Beluga

by Rick Gavin

  “We sort of do,” Desmond told the captain.

  He wasn’t the type to tolerate counsel from some blubbery Delta local who wasn’t remotely a Shambrough or anything close.

  “I’m going down,” the captain said. He added just generally, “As you were.”

  So we stood around like we had been and watched him ease down the drive in his cruiser.

  “Might go all right,” the sergeant said, the one from the Alluvian men’s room.

  Kendell looked like he thought differently. I know me and Desmond did. Desmond went fishing in his Escalade and brought his rifle out. It was a .30-06 that Desmond could hit any damn thing he pleased with. Desmond only raised it when he wanted something dead.

  “Who all’s down there?” That from the beefy officer with the shotgun.

  Tula told him, “Don’t know. Haven’t seen anything but the dog.”

  There’d been nobody in the yard. Nobody on the drive. I couldn’t even remember a car passing by, and we were kind of on the way to the truck route. It felt like anybody who could steer clear of us already was.

  We saw Captain Greer get out of his cruiser. We watched the hound close on him and cower. Only Kendell had proper binoculars, so he told us what was going on once the captain had slipped under the canopy of Lucas Shambrough’s massive live oak trees.

  “Knocking,” he said.

  Then nothing for a bit.

  “Knocking,” he told us again. “Here we go.”

  “Little black woman?” I asked him.

  Kendell shook his head. “The man himself. Looking up here.” Nothing for a quarter minute from Kendell. Then he lowered his binoculars and told us all, “Inside.”

  “How long?” Tula asked.

  “I’ll give him ten minutes. Maybe fifteen,” Kendell told her.

  It turned out we didn’t have to wait nearly that long. Kendell was explaining to his officers just how he wanted them deployed when me and Desmond heard a pop from down around Shambrough’s house.

  The cops all missed it, huddled and talking cop strategy and all.

  I glanced at Desmond, who nodded the way he does.

  “Gunshot,” I said.

  Kendell clammed up and wheeled. “Where?”

  I pointed toward Lucas Shambrough’s pile of a house.

  “You sure?”

  We all heard the second one.

  I told Kendell, “Yeah.”

  They went scurrying to their cruisers. Kendell told me and Desmond, “Stay here.”

  They were hardly into the driveway before we heard a flurry of shots. Pistol fire, it sounded like, in lethal concentration.

  I pulled two .45s from my duffel.

  “I’ll go down and around,” I told Desmond.

  “I’m going to plug up the drive,” he said.

  So I found myself on the near end of the bean field I’d run through with Larry just the night before. There wasn’t any cover to speak of out there, but everybody sounded a bit too occupied already to trouble with the likes of me. I ran down and around and came out at the bottom of the Shambrough lot, not twenty yards from where me and Larry had crossed the yard and escaped.

  The gunfire had flagged a little by then. I still heard the odd shot. Definitely pistol rounds. Ground floor, as best I could tell. Not the cellar at least.

  Then I heard Kendell barking out, “Police!”

  I crawled across the yard, leery of crossfire, and got joined by Lucas Shambrough’s hound, who wriggled when he saw me. “You again!” he might as well have said for all the prancing and licking he did.

  “Come here, boy,” I told him and shifted him behind me. About the last thing I wanted to do was get revved up and shoot a dog.

  I heard the squeal of what proved to be a sash in a jamb. A second-floor window slid open, and the ninja schoolgirl assassin—in a denim shift—came crawling out over the sill. She tossed some kind of machine pistol down onto the lawn, hung for just a moment, and then dropped straight to the ground. She didn’t even roll when she hit but just crouched and staggered a little. Then she went scrambling for her gun as Tula came out over the sill.

  I had a fistful of hound scruff in my left hand and my .45 HK in my right. Just as that girl reached for her gun, I squeezed off three quick rounds. They kicked up dirt all around the thing and caused the creature to raise up.

  When she saw me, she seethed about like a child might. I half expected her to stomp her feet.

  “Hey, sugar,” I said.

  She bent. I fired. Another dirt explosion.

  By then Tula had done her hanging from the sill, had found a spot she liked, and had dropped her lanky self onto the ground. I thought maybe she’d just pull her piece on the ninja and corral her the conventional way, but Tula wasn’t in the mood for anything as civilized as that. I couldn’t be sure what had gone on inside, but I could see that Tula hadn’t liked it by the way she dove at that schoolgirl assassin just like a cornerback might. She was laid full out when she hit the girl, rammed into her torso with her shoulder. The force served to pile the both of them up on the ground.

  It seemed an even battle at first. They rolled and tussled and grunted. Then Tula caught that ninja with the heel of her hand square on the bridge of her nose. The blood fairly squirted from both her nostrils, which made everything slicker and a hell of a lot more grisly. The sight of her own blood made that ninja madder than she’d been. She loosed a shriek of rage and went at Tula with every kung fu thing she had.

  She worked free and got up. Tula got up, too. They’d forgotten about firearms by then and were just going at each other. The ninja schoolgirl was bleeding all over her shift. She went stalking toward Tula and then whipped around and tried to fell her with a kick, the sort of kick Dale would have visited on Desmond if Dale had even a scrap of talent. The ninja assassin knew just what she was about. The trouble was that Tula did, too.

  Tula dodged and ducked. She caught the ninja with a punishing blow to the throat. The ninja came back with an elbow. Tula blocked it with her forearm and then shoved down the ninja schoolgirl’s head and delivered a knee to her brow. The creature stumbled back, but Tula kept right on her. She delivered a sweeping kick of her own to the ninja schoolgirl’s knee. It staggered her further, and then Tula came through with a sweeping roundhouse right that was such a thing of glorious leverage and intent that I was wishing I’d thrown it before it even connected.

  The dull thud of Tula’s fist on that ninja schoolgirl’s jaw was so powerful and concussive I think I felt it in my feet.

  Mako/Isis—whoever she was—piled up like Larry might have. Tula dropped on top of her like a good warrior should and rained down a few more blows.

  “Hey!” I said.

  She kept on punching.

  “Enough!” I told her with volume.

  When she didn’t stop, I finally fired a shot into the air. That snared her notice. Tula glared my way like I just might be next. I had a nose she could flatten, a throat she could punch, a jaw she could slug and shatter.

  “Dead or in jail?” I asked her.

  Ninja schoolgirl looked lifeless by then. Tula was straddling her with her fists clinched still. She studied the creature’s battered face. She stood up and told me, “Done.”

  I walked over to where she was standing. I did it slowly and in stages because I know from experience it can take a few minutes to get unprimed from a fight.

  “You okay?” I asked from just out of arm’s reach.

  Tula nodded.

  “What happened in there?”

  “She shot up the place.”

  “The captain?”

  “Ducked behind a couch or something. Hit in the arm. Foot, I think.”

  “Kendell and them?”

  “Fine. She mowed down a bunch of … cronies,” Tula told me. “Went crazy with this damn thing.” Her foot found what turned out to be the ninja assassin’s TEC-9. Tula kicked it halfway across the yard.

  Shambrough’s hound wanted to chase it, bu
t I still had him by the scruff. He whimpered some on general principles.

  “Who’s that?” Tula asked me, looking at the hound.

  “Friend of mine,” I told her.

  We both heard the engine turning over and the roar of it starting up.

  “Where’s Shambrough?” I asked.

  Tula had her cuffs out. She shook her head. “Never saw him.”

  I’d been in the Delta long enough to know an Air Tractor when I heard one. That big Pratt and Whitney engine was singing as the plane headed off away from us, down some kind of airstrip, I had to guess.

  I hustled across the yard with Shambrough’s hound giving chase. There was the usual Delta dirt strip at the edge of the soybean field. Just as I got to where I could see the full length of the runway, a canary yellow crop duster pivoted around, and the pilot goosed the throttle.

  Kendell and the beefy officer jogged into view. They got as close to the strip as they dared. They both had their sidearms drawn, but neither one of them raised and aimed.

  “Shambrough?” I shouted.

  Kendell nodded. He holstered his pistol and watched as that bright yellow Air Tractor came bumping along the dirt strip and lifted into the air. Shambrough tipped his wings at us as he nosed up over the live oaks. He had the big plane. Even I could tell that. If his tank was full, he could fly probably six or seven hundred miles before he had to set down.

  He made a tight circle around the house, not a hundred feet off the ground. I walked out toward the front of the lot.

  I saw Desmond standing in the driveway with his rifle raised and level. He was drawing a bead.

  Lucas Shambrough kept circling and grinning at us from under his canopy. Desmond exhaled and squeezed slowly like he’d been taught. He wasn’t the sort to miss.

  That Air Tractor kept on for a bit, went up the road about a mile. It was flying slightly south of level and so finally clipped a power pole. It didn’t explode or anything gaudy. It just plunged straight into the ground with a thump and raised a cloud of loamy Delta dust.

  “Wasn’t counting on that,” I said to Desmond once I’d reached him in the drive.

  “Never had much use for a show-off,” Desmond told me.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Ninja schoolgirl assassin’s given name was Alice Marie Fennick, and she was a public school product from Zanesville, Ohio. According to the records Kendell dug up, she’d stolen a LeBaron once in greater Cincinnati, but that was the only crime she’d ever been convicted for.

  It turned out she was forty-eight years old and had a son named Luther. He was a chiropractor in Phoenix. Kendell talked to him on the phone. He still didn’t know who his father was and hadn’t spoken to his mother in years.

  “Kind of a hothead,” Luther told Kendell.

  I think Kendell just told him back, “Right.”

  Captain Riley Greer got written up in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, mostly for having been shot twice in the line of duty. He had an upper-right-arm through-and-through and got a slug dug out of his ankle, which meant he went around for a while with both a sling and a walking stick. It turned out the gunplay had started when one of Lucas Shambrough’s cronies had dropped his sidearm on the hardwood floor and it went off. Apparently, that was the sort of thing to bring out the worst in a ninja schoolgirl assassin.

  She wasn’t much of a delight to interrogate. She never said anything useful, and when she got bored or put out with a question, she’d dredge up something choice and spit. She wouldn’t talk about Lucas Shambrough. She wasn’t interested in a deal, and she didn’t seem to care if she got locked up for the rest of her natural life. Fortunately, they didn’t need her to build a case since they had Izzy and Skeeter and the Sunflower lady along with Kendell and Tula. The thinking was they’d put her away for assault and wait for the Hoyts to start barking. The odds seemed high they’d add on the murder of that catfish boy after a while.

  Lucas Shambrough, naturally enough, didn’t survive his crop duster crash, and he didn’t survive it in about a half-dozen pieces. The rescue squad boys had to haul him off in a sack. His relations—sisters mostly—tried to get Desmond indicted for murder, but the county attorney declined. The state’s attorney as well. Word was they even petitioned the governor, who just told them, “Hell of a shot.”

  Me and Larry got off with a letter of apology to Jasper and the Greenwood PD, and when I rode with Desmond to K-Lo’s to see what help we could offer, Kalil informed us that Dale was plaguing all of his shiftless deadbeats just fine.

  “You don’t need us,” Desmond said.

  K-Lo didn’t have to think about it. “Nope.”

  “Got nothing?” I asked him.

  “He’s a goddamn terror.”

  Me and Desmond couldn’t complain. It was almost rewarding to see Dale make a little something of himself.

  The money we’d given to Larry more or less evaporated. Not just actually but also in Larry’s head. Not that we pressed him for it, since he would have needed to rob a casino to get it, but he might have pretended like he owed it and apologized a little. Instead he tried a new scheme on us until Desmond shut him up.

  I ended up with Lucas Shambrough’s hound, fairly commandeered him, in fact. His given name was Octavius, to judge by the brass plate on his collar. He wouldn’t answer to it, and I decided I’d rather him not answer to Buddy instead. He kept Fergus up in the Nuttall oak. He liked to sprawl in Pearl’s impatiens. He could hardly believe I’d let him sleep in the bed or eat Pearl’s freezer-burned casseroles. He rode in my Ranchero like a champ, with his head out the window and his ears blown back. Mostly Buddy delighted in just going around not getting kicked anymore.

  The dinner we had was Pearl’s idea. Skeeter and Izzy were both up and around by then. We dressed up Pearl’s screen porch, threw good linen on Pearl’s picnic table, and then proceeded to get tamale and cole slaw juice all over the place. Kendell brought his wife, Myrna, who was too Baptist for most parties but seemed to start enjoying herself once Pearl had nattered at her for a while. Pearl was like a prattle jackhammer. She’d loosen anybody up in time.

  Tula parked right next to me on the bench, and I was grateful for that. I hadn’t seen much of her, what with her shifts and her depositions. I’d taken CJ fishing a couple of times, and I guess I’d won points for that, but dinner out on Pearl’s porch was the most time we’d had together since Tula had jumped out of Shambrough’s window and taken that ninja assassin on.

  It was only two days later as I was whipping past Herndon in my Ranchero when a cruiser lit me up. It was crowding dusk, and all of the pivot irrigators were going. I pulled over by a wheat field and could hear the rhythmic slap of the spray hitting the plants. I fished out my expired Virginia license—hadn’t yet made time for the DMV—and I went fishing for my registration in my cluttered glove box.

  “Step out of the car, sir.”

  It was Tula. I exhaled with relief and kind of laughed.

  Not a dent from her. “Step out of the car.”

  I climbed out of my Ranchero.

  She closed one bracelet on my right wrist, cranked my arm down, and cuffed my left one as well.

  “Watch your head,” she told me as she shoved me into the back of her cruiser.

  She went back and got Buddy and let him up front with her. Without another word, she eased onto the road.

  “Nice evening,” I tried. Nothing. “What’s CJ up to?” Not a thing.

  She cut north across the truck route and then back west on a road I knew by now. She reached back to unclamp her hair and let it fall as we pulled in her drive.

  “Step out of the car, sir,” she told me again.

  And that’s precisely what I did.

  ALSO BY RICK GAVIN

  Ranchero

  About the Author

  When he’s not writing, RICK GAVIN frames houses and hangs Sheetrock in Ruston, Louisiana. This is his second novel.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organization
s, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  BELUGA. Copyright © 2012 by Rick Gavin. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Gavin, Rick.

  Beluga / Rick Gavin.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-250-01522-8 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-01599-0 (e-book)

  1. Money laundering—Fiction. 2. Delta (Miss.: Region)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3607.A9848B45 2012

  813'.6—dc23

  2012030068

  e-ISBN 9781250015990

  First Edition: November 2012