Frenzy dje-2

by Rex Miller

  "We'll be bringing in about five thousand boxes at a time. They'll be flats, and what you'll do is hire a couple of kids to put these together and stack them up when we start . . . Uh, say listen, do me a favor, I've got to go meet someone. See that man in the blue car there?"

  "Yes, sir?"

  "Do me a favor." Spain pulled a money clip out of his pocket and peeled off a twenty. "Walk over there and tap on his window and just say, Go on up. He'll know what you mean."

  "Go on up?"

  "Right. It'll save me a couple minutes 'cause he always wants to talk to me and I just don't have the time to waste and, you know, I just don't like to be rude but he's one of those guys who never shuts up." They both smiled.

  She said, "Sure. Just say, go on up. I don't need to tell him anything else?"

  "No." He put the twenty-dollar bill in her hand. "Then just walk back across the street and ..." He turned around. "See that cab-stand over there?" She nodded. "Just take a cab on back to the office." He had to check himself from telling her to keep the change. He knew she would account for the fare the next time he saw her and probably agonize over what percent tip to give the driver. He thanked her and she got out and started across the street as he pulled away from the curb.

  He drove around the block. Waited a sixty-second count. Slowly eased up into a parking area next to a business down the block from the cabstand. He waited until he saw the woman walking across the street, going over to the first taxi. Driver gets out. Opens a door. She gets in. They seem to sit there forever. Finally the cab pulls out. Spain starts the engine, pulls his car up in front of the apartment hotel. Goes straight on in and takes the elevator up to Picciotti's floor. The door is unlocked, which is what he has just paid a man he's never allowed to see him over a thousand dollars for.

  Spain goes in and starts brewing coffee, making himself right at home. He's locked the door. Now all he has to do is settle down, relax and wait for Mr. Picciotti to return home. The maid's laundry cart from the fourth floor has mysteriously disappeared. It's in Picciotti's bedroom. Johnny won't be leaving here on his feet, I'm afraid, Spain thinks with a smile.

  It is three-thirty in the afternoon when Spain, relaxed, reading on Johnny's satin bedspread, hears the key in the door and he quickly gets to his feet and waits behind the bedroom door. No noise for a minute, then a blaring television set is turned on and Spain reaches for his .25 automatic and eases into the room.

  "Don't," he says, pointing at Johnny Soldier's surprised face. "Don't even think about it, Johnny. If this was a hit you'd already be greased, right?"

  "Wha' the fuck ya wan'?"

  "Attaboy," Spain says, pulling a piece out of the man's holster. He can barely get it loose. "Some fast-draw rig you got there. A PPK." Spain laughs. "What are you, James fucking Bond?"

  "Who d' fuck are ya?"

  "This is who I am, asshole." He kneecaps him and Picciotti drops to the carpet in pain.

  "You're dead, you piece a' shit," Picciotti grunts.

  "Yes, eventually we all end up that way. Well," He goes over and snicks cuffs on the man, but Johnny pulls away before Spain can get them both on properly so he kicks Johnny in the head, catching him with a pointed toe in the side of the neck, and finishes getting the cuffs on.

  "How d'ya like working for Blue, Johnny? Good job, is it?" He kicks the man again, in the face this time, then goes into the bathroom and gets a couple of hand towels and a washcloth for a gag.

  "You're going to tell me all about Blue and the boys. All about the operation, you wop peckerhead, but first we'll take a little ride. Okay?" He wheels the maid's cart in. Johnny is bleeding out of his mouth and Spain soaks one of the towels in it and puts the towel in a plastic bag.

  After Picciotti is off-loaded, his next chore is to take Johnny's car keys and unlock the man's vehicle and wipe the bloody towel across the headrest. Just a bit of theater. This done — they leave.

  The spur had been a busy linkage shunt at one point but the tracks had long since been torn up for scrap. Everything was gone now except the deep scar through the woods where the railroad trains had once run parallel to the water's edge and several hundred meters inland. It was all gone now. The railroad had literally vanished. The county had even hauled away the gravel in the roadbed, every pebble, every scrap, right down to the dusty spikes, dumping the detritus and junk over various backroads throughout the Missouri boonies. And for a long time to come, farmers would remember the railroad when their pickups rolled rubber over the odd errant spike.

  Spain pulled his vehicle well off the roadbed and into a light, declivitous place adjacent to where the county had blocked off the roadway with a stout barricade of treated cross ties. There was a big oak nearby and the vehicle fit nicely between two of the huge root systems that had come reaching out of the low spot like gigantic, gnarled fingers. He started carrying tools and material over toward the water's edge.

  It was a tiny spot that was secluded and totally invisible from virtually every angle but one, a natural cove made by erosion from the bank forming a small O with a pie slice eaten out of it by the river. The sign back on the road identified it as a Headwater Diversion Channel. As he looked down into the moving waters it looked deep and muddy even inside the little cove, and he wondered idly how many rivers fed this body of water he was looking at. He supposed the Mississippi, the Ohio, maybe even the muddy Mo, and he spat down into it and walked back for more.

  His load broke a sweat on him in no time and the cool breeze felt good as it dried him. He unloaded three feed sacks partially filled with small rocks he'd shoveled off a county road — maybe one of them had come from here in the first place — and a few broken bricks he'd found near a construction site. He had a half-dozen bags which he began filling with loose dirt and closing with twist-'em wire-closures. He had a razor-sharp sickle, a spade, a post-hole digger, gloves and an abandoned wooden door which he'd sawed off to six feet by roughly two and a half.

  He sickled his way into a likely spot and began carving out a two-foot-wide, six-foot-long trench with the sharp digger. He was very strong and the blades bit into the soft surface soil easily. His goal was to go down three feet and he put a lot into it, not particularly pacing himself or holding back, but working with grim determination. In a few minutes he'd pulled out so much dirt that he had to start filling bags or move into the hole. He liked the leverage he had at the trench's edge, so he took time to fill the plastic bags and when the hole was accessible he started again.

  The sun was falling now and it was setting spectacularly across the river along the horizon, and it shot dappled orange and peach and crimson highlights through the willows bent gracefully out along the water's edge and along the banks choked with dog fennel and foxtail, thorn and thistle, creeper vine and cockle-bur, ragweed and chigger-weed, poke and poison ivy. But Spain saw none of it, standing there on the edge of Mother Nature's leafy wonderment, digging a shallow grave as the jarflies and mosquitoes and frogs sang relentlessly.

  Something cracked through the wall of insane concentration and for that moment the one called Spain realized where he was and his surroundings permeated the dense death haze that he carried with him now. He had impressive banks of information stored away. Trivial and important knowledge. Minutiae he'd accumulated in his half a lifetime such as the fact that the Indians had once made a tobaccolike mixture called kinnikinnick. It came back to him in that moment when his eyes observed sumac and dogwood bark, relaying the message to his brain cells, and in that flush of cognition he realized that all the rain had kept much of the green here. Ladue had been barren-looking when he left for the South. The thought, lonesome amid the rest of the screaming abnormality, fled, and he was pleased at the way the recent rains had left the earth easy to dig in.

  When he had the grave he wanted, neatly rectilinear and ready for its occupant, he went back to get Johnny Picciotti, Blue Kriegal's bodyguard. He was lighter than he looked, Spain noticed as he dropped the man's mummied form into the sh
allow grave and began filling it carefully, tamping the pieces of broken brick in and then starting on the dirt. From time to time a muffled scream would be audible, but when the first layers of bricks and rock and dirt covered it, you couldn't hear much. Just frogs, mosquitoes, and the incessant buzz of the jarflies.

  "Glad we could have this little chat," he tells the silent earth.

  The phone by the bedside table rang and the man picked it up, having to reach over the sleeping body of an inert young boy to lift it from the cradle.

  "Eh?" he grunted into the phone, glancing over at the clock that had some kind of fancy numbers some decorator thought looked good and he could never tell what the fuck time it was.

  "Boss?"

  "Who d' fuck is this?"

  "Boss, this is Blue."

  "What d' fuck ya doin' calling me dis time a' da fuckin' night?"

  "BOSS! Walk up, f' shit sake it's important."

  "What?"

  "Can I talk?"

  "Fuck, I dunno. No. Whatd'ya want, goddammit?"

  "I gotta talk to ya."

  "Fuck it. What?" He rubbed at the sleep in his eyes.

  "Dey got Johnny."

  "Whadya fuckin' mean dey got Johnny."

  "Johnny. He's fuckin' disappeared. We got his car."

  "No fuckin' way, He's prob'ly wit' a broad. Fuck it. Go back ta sleep."

  "... f' shit sake, wake up, goddammit. They got him."

  "Who got him? Whatd' fuck ya talkin' bout f' the ten't damn time?"

  "Rikla dat piece'a shit got him. We got d' car. Deres blood innit."

  "Blood?"

  "Blood, gaddammit, on d' headrest thing dere. RIKLA he hit Johnny d' no good piece of SHIT his fuckin' children should DIE! Hadda be fuckin' RIKLA!"

  "When?"

  "Huh?"

  "Whenja fina car?"

  "Jus' now. Me'n' Gino found it."

  "How long has Johnny been gone?"

  "Since las' night. I mean, we figured like you, ya' know, it hadda be a broad or a fuckin' game or sum'pin', but we finally go up dere to dat place where he lives an' look inna gargage and we checked inside d' car an der's the goddamn bloodstains'n' shit."

  "He could be hurt. Inside. Not answerin' d' phone."

  "Naw. We got the super guy to let us in. Nobody up der. RIKLA NAILED HIM, de fuckin' cock-sucker."

  "How do you know so fuckin' sure?"

  "Who d' fuck else gonna be wit' de balls to hit Johnny Soldier, f' shit sake? Hit him where he lives like dat. You know it hadda be some fuckin' som'bitch wit' no respec' for where a man lives. Dat fuckin' Rikla garbage go inside an' clip a man where he lives. An one of US ain't gon' clip a guy where d' guy fuckin' LIVES, goddammit."

  "Yeah. Well." The man sat up and yawned, rubbed his eyes again, looking at the thin boy asleep beside him or pretending to be asleep. "Get Buck n' Lowenstein. You and Gino meet me at d' other place in about ..." He glanced at the clock again. "Fuckin' goddamn shit clock it don' even tell the fuckin' time. Fuck it. Meet me over dere in half an hour. Bring ya tools 'n' shit. I don't guess we got to take dat fuckin' shit."

  One of the main reasons he couldn't concentrate was he had Ritafication on the brain. Tonight's the night, he kept thinking. It was amazing to him the way he could always revert to a sixteen-year-old kid mentally at the mere cross of a leg in a high-heeled shoe. I mean, healthy is one thing, but Holy Moly, Captain Marvel, gimme a break here.

  So Rita Paul now Haubrich of the legs and the red hair was the way he rationalized it. Whatever the real reason, this case was still a jellied blur.

  The whole day had been spent first with Springer and a couple of homicide and organized-crime guys trying to do a chalk talk which had him so confused he erased it from his slate and tried his own simplistic version on a legal pad. It began like so:

  THE TWO TONYS GANG

  Cypriot (gone/NY?) Dago (slams)

  Rikla . . . Measure Russo . . . Venable

  He said to a detective nearby. "Hey, Glass?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Who is Johnny Picciotti?"

  "Johnny Soldier. Punk worked for Measure's people. Blue Kriegal's bodyguard but it looks like the job's open. Appears he got himself snuffed."

  "But no body, right?"

  "Yeah. He's in the foundation of some new condo out in Lake St. Louis."

  "Uh-huh," T. J. Monahan said, "or he's got compacted in the trunk of an old junker out at Used Car City."

  "Right. He's now the rear bumper of a Dodge Omni."

  "And Tony Tripotra. Was he with Rikla or Measure?"

  "He WAS with Rikla. He's with the angels now. Dead muscle. A thief. Had a package behind ADW and an armed-robbery thing that he beat. I doubt if he ever made his bones even. Just a guinea moke for Rikla."

  "How did Blue Kriegal get the name Blue?"

  "Blue movies," somebody suggested.

  "Naw," Pat Skully said. "It was because he blue so many little boys." Eichord thought it had warmed up a little or maybe it was just that he'd become punchy with the information overload.

  "EEEhhhhh," Leech called out to him as he clomped through the squad room in his size-fourteen wides, "How's the Capo di Tutti Frutti today?" He said to Eichord.

  "Sweet as ever and never been kissed." But fixing to remedy that situation, he hoped.

  He shaved again for the date. Cut himself nicely, which was always a good sign, and looked at himself in a favorite sport coat and decided, No way. Ung. Not a shot in the world. He could feel his Right Guard going even as he pulled up in front of her place. She looked. What's the word? Gorgeous doesn't cover it. She looked like . . . Oh, let's be calm. Precise. We're a trained observer, he thought. She looks YIP P P P-EEEEEEE!

  She was nice. Everything about her was nice. She looked very nice. Smelled nice. Smiled nice. Talked nice. Thought nice. This is going to be a nice, breathlessly boring date. Niceing each other to death.

  She suggested a place at his request and it was — right — nice. A quiet, dark but not too dark, nice little place with good service and probably good food and wine. He didn't taste anything because he had Rita Haubrich to look at and taste. Pitiful and nobody's proud of being a slobbering, drooling sex maniac, but these are the facts, ma'am.

  Rita drank a chilled white wine which she had to order as he had been struck numb, dumb, and pantingly goofy by the tactile senses that her presence had assaulted. He ordered something and it sat there untouched in front of him while they talked.

  Yes, dammit to blazes, it was NICE talking with her about all kinds of things. He liked her a bunch and she seemed to be able to somehow tolerate Eichord, even laughing at his attempts at good humor. But then who wouldn't be charmed by the sophisticated, rapier wit and hilariously piercing bon mots such as the following:

  "Well, how time flies," she had said to him with her big smile lighting up the dark corners of the restaurant. "We've been talking, or I should say I have been talking on and on. Did you want to do something else this evening?" And Jack Eichord replied — and get this now for some of that repartee, he didn't hesitate a moment — he replied brilliantly, "Hammma, hammma, ham-mma," which she had the taste to think was sublimely funny. She had probably seen various folk struck numb, dumb, and pantingly goofy before. She was what they used to call a looker. She had always been pretty. But now she was nothing less than SENSATIONAL.

  They had fun talking and they sat there for hours making fools out of themselves not in the least. Rita kidded him that he was the first adult male she'd ever known who wasn't a lawyer.

  "Are you sure you didn't become a lawyer in all that time?"

  "I assure you I —"

  "Promise." She made a pretty face. "Cops sometimes study for the bar."

  "Cross my heart. Defense rests." He knew when to let a straight line go by untouched.

  "Are you WANTING to be a lawyer?"

  "'Fraid not. Is that good or bad?"

  "Yes, probably one or the other but irrelevant. It's just so very wonderfully different. You
are the only adult of the male persuasion I've ever met in the last twenty years who wasn't a lawyer."

  "Still just a plain old cop."

  "Cop, maybe. Old, ehhhh. Plain. Huh-uh." She laughed. She looked at his dark black hair flecked with gray, and dark eyes that bored into her soulfully, and that was when it happened.

  "Oh, shucks," he said, summoning up a hidden wellspring of conversational brilliance. Thrilled to his sex-mad core. He LOVED St. Louis.

  "You know," he began, some lame crap just to say something and he just couldn't finish the stupid sentence. He was absolutely bowled over by her and he let it hang there unfinished, just looking at her in admiration.

  "Yeah?" is what another woman might have said to his unfinished dialogue. She thought it and he understood. And he thought that she could read the sincerity in his eyes. It was ridiculous, of course, but it was so damned biochemical and metaphysical and dad-gummed blue-eyed fun that he just nodded at her as if to say, Yes, I agree it was nice to be able to have a conversation without speaking. And then suddenly both of them got very self-conscious about it and at the exact moment Rita started to say, "It's interesting how a person can —" he started to say, "Have you ever considered the fact —" and they said them in unison and both broke up laughing and then they said, "Go ahead."

  "I wasn't going to say anything."

  "You go ahead, I wasn't going to say anything either."

  "Would you believe I'm having lots of fun sitting here having the dumbest conversation that has ever been held?"

  "Me too." And he wanted to ask her if he took an ink pen and connected all the little tiny dots on her body would it be some kind of far-out beautiful Picasso-like Cubistic artwork? And could he try that later, maybe? He could use something water-soluable. He had other thoughts, too.