MICHAEL LISTER'S FIRST THREE SERIES NOVELS: POWER IN THE BLOOD, THE BIG GOODBYE, THUNDER BEACH

by Michael Lister

  The big man would have no problem tossing me around the room with one hand, snapping me in two with so little effort it wouldn’t raise his heart rate, but the little one was by far the more dangerous of the two. I knew it before he opened his mouth, before he delivered a single threat or made good on it. I could see it in his eyes. It wasn’t what was there, but what wasn’t. Behind his gray eyes there was no conscience, no empathy, no pity, no mercy, no remorse.

  The smaller man sat down in one of the chairs in front of my desk.

  “Excuse us a minute, doll,” he said to July.

  She started to protest, but I shook my head, and she walked out quietly and closed my door.

  “That was smart, soldier, you got brains,” the small man said. His voice was low and flat, with only occasional inflection. “No need to get the pretty girl mixed up in any of this.”

  The small man had a grayish tint to him. Perhaps it was that his gray pinstripe suit and gray felt fedora matched his eyes. Maybe it was the faint gray stubble on his face, but it seemed to be more than that, as if his little body put off the color of his core somehow.

  “Any of what?” I asked.

  The big man, who wore a slightly too-small black suit, remained standing and had yet to make a sound or an expression.

  “Complicated things like politics, medical treatment, and romance,” he said. “Things guys like us should stay out of.”

  “Brother, I’m about as far out of those things as a body can be,” I said. “Got no political interests—let alone aspirations, got no use for women, and not undergoing any medical treatment.”

  “Not yet,” the big man said.

  He sounded like a slow, mean kid, and I wondered how the little man put up with him.

  “Must be tough havin’ only one arm,” the little man said.

  “There’re worse things,” I said.

  “Sure, soldier, but you’re in the tough-guy business,” he said. “Hard to be tough with only one arm.”

  “I do all right,” I said.

  “I’m sure you do,” he said. “But goin’ up against the locals what pass for muscle around here’s one thing. Takin’ on guys like us is another.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Doesn’t change anything, but it may be true.”

  “Okay, soldier, I understand,” he said. “I’m just wasting my breath here. Doesn’t matter what I say, we’re gonna mix it up ’cause that’s what guys like us do, but I still gotta give you the message I’s hired to just like there was a chance you might actually listen to it.”

  I nodded.

  “Man who hired me thinks it’s best you stay out of politics, away from other men’s wives, and away from hospitals.”

  The big man came to life again, his face showing his pride in himself and the pleasure what he was about to say would bring him. “If you don’t,” he said, “you’ll need a doctor and a hospital of your own.”

  “But not a politician or another man’s wife?” I asked.

  The big man looked confused. The small man smiled.

  “You ought not do that, mister,” the small man said. “That’s just low.”

  “According to you, I’m gonna have a short life,” I said. “Better get my fun while I can.”

  Chapter 16

  It cost me extra, but I had Clipper in a uniform. He was banging on the delivery entrance of Rainer’s place on Eleventh Street, a brown parcel in his left hand. A single-bulb light fixture above the door provided the only illumination, and from my position in the back of the delivery truck all I could see of him was his white uniform, the white of his real eye, and his bright white teeth.

  Clipper Jones was a young Negro who had been part of the 99th Fighter Squadron, 1st Tactical Unit before suffering the loss of his left eye. He picked up the nickname Clipper while training at Dale Mabry Field because of the way he would so fearlessly dive down toward the Gulf, fly in low and “clip” the tops of the north Florida pine trees.

  The back door of the private sanatorium opened, and Clipper began his routine.

  I was crouched in an old milk truck. One of Clip’s many brothers had converted it into a delivery vehicle. I was attempting to see and hear what was going on near the door.

  “He’s not here,” the dark-haired nurse said.

  It had rained earlier in the night and was threatening to again. The air was thick with moisture. As if steam rising out of the earth from small hidden holes, a low fog hovered over the ground, some of it breaking free to cling to tree branches and gather itself around the lights on buildings and street corners.

  “This here’s gots to be signed fo,” Clipper said. “And it’s gots to be Dr. Rain to do it.”

  “Rainer,” the woman corrected.

  “Rai-n-er,” he repeated slowly.

  I thought he was overdoing it a bit, but he often told me you could never overestimate the superiority white people felt over coloreds.

  He must have been right because of what she did next.

  “Come in,” she said. “I’ll call Dr. Rainer.”

  She turned and began walking inside. Before he followed her, Clipper looked back in my direction and gave me a big, fuck-crackers smile, which was about all I could see.

  When Dale Mabry Field near Tallahassee was expanded from a small airport used by private planes, Eastern Airlines’ DC3s, and National Airlines’ mail carriers to an Army airfield in late 1940, a small black community had been relocated. Clipper’s grandparents had been part of this community. It had never set well with Clipper, and he didn’t mind letting his superiors know it. In fact, his antics in the airplane that earned him his nickname were part of his protest. He had always suspected his eye injury wasn’t an accident—hired me to prove it, but I couldn’t get past the army’s tall green wall of silence and endless miles of red tape.

  Within a few minutes, Clip was opening the back door and waving me in with the gun in his right hand. I climbed out of the truck and joined him.

  “Not much security,” he said. “One fat fucker I slapped the shit out of.”

  “Where’s the nurse?”

  He jerked his head toward the open door. “Come see for yourself.”

  I followed him into a tile-floor lobby to find the discarded box his gun had been in, the fat security guard on the floor, and the night nurse cuffed to a big wooden chair, a piece of tape across her face holding a gag in her mouth.

  “Why the gag?”

  “Take it off and see,” he said. “Shit, Jim, how long it gonna be ’fore you quit questioning every got damn thing I do?”

  I started to remove the gag, but stopped myself. “Sorry,” I said.

  The small lobby had brownish linoleum with green-and-rust-colored frames around Oriental rugs. A reception area behind a small glass sliding door stood on one wall, the light inside it providing the only illumination for the dim lobby. In the middle of the open space, two seating areas, one a modern Kroehler couch and chairs, the other East Indies Rattan.

  Off the lobby in opposite directions, two corridors extended about a hundred feet with doors on each side.

  “We just gonna bang on every door until we find her?” he said.

  Lightening flashed outside and for a moment the entire room was bright and well lit. A few seconds later thunder rolled in the distance. Another storm was moving in off the Gulf.

  I shook my head. “I’m gonna quietly look for her. You’re gonna stay here and keep an eye on things.”

  The hallway was dim, lit only by intermittent fancy fixtures with low-watt bulbs inside them. Several rooms were empty, the beds made, the doors open. I tried the handle of the first closed door I came to. It was unlocked. I opened it. Inside, I found a tall man with a long white beard sleeping on his side. I closed it and tried the next one. This time I found a rotund woman lying on her back, a small dog asleep on her slowly rising and falling chest.

  I had gone through a handful of rooms when I found Lauren’s. She was fully dressed, sitting on her bed, crying.<
br />
  “Jimmy,” she said, as she jumped off the bed, rushed over, and hugged me.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Came for treatment,” I said. “Whatta you think?”

  “I can’t go,” she said.

  “I’m not giving you a choice.”

  Lightening flashed outside, illuminating the raindrops on her window.

  “You don’t understand,” she said.

  “Well, you can explain it to me or keep me in the dark,” I said. “Either way you’re coming with me.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?” I asked. “What does Rainer have on you?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  I shook my head. “There was a time when you told me everything,” I said. “At least I thought you did. Was I wrong about that, too?”

  The wind picked up and pelted the window with a volley of raindrops. Through the rain-spattered glass pane I could see the leaves of banana trees and palm fronds waving in the wind.

  I could tell she wanted to change the subject. She said. “If you’re forcing me to go, we better get going.”

  Chapter 17

  “Clipper?” Lauren asked. “What’re you doin’ here?”

  “Ever since your soldier here done got hisself shot up, he can’t do shit by hisself.”

  I laughed, but only so they wouldn’t see the sick look on my face. He was right. There were many aspects of my job and my life I could no longer do, and though there wasn’t anything I could do about it, I wasn’t about to get used to it.

  “Would you please tell him I need to stay here,” she said.

  He looked confused. “You don’t want to go?”

  “No,” she said. “I can’t.”

  Lightening flashed and lit up the room, Lauren’s eyes growing wide at the sight of the bound and gagged nurse and unconscious security guard.

  “You don’t have a choice,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “You heard the man,” Clip said. “He da one puttin’ money in my pocket tonight.”

  As we walked out, Lauren looked back at the night nurse with an expression of helplessness and apology. “Tell Dr. Rainer I was forced to leave against my will. I’ll be back. And I’ll pay him every penny. Okay? Got that? Be sure to tell him.”

  The nurse nodded.

  We continued moving, Lauren leading, and I realized Clip had stopped. I turned to make sure he wasn’t about to shoot the nurse or night watchman, and found him leaning over saying something to the nurse.

  When he reached me, I asked him what he had said to her.

  “That I put the key to the cuffs in fat boy’s shirt pocket so he can free her when he wake up.”

  “That was nice,” I said.

  “She ain’t bad lookin’,” he said. “Still want a white woman—least once.”

  “Oh,” I said, with a big smile. “So you were being romantic.”

  “Well, I can’t just break in and kidnap a dame,” he said. “I ain’t that romantic, but—”

  Lauren had already stepped out of the back door and she was now coming through it again, a gun held to her head by the small gray-tinted man who had been in my office earlier in the day. He was standing behind her, using her body as a shield. The big man was behind him. I could see his upper body and head over Lauren and the little guy. He had to duck to walk through the door.

  Through the door behind them, I could see that the rain was coming hard now, slanting in the wind, visible in the light mounted beside the door.

  When I looked back at Clip, he was pointing his gun at them.

  “Tell the nigger to drop the heater, soldier,” the little gray man said to me.

  They were inside now. The big man had his gun out too, pointing it at me.

  I looked at Lauren, trying to reassure her, to let her know everything was okay, though clearly it was not.

  She said, “Looks like you showed up for a gun fight with only your fists.”

  “One fist at that,” Clip said. “Ain’t that some kind of shit.”

  “I said tell your nigger to drop his gun,” the small man said.

  Lightning flashed, followed fast by a sharp clap of thunder. The storm was on top of us now.

  “He think you pay me enough for me to be your nigger?” Clip asked.

  “I do pay you a lot,” I said.

  “Not enough to be your nigger,” he said. “Nobody got that much money.”

  “Okay, fellas,” the little man said, “I’ve let you have your fun. Now drop the gun or Mrs. Lewis here’s gonna have something even Dr. Rainer can’t help her with.”

  “I ain’t never put down my gun for no man,” Clip said. “Never goin’ to neither.”

  I knew that was the case, which was why I had been stalling. Clip would die before he’d relinquish his weapon. It was a matter of pride, a defiance that preferred death to dishonor, which was how he viewed surrendering in any form. It was what made him so dangerous, but in this instance he was endangering Lauren’s life, and I was the one who had set it up.

  “You better talk to him, soldier,” the little man said to me. “He’s gonna get the lady killed.”

  “He won’t put down his gun,” I said. “Not for any reason. He’ll die first. Let us all die.”

  “You be the first one I shoot,” Clip said to the little man.

  “So we know Mrs. Lewis will die and we think perhaps I will,” the little man said. “Wonder who else will? Mountain, who you gonna shoot first?”

  “Got my gun on the cripple, Cab,” Mountain said.

  “He’s got no gun and one arm, Mount,” Cab said. “Why don’t you point it at the jig.”

  As Mountain moved his gun off me, Clip shot him in the face. He dropped his gun as he was falling and I picked it up.

  “Look like the crip and jig got the drop on you,” Clip said.

  The thunder and lightening were happening nearly simultaneously now, the flashes of light and cracks of sound so often as to be almost continuous.

  “I’ve still got the girl,” Cab said.

  His voice was much softer now and not nearly as confident. He hadn’t expected what had just happened, and wasn’t quite sure what to do.

  “Mrs. Lewis and I are going to back out of here,” he said, “and you two are going to let us. I know you’ll shoot me now, so I won’t hesitate to shoot her.”

  He began backing out, dragging Lauren with him. Clip and I began to follow.

  “Stop right where you are,” he said. “Or I’ll shoot her right now.”

  “Then get shot yourself,” Clip said.

  “I don’t mind dying so much,” he said.

  When they reached the back door and he had stepped through it, Lauren’s heel got caught on the threshold and she tripped and fell. As she was going down, Cab released her, fired off a few rounds at us and disappeared into the rainy night.

  I ran over to Lauren. Clip ran past us out into the storm in search of Cab.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  The security guard was beginning to stir and the doors of patients’ rooms were opening. In another moment we’d have a crowd of eyewitnesses.

  “I’m better than Mountain,” she said, nodding to the large man lying on the floor, an expanding pool of blood beneath his head.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I helped her up, then checked outside. Clip ran up just then. He was soaked through, his face and hair dripping.

  “I missed him,” he said. “He’s gone.”

  “We’ll deal with him later,” I said. “Let’s get Lauren home.”

  “Whatta you mean we’ll?” he asked.

  “That I’ll—”

  “That cracker’s all mine,” he said.

  Chapter 18

  “What are you mixed up in, Lauren?” I asked.

  She didn’t say anything.

  I took my time driving La
uren home, using the hard slanting rain and wet streets as an excuse, but it didn’t do any good. Every attempt I made to start a conversation failed. I was trying to remind her of how good it had been between us, convince her she could still trust me, but she just wouldn’t respond.

  I changed my approach.

  “Does Harry know?”

  “No,” she said. “He has nothing to do with this.”

  Still protective over Harry.

  “It’s a private matter,” she said.

  “Not any more it’s not,” I said. “People are dying. That kind of thing always draws attention. Pesky cops and reporters are gonna keep at it until they have something.”

  “But it was self-defense,” she said, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the rest. “I’ll swear to it. Nobody’s gonna—”

  “Who was self-defense, Lauren?”

  “The big guy Clipper shot tonight,” she said. “He won’t get in any trouble for that, will he? Even if he does, I’ll testify my life was in danger and he saved me. It’ll just have to be after the election is over.”

  The storm was continuing to move past us, the thunder and lightning nearly gone now, only the rain remained. The rain reflected the lights of downtown as it sluiced down rooftops and the sides of buildings and ran in gutters toward drainage ditches.

  “What about the others?” I asked.

  “What others?”

  “You don’t know of any other murders that happened recently?”

  She shook her head. I wasn’t sure I believed her.

  “The boy who sold you the file out on the beach,” I said. “Freddy.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve been locked up in a room. How would I—I can’t believe he’s dead. He was such a sweet kid. He was just trying to help me. Who would kill him?”

  “You tell me,” I said. “Who would beat him to death?”

  “He was beaten to death?” she asked, her voice breaking.

  She began to sniffle a little, and I looked over to see a tear rolling down her cheek.