And So it Began (Delaney Book 1)

by Owen Mullen

  Fitzpatrick called for assistance. An hour later, we were back in his office writing our separate reports of the incident and the case. Miller Davis was in a cell downstairs. So were the two collectors, and apparently, one of them was ready to talk. Danny made arrangements for the river to be dragged, but that wouldn’t begin until dawn. It was possible Cal Moreland had escaped death when he jumped into the Mississippi. Neither of us considered the idea. When the new day arrived, we were sure we had more than enough evidence to put the extortionists away for a long, long time.

  Around 6 a.m., another call from Danny brought in Delaup. We ran through the chain of events with him. He was stunned, of course, not least because, once again, the NOPD faced a scandal.

  I told him how it began: the meeting in my office with Cilla Bartholomew and the traders; their fear-filled insistence on no contact with the police. How I’d solicited Cal Moreland’s help, and the murders of Raymond Clark and Ryan Hill in the so-called drug bust. He was furious to be party to the information so late in the day.

  ‘Your reason for trusting Moreland at this stage was based on the friendship between you?’

  ‘Yeah. And because Clark and Ryan were from his precinct.’

  ‘You knew that, how?’

  I took a breath. ‘I asked Officer Fitzpatrick to put a name to the license plate number the first time I followed them.’

  ‘Does Officer Fitzpatrick supply you with confidential information on a regular basis?’

  He was making a point about being left out of the loop, not the misuse of department resources.

  ‘You put a lot of store in friendship, don’t you, Delaney?

  ‘I guess I do, Captain.’

  His eyes bored into me. Then, his anger passed. ‘Go on.’

  I told him about the racket starting up again, Clyde’s murder – still unsolved – coming clean with Danny Fitzpatrick and tailing the two new collectors to their meet with Miller Davis.’

  Fitzy spelled me. ‘We followed Davis to Moreland’s place. The circle was complete. After that, it was about making sure we had enough on everybody.’

  ‘And do we?’

  Danny lied, ‘I believe so, yes, sir.’

  He moved to a table covered in blown-up shots of the collectors in action, the money exchange on the piece of waste ground with Miller Davis, then Davis entering Cal Moreland’s house. The raids on his house and Cal’s turned up cash. A lot of it, though not the big numbers we knew the scam was producing. The money sat in bundles next to the photographs.

  ‘The traders will identify the two collectors. At least they will, if they’re sure it’s over. In the face of the evidence against them, both patrolmen will give up Miller Davis. Moreland is gone, but we have him confessing to three murders on tape, apart from his attempt on Vince, which I witnessed.’

  ‘What’s the sound quality like?’

  ‘Good. Listen.’

  Danny pressed a button and the voice of a friend who’d become a stranger filled the room, an eerie reminder of hours before.

  ‘Hi buddy. What gives?’

  ‘When did it begin?’

  ‘When did what begin, Delaney?’

  We listened. Fitzy ran the tape forward.

  ‘… couldn’t leave it, could you? Just couldn’t leave it alone.’

  ‘Thought we were on the same team, Cal.’

  ‘That night in the diner I knew it would take a miracle to shake you off. You’ve always been a pussy, Delaney. But you’re a persistent pussy.’

  ‘So, you killed Raymond Clark and Ryan Hill.’

  ‘Casualties of war. Low men on the totem-pole. Gotta be.’

  ‘And Clyde?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The trader you hanged in his back-shop.’

  ‘A warning to the others. Except somebody wasn’t paying attention.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Money, that’s why.’

  ‘Money to do what?’

  Danny Fitzpatrick stopped the recording and looked at his boss.

  ‘Of course, the transcription will be part of the final report, but it’s all there.’

  Delaup looked ill. A man with more worries than he could handle. ‘Okay. Write it up. No mistakes.’

  He walked to the door. The clock on the wall said seven-twenty-five. I understood the position he was in and didn’t envy him. His skin was grey, his eyes even more hooded than usual. He might’ve been the one who’d been up all night instead of us.

  ‘Can’t wait to tell the super about this one. Good work, by the way.’

  Good work? Maybe it was, though, at best, a double-edged sword. We’d solved the cop killer case, the murder of Clyde Hays and the extortion of the traders, but landed the department bang in the middle of another NOPD scandal. No prizes for guessing which would be remembered.

  36

  We went back to putting the evidence together. Fitzpatrick took time out to introduce himself to Miller and the other two in the cells downstairs. He would question them in earnest later. The tape played the unreal conversation. We stopped and started the machine, checking and rechecking what had been said. When it came to the part where Cal Moreland shot me, I blanched.

  ‘Sorry, Delaney, it’s got to be!’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Cal! Don’t! Let’s deal! Give me a name!’

  The phone rang. I pressed a button on the recorder and the tape came to a stop. Danny rolled his chair across the room and lifted the receiver.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ he said.

  Something was wrong.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tom Donald died twenty minutes ago.’

  The news hit me harder than the bullets from Cal Moreland’s gun. If I hadn’t chased him, he wouldn’t have run. He’d be alive, instead of lying on a mortuary slab. Suddenly, I felt tired.

  We’d never speak to Tom Donald now. There would be no explanation of why he ran from me. A moment of clarity cut through. Tom Donald hadn’t been running from me, not at first; he’d been chasing someone, until he heard or saw me coming after him.

  Match, batch, hatch, patch, thatch, scratch.

  My pursuit of an innocent man had let the killer escape. The accident was the final distraction, the icing on the cake. The only one who might be able to identify him had been hit by a car. The perp sure had his own share of luck.

  ‘You all right?’

  Danny must’ve been collecting air-miles on that question.

  ‘I need some sleep. I’ve got a talent contest to go to.’

  Lowell’s eyes clouded with the beginnings of doubt. I guessed he was thinking perhaps he’d hitched his star to the wrong wagon. We both knew taking care of him had fallen to the back of the line lately. And here I was again. Running late, passing through. In the park, I gave him all of five minutes. Strictly business.

  I called Catherine and asked her to collect Lowell and take him to her house for a day or two. Pressure of work and all that. She agreed. I fed and watered him, and played Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken album loud for him while I showered and changed. The need for sleep was replaced by the need to put events of the previous night behind me. Today, the nearest pageant was in Metairie, not far from New Orleans. Would the killer be there? It wouldn’t surprise me. If Danny Fitzpatrick was right, I was part of the game.

  The first thing I did when I arrived at the church hall in Metairie was speak to the organisers, dazzle them with my ID and give them Fitzpatrick’s number to call if they doubted me. A blousy woman sitting by the front door doing registration asked me to stand to the side and wait until someone could speak to me. Mrs Rose Sinclair and Chantelle Dawson were the people in charge: in their fifties – ruddy-faced, wholesome, matronly figures. Ladies totally immersed in their community. Their main concern was that their event wasn’t disrupted. Of course, they didn’t get the real story. I fed them a version invented on my way over about a search for a tug-of-love kid. Long on emotion, short on facts.

  ‘And what makes you think this child
may be here, Mr Delaney?’

  ‘I don’t think she’s here. The last sighting of the father was in the Metairie area. In Atlanta, Susannah – that’s the little girl – was involved in all kinds of stuff – tap-dancing, singing. Even did some modelling for children’s wear. The thinking is, that to keep her happy, her father might be forced into letting her compete in Saturday events like yours.’

  Chantelle Dawson was sharper than her colleague. ‘Why don’t we check our lists and give you a photocopy?’

  And keep me at the door.

  ‘That would be helpful, ma’am, thank you, though sure as hell he’ll have changed their names.’

  ‘So, what is it you want to do here?’

  Rose Sinclair was getting the idea. I wasn’t going away.

  ‘A couple of things. You needed to know who I was, and why I was here, in case I found them, and he tried to make a run for it. Now, if I ask you to call the police, you’ll do it. It isn’t my intention to disrupt anybody’s day. I’ll be discreet. I need to be able to drift around checking it out. He’s probably changed the way Susannah looks, dyed her hair, had it cut, who knows? All I’m gonna do is look.’

  Their reluctance was tangible.

  ‘I understand everybody’s on edge.’

  The senior woman relented. ‘Very well. A list of the entrants will be left here at registration.’

  Her friend took a final officious shot. ‘And if we call the NOPD, they’ll vouch for you, is that right?’

  ‘No. If you call Detective Daniel Fitzpatrick. Not everyone knows about this. Check on me, by all means. Just remember, we’re trying to reunite a mother with her child. It’s a delicate situation; it requires sensitivity.’

  She pulled her shoulders back, bristling with self-importance, but she got the point. I was in. And they never did call Fitzy. Too busy selling prize-draw tickets. At the desk, a couple of women and a man were registering a child.

  Cute kid. Weren’t they all?

  The younger woman did the talking, the older one at her elbow with the girl’s hand in hers. The man stood back, surplus to requirements.

  ‘Renaldi. Katie Renaldi.’

  The church hall was actually a much bigger building than I thought. Two large halls and a lot of smaller rooms, all with the faint musty smell that comes with old buildings when the heating isn’t on often enough, and the windows are never opened because they’ve been painted shut. It was going to be busy; women and kids were everywhere. Men were outnumbered. The competition had started in the larger of the halls. Music drifted out. I poked my head around the peeling frame of the door. 300 or 400 seats faced a stage where a little girl – no more than a baby really – was muddling through an under-rehearsed version of “On the Good Ship Lollipop.”

  My heart sank, not from the performance – although that would do it – the kid stood in the middle of an orange spotlight, effective because the rest of the hall was in total darkness.

  At the front door, people were still arriving, and a line had formed. The woman at the desk was under pressure. I was about to turn away when I noticed a man and a woman tag on at the end. I recognised the woman, though not at first. The man was a stranger to me.

  They didn’t have a child with them.

  37

  What to do didn’t stay my decision for long. The woman saw me. I waited. When they reached the desk, the females greeted each other warmly. The couple moved into the building without the interrogation I’d been through. She came forward.

  ‘Well, well? Still on the case?’

  Claudine Charlton remembered my face, not my name. The guy beside her looked me over. She introduced us. ‘This is Alec Adams, my stage manager.’

  It was my turn to do the weighing-up. Adams was six-one, late-forties and balding. He’d been handsome. Now, threads of purple from too much booze etched his face. He shook my hand, pressing hard, holding on longer than necessary in a quiet show of macho bullshit. I didn’t like him. Or her, for that matter.

  ‘Pretty far travelled, aren’t you?’

  ‘Checking out the talent. My shows work because I try to keep the standard high. Don’t always succeed. When I hear about a kid who has something, I want them in my competitions. I operate a good few notches above this level, I’m pleased to say. I intend it to stay that way. This is a field trip. Tough going but necessary. Alec’s been with me for years. His opinion’s always worth hearing.’

  A nice explanation, delivered off-the-cuff, though I hadn’t forgotten Timmy Donald died in Baton Rouge at one of Claudine Charlton’s events. I didn’t consider her or her stage manager could be involved; the attack on Timmy Donald was too close to home. Unless that was their cover.

  Fitzpatrick picked the phone up on the first ring. ‘How goes it?’

  Seeing Claudine Charlton and her ex had rattled me. I was reminded how little we knew about the killer even after months of work. He preyed on winners: not much, considering the amount of effort that had gone in.

  ‘Everybody wants to talk. Since you left, we’ve been conducting simultaneous interviews with Miller Davis and the bully boys.’

  ‘Good. Good.’

  At least that case had moved along.

  ‘And there’s no honour among thieves, I can tell you that. These guys would kick their grandmas, if it helped them out. But we do have a problem. The two thugs only had contact with Miller. Miller only dealt with Cal Moreland. His job ended when he passed the cash.’

  I finished it for him. ‘And Moreland’s dead.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The people I work for don’t make deals, Delaney. There are no deals with them.

  ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Metairie’

  ‘Why there?’

  ‘That’s where the nearest event is.’

  ‘Anything cooking?’

  ‘Not so far. The woman who organised the pageant in Baton Rouge is here.’

  ‘What’s she doing in Metairie?’

  ‘She’s here with her stage manager, a guy called Alec Adams. He’s her ex-husband, and she’s supposed to hate him.’

  ‘So, why’re they together? What’re they up to?’

  ‘Talent spotting, she tells me. Hoping to find some kids with enough going on to step up a gear and perform in her shows.’

  ‘You believe her?’

  ‘No reason not to. Yet.’

  There was nothing else to say.

  ‘We should hook-up tomorrow. Go back over the evidence together. See if we can’t find an angle on this thing.’

  ‘Let’s do that.’ I ended the call, closed my cell and looked around at the flow of adults and children, preoccupied with their moment in the sun.

  ‘Hello.’ Peter Roy was coming towards me. ‘Peter,’ he reminded me and took my hand. ‘We meet again. Busy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Must be an awful lot of talent in the South.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ He made a face, and we laughed.

  ‘Where’s your wife?’

  ‘Getting Labelle ready. You haven’t heard our girl sing yet, have you?’

  I hadn’t bothered to give their daughter a listen. ‘When is she on?’

  ‘Supposed to be in an hour. These things rarely run on time. Has Molly done her stuff?’

  I decided to tell him; he’d suss it sooner or later. His wife would have got it in one. He raised an eyebrow, understanding the implication of what I was saying. ‘They’re not here today.’

  ‘Really?’

  I’d spoiled his day. Peter Roy was a father and bound to be concerned about the safety of his child. His wife had chastised him in front of me for breaking their agreement. “Labelle is never to be left alone. Not even for a minute.”

  That day, he pretended to be relaxed about the threat. He wasn’t now. The tension seeped out of him, at odds with his middle-aged clothes; the suede shoes, the sweater and the beat-up tweed jacket with the protective leath
er additions at the elbows that made him look like everyone’s favourite uncle.

  ‘I better go find Reba,’ he said and hurried away to make sure his family was safe.

  Well, well, well. Once more into the breech, and all that. And such rich pickings today. Might have thought the good folks would be deterred by recent events, but no, here they are. Bright as buttons and ready to go. Hell mend them. They just won’t learn.

  Careful. Careful.

  You’ve been warned.

  He’s here.

  What does he know? Nothing. Stop! What’s wrong with you?

  He’s here. It’s dangerous.

  That’s what makes it fun. Seeing him try to figure it out. And every time he fails, we win.

  But the danger?

  Yes, the danger.

  That’s what makes it fun. It was too easy before he came along.

  But now, he’s here.

  Aren’t you afraid?

  You must be afraid.

  No. Why should I be afraid?

  ‘Excuse me. Can I give you this?’ The woman who had spent the morning taking registration stood beside me. Her voice brought me back from wherever I’d been.

  ‘Oh. Thank you.’

  ‘Mrs Sinclair said you needed it. I’m finishing up, so when I saw you, I thought …’

  ‘Yes. Thanks again.’

  I stuck the envelope inside my jacket. There was no tug-of-love child to check on; I’d wasted somebody’s time. Without the family, I felt uncomfortable. My watch said eleven-thirty. It wasn’t even half over. I bought a coffee and took it to the front door. Instant. Good enough.

  I remembered Peter and Reba Roy’s daughter and took the envelope out to check when she was due to appear. The list ran to three, neatly typed sheets, segregating the children by age. I scanned the names of the first two groups who had performed earlier, turned over and let my eyes scroll down the second page: nothing. And the last sheet: the same.

  Labelle Roy wasn’t anywhere. That had to be a mistake. How else could it be missing? Then, it came to me. I’d never actually seen Labelle. I’d heard about her. Often. But she was always doing something, or off with the parent I wasn’t talking to.