Parts Unknown

by Rex Burns

  “Yes.”

  “Earl knows the game is over,” I said. “He wants to get a break by making a statement.”

  “I can’t promise a thing, Mr. Vercher. You ought to know that.”

  “He knows.” I handed him the statement. “Read it over. See what you think it’s worth.”

  The sergeant read the handwritten pages carefully, pausing here and there to work through the awkward penmanship. When he looked up, he shook his head. “A lot of this about Matheney and Gilbert is hearsay. He didn’t see them actually operate on those people.”

  “I never witnessed nothing, officer. I told these gentlemen I never knew what Gilbert was doing.”

  “But it corroborates what we suspect, Dan. And it makes a definite link between a missing man who turned up dead, Dr. Matheney, and Antibodies Research. It’s good enough for a warrant,” I said.

  Vercher had been doing some thinking while Kiefer read. “Toby might make a statement too. Maybe if you can work a deal for us both, you’ll have both our statements.”

  Bunch smiled. “See, Dan? Citizenship at work.”

  Kiefer finished his coffee and stood, gesturing to Vercher. “Yeah. All right—let’s you go call this Toby. We’ll see what he has to say to me.” He glanced at us. “Voluntarily.”

  We watched the two men leave the tavern. Bunch sipped at his beer. “You think Maddox will act on Vercher’s statement?”

  “He won’t want to, that’s for certain.” I drained my beer, keeping my face in shadow so it wouldn’t scare the other patrons. “In fact, he’ll probably delay as long as he can, and that’ll be enough to let Gilbert hear about it and get away.”

  Bunch rubbed his jaw, the bristles rasping. “Yeah. It would save a lot of important people a lot of embarrassment if Gilbert just disappeared.”

  “And if they had time to sell their Antibodies stock before the story made news.”

  “Wouldn’t Maddox be popular then!”

  “A real boost to an ambitious man’s career.”

  Bunch drained his glass. “Let’s go see the Mother Superior. I got an idea.” He explained it on the way over.

  She did not want to see us. The maid said the senora wasn’t home. I recognized her as one of the janitorial crew, and she recognized me too, because a slight tilt of her head told me that Mrs. Chiquichano was listening at the top of the stairs.

  “We’ll come in and wait for her,” I said, and gently lifted the woman aside. “Please tell her we’re enjoying her hospitality.”

  Mrs. Chiquichano came quickly down the stairs, heels driving against the carpet like a pair of hammers. “I want you out of my house. You have no right to be in my house—get out!”

  “You know Dr. Matheney committed suicide last night?” asked Bunch.

  The woman’s black eyes widened slightly and she seemed to hold her breath. “No!”

  “It’s in all the papers. Got some more good news for you too: Gilbert’s two assistants are down at police headquarters right now. They’re making statements, lady, to the district attorney, trying to save their asses. Your name’ll come up sooner or later.”

  She shook her head, voice stifled by tension.

  “Maybe you and Gilbert should talk things over.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Call him. Tell him you have to meet him. Tell him it’s important.”

  “He won’t come—that one doesn’t do what I tell him.”

  “If he doesn’t, say you’ll go to the police.”

  She still couldn’t bring herself to agree to that. “Why? Why should I call him?”

  “It’s you or him.” Bunch told her the details of Vercher’s statement. “So you better call him. You tell him you want more money to keep silent or you’ll go to the police yourself. He’ll believe you.”

  “What do you mean, it’s me or him?”

  “I mean if you call him, we’ll tell the police you cooperated. If you don’t, we’ll see that you’re prosecuted and sent to jail as an accessory to murder.”

  It was a good reason. She was vulnerable, and she knew it. But she still wanted some kind of guarantee. Knowing what she herself was capable of, she couldn’t trust anyone else.

  Bunch sketched in the facts: “Lady, we’re not guaranteeing a damn thing. We’ll tell the DA you helped us get Gilbert, but that’s it. And as far as I’m concerned, we shouldn’t be doing that much for you. As far as I’m concerned, we should just call the cops right now and have them nail your fat ass to the wall. But we want Gilbert more than we want you, and you’re the way we can get him.”

  She thought that over and finally nodded. “You will give me time after I call? You will give me time to get my money before you call the police?”

  “Yeah. We’ll give you time. Now here’s what you say.” Bunch told her exactly what to say and where they should meet. She dialed and we listened to her follow the script, complete with a few convincing variations when Gilbert, angry and worried, tried to get out of meeting with her. She hung up. “He’s coming.”

  “Fine,” smiled Bunch. “And so are you.”

  Our plan was to use Senora Chiquichano to get Gilbert alone. Gilbert, I was certain, had no intention of volunteering his presence to Kiefer’s tender embrace, and when he learned of Vercher’s statement, he would be gone. But not if we had him, and especially if we had him on tape talking to Chiquichano about the murders.

  The place was a tangle of overgrown riverbank along the South Platte, near enough to downtown for a quick drive to the police station, yet secluded enough that we could handle Gilbert if necessary without witnesses. Chiquichano had told the man that she didn’t want to chance being seen with him, and he’d finally agreed, saying he would be there between seven-thirty and eight. That would make it just about dark, and it gave us time to get set up and hidden in the bushes that formed a thick screen between the riverbank and the almost empty railroad yard behind. Across the narrow stream and its banks of dried gray mud, the bike path ran like a ribbon of tar, and the occasional jersey of a cyclist zipped by, a flicker of brightness behind the colorless undergrowth.

  “I don’t like this place.” The woman stood restlessly while Bunch arranged the microphone and transmitter under the light jacket she wore. “I don’t like doing this thing.”

  From my seat behind a thicket of hackberry, I said, “Think of it as another investment, senora—the chance to spend your money in the near future.”

  She gingerly paced back and forth across the corner of open field and tried not to cut her shoes on the broken glass that always marks forgotten corners of the city. After a while, she said, “I don’t think he will come.”

  “He can’t afford not to. Relax.”

  Bunch, about twenty yards away and hidden in the undergrowth that grew rank along the damp riverbank, gave a low whistle. I peered through the leaves and saw, moving with slow deliberation across the wide and empty rail yard, which was marked here and there with rusty spur lines, a brown Cadillac, lights out and ghostly in the gloom of twilight.

  “He’s on his way. You remember what to tell him?”

  The answer came slightly breathless over the transmitter. “About the two men—yes.”

  On the horizon, the towers of the city were beginning to light up with glowing windows, and toward the north, a steady river of headlights flowed across the Sixth Avenue overpass. Nearby but elevated out of sight, the traffic on busy I-25 made an unbroken rushing noise that drowned out the feeble sound of the South Platte.

  The senora stood and watched the brown car pick its way across the uneven bumps of railroad track to come within fifty yards and halt. She waited. I waited. Bunch waited.

  The driver’s door swung open; the car’s dome light remained dark, and the fuzzy haze of twilight made it difficult to see clearly. Dimly, I saw a shadow hunch at the car door’s hinge and hold still. A moment later, an explosion of flame speared toward Mrs. Chiquichano from the muzzle of a powerful hunting rifle. She gave a strangled
, high-pitched noise and flung her hands up to the empty sky as she fell backward and thudded unmoving onto the dirt.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  I saw Bunch’s shape sprint out of the shrubbery toward the Bronco as the Cadillac swung away and started lurching and jouncing toward the city streets.

  The woman was dead. The shot had caught her in the throat and sliced an artery, and the gush of blood had sprayed up the side of her face and down across her shoulder and arm. By the time I reached her, only a last tiny pulse or two throbbed out, and, looking at the corpse, I knew that the heavy slug I found in my Healey’s fire wall would match the one that had driven like a hammer through the woman’s jaw to almost sever her neck.

  The straining engine of Bunch’s Bronco roared away across the tracks as Gilbert’s Cadillac fishtailed in a patch of loose gravel and tried to avoid being cut off. I saw a long arm balance momentarily against the outside mirror of the Bronco, and Bunch’s pistol spurted flame as the brown car made a squealing turn for another exit. Bunch floored the pedal and leapt high across an embankment to pancake in a cloud of gravel and weeds and spin toward the heeling Cadillac. Another shot by Bunch, and I saw the windshield of Gilbert’s sedan splinter and the car careen wildly in a full turn before aiming back at me. It gained speed and roared, dented and steaming, straight at me. I managed to squeeze off one quick round at the shattered windshield before diving for the thin shelter of a clump of saplings as the straining metal scorched past in an odor of dust and steam and burning oil. It flew by, Gilbert’s eyes bulging and his mouth open helplessly. Two hubcaps sprung like satellites as the Cadillac sailed over the bank and plunged with a foaming wash into the shallow river. A broken branch bobbed gently against the windshield, then swirled free to drift downstream.

  The paperwork took the rest of the night and once more reminded Bunch and me why we left police work in the first place. Kiefer finally let us go home as the dark towers of the city were being outlined by a sky lightening into gray. It was the same obscure mix of night and day that had seen the beginning of things, and for a moment it seemed as if no time at all had passed, as if we had simply moved in a big circle back to the start. But this time the sun was coming up, and when I reached my apartment, Mrs. Ottoboni’s porch light could barely be seen against the growing dawn.

  Early the next afternoon, I detoured through North Denver on my way to the office. In the hard daylight the barrackslike apartment house looked even dingier, its scabrous paint and neglected roof no longer hidden in shadow. A clutch of children played in the dirt of the front yard, and as I stopped the car, they fell silent and stared. When I opened my door, they slipped into the dark hallway like timid animals.

  A nervous woman answered my knock at apartment 1, her eye and cheek peeking under the door’s taut chain.

  “Do you remember me? The private detective looking for Mr. Calamaro?”

  The answer was a silent half-nod.

  “I came by to tell you Senora Chiquichano is dead. No more mordida.” The rent on the cramped apartments should go down, too, but they would find out about that soon enough. “You understand?”

  “La patrona? Murió?”

  “Dead. Yes.”

  The eye did not blink as the door slowly closed. A click of the lock. I didn’t know if the woman believed me or not.

  I hoped to find the check from Security at the office among the letters. Or at least a job offer. But no one offered, and the check was still in the mail. I did have an ornately inscribed letter from El Salvador, however, signed by Felix Frentanes, which, with all the formal politeness a professional scribe could muster, asked for information about his wife. There were no job offers on the telephone either. Instead, a somber little message from Mrs. Gutierrez told Bunch that Nestor’s family had received a large check from some company in America and were grateful. The only other message was from Archy. He had transplanted the engine of my old Healey into the body of another one and, if he did say so himself, thought he did a pretty good job.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Devlin Kirk Mysteries

  CHAPTER 1

  THE ADVANTAGE CASE was Kirk and Associates’ first big job in three months. Based on growing pilferage and theft, an increasing number of behavior problems, and especially a rapid climb in the accident rate—the classic indicators of substance abuse on the job— Advantage Corporation’s management suspected that a worker in the warehouse or assembly area was peddling dope to the employees. Because Kirk and Associates was hungry, Devlin took a chance and put in the new kid, Chris Newman. Having come to Denver in search of bright lights and excitement, he’d wandered into Kirk’s office looking for work. With his long hair and struggling mustache, Chris looked like a seventeen-year-old trying to act old enough to drink; and except for his lack of experience, he was a good choice. Unlike Bunchcroft or Kirk, he was new to Denver and passed easily as a young kid on his first job because that’s just what he was. He’d recently moved from the Western Slope. Growing up on his parents’ ranch near Creede, Colorado, he’d learned how to handle himself around heavy equipment as well as in the woods. Like farm kids everywhere, he knew a lot about tools and machinery. That made him a quick study for the various blue-collar jobs that provided cover for agents. It was a month or so later that Devlin told Reznick, the regional manager for Advantage Corp., that, sure, Kirk and Associates could handle the case.

  Like the rest of us in this racket, Chris got his training on the job. He started with the usual surveillance and paper serving which was routine and whose profits just about covered his salary. He did well. In fact, he found excitement and pleasure in the daily variation of assignments and the different people he ran across. It was, he told Bunch once, a lot like working on the ranch because no two chores were exactly the same. And a lot of times he was on his own to solve problems that came up. Bunch had told Chris when he was hired that he was getting a front-row seat at the greatest show on earth, and so far Chris thought the job lived up to its billing. But this was his first undercover work and his first solo, as well. Usually, Devlin said, he would have placed Chris on the job with an experienced operative so they could work together and Chris could pick up pointers. On this assignment, however, two new employees would stand out like a fart in church. But the job was too important for the agency to let it go by. Would he be interested?

  Chris reckoned he would be.

  If his inexperience worked against him, the fact that he looked like anything but an agent worked for him. Kirk told Bunch he thought the kid’s skills with people and his native wit would get him through. Bunch told Chris that it was just a routine gig and he’d get used to it. All he was supposed to do was be a pair of eyes. No buys, no infiltration, no evidence gathering, no contact with suspects. Chris figured he could manage that much. Ten years ago, when he was thirteen, he’d started running cows alone up in the San Juans. The towering ice- and rock-capped mountains formed a wall around Creede and provided summer pasture for the ranch. There, the ability to look and listen meant survival, and that was no different from what he was supposed to do here in Denver. Besides, he hadn’t yet met a townie who was as wild and mean as some of the drunk cowboys he’d tangled with as a high school kid. Not that he’d won any fights with those hot-eyed yahoos. But he had been able to talk his way out of most of them, and people were people all over. Just look and listen and phone in a report to Devlin once a day.

  That’s what Bunch and Devlin were waiting for that afternoon as the September sun stretched through the large arched window of their office and the grumble of casters rolled across the ceiling. For some reason, the sculptress in the room above moved her epoxy creations here and there about this time of day. The sound grated on Bunch’s nerves like a knife blade over bone. Usually it didn’t bother him, but he was still pissed that Kirk had given the undercover assignment to Chris instead of to him.

  “I mean, for Christ’s sake, Dev, it’s been almost three weeks the kid’s been in there. I know�
��so do you—that things are happening right under his nose and he doesn’t even know what to look for.”

  The reason Chris rather than Bunch had been placed was because Bunch was too well known. And he was too big: he’d look like an elephant at a pony show. Average height, average looks, above-average intelligence—that’s what you wanted in an undercover agent, and that’s what they had with Chris. Bunch’s real problem, besides being too tall, too ugly, and too dumb, Devlin said, was boredom. Bunch agreed with the boredom part of it: he was sick of sitting on insurance cases. That was half of Kirk and Associates’ work nowadays—watching people who claimed disabilities or loss so insurance companies would make them rich. The other half was process serving and sitting around the office waiting for that magic call from someone who needed their specialty: industrial security.

  “If you went into that factory, Bunch, you’d scare every suspect into hiding. It’s tricky enough planting somebody who looks like Chris. If we tried it with you—or me—nothing would move.”

  Bunch understood that, but it didn’t help much. One of the reasons he’d quit being a cop was because of the dull bureaucratic routines that kept stifling the excitement he felt on the streets. That, and the convolutions of the laws, which had made enforcing them seem like bailing water with a sieve.

  “Besides,” said Kirk, “he told me yesterday he has a suspect.”

  “Yeah. Somebody might be peddling baggies. Wowee.”

  “It’s a lead. It might turn into something.”

  Bunch slapped his stomach and watched the flesh jiggle. “My gut’s turning into fat. Sitting in goddamn cars all goddamn day.”

  Kirk filed one bill under “Wait for payment” and another under “Pay as soon as possible.” The criterion was the shade of pink tinting the past-due column. “You want to do skip tracing? Or hunt straying husbands like Vinny Landrum does? That’ll give you a little exercise.”

  “I saw that scumbag the other day. He said business was never better.” Bunch heaved to his feet and wandered over to stare out the single large window. A glass panel had been cranked open in the hope of snagging a little stray air. All it gathered was diesel fumes from the trucks in Wazee Street a floor below. He spit through the opening and watched the fleck of white drift away and disappear. “Asked how we’re doing.”