Spiral

by David L Lindsey

  The car coming from the exit ramp at the other end of the garage was already barreling down the aisle, its headlights on bright, as the second car burst out of the up ramp six cars away, its headlights panning the walls and swinging around to meet those from the other direction. Bias fired two shots in each direction as he sprinted across the aisle in front of them, and dove over the second-floor ban into the darkness.XXX

  Chapter 43

  HAYDON swung his legs over the side of the bed and let the telephone ring one more time. He was aware that it was still dark outside as he lifted the receiver and looked at his watch in the light of the bedside lamp Nina had just turned on. It was three-twenty.

  "This's Bob, Stu," Dystal said. "That son of a bitch Negrete's gone mad dog on us again."

  "What's the matter?" Haydon had to clear his throat.

  "You awake?"

  "Yes. Go ahead." The bottle of wine Haydon had shared with Nina only hours before was making the top of his head feel as if it were filled with lead.

  "Ferretis has been killed. Night guard in a parking garage down near the Warwick heard a coupla cars ripping up and down the ramps and some shouting on the second floor. Cars tore outta there and he went up to have a look-see and found him. Three nine-millimeter slugs high in the stomach."

  "Is that all?"

  "Yeah, I asked too, but it looks like he was just blown away. Nothin' else except that he didn't have any ID on him. Somebody'd been through his clothes and took everything. They identified him first from a picture they'd gotten from his wife earlier, then she went and made a positive identification later."

  "The guard didn't get license numbers?"

  "Nope, but we got good descriptions of the cars. Next thing: They've picked up that little ol' Cissy Farrell in a motel on the Gulf Freeway. Drunk as a skunk. She'd knocked her phone off the hook and the night manager went to check, called a blue-and-white unit to haul her off. They hit on her name and took her in. She's sleeping it off down there."

  "You're not downtown?"

  "Hell, no. I'm sitting here on the edge of my bed in my under wear. I thought you ought to be there when we talk to her."

  "Right. I'll be there in half an hour."

  Haydon hung up, and massaged the muscles at the back of his neck.

  "What's happened?" Nina put a hand on his back.

  "Ferretis was killed a few hours ago, and they've got Ciss Farrell downtown." He stood. "I've got to get down there."

  He threw his pajama bottoms on the foot of the bed and walke naked into the shower. Turning the water on cold, he sat down on the marble seat built around the walls and let the cold spray beat h head and back. He thought of the scene he had found in Lawrence Waite's kitchen, and wondered how this girl had missed being one those grotesque victims. Cissy. He tried to imagine what she looked like.

  After drying off, he wrapped the towel around his waist and shaved. He splashed Kuros aftershave on his face and selected a charcoal double-breasted pinstripe from his suit closet. If he was right, there wouldn't be any time to change clothes before Mooney's memorial service later in the morning. He sat in one of the armchair in the dressing area and tied his shoelaces. Nina was watching him from the bed.

  "How do you feel?" she asked.

  "All right." He stood, took a fresh shirt from his armoire, a put it on, taking cufflinks from one of the drawers. "Listen," he said, fastening the links. "Would you make sure Celia gets started on teco report? Somewhere inside her head she's got a piece of infornation that could open this up."

  "What about Renata Islas?"

  "I'm going to try to get over there after we talk to Cissy Farre He selected a tie and slipped it under his collar. "It was a good idea get them together."

  He took his Beretta out of an armoire drawer and slipped it his belt in the small of his back. Taking his suit coat off a hanger walked over and kissed her. "Don't let Celia out of your sight."

  "Okay," she said. "Be careful."

  At almost four o'clock in the morning Houston streets ari empty as they ever get, and Haydon made good time by way of Montrose and Memorial Drive. The night shift still had three hours to run, and some of the detectives on Lapierre's task force were in their offices. Others had gone downtown to the garage where Ferretis had been found.

  Haydon walked into his office, where a night-shift detective was tapping away at one of the terminals. The detective turned around, saw

  who it was, started to speak, then hesitated when he saw that Haydon had stopped in the middle of the room and was staring at Mooney's cubicle.

  Mooney's coffee mug, a gift from another detective who had brought it back from a summer vacation in Ireland; his big-breasted pin-ups taped on the side of the cubicle next to the monthly boxing schedules; his caricature on a piece of yellowed notebook paper sketched as a gesture of friendship by a man who had dismembered his wife, but who, Mooney said, was "otherwise a nice guy with talent"; his cartoons cut from a variety of magazines... everything ... was gone. His desk was bare; nothing of Mooney remained but the hand-soiled outlines where the strips of tape had been pulled up.

  Haydon had not been ready for this. Mooney was memory.

  "Sorry about Ed," the detective said. His name was Harker, a young detective with wavy blond hair and a well-trimmed mustache. "I wish I was on that task force."

  Haydon nodded, and turned and walked out of the office.

  He was standing at the coffeepot, stirring nondairy creamer into a Styrofoam cup of coffee and thinking of the bare cubicle, when Dystal came up beside him and poured a cup for himself.

  "Morning," he said. His voice was early-morning basso. Neither man looked at the other as they stood side by side stirring their coffee. "Okay. The story is this way about your situation. You're doing some sort of undercover stuff. Uh, the details aren't all worked out real clear, but . . . well, you don't have to talk to anybody about it and we've briefed the couple or so that needed to know and they aren't going to be asking you any questions. We had to do some stuff, you know, I mean, Pete's coordinating this thing and we didn't want him to think you were doing any kind of end-run kind of thing. Didn't want to get men crossways on this."

  Haydon didn't have any idea what had been done, and he didn't want to know.

  Dystal heaved a weary sigh. "You can ask any questions you want to when we get her in here." He sipped loudly from the Styrofoam cup. "They're bringing her up now. Pete's been down there where Ferretis was killed. He'll be here in a minute."

  The squad room was quiet. Even with the twenty-four-hour task force in full swing, four o'clock in the morning is slow.

  "Did you find out anything about Rich Elkin?"

  "I got Moyer out of bed to ask him about it after I left your place. I didn't explain the whole deal to him, but I let him know it was purty damn important and I needed something pronto. He's supposed to get back with me early this morning, and we can get into it about his Mexican connection and what they can do for us."

  Cissy Farrell was waiting in Dystal's office with a jail matron when the three detectives walked in. She sat in a straight-backed metal chair, a skinny, wasted-looking girl in her mid-twenties. After having thrown up her binge of Doritos and Coors, she looked pathetically gaunt, with pasty skin. She was nervously smoking Salems, and drinking a Classic Coke, which she put down on the edge of Dystal's desk, making rings on the top. Her hair was so dirty it looked wet, and the bruised bags under her eyes were painful to look at. She had a thin nose, thin lips, and brown eyes that bulged slightly. She was trembling. The matron stepped outside to wait in the squad room.

  Dystal introduced himself, and then Haydon and Lapierre. He went around behind his desk as the other two men took chairs across from the girl.

  "Now, Mrs. Farrell," Dystal began, leaning toward her and assuming an avuncular tone. "Do you have any idea why we brought you up here to talk to you?"

  She shook her head, which was bent down between rounded shoulders. She had the demeanor of a scolded
dog.

  "Well, the motel manager called the police because of your drunkenness, and when they picked you up they realized that you were someone we were looking for. Do you know why we were looking for you?"

  The girl shrugged and limply lifted the cigarette to her colorless

  lips.

  "Do you know what has happened to your husband, Mrs. Farrell?"

  She grew rigid in her slumped position. It seemed that even her heart didn't move for a full two minutes, and then she said, "Goddam." It was not said in anger or fear, but in unmistakable anguish.

  But she seemed too weak to cry, and her hand went up to her mouth, which was hidden by a stiff hank of hair that had fallen away from her head. As she exhaled the smoke, she nodded.

  "Well, hon, I hate to do it," Dystal said kindly, "but I got to ask you about it. You know anything about it at all?"

  The girl nodded. She kept her head down slightly and only looked at Dystal from under her eyebrows.

  "Now you just relax as best you can," he urged, "and tell us what you know, or think you know."

  Cissy dragged on her cigarette. "I want immunity," she said.

  "Immunity?" Dystal frowned and sat up a little.

  "Uh-huh."

  "From what, hon? You're not any kind of suspect in this thing."

  "But I know some thangs."

  "Well, you don't need immunity because you know some things."

  "About criminal activity, though," she said, sucking at the cigarette again.

  "What criminal activity is that?"

  "Guns an'. .." She stopped and reached for her Coke. She took a few swallows and went back to the cigarette.

  "Guns and what?"

  Her voice was weak. "Explosives."

  Dystal didn't even flinch, but kept his easygoing comportment as if she had said candy bars. "Well, hon, we don't know anything about anything. All we know is we found your man and your friends dead in that house and we don't know why, or when, or who, or how. If we're gonna do any good on this, you're gonna have to straighten us out. We sure do need your help."

  "I want protection."

  Dystal cut his eyes up at Haydon and Lapierre. The one thing they didn't want to hear her say now was that she wanted to see her lawyer. Dystal leaned toward her again.

  "Listen, hon, we're not gonna let anything happen to you, but you gotta tell us what it is you're talking about."

  Cissy leaned forward and mashed her cigarette out in Dystal's Texas-shaped ashtray, grinding the butt out on the amber-stained rattlesnake rattles. She dug in her purse, found her pack of Salems, and took out another one and lighted it.

  "Me an' Donny, we met Ruby and Tucky a coupla years ago," she said, clearing her throat. "At a gun show. Donny, he likes pistols, six-guns. Western revolvers. He had an Hombre, a Dakota, a Texas Ranger, like that. Shot 'em out on his daddy's place out past Galena Park. Just at cans 'n' thangs. Tucky had a table at this show, an' we stopped to look at his stuff. We got to be friends, 'cause Ruby was there too and I kinda hit it off with her while the boys was talkin'. We both was Waylon Jennings fans."

  Cissy crossed her legs and leaned forward a little as if she were trying to ease a cramp.

  "Tucky's a real heavy-duty gun hog. A dealer at these gun 'n' knife shows an' stuff. His big thang is survival warfare. We went to this survivalist camp around Conroe with him an' Ruby two or three times, and Donny really got off on it. Those people was really military. Assault weapons, camo outfits, the whole bit. All the women knew how to shoot as good as the men. I learned how, an' we painted our faces an' played war games an' had some good times. Anyway, we got to be real close friends with those people, an' after several months, Tucky, he let Donny in on his side business. His job was at the ship channel. Night watchman, but he moonlighted buyin' an' sellin' illegal guns. Machine guns. Full-automatic stuff. And then he got into explosives. RDX. C-4. Donny got into it with him."

  When she stopped to pull on her cigarette, Dystal asked, "Where'd they get these firearms and explosives from?"

  "I don't know. Somethin' to do with the ship channel, came in on ships or somethin'. It was Tucky's deal. Me and Ruby, we stayed out of it, at first."

  Cissy's voice cracked a little at this point, and she ground out another cigarette in the ashtray. She drank from the Coke again, and when she put it back on the desk she knocked it over.

  "Oh, goddam." She grabbed for it and stood. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said, hovering over the spilled cola, her arms trembling. But Dystal was already reaching in a desk drawer for some paper napkins he kept there.

  "That's all right, that's all right, hon," he said. "Don't mind it. Just sit down. No harm done."

  But Cissy had already collapsed in her chair, and was crying, ducking her head and holding it in one hand and crying. Dystal uiopped up the spilled Coke, put the napkins in his trash can, placed a fresh napkin under the can, and pushed it back to her.

  "Mrs. Farrell, I know you're upset, but just hang in there. There's no need for you to be jittery with us. Okay? Come on, now," he said, pushing the Coke toward her a little more. "Take a sip, and go ahead on." He gave her a paper napkin to blow her nose.

  After a minute she continued.

  "I don't know nothin' about who Tucky sold to. Donny was just learnin' the ropes, so he didn't really know a lot, I don't thank, and he didn't tell me much about what he knowed. He's the quiet type, anyway. But about a month ago Tucky and Ruby asked us over to their place one night an' we all sat down in the . . . kitchen . . . and Tucky was real excited. He said he had got a feeler from a Mexcun that could maybe turn into somethin' real big. He said the Mexcun was wantin' a bunch of RDX, like twenty-five kilos. He said it was gonna be a lot of money, but it was gonna take all of us to pull if off because he couldn't trust the Mexcuns at the payoff."

  "Excuse me," Haydon interrupted her. "Do you remember if he mentioned the Mexican's name?"

  "Mostly he just called him the Mexcun," Cissy said, lighting another Salem. "But I remember his name was something like a girl's. Uh . . ." She tilted her head back and looked at the ceiling. "Irene. Yeah, like Irene-o."

  "Fine. Go ahead."

  "Well, after a couple of weeks when it was all firmed up, an' the delivery date an' place was set with this Mexcun, Tucky made us plan out this operation like it was some kind of military thang. We all wore these little mikes so we could all hear each other and talk to each other. He was to square the deal down on the channel. Me and Ruby was posted on top of some oil storage tanks with these little Weather-bys with night scopes, an' we were gonna cover the boys. But it went off without a hitch."

  "Who did Mr. Waite deal with on the channel?" Lapierre asked. "Was it with the same man?"

  "Oh, no sir. It was two other guys, but we knowed that might be. The Mexcun and Tucky had arranged some passwords, and these two guys knowed the words."

  "Do you know their names?"

  "Just their first names, which I heard on the earpiece. One was Rubio. Ruby, she laughed at that 'cause it was sorta like hers, another girl's name, too, like the first one. An' the other was somethin' like Blahs. I don't know for sure. I don't know Mexcun."

  "And they bought twenty-five kilos of this RDX?" Dystal asked.

  Cissy nodded.

  "Well, do you know anything else about these boys?"

  Cissy shook her head.

  "Did you get a good look at these men?" Haydon asked.

  "Not really. That night scope don't give great detail, an' they were movin' around an' talkin' with their backs to us an' stuff. Naw, I couldn't tell much about 'em."

  "Are these the boys you wanted protection from?" Dystal asked.

  "Yeah," she said hoarsely.

  "Why would they want to kill you?"

  "Shut me up, I guess."

  "You think that's why the others got killed?"

  "I guess."

  "Where were you when this happened?"

  "I'd gone down to get some beer. When I came back I saw these two ca
rs at Tucky's and I got leery and drove aroun' until they was gone and then ... I went.. . and found 'em."

  Her voice squeezed off and she started crying again.

  "And so you went to the motel to hide?" Dystal asked.

  Cissy nodded, and continued crying. Haydon could see her shoulder blades through the western shirt, and it reminded him of the pale back of Ruby Waite as she slumped over the kitchen table.

  "Can you describe the cars for us?" he asked.

  She sniffed, cleared her throat, and coughed. "I don't know. They was light-colored. I don't know. I can't tell anymore about cars. I get 'em all confused. And they was down the road a bit." She shook her head, "I don't know."

  "Mrs. Farrell," Lapierre said. "Do you have any idea what the men planned to do with the explosives they purchased from Mr. Waite?"

  "No, not at all."

  "You never heard Mr. Waite or anyone else use any other Latin names in regard to this or any other transaction?"

  She shook her head.

  "Were these men from Houston?"

  "I don't know."

  "Do you know how Mr. Waite got in touch with them?"

  "No, sir. Only that it was all arranged through that Irene-o and then the other two Mexcuns showed up an' took delivery."

  "When did this exchange take place?" Haydon asked.

  "Uh . . ." Cissy studied the end of her cigarette, which was shaking in her bony fingers. "Uh, this is Friday? That woulda been, uh, Wednesday night."

  All three men looked at the girl in silence, and then Dystal said, "Okay, hon. We appreciate your help. Right now we gotta get some things lined out here. I'll get the lady out there to take you to a nicer room than that tank, and then we'll talk some more a little later. You want some breakfast?"

  Cissy nodded. "I better get somethin' in my stomach," she said.

  Chapter 44

  BY eight-thirty, Dystal and Captain Mercer had already had theibriefing meeting with the HPD brass and public-relations people. Thi mayor had already checked in, as well as several councilmen. Every body wanted to get "this thing" cleared up as soon as possible. Dowr stairs the headquarters lobby was crowded with reporters and telf vision cameras, and more than just a few people were hanging aroun waiting to see the news people go into action. The discovery of the bodies at Waite's house in Port Houston the evening before and the shooting in the garage early in the morning hours had all been reported on the morning television news. The news teams were getting as little sleep as the police, and since the police department itself had few clues as to what was going on, the reporters were doing more th their share of speculation. And the excitement seemed justified. Within the space of three days a full-scale Latin underworld slaughter had taken place, and six U.S. citizens had been killed in its wake. One them a policeman. In light of that, the public, and the law-and-or politicians, did not feel they were getting satisfactory information. Most assumed the entire Miami drug business had moved to Houston.