by Jim Pascoe
“So, are we finished here, then?” I asked.
He nodded his big head. “Yeah, we’re finished. I think we’ve got everything we need. Don’t go skipping town on us, though,” he ordered. “Just in case we don’t.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yeah? So now whatcha gonna do, hotshot?”
“First, I’m going to sleep for a few days. Then, it looks like I’m self-employed.”
“Jesus!” Duke Wellington spouted. “That’s all this town needs—a goddamn lone-wolf Ben Drake runnin’ around stickin’ his nose in all the places it don’t belong!”
I couldn’t let him have the last word. “Come on, DW, you didn’t think I’d want to stop solving your cases just because my boss is dead, did you?”
He had more to say, but I wasn’t hearing any of it. I walked outside and took a breath of late-night air.
I’d made two other calls that morning. One was to Elizabeth Biggs, letting her know that this mess was about to come to an end. She told me over and over how proud she was of me and that she knew I was the right man for the job.
Without going into detail, I told her that I knew of two little dogs that suddenly found themselves without a home. I figured they’d be good company for her. She seemed to agree, even though this made her start in with the questions. I promised I’d give her the whole story later. We made plans to have coffee together the following week.
As usual, talking to her made me feel good. Her words gave me the strength to see the night’s events through to the bloody end.
Walking to my car, I realized I was shaking, the reality of the evening finally overriding the blur that comes with a rush of adrenaline. I paused, lit a cigar, and continued across the parking lot.
I was glad—and more than a little surprised—to find Rebecca Hortzbach leaning against my powder-blue Galaxie 500, smoldering cigarette between her lips. My third call had been to her, and I wasn’t expecting to see her until later in the week. It’d been awhile since I’d seen her in street clothes. It didn’t take me long to notice she looked great.
Rebecca took a long last draw on her cigarette, then flicked the butt across the dark lot. “Looks like you need to relax. Let’s take care of that shoulder and get you some breakfast.”
I tugged on the knot of my tie and unbuttoned my collar. “Sure. You got any ideas of where to go?”
“Ben, my dear, I’ve got plenty of ideas.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
_______________________
I leaned against a streetlight post, pulled the brim of my fedora down, and kept my eyes locked on the small figure limping away from the drugstore. In his grubby little hands, he held a brown paper sack about the size of a lunch bag. During the hour or so I’d been on his tail, I’d been waiting for him to slip up, get sloppy, or in some other way show his hand. All people have weaknesses. Crooks, cops, grifters, gift-givers, pimps, pushers, and priests—all the same. Watch someone long enough and you’ll see hairline faults vein their way across the strongest of façades. Just a matter of waiting it out.
Or was that all a load of no-good nonsense, some feel-good, pulpy truism that I told myself while I battled the bad guys? They say some things, some people, do change. Certainly, I changed a lot in the days after I cracked the Gentleman Joe Biggs murder case. My office location had changed: up two floors in the William Kemmler Building, a more modest space than the open layout of the Always Reddy Detective Agency. My relationship with Rebecca had changed, and for the better.
One person I didn’t expect to change was Detective Duke Wellington, which is why I was surprised to find him turn up as the first paying customer at my brand-new agency.
I pushed off the light post and eased into the thin foot traffic on Porras Street. My target walked at a good, steady pace until he reached the corner. He stopped next to a blue mailbox, craning his neck to see if the coast was clear. Clear for what? I wondered as I ducked into the closest alcove. It couldn’t be anything good. The last time I saw Zef Ehrenreich, he was shouting threats and giving me a good time with his foot in my gut.
That’s not why I was now following this diminutive loudmouth, though. I’d gotten a tip-off while doing some investigating at the Short Stop—a popular cop bar on the east side of town—that Ehrenreich would lead me to my real mark. The more suspiciously he behaved, the more I knew I had the right guy.
Ehrenreich put the paper bag down next to the mailbox and walked away.
My first thought was to wait for him to clear the corner and race over to the bag and check its contents. But I froze, realizing that it could easily be a trap. A bomb? A cache of toxic chemicals? How could I test the bag without putting myself or the folks on the street at risk? Every second I thought about it was more time that Zef Ehrenreich had to lose my tail.
Hell, I’d done a lot riskier things than pick up someone’s drugstore throw-away. I went to grab it when a kid, only about eleven, ran in front of me, snatched the bag, and started shouting around the corner: “Hey, mister! You forgot your lunch!”
“No!” I yelled. “Put that sack down, kid!”
He eyed me with all the uncertainty of a preteen. “What’s your deal? It’s not your lunch.”
“It’s not yours either. Just put it down.” I suddenly had a flashback to an adult telling me not to do something. I never listened. I knew this kid wouldn’t either.
A quick standoff. Me and the kid. Eyes locked. The kid broke it by opening the bag, shoving his hand inside like it was a Cracker Jack box.
“I said no!” I ran over to him.
He crumpled the bag in a loose ball, tossed it at my chest. “There’s nothing in it.”
He ran off. I picked up the brown ball, uncrumpled it, looked inside.
It was empty—almost, except for a white index card, with a typewritten message on it: Come and get me.
So I guess the good news was I hadn’t lost Ehrenreich. He was bound to be right around the corner, waiting.
* * *
“I’m tellin’ you, Drake, this is unusual business, highly unusual. Duke Wellington doesn’t make a habit of asking private heat for help.” The big policeman paced in front of my metal desk. He was wearing a green sports coat over skinny black slacks. He looked more like a real estate agent than a cop.
“Believe it or not, DW, I want to help you.” I had a hard time believing it myself. “When was the last time you saw him?”
“Over a week ago.” He patted his sweaty bald head with a colorful handkerchief.
I opened the bottom desk drawer, pulled out a bottle of bourbon and two small juice glasses.
“Sit down. Have a drink with me.”
“Can’t do that, Drake. I’m a public servant, on duty. Wouldn’t be right, just wouldn’t be right.”
I poured the hooch in both glasses. Pushed the one glass over toward him. Pointed at the glass, pointed at the chair.
He sat and took a drink.
“Mark’s not the kind of guy to go missing. Not like this. I smell trouble. I got to get to the bottom of this.”
I nodded my head. I took a deep breath before diving in. “Look, I don’t know how to say this, but Mark strikes me as a cop whose sense of the law is a little more gray than pure black and white.”
He clenched his white teeth. “You got something to say, why don’t you spit it out and say it.”
“Have you ever noticed Weisnecki doing something on the wrong side of right? Something that might get him in over his head?”
Duke Wellington paused long enough to give truth to my suspicions. I knew the cops in this town. Just like I knew the crooks. “Let me tell you somethin’, Drake, I’ve seen things, okay, things that don’t make me any too happy. I got my way of doin’ things. Mark’s got his way of doin’ things.” He stood up. “That don’t mean he’s gone rollin’ to the other side! He’s police.”
I didn’t say anything. I wanted to let him cool down. The
last thing I needed was a fistfight with the fuzz. He sat back down.
I tried a different approach: “I know you’re not going to tell me details of the cases you two were working. Can you tell me anything?”
“I’ll give you details, Drake. Details like this: we’re workin’ an art heist. But that ain’t it. That case is a piece of cake, even you could solve it . . . I mean, you could solve it even without gettin’ your face kicked in a couple times.”
I rolled my eyes. He continued: “Okay, we also got two homicides. A hit-and-run that took place on South 15, near the city line. A woman shot in the stomach with a tiny-caliber load—probably lovers’ spat got out of hand. So what else? We’re trackin’ a money-laundering scheme run by a joker named Small-Tooth Kelley, and a few narco runs that’re probably unrelated.”
I knocked back my bourbon. “Wait, did you say Small-Tooth Kelley?”
Suddenly the mysterious disappearance of Detective Mark Weisnecki had me very interested.
* * *
I turned the corner and saw the smug little jerk a few blocks down the street, just standing there eyeing up the latest fashions in the haberdashery window. I adjusted my hat against the glare of the late-afternoon sun and started a slow stroll down Cherry Boulevard.
When I got about halfway to him, he checked his watch and started north. He walked for a few blocks, speeding up, before he turned down a side street. I picked up the pace myself, sprinting for a block and a half, before I slipped back into a brisk walk as I turned the corner.
Ehrenreich was up ahead of me a lot farther than I expected him to be. He was pretty fast for such a little guy—I’d have to put a little more hustle into my efforts if I wanted to catch him.
We did the cat-and-mouse thing for about half an hour, Ehrenreich leading me on some kind of manic chase right into Testacy City’s warehouse district, a sprawling assemblage of stone and steel just across the freeway from downtown.
There was a time, not too long ago, when the warehouses were bustling with commerce, but these days many of the buildings were just husks, bleak reminders of a once-promising era.
Ahead of me, Ehrenreich disappeared down a narrow alley between two derelict buildings. I really wanted to get this over with. I dashed up the street, turned the corner, and bolted down the alley. I burst out into the cross street, looking left, then right, then skidding to a stop on a patch of loose gravel.
Nothing. I’d lost him. I bent over, breathing hard, thinking about a smoke. Over my ragged breaths and pounding heart, a noise caught my attention. I looked across the street and saw Buck Bixel, the muscle to Ehrenreich’s mouth, casually tossing a baseball up and catching it, over and over. He stared right at me, grinned, and stepped through a small door on the side of an unmarked warehouse, chased by the day’s growing shadows.
I sighed, checked my gun. I knew it was loaded but checking made me feel better, made me think I’d be ready for whatever was going to happen inside. Thinking back to the last time I followed a maniac into a building, I felt for the small flashlight in my suit pocket.
I crossed the street, searching for something—anything—that would give me a clue about just what the hell was going on. The whole place was deserted, except for the nose of a once-red, rusting-out late-model Ford pickup poking out from another alley just down the street.
The handle of the door Bixel went through wasn’t locked. I didn’t think it would be. The door opened silently. After one last glance around, I slipped inside, pistol up, ready for anything.
The cavernous warehouse, dimly lit from above by mercury vapor lights, housed rows of boxes and crates stacked to various heights on thick metal racks. The whole place looked like a maze. I hated mazes.
I heard the distant ding of an elevator arriving. I peered down a long aisle toward the back of the building. One of those big freight numbers where the doors closed up and down whirred to life.
I ran down the aisle, knowing I’d never make it in time, knowing I had to try. I glimpsed the outline of a short man inside the elevator before the doors clamped shut and a green arrow pointing up winked out.
Noticing a big steel door in the corner, I pulled it open and rushed up the steps, taking two at a time. The warehouse ceiling was at least thirty feet high, so I knew I had a good climb ahead of me. I rushed up six flights, footsteps clanging on the diamond-plate steel, before I burst through the door, gun leading the way.
Nothing. I stood in a dark room, elevator to my right, doors closing. I frantically slapped at the down button, hoping to stop it. I didn’t.
This game was getting old, and I was tired of playing. Then the lights went out.
Even though there were a few hours of light left in the day, the inside of this place was as dark as a cave. Dark and silent. I was half-expecting something to hit me on the back of the head. Instead, I heard the click-and-slide of a door locking behind me.
I turned on my flashlight and tried the door to the stairs. It didn’t budge. Even if I took the time to pick the lock, the heavy bar on the other side would make sure the door stayed shut. I couldn’t see it, but knew it was there.
Going backward wasn’t an option. I was being led somewhere, that much was obvious, so I decided to take a look around and see where I was headed.
I shined my light around the room. I couldn’t see very far into the gloom, just far enough to spot two bodies lying motionless on the floor. The body closest to me, a big man in a dirty T-shirt and ripped jeans, lay facedown on the cold stone floor, arms splayed out to the sides. The back of his head had been cracked open by something heavy. A red halo of blood, shimmering in my light, surrounded his head.
Gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, I pushed him with my foot. He flopped over onto his back. Turned out I knew him—or at least of him. Beast Benton, face puffy from a recent beating, had taken his last fall.
Ehrenreich. Benton. Small-Tooth Kelley. This thing was starting to make some sense: That run-in I’d had with Small-Tooth Kelley—a little gambit with a big bag of oranges—when he was trying to fix one of Benton’s fights, and I broke it. Now Benton was dead, and it was probably my fault. Damnit.
The other body groaned. I shined my light over in time to see a man start to sit up. I knew this one too, and a lot better than I’d known Benton. “Weisnecki!”
He rubbed an eye with one hand. “Drake? What the hell are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“Well, you’ve done a bang-up job.” He reached under his coat and pulled out his big pistol. The barrel pointed right at me. “But it ends now.”
“Mark, wait!”
He fired. His shot went wide.
I didn’t want to shoot a cop. Even in Testacy City that would mean trouble. I dropped my gun and held my arms out. “Look, Mark, I have no idea what your beef is here. But let’s talk it out.”
Weisnecki struggled to his feet, chuckling softly. “Figures Kelley would bring you in on this.” He leveled the gun at me again.
I tossed my flashlight off to the side. There was just enough light in the room to see Weisnecki’s vague black-on-black outline. I ran at it, and tackled him low around the waist. He brought the butt of his gun down on my back once, twice, before we hit the ground. I heard the weapon skitter across the floor, disappearing deeper into the darkness.
Weisnecki brought his knee up hard, right into my stones. He fought dirty. I should have seen that coming. Pain lanced through my body and burrowed deep into my kidneys. My eyes watered, the back of my throat burned. I rolled onto my side, groaned, and caught Weisnecki’s shoe straight in my gut.
“Nice try, Drake, but I ain’t going out that easy.”
I struggled to make my mouth form words. “Mark, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I—we—know you’ve been dealing with Kelley. That business with Benton? We know you were mixed up in that.”
“Dealing with? Mixed up? Christ, Mark. I had a case. I closed it, plain and simple. It’s what
I do.” I tried to sit up, but Weisnecki slammed his foot down on my shoulder. My senses were all haywire. I spit out a mouthful of bile, my eyes stung, my nostrils burned.
“Uh-huh. And then you tried to cover your tracks, but you got sloppy.” He stood over me, an angry silhouette, hands balled into fists, daring me to make a move.
“Seriously, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I tried to sit up again. This time I made it. My nostrils still burned, a gasoline smell, smoke and ash. I knew that smell—fire, and too close to where I was. “Look, we have to get out of here. Let’s talk this out later.”
“We ain’t going anywhere, Drake.” He pulled a pair of handcuffs from inside his coat. “You’re not slipping away this time.”
I held my hands up. “No time for the bracelets. This place is going to be cinders, and I don’t want to be inside when it goes. We have to get out of here. Now.”
Weisnecki hesitated, looked around. He could smell it now too. I dragged myself to my feet. We could both hear the crackling and popping from below as the fire ate through the warehouse.
“Mark, we don’t have a lot of time. We can figure this out together—”
“Together? Like you and Brockman did? Think I forgot about that?”
A few years back, I’d had an accidental run-in with a tough-guy cop by the name of Bob Brockman. He’d set up a crazy murder-and-get-rich-quick scheme. I busted up his plan, we tussled, he didn’t make it. Weisnecki knew how it ended, and, no, I didn’t think he’d forgotten. I knew I hadn’t. More often than I cared to admit, memories of that day—a twisted mess of a day that changed my life forever—sneaked up on me.
“No. Look. Brockman was—”
“—Dirty, yeah, I know. He was working a score. And someone cleaned up behind him.”
“Yeah, you.” When I left Brockman’s body in the basement of a burned-out building, I left the cash behind too. Someone else took it. I always suspected a certain policeman.
Weisnecki snorted and pointed at my chest. “You think I took the cash? Hell, Drake, I think it was you.”