There’s still one little thing.’

  His throat dry, Sarif nodded. He withdrew a tiny, green felt bag from his briefcase and offered it to Corrigan.

  Puzzled, Corrigan accepted the bag. He shook it and a dull-gray coin the size of an American quarter fell on to his palm. On it, the upper torso of a bearded man stood out in bas-relief. ‘What the hell is this?’ the gallery owner asked.

  ‘What you paid for,’ Sarif replied, still focused on the aluminum case.

  Corrigan raised the coin and squinted at it. Muttering, he took it to the cluttered table and shoved the papers around until he uncovered an antique magnifying glass not unlike those usually associated with Sherlock Holmes. He used it to examine both sides of the coin. ‘I’ll be damned,’ he said, smiling.

  He held the coin and magnifying glass to Drier who pushed himself off the wall and accepted the items.

  ‘He’s a cutie pie, that Doc Abelard,’ Corrigan said, turning to Sarif. ‘Who’s the old bird in the engraving?’

  ‘Dr Abelard did not say.’

  ‘The coin is one of a kind, right?’

  ‘Of course,’ Sarif said, hand on the aluminum case now, drawing it toward him. ‘All records and notes have been destroyed.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Along with Dr Abelard.’

  ‘Come again?’ Corrigan asked.

  ‘I set fire to the lab. Everything is ash.’

  ‘Including Abelard?’

  Sarif had the case opened and was too concerned with counting its contents to notice Corrigan’s face. ‘Of course,’ he said, as if he were discussing the weather. ‘As soon as he gave me the coin and his assurances, I slit his Limey throat. He squealed like a pig.’

  Corrigan picked up the pistol, replaced the silencer. ‘A genius like that,’ he said, ‘you kinda wonder what other useful shit he might have had on his drawing board.’

  Sarif continued to count his money. ‘We will never know,’ he said.

  ‘Precisely my point, you stupid Arab son of a bitch.’

  The words and the anger behind them got through to Sarif. Blinking rapidly, he said. ‘I, sir, am Egyptian.’

  ‘That’s better?’ Corrigan asked.

  Sarif, clutching his euro notes, was starting to reply when the bullets lifted him off his feet and hurled him against a stack of frames, scattering him and them to the floor.

  Corrigan walked across the room, reached down and yanked the packet of currency from the dead man’s fingers. He didn’t have to break the fingers, so that was one good thing he could say about the slimy little weasel. He returned the banknotes to the briefcase and snapped the lid shut.

  ‘Egyptian,’ he said.

  ‘I’d have done that for you, Cap,’ Drier said.

  ‘The gun was in my hand,’ Corrigan said.

  He slipped the engraved coin back into its felt pouch and handed it and the pistol to Drier. ‘They go with the canvasses, Leonard.’

  The door buzzer sounded.

  Corrigan glanced at the monitor attached to a metal brace over the hall door. He smiled at the sight of the visitor standing on the stoop.

  ‘Think of some inventive resting place for Mr Sarif, Leonard. But be sure you dig the ceramic bullets out, first. Wouldn’t want to confuse the Sûreté.’

  He moved quickly to the front door. There, he paused to fix the knot of his tie, straighten his cuffs and pat down the hair at the back of his head. Satisfied with his appearance, he twisted the bolt lock free and opened the door to what, in his Yalie years, he used to refer to as ‘an F. Scott Fitzgerald wet dream’.

  Angela Lowell was an ice princess in her late twenties. Blonde, dressed for success.Grace Kelly playing a Rosalind Russell role, Corrigan thought. He had to remind himself that the stunner entering his shop was too young to know who the hell Rosalind Russell was. She might not even know who Grace Kelly was.

  ‘Ms Lowell, an unexpected pleasure,’ he said.

  ‘I just wanted to make sure that everything was set for the flight tomorrow, Mr Corrigan,’ she said, leading him to he display room.

  She could have phoned, Corrigan thought. Dare he hope that her visit might be an invitation to . . . something? ‘We’re all set,’ he said.

  ‘Could I take one last look at my selections?’

  Corrigan realized her selections were in the back room with the freshly dead Mr Sarif. ‘I’m afraid they’re already crated,’ he said. ‘Not having second thoughts?’

  ‘No. I just wanted to see them again.’

  Corrigan gave her his most charming grin. ‘You’ll have years and years to do that.’

  ‘Assuming I remain . . . employed by the purchaser.’

  ‘Hold out for visitation rights,’ Corrigan said.

  She smiled. Damn. Bottle that smile and you could put Pfizer right out of the Viagra business.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d want to spend your last evening in Paris with a middle-aged art dealer,’ he said, ‘who just happens to know a great little four star restaurant on the Rue de Varenne?’

  ‘That’s sweet of you, but I’m meeting friends.’

  ‘Lucky friends.’ Laying her would have been the icing on the cake, but since that option was off the table, he saw no reason to prolong his hard-on. ‘Well, you’ve got an open dinner invitation on your next visit,’ he said, leading her to the front door.

  Before exiting, she turned to look at him. ‘It must be so stimulating,’ she said.

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘Being constantly surrounded by all this wonderful art.’

  Corrigan cocked his head. ‘Yeah. Stimulating . . . and frustrating,’ he said.

  ‘Frustrating?’

  ‘Sure.’ He smiled. She probably thought the smile was for her, but actually he was thinking about the dead self-proclaimed Egyptian in the back room. ‘You know the old saying: “Art is forever, but life is so damn short”.’

  Los Angeles

  ONE

  ‘Jee-zus,’ Wylie said. ‘He’s giving it to her good.’

  Mace stared at the
grinning young idiot sitting beside him at the window and wondered if he might be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. They were in darkness, in a room on the top floor of the Florian Apartment Hotel, a U-shaped, three-story building a block above Sunset Boulevard.

  Wylie had his night vision binoculars trained on the wing of the building across the way. Mace guessed that he was barely into his twenties. Six feet tall, a couple inches shorter than Mace and maybe twenty-five pounds lighter at one-sixty-five to one-seventy. Greenish-blonde mop of hair showing black at the roots.

  There was enough light from the moon and the Florian’s glowing pool in the courtyard below for Mace to make out the head of a blue and red serpent tattoo poking above the neckline of Wylie’s loud Hawaiian shirt.

  At Pelican Bay prison, Mace used to watch an old con named Billy Jet stick needles full of dye into the flesh of some of the other cons. There wasn’t much else to do there, except get tats or watch other guys getting tats. As far as Mace knew Wylie had never served time, so the snake didn’t make any sense to him at all.

  The second floor window occupying Wylie’s attention wasn’t the one they were there to watch, but that point seemed to be lost on him. He licked his slightly feminine lips and said, ‘Oh, ba-bee, don’t use it up all at once.’

  Mace stubbed out his cigarette and picked up his binoculars. He aimed them at a set of windows directly across the way. The main room of the apartment was still empty. The subject was somewhere to the right, probably in the bathroom, since no light had gone on in the bedroom.

  ‘Shee-it,’ Wylie said, ‘this waaay beats the beater flicks on cable all to hell. I’m ready for a little hormone fix, myself.’

  Mace sighed.

  ‘Whoa. Watch out for Mr Back-door Man.’

  ‘If I didn’t know better,’ Mace said, staying focused on the subject’s apartment, ‘I’d take you for some snot-nose kid on his first trip to what they laughingly call a gentleman’s club.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ Wylie said, obviously stung. ‘Well . . . go fuck yourself.’