No way out jd-2

by Joel Goldman

  “Quit moping,” Lucy said. “You’ll be home in time for the late-afternoon game and the night game.”

  “Yeah, but I’m missing the first game.”

  “Who’s playing?”

  “Who cares? What matters is that I’m not watching.”

  “Poor Jack Davis. He lives a life of unrelenting cruelty.”

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “If you have to ask, it’s not nearly as much fun.”

  “Order up,” LC said.

  Lucy brought our food to the table carrying a tray in one hand and a brown bag, grease staining the paper, in the other.

  “Simon’s dinner,” she said, setting the bag on an empty chair.

  Lucy was an ex-cop, ex-con, and private investigator for Alexander Investigations. Her boyfriend and my best friend, Simon Alexander, was the owner. Simon specialized in cyber crime. Lucy worked the human side, investing her heart in her clients. I was her part-time gun. A convicted felon, she couldn’t possess a firearm, but I could even though I had a movement disorder that made me shake and had forced me to retire after twenty-five years with the FBI. Who said justice was blind?

  “Simon gets barbeque and he gets to watch the game?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Lucy said, patting me on the head. “And you got barbeque and a trip to the Municipal Farm to visit Jimmy Martin. Aren’t you the lucky man?”

  “Luckier than Jimmy. Did you really think he’d tell us where he buried his kids?”

  “Evan and Cara are missing. No one says they’re dead.”

  “Evan is six and Cara is eight years old, and they’ve been missing for three weeks as of yesterday. How many of those kids come home?”

  “Not many. I know. But that doesn’t mean he killed them.”

  “Let’s see,” I said, ticking the facts off one by one. “Jimmy and his wife are in the middle of the divorce from hell. She threw him out and had to get an order of protection against him. He can’t see Evan and Cara unless it’s with a court-appointed social worker. The kids disappeared the same day he was arrested for stealing copper wire and tubing from a construction site.”

  “I know. I know,” Lucy said. “We’ve been over this. His lawyer asked the judge to release him on his own recognizance since he wasn’t a flight risk because he wanted to be with his kids.”

  “And?”

  Lucy leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, reciting as if she was being coerced. “And, his wife was in the courtroom and whispered to the prosecutor to ask Jimmy where the kids were, and Jimmy refused to answer, so the judge said no bail and sent him to the Municipal Farm because the county jail was full. He didn’t even take the Fifth. Just acted like he didn’t hear the question.”

  “That’s the great thing about the privilege against self-incrimination. You can’t exercise it without everyone thinking you’re a criminal. So, either he killed his kids so his wife couldn’t have them, or he’s torturing her by making her think he knows where they are even though he doesn’t. I don’t know why you were so hot to talk to him. If he won’t tell his wife or the judge what he knows about the kids, assuming he knows anything at all, he sure as hell isn’t going to tell us.”

  “I get that, Jack. But it can’t hurt to try. Their mother hasn’t given up hope. That’s why Peggy hired us. So, I’m not giving up either.” Lucy slowly stirred the pool of ketchup on her plate with a cold french fry. “It’s just so hard to believe he’d let her suffer like that, make her wonder what happened.”

  “Never underestimate an angry man’s capacity for cruelty. There was a case in Alabama where a father killed his four children, threw them off a bridge, to torture his wife.”

  “Which is worse? Mourning their deaths or never knowing if you can?”

  I took a deep breath, thinking about my dead children. “I’ve done both and wouldn’t wish the choice on anybody.”

  “I know,” she said, taking my hand, “and that’s why I asked you to go with me to see Jimmy Martin. You don’t really miss watching that football game, do you?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “Not for a minute. Eat your lunch before it gets cold.”

  Chapter Four

  Two women and a man were sitting at a corner table near the television. They had more on their plates than ribs. The man was facing us, the women giving us their backs; the other eight tables were empty. They gave off a vibe of bad news getting worse. I couldn’t help picking up on it, blaming too many years spent finding trouble before it started.

  Their postures were stiff, their voices rising and falling, the buzz from the television muffling what they were saying. One thing was clear: They weren’t having a party.

  The man’s totem head was square. His eyes were heavy-lidded, the left one lazy. His neck was short and squat, his shoulders rolled with fat. I put him at forty, maybe less. He drummed meaty fingers on the Formica tabletop, his lazy eye drifting my way, catching me watching them, his glare telling me to butt out.

  The woman sitting on the end of the table pointed her finger at him. He grabbed her hand, squeezing until the woman sitting next to the wall pulled them apart, the man gritting his teeth, folding his beefy arms over his chest, the first woman slumping, elbows on the table, her face in her hands.

  The woman who’d separated them came out of her chair like a charmed snake, the man flattening his hands on the table, staring up at her, his mouth a dumb scar. Purse on her shoulder, she turned and sauntered past our table, crossing the black-and-white checkerboard linoleum floor, chewing her lower lip and glancing at me before disappearing down the narrow hall between the open kitchen and windows blanketed with wrought-iron bars, heading, I guessed, for the bathroom. She was young, early twenties, slender with a ropy muscular build, sporting a lip ring and auburn hair streaked with bright red and cut close to a face midway between pretty and incredible.

  “I think she likes you, Jack,” Lucy teased.

  “My lucky day.”

  “What do you make of them?”

  “From the looks of things, I’d say they aren’t having a good day, especially those two,” I said, aiming a rib at the man and woman still at the table.

  The man leaned toward the woman, whispering, hunching his shoulders, his arms wide, making a plea, the woman crossing her arms, shaking her head. The man pressed, chopping the air with an open palm. He wasn’t asking; he was telling, his my-way-or-the-highway message plain enough. The woman pulled back, turning away from him and toward us, her eyes widening, her mouth locked in a tight grimace.

  “Why’d they have to pick LC’s to have a fight?” Lucy asked. “The guy with the lazy eye makes me nervous. Angry, unhappy people do crazy stuff, and I’ve got a bad feeling about them. Why did you have to leave your gun at home?” she asked.

  “You know why. I couldn’t take my gun into the Municipal Farm, and I don’t like leaving it in the car. Besides, you see the sign on LC’s door, the one with the gun inside a red circle and a line drawn through it?”

  “You think they look like the kind of people who care about a sign on the door?”

  Voices rose from the corner table, drowning out the static from the TV. The woman turned toward the man, reached across the table, and slapped him.

  “I won’t have it, Frank. I’d rather lose everything!”

  She knocked her chair over as she got up, the man she called Frank matching her move, grabbing her wrist. She gave him the back of her other hand this time, her ring cutting a bloody groove across his cheek.

  He let her go, wiped his cheek on his sleeve, and reached inside his coat, pulling a gun. The woman skittered backward, her hands raised. Frank fired once and she crumpled to the floor, faceup and dead, laugh lines and crow’s feet soft and slack, her gray eyes open, locked and puzzled.

  Lucy and I froze in our seats. There was nowhere to hide. Frank gazed down at the woman and then pointed his gun at us, his hand wobbling, waiting for something to happen.

  “Goddamn it, Frank! What in the hell i
s wrong with you?”

  It was the woman who’d left the table before the shooting started, her voice behind us. I stole a look over my shoulder. She was standing next to LC behind the four-foot-high counter, a drywall pillar obscuring her head and shoulders.

  “It wasn’t my fault, Roni,” Frank said, his voice quivering. “She started yelling at me-then she slapped me. Slapped me twice and cut me too.”

  “You could have walked away or slapped her back. Why’d you have to shoot Marie? And where in the world did you get a gun?”

  He shook his massive head, blinking at the body lying at his feet as if it had fallen out of the sky. “I didn’t mean to. It just happened, that’s all.”

  “Is she dead?”

  He nudged Marie with his shoe. “I expect so. I shot her pretty good right in the chest.”

  “Well, that’s just great, Frank. Really, it is. Just great.”

  The big man heaved and rolled his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Roni. I guess we better get out of here.”

  “And go where? Look around the room, Frank. There are three other witnesses besides me. How far do you think you’ll get?”

  “A lot farther than if we stick around. Now let’s get out of here!”

  She stepped away from the pillar into the open, raising a gun at him in a two-fisted grip, her voice strong and steady. “Don’t make me shoot you.”

  “Aw, hell, Roni. You’re not gonna shoot me. You never shot anybody in your life.”

  “Every girl dreams about her first time, Frank. I just never figured it would be you.”

  Frank leveled his gun at her, no wobble in his grip, his lazy eye closed in a squint. Lucy and I were trapped in their cross fire.

  “I don’t want to shoot you,” he said. “But I’ll do it if I have to. And them, too,” he added, tilting his head at us. “And the colored guy.”

  “That’s a lot of killing to have on your conscience, Frank.”

  He swelled up, stuck his chest out, stretching his gun hand toward her. “I can carry the freight.”

  “Now, Frank,” she said. “I’m a much better shot than you. I work at it, and I’ve never seen you at the range, not one time. With that lazy eye of yours, you’re just as likely to shoot yourself as anyone else. Only reason you hit Marie was she was standing on top of you.”

  “Don’t push me, Roni,” he said, his voice low and hard. “That’s what Marie did, and you see what it bought her.”

  “She couldn’t protect herself. I can. Do you have the nerve to pull the trigger a second time when you know I’ll shoot back?”

  Frank was sweating, his neck red, his face purpling, the gun now bobbing in his hand as he fought to breathe. “I come this far! Don’t think I won’t do it!”

  “All right then,” she said, bending her knees slightly, lining him up in her sight. “You better not miss because I got you dead to rights.”

  They stood like that for a few seconds, Lucy and I flipping back and forth between them until Frank relaxed, lowered his gun, and turned sideways and Lucy and I started breathing again. Roni straightened, easing her stance, when Frank jerked his gun hand up and fired, missing her. She ducked and pulled the trigger, hitting him in the thigh. He dropped his gun, clutched his leg, and twisted to the floor.

  “You shot me!”

  She ran over to him and picked up his gun, sticking both weapons in her belt.

  “The moon is pink,” she said.

  “I can’t believe you fucking shot me!”

  “The moon is pink,” she said, pressing her hands over his wound.

  “The moon is pink! What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you weren’t listening to a word I said, you dumb son of a bitch. I told you I would shoot you. I might as well have been telling you the moon was pink for all the good it did.”

  “I heard you. I just didn’t believe you.”

  “Same difference,” she said.

  She looked at me, her brows raised, her mouth open, asking for help without saying it.

  “I’ll call 911,” I said.

  She nodded. “Appreciate it if you would.”

  Lucy knelt next to Marie, checked for a pulse, and shook her head at me. She traded places with Roni alongside Frank, pressing her hands against his wound, stemming the blood flow to a trickle. Frank turned pale and laid his head on the floor.

  Roni stood, wiped her bloody hands on her denims, and walked to my table as I closed my phone and stood.

  “Help is on the way,” I said. “I’m Jack Davis. Who are you?”

  “Veronica Chase. Everyone calls me Roni.” She reached for a cameo hanging from a gold necklace, rubbing the charm between two fingers, and looked at Marie and Frank, then at the blood on her hands and jeans, her face turning green. “Oh Lord, I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  And she was.

  Chapter Five

  Roni was too weak to protest when I pulled the guns from her belt and helped her to another table. LC swabbed the floor where she had thrown up, handing me a damp dishrag to wipe the blood off her hands. He gave her a Seven Up to calm her stomach and gave me a carryout bag for the guns. His was a Bersa Thunder 380, and hers was a Beretta 8000 9-millimeter, both guns ideal for concealed carry and personal protection.

  Her eyes were glassy, her movement slow, shock dulling her senses, staving off the whirlwind of emotions that sweep through people in the aftermath of violence. The coolness with which she’d confronted Frank was a good sign that she would be able to handle the replays that would haunt her sleep in an endless loop. Her color improved from green to pale as she watched Lucy tend to Frank. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was shallow.

  “Is he going to die?” she asked.

  “Eventually,” Lucy said, “but not today.”

  Roni nodded, saying “Bless the day,” and took a sip from her Seven Up, the fog lifting as she focused on me.

  The internal pressure that erupts into my shakes and spasms burst loose, fibrillating my torso as my neck arched and stiffened, aiming my chin at the ceiling. I grunted like I’d been kicked in the gut, letting out a long breath when the spasm passed.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Roni asked.

  “I’ve got a movement disorder.”

  She nodded, lips pursed, swirling her drink. “Ever wonder why you?”

  “Why not me?”

  She wiped her mouth and nodded. “I don’t know you well enough to say. You do that all the time?”

  “Just enough to keep life interesting, especially when I get caught in the middle of a shoot-out. Who are they?” I asked, pointing at the floor.

  “Frank and Marie Crenshaw.”

  “Frank and Marie always get along that well?”

  “Actually, they were real good together until the last year or so.”

  “What happened?”

  “The same thing that’s happened to a lot of people since the economy went south. Seems like everyone has either lost their job or their business or they go to sleep every night scared to death of getting out of bed in the morning because it might be their turn. I don’t think Frank has slept in a month.”

  “What’s your relationship to them?”

  She took a sip of her Seven Up, leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes for a moment, opening them when she answered.

  “We have a history.”

  “What kind of history? Are you related to them?”

  She sat up, studying me, her eyes narrow and cautious. “They’ve got a scrap business off of Independence Avenue in Sheffield. I keep their books.”

  “So, you work for them.”

  “Not like that. I’ve got my own business. Chase Bookkeeping. They’re one of my clients.”

  “You don’t look the bookkeeper type.”

  She smiled. “It’s really my mom’s business, but she had a stroke last year. I’d just gotten my accounting degree at Park University so I kind of took over. First thing I learned: when you’re the boss, no
one can tell you what you’re supposed to look like.”

  She fished in her purse for a business card and handed it to me.

  “You also don’t look like the type who carries a gun and knows how to use it.”

  “That was my Grandma Lilly’s rule. She said the women in our family had to know how to take care of ourselves.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  She gave me another smile, this one with her mouth closed. “You might say we’ve got a history too.”

  “Grandma Lilly ever shoot anyone?”

  “Not in a long time, but she says it’s never too late. She’s sixty-five and still goes to the shooting range.”

  “I can’t wait to meet her. Where’s she live?”

  “With me and my mother in Pendleton Heights.”

  “Where’s that?”

  She squinted, giving me a microscopic look as if I was from a foreign country. “It’s a neighborhood in the northeast part of town. West of Sheffield.”

  I’d lived in Kansas City long enough to know the east side from the west, the Country Club Plaza from the mega malls and strip centers in Johnson County, and where the state line divided Missouri and Kansas. I knew that Northeast KC was bounded by The Paseo on the west, Interstate 435 on the east, Gladstone Boulevard to the north, and Truman Road to the south; that Independence Avenue ran east and west from downtown to the Interstate, bisecting Northeast into northern and southern hemispheres.

  Though I didn’t know the names of its neighborhoods, I knew that Northeast had a history of mansions on Gladstone Boulevard, hookers on Independence Avenue, and gangs south of the Avenue. And I knew one other thing. It was where Peggy and Jimmy Martin and their two kids lived, a coincidence that shrunk my Sunday afternoon world to claustrophobic dimensions.

  “It’s Sunday. What are you doing working?” I asked her.

  “We had some things to go over. It was the only time we could meet.”

  “What kind of things?”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “What are you? A cop?”