It took a few minutes for us to receive our drinks with mine taking the longest. Cochran kept looking at his watch and out the front door. As soon as I had my drink, he hustled us out the door and onto the sidewalk.
“Now what?” I asked as I sipped my drink.
Cochran grinned and pointed down the street. As if on cue, a large black SUV and a city police car came into view. They drove fast and seconds later screeched to a stop in front of The Empire Room. A second police car arrived from the other direction. Traffic on the street came to a stop, and a small crowd formed quickly with everyone, like us, watching the show.
Four people in suits, two women and two men, climbed out of the SUV. One of them was talking on a cell phone. They were joined by uniformed police officers, six of them, from the patrol cars. They huddled for a minute and then streamed up the steps and into The Empire Room.
I thought about how Lynn and I had run down those steps only days before, Lynn carrying her spiked heels and wearing that silly outfit with her blonde wig falling off. I think Lynn sensed what I was thinking, because when I gave her a grin, she poked me. But she was smiling, too.
Several minutes ticked by. Some of the pedestrians who had stopped to watch the action gave up and left, but word must have gotten out on the street that something was happening, as the crowd continued to grow. I recognized several pickpockets who’d run afoul of Doris, as well as a fence or two, plus a handful of panhandlers, street preachers and others who live on the margin of society. Even Molly Munn showed up with her cart. A pair of traffic cops routed cars around the stopped police cars and the FBI’s SUV.
The four of us kept our eyes on the doors of The Empire Room and sipped our drinks. We didn’t mind waiting. A paddy wagon drove up the street and parked directly in front. A jail warden got out of the passenger seat and opened the doors in the back.
At last the doors to The Empire Room swung open. The first to emerge were three of Doris’s crew. I saw Jeremy and Chad among them. Their hands were handcuffed in front of them. Jeremy was easy to spot by the cast on his wrist and Chad by the bandage on his head. They were led by uniformed officers and put into the paddy wagon. Lynn took my hand, and I squeezed hers in return.
Finally the big moment came. Doris Whitaker was brought out of The Empire Room and down the broad steps. A small crowd of well-dressed men and women followed behind her, diners in The Empire Room who had been startled and confused by the forcible removal of one of their most revered fellow diners. Several tagged along with Doris’s escorts, obviously protesting their actions. People in the crowd began holding up their cell phones and snapping pictures.
Someone in the crowd called out her name. “Hey, Doris! Look over here.”
Someone else called, “Hey, Doris, smile for the camera!”
The two women FBI agents and two policewomen escorted her down the stairs. Her wrists were in handcuffs, and when I saw her shuffling walk, I realized she was wearing shackles on her ankles, as well.
Doris Whitaker was a mess. Her carefully coifed hair was in disarray, the thick makeup on her face was smeared, and her fashionable dress had ridden up behind her, exposing the backs of her legs.
Her cultivated looks were not all that Doris lost that morning. She snarled at the crowd and cursed them, the police and the FBI. Then she caught sight of us across the street. Her shouts became incoherent shrieks as she called us every name in the book and then some. The crowd noticed at whom she was directing her wrath, and I began to think we should withdraw back into the coffee shop.
Before I could suggest it, Barbara stepped off the sidewalk, crossed the street and headed straight toward Doris. Barbara was a tiny woman in stature, but as she crossed the street she was like nothing less than an avenging angel.
As one, Cochran, Lynn and I started after her and caught up to her just as she reached Doris. Barbara placed herself directly in Doris’s path. The policewomen and FBI agents didn’t seem to know what to do with the force of nature that is Barbara when she is angry.
The watching crowd, sensing something unusual was happening, grew quiet. Barbara addressed Doris in a voice razor sharp and twice as cutting.
“Doris Whitaker, you painted hussy. You have been a blight on this city far too long. I knew you forty years ago when you were a cheap tart who shamed our sex when you hustled tricks on Broadway.” Doris’s face reddened. Barbara continued, listing every one of Doris’s sins for all to hear and stripping her of every pretense of respectability.
The crowd around us listened in rapt attention. Her fellow customers of The Empire Room, hearing Barbara’s litany of Doris’s crimes, began edging away, reconsidering their show of public support. At the height of his legendary speaking skills, Daniel Webster could not have delivered a more damning speech.
“I don’t know what kind of sentence you are going to receive or to what prison they will send you, Doris Whitaker,” Barbara finished as her eyes flashed with anger, “but should some day in the future you be released from jail, don’t you dare return to sully the air of our city again. So help me, if you do …” and here Barbara raised her hand as if to slap her. Doris recoiled, all her pride and fight withered away under Barbara’s scolding.
I stepped forward to stop her, but Barbara lowered her hand. “Don’t worry, Doris,” she said in a glacial voice. “I wouldn’t stain my hand by touching that cheap, painted face of yours.” She turned her back on Doris and walked back to where Lynn and I were standing.
Lynn began to clap, Cochran joined her, and then so did I. Others picked up the applause, and pretty soon the whole crowd was applauding, cheering Barbara and bidding good riddance to Doris.
Barbara linked her arms with Lynn and me. “Come along, you two,” she said with a happy smile. “Let’s go home.”
I suppose Doris was put into the paddy wagon and taken off to jail. I wouldn’t know. We never looked back.
Meet Author Andrew MacRae
Andrew MacRae is a misplaced Midwesterner now living in California. He works in the high tech field and is the creator of the Virtual Globe Theatre, a model of Shakespeare's theater as it stood in 1599.
He has had several mystery and crime stories published as well as slipstream, historical stories and children's stories and poetry. His mystery novels, Murder Misdirected and Murder Miscalculated, are both published by Mainly Murder Press.
In his spare time Andrew leads a monthly folk music jam, hosts a monthly open mike, presents showings of classic movies, produces concerts and staged radio shows and serves on an historic architecture review board.
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For more great mysteries from fresh, new authors visit www.MainlyMurderPress.com
Sample of
Murder Misdirected
by Andrew MacRae
Prologue
A nervous man sat in an anonymous coffee shop in the center of the city, the fingers of one hand drumming on his knee. It was early afternoon, and he had hours to kill before meeting his partner. Having betrayed his employer’s trust, he now understood a simple cruel truth, that trust betrayed for one is trust betrayed for all. Could he trust his partner? Did his partner trust him? The man took his hand from his knee and held it in front of him, trying to will it to cease its motion. He reached for his coffee, misjudged where it was and knocked over the paper cup. It was almost empty, and what spilled was easily wiped up with a paper napkin, yet the man saw it as a sign. He put the napkin down and looked at his hand again. It was still shaking. The man put his hand back under the table, where it found his knee, and his fingers began their drumming again.
Betrayal, too, was on another man’s mind in another part of the city as he placed a thin metal case on a hotel bed and unlocked it. From the case he removed an automatic pistol and silencer. He fitted one to the other and contemplated the coming course of events. Killing his partner was not of great concern to him. It was only a logical step in the path he had taken. The man placed the assembled pistol and silencer into a shoulder holste
r and tightened the straps. He put on his suit coat and checked himself in the mirror to ensure the gun did not show. He looked at the clock on the table next to the bed. He had hours to kill before meeting his partner.
One
A fat, easy score, that’s all I wanted, and it’s what I desperately needed. What I didn’t know, couldn’t know, was the murderous chain of events that my need of cash was going to set into motion. I was back in town after three long months of watching Fast Eddie slowly die and finally burying him when he did. Eddie’s funeral and our extended stay back east that preceded it had consumed all my money and then some. I didn’t begrudge the money or the time spent, though. Eddie was my friend and my mentor, but it meant I was going to have to hustle if I wanted to avoid trouble.
The driver of the last ride I hitched wasn’t going anywhere near downtown, but Lynn’s apartment house wasn’t much out of his way, and so he dropped me there. We shared the brief goodbyes of strangers through an open car window after I unloaded my small suitcase and garment bag, and he took off down the dark and empty street while I went inside the apartment house and climbed the stairs to the second floor.
I put my suitcase down on the scuffed linoleum in the darkened hallway in front of Lynn’s door and gave a few tentative raps with my knuckles. I didn’t want to disturb Lynn’s neighbors, so I stood there for almost a minute before realizing she was bound to be sound asleep and politeness wouldn’t work. I almost turned and left, but in the early hours of the morning and with only a few dollars in my pocket, I had nowhere else to go.
I knocked again, this time with force, and kept on knocking for a full minute. I didn’t stop until I saw the doorknob turn. The door opened a couple of inches until a chain stopped it. Lynn’s angular face looked sleepily out at me. She blinked until her eyes focused and she recognized me. I gestured with the hand that held my garment bag and gave her what I hoped was a sincere smile with just a trace of a woebegone child.
“Oh, God, I should have known. Who else would wake me up at four in the morning?” Lynn closed the door again and for a fraction of a second I thought she was going to leave me out in the hallway. Then I heard the chain fall loose.
The door opened again, this time all the way. Lynn was wearing baggy sweat clothes, as she always did in bed. They were gray and hung loose on her. Bright pink bunny slippers on her feet offset their drab color. Lynn’s straight black hair hung down her back, the back she turned on me as soon as the door closed. I reset the chain and followed her into her living room, carrying my possessions.
“I’m sorry. It’s a long story.”
Lynn put her hands over her ears as she continued walking away from me and headed down a hallway. “I don’t want to hear it now. I don’t want to hear any of it. It’s four in the morning, and I just want to go back to bed.”
I took the hint and stopped apologizing. Instead, I looked for a place to park my suitcase and garment bag. I dumped them in a corner of the small living room. A moment later Lynn came padding back into the room carrying a couple of folded sheets, a blanket and a pillow. She handed them to me without a word and turned to the sofa. She bent down and tugged on a strap, and it unfolded into a modest-sized bed. That done, she headed to her own room.
“Thanks!” I called to her retreating back. Her hands went to her ears again in response.
I made up the futon, got undressed and tried to sleep, wondering how many days Lynn would be willing to put up with me. It didn’t help that an hour later, sound asleep, I rolled too close to the edge of the futon frame, and the whole thing tipped over and dumped me onto the hardwood floor, then clattered back with a bang.
I was still untangling myself from the sheets when Lynn appeared.
“It tipped over,” I said lamely.
She shook her head and went back to bed. I remade the bed and climbed back in. I guess I didn’t put the futon on all the way because a second later it tipped over and dumped me to the floor again.
“Sorry!” I called out. Lynn didn’t answer, and I managed to get through the rest of the night without it happening again.
Lynn let me sleep in when morning came. I was vaguely aware of her moving around, and at one point I heard her leave and then return about an hour later. Out for her morning run, I assumed, and went back to sleep. When I finally woke up it was nearly noon, and Lynn had left for her job as a stripper at The Pink Poodle. A note on the kitchen counter let me know there was one bagel left, some cream cheese in the refrigerator, and I was to rinse out the coffee pot after having what was left, please.
It’s a strange feeling, being alone in a friend’s apartment. So much of Lynn’s personal life was unwittingly on display. It’s a tiny apartment, just the front room with a little galley kitchen tacked onto one side, one bedroom, and a bathroom whose fixtures date back to a time when bellbottoms were first in style. The carpet was gone since the last time I was there, and now the original hardwood floors gave a warm hue to the room.
Lynn’s apartment was on the second floor of a four-story building. From outside the open window over the kitchen sink came the sound of traffic from the street below along with the scent of garbage not yet collected. There was a short bookcase, and out of habit I scanned the titles. Lynn’s reading tastes hadn’t changed much. There were the usual historical romances, a few cocktail table books about foreign lands and a small stack of magazines about ballet. Judging from the dates on the magazines, Lynn must have let her subscription lapse over a year ago.
In the kitchen I found the half-dozen postcards I sent from Louisiana stuck to the refrigerator door with the last, the one letting her know of Eddie’s death and my plans to return, on top.
After toasting and eating the bagel and finishing the coffee Lynn left for me, I washed and put away the few plates and cups that were in the sink and rinsed the coffee pot per direction. I took the sheets from the futon, folded them carefully, placed them with the pillow back in the closet, then folded up the bed again into a sofa. Only after all that did I shower, shave and get dressed, taking my suit from the garment bag and putting it on. My suit is an important tool in my profession, and I try to take care of it. I put on my watch and checked the time. It was almost one o’clock and time for me to get going.
I left Lynn’s apartment, triple locked the flimsy door and dropped the keys in her mailbox. As I did, I wondered again just how welcome I was. I count Lynn as one of my few real friends and sometimes, just sometimes, wondered what life might have been like if we hadn’t broken up.
A slight October breeze from the bay revived my spirits and scattered my melancholy as I emerged from Lynn’s apartment building. I made a quick check to ensure there wasn’t anyone waiting whom I wished to avoid, then crossed the street and headed for the bus stop. The sky was overcast with a touch of fog in the air, my favorite kind of weather and the best for my kind of work.
A bus came along within minutes, and I hopped on board, used my bus pass and found a place to stand and a strap to cling to. Like every city bus since their invention, it smelled of leather, diesel and sweat, and it groaned and swayed as the driver pulled away from the curb and back into traffic. There were seats available, but I like to ride standing up. It gives me a chance to look at people’s faces and try to guess their stories. On a more practical note, it makes for a faster getaway if necessary.
I like taking the bus. I can learn all I need to know about a city and its mood, its beat, its rhythm and meter by riding public transportation. Besides, I don’t own a car, let alone have a driver’s license. I have no driver’s license, no credit cards, at least not my own, no cell phone and most importantly, no police record. In general I try to live off the grid as much as possible. I figure the less known about me, the better.
It was so, so tempting to help myself to the wallets and other valuables that their owners unknowingly offered me on the bus as we headed downtown, but I managed to resist. I was after bigger game, and lifting wallets from out-of-town visitors is safer tha
n from a local. Still, I looked longingly at all the coats hanging open and the other invitations.
A young woman with short, red-brown hair and a round, pretty face stood next to me, both of us clinging to straps and swaying in unison with the movement of the bus as we came near my stop. Her fashionable purse was unlatched, and I could see her wallet near the top. It would have been easy to pretend to lose my footing for a moment, bump into her and, misdirecting her attention by keeping eye contact with her all the while, let my hand dip in and out of her purse. It would have been so easy.
“Excuse me,” She looked up. I leaned close to her so others nearby wouldn’t hear. “Your purse is open.” She looked down, quickly snapped it shut, and gave me a grateful smile.
“Gee, thanks.” She had a nice smile. The bus lurched to a stop. I returned the smile.
“Don’t mention it.” I got off the bus having done my first and probably only good deed for the day.
I walked the last couple of blocks along Market Street to the Edgars Convention Center. It’s a massive complex covering a full city block and surrounded by high-class hotels, restaurants, bars and cafes. Building that convention center required the destruction of a dozen or more ancient brick buildings and the businesses they housed. Its futuristic architecture of glass, concrete and steel had won numerous awards, and civic boosters hailed its construction as progress on the march. I see it as just another cookie cutter step toward making our city look like every other city in the country. But there’s a silver lining to it, at least for me. When the economy is good, hardly a month goes by when there isn’t a large industry conference or trade show held there, and that means opportunity for me.
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