.45 Caliber Jitterbug

by Maxwell Cynn

  “Did he tell you anything?”

  “He admitted that Greer was the one who beat him. Said he told Helen about it this morning, so I guess you already know. He confirmed Greer is trying to take over the action in Biddleville, and that Miss Dunhill was the current boss. They were out together and Greer jumped them.”

  “He told Helen all that?”

  “Yeah, she didn't tell you?”

  “I haven't talked to her. I haven't seen her since this morning when she went to see Locklear. I was hoping you knew where she was. She wasn't here for supper.”

  “That doesn't sound good, Jack. She wouldn't be crazy enough to go talk to Greer, would she?”

  “She might. She was pretty pumped up after the meeting this morning. She backed McKnight down like a playground bully.”

  “She's always been a little powder keg when she gets her mind set on something. Helen always gets what she aims for.”

  “You could have warned me.” Jack said it mostly under his breath, but Steve heard him.

  “You were a goner when you caught the garter at my wedding. I saw that look in her eyes, and the way her and Suzy were giggling.”

  “Come get me and we'll take a ride up to Biddleville.”

  “I'll be there in ten minutes. You think she's there?”

  “If she's not, she's probably safe. If she is, we need to find her.”

  “I'm on my way.”

  Jack hung up the phone and ran up the stairs to his room. He took off his coat, threw it on the bed, and opened the top drawer of the dresser. He saw Darla's garter and picked it up. He remembered back to that day. Steve had said that Helen locked him in her sights that day. He slid it up his right arm to the bicep. Just for luck.

  He picked up Daniel's shoulder rig and strapped the gun on. He'd never worn one before. But Daniel had taught him to handle the snub nose revolver, and he was a pretty good shot on the range. He pulled it out and flipped open the cylinder. Still loaded, just as Daniel had left it. He never got a shot off. Jack put his coat back on, covering the weapon, and walked back out to the front porch.

  He spotted Steve leaning on his motorcycle. “Hey,” Jack shouted and walked toward him.

  “What have you been up to, Jack? You look like you slept in that suit.”

  “It's been a busy day,” he said, brushing the wrinkles from his jacket where the shoulder rig was making it bunch. “Are you on duty?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Did you get any sleep?”

  “Not very much. I hate sleeping during the day. I got a good nap this morning, until the dreams woke me up.”

  “Butch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let's go,” Jack said.

  Steve kick-started his motorcycle and Jack climbed on back. They plowed up Tryon Street, weaving in and out of traffic along the way. The roar of the police motorcycle was deep and strong. It made Jeb's seem like a toy. They ran the light at the Square, sliding the motorcycle left onto Trade Street and blasting east out of town.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Matty and Tira were standing near the trolley track on Tryon Street, plying their trade, and the police motorcycle barreled up the street and pulled up to the curb by them.

  “Hey, Jack,” Matty said with a smile. “What you doing still ridin' around with that cop?”

  “Don't be talking to that white boy,” Tira complained. “I told you he be bringin' trouble up here.”

  “Oh hush, Tira,” Matty dismissed. She walked closer to the motorcycle, Tira backed away.

  “Hi Matty. I'm looking for a friend. A white girl, tall, auburn hair, wearing a nice black skirt and jacket, real classy.”

  “Yeah, I seen her. I wondered what a fine looking white girl was doing up here. You know what happened to the other one. I seen her over by Jesse Greer's place. I started to ask her if she was lost, but then that damn Mechum come out of nowhere. They was talking. She didn't act like she was too happy to see him, but she looked like she was handling her own. I just let it be. I ain't got no call gettin' in the middle of no white folks' business. I hope your friend's alright.”

  “Where is Greer's house?”

  “Right down that road there.” She pointed to Solomon Street, right behind them. “It's the fifth house on the left. That yellow one right there.”

  Jack saw the house she was pointing out. It was a small shanty of a house with a long, low front porch. The house was much the same as all the other simple houses in Biddleville, built fast and cheap along a straight line of dirt road to house the coloreds who gather around Biddle University and its upscale colored community.

  “Thanks, Matty.”

  “Let's go,” Steve said.

  “Wait. We better leave the motorcycle here. Maybe we can get the jump on him. If he hears us he might bolt.”

  “Good idea.” Steve turned off the engine. Jack stepped off and Steve set the kick-stand. He hung his helmet on the handlebars. “Watch my ride, Matty,” Steve said with a smile.

  “You're as cute as Jack,” Matty cooed and smiled mischievously. “What's your name, officer?”

  “Steve,” he said, with a slight blush.

  “Just too damn cute. You can cuff me anytime.”

  Steve smiled and his face turned bright red.

  The two men walked cautiously down the street, staying close to the other houses. They eased around behind the fourth house and into the back of the one Matty said Greer stayed in.

  “You know this Greer?” Steve whispered.

  “He's the mountain I broke my fists on.”

  “Swell.”

  “How do we play this, Officer?”

  “I don't have a warrant, but if I knock on the door, and I see anything inside, I can enter. If I had backup I would have them watch the back door, but you need to stay close to me since you're not armed and your hands are in no shape for another round with Greer.”

  Jack opened his coat and revealed the shoulder harness.

  “I'll take the back,” he said, drawing Daniel's snub nose revolver.

  “Where the hell did you get that?”

  “It was Daniel's.”

  “Where did he get it?”

  “I thought you gave it to him.”

  “No.”

  “I don't know then, I never asked. I just assumed.”

  “I wouldn't have given him a gun. You shouldn't have one. This isn't one of your novels, Jack. There are real bullets in that thing.”

  “Let's hope so. I'm sure Mechum has real bullets in his.”

  “Damn it, Jack.”

  “Just go knock on the door. I've got the back.”

  Jack slipped around to the back corner of the house and Steve went to the front. Jack watched from the corner of the house and Steve stepped up onto the side of the long, low front porch, then Jack moved cautiously along the back of the house, crouching below the windows, and stepped silently up the back stoop, keeping his head below the curtained window in the back door.

  Jack's heart was pounding like a steam hammer busting pavement. Steve was right, this was all too real. He looked at the gun in his hand. He'd seen what a bullet could do to a man and he'd never imagined himself pulling the trigger, not at a person, and definitely not at someone who might be aiming another gun at him. He shook his head. How could Steve do this for a living?

  Jack rose slowly to the side of the window and peeked in between the curtains. The room was an unfinished porch that'd been closed in. He saw a man hanging by his wrists from the low exposed rafters. His back was to the door, but the uniform he wore was unmistakeably that of a Deputy Sheriff. A colored man, shirtless, was standing on the far side of the deputy. Jack got a glimpse of his face. It was Greer.

  Greer seemed to be talking to the deputy, whose head was hanging forward limply. Greer lifted the man's face, said something Jack couldn't hear, then punched the defenseless man in the ribs. Jack stood up and kicked the door open. He never thought to do it, it just seemed to happen. His mind empt
ied, everything seemed to slow and become more detailed. He heard the door crash back against the wall, the firm rap of a knock on a distant door, the sickening thud of a second fist driving into the deputy's ribs.

  “Hold it, Greer,” he heard himself shout in a long slow drawl as Daniel's gun appeared between him and the colored man. He seemed to have all the time in the world to set, a two-handed stance just like Daniel had taught him, and aim at the man's broad chest. He should hold his breath, squeeze the trigger, that's what Daniel told him, what he'd done on the target range a hundred times before, but he had no breath to hold. His heartbeat pounded a slow echoing beat in his ears like the persistent tick of a monstrous clock.

  The man turned toward him and pushed off in a slow motion charge like a track runner leaving the blocks. His voice bellowed an unintelligible cry and his face distorted in rage. Jack squeezed the trigger without a thought and saw the bullet pierce bronze flesh, a crimson spray filled the air behind the man, his body jerked and twisted, and crumpled to the floor. The sound of the blast was deafening, the kick of the gun in his hands painful, then time snapped back into full swing like a roller coaster capping the top of a hill and plunging downward.

  “Stay the fuck down, Jesse,” he shouted and moved toward the man, gun aimed at his body. A puddle of blood formed on the floor and the man started to rise, then fell back to the floor. Jack's stomach jumped into his throat, he couldn't swallow past it, but he couldn't let himself puke. “Don't fuckin' move, Jesse, I don't want to shoot you again.”

  Jack looked up at the deputy's face. It was Mechum, his cheeks and mouth bloody and swollen, but he was conscious.

  “Not bad for a writer,” he coughed out.

  There was noise in the front part of the house, Steve's voice shouting. The inner door to the room Jack was in slammed open. Jack spun, but the clock was in full motion again, he didn't have time to bring the gun around. There was a load blast before it registered what he was seeing. Patty was holding a gun as big as she was. “Damn that's a big gun,” Jack thought and hot pain took his right leg out from under him. He collapsed face first to the floor, Helen's name on his lips, and the world turned dark.

  Jack opened his eyes, lifted the gun he was still holding, but no one was there. Steve came through the door, gun first and surveyed the room. “You okay, Jack?”

  “Go get her,” Jack managed to say, and Steve moved cautiously out the back door.

  The pain was almost unbearable. It felt like his leg had been ripped off just below the hip. He tried to lift himself to his knees, but the pain almost blacked him out again. He rolled to his back, and sat up, grunting through clenched teeth. His right leg was a mass of blood between his hip and his knee. The pain was in his hip, there was no feeling below that.

  “You need to stop the bleeding,” Mechum said weakly, still hanging above him. “Tie something around your leg above the wound.”

  Jack holstered the revolver and pulled his tie off. He knotted it tightly around his leg. The wave of pain almost poured out his mouth, taking his stomach with it. He looked at Jesse lying beside him. The big man was not moving, but Jack could see the slight rise and fall of his chest. He was still alive.

  “Use me to pull yourself up, stand on your good leg,” Mechum coaxed weakly.

  Jack bent his good knee and got his left foot under him, then climbed up Mechum's suspended body with his aching hands.

  “Cut me loose,” Mechum said. “Helen is in here somewhere.”

  “What did you do to her, you bastard?”

  “Do I look like I'm doing anything but getting my ass beat? Cut me loose.”

  Jack tried to put weight on his leg, but had to grab Mechum again to keep from falling.

  “Helen told me what you thought I did,” Mechum said. “But Greer beat Locklear and raped Dunhill, then that crazy Burkeheimer bitch shot her. Cut me the fuck loose, Jack. I'm a Federal Marshal.”

  Jack looked into Mechum's eyes. “Where's Helen,” he asked coldly.

  “Burkeheimer took her while Greer worked on me. Cut me loose so we can find her. If your friend doesn't get that bitch, she'll come back and kill us both.”

  Jack pulled out his pocket knife and sawed at the ropes holding Mechum suspended. When he cut through they both fell to the floor. Pain screamed from his hip. Jack gritted his teeth determined not to pass out. They wrestled their way back up into a sitting position and Jack carefully cut the ropes from Mechum's wrists. The burly man pushed himself to his feet with a great effort, and obvious pain, then helped Jack back up on his good leg. He wrapped Jack's arm over his shoulder and the two limped and staggered into the front of the house.

  The house was a small shotgun style with one room leading to the next. The open door Steve had come through led to a small kitchen and dining area, then another door led into a bedroom, and yet another into the main room. They found Helen lying bound and gagged on the bed. Mechum put his finger against his lips when she looked up at them wide eyed. He left Jack leaning on the wall just inside the door. Jack drew his gun and Mechum walked to the door leading into the main room of the house. Mechum pushed the door open and the room was empty, the front door of the house was broken off its hinges.

  Mechum moved back into the room and untied Helen. Jack slid himself along the wall toward the door. He could see into the main room and out the front door while still keeping a watch behind them, into the kitchen. Jack slid down the wall and sat on the floor. He'd never felt so exhausted in his life. All he wanted to do was close his eyes and sleep.

  “Wake up, Jack.” It was Mechum's voice. He opened his eyes and the big man was sitting on the floor, his back propped against the bed. “Hang on, old buddy. Helen is calling for an ambulance.” Mechum didn't look any better than Jack felt.

  “You're a Federal Marshal?”

  “Yep.”

  Jack laughed. “I thought...”

  “I know. I've been working undercover, investigating corruption in the Sheriff's Department. Then these Chicago mobsters came to town and started a damn war with the local boys."

  Jack fought to stay conscious, his eyes felt rough as sandpaper.

  "Your friend Daniel figured it all out. I tried to get him to back off so he wouldn't get hurt, but he was pretty damn hard headed.”

  “Yeah, he was.”

  “Y'all are a lot alike. Anyway, he was determined to get in the middle of it. I gave him that Colt you're wearing. He was a brave kid."

  Jack looked down at the gun still stuck in its holster.

  "We thought we had them, but Daniel walked into a trap. I didn't find out how they got to him until today.”

  Mechum's voice sounded distant. Jack drifted off.

  “You okay, Jack?” Helen asked, leaning down. “The ambulance is on the way.”

  “I'm okay. Where's Steve?”

  “I don't know, Jack. He chased that woman through here.”

  “They went out the back door.” Jack said, his own voice sounding distant.

  “Did you call the number I gave you?” Mechum asked Helen.

  “Yes. A Lieutenant Nelson answered. I told him where we are.”

  “Good. This place will be swarming with G-men before the ambulance gets here.”

  “Okay, give me the story,” Jack said. “Obviously I was way off.”

  “Not really, Jack,” Helen said. Her hand was on his cheek, and it felt swell.

  “I never pegged Burkeheimer as the mob hit man.”

  “Yeah, that hot little package carries a very big gun," Mechum said; "Smith and Wesson forty-five caliber, military issue. She did Daniel, Dunhill, and Butch. She put the moves on Daniel right after she came into town. I told him to watch his step, but we both thought she was just Hall's secretary and Daniel was trying to charm her for information.”

  “How did she get the two of you?”

  “Locklear told me that Greer was the one who beat him up,” Helen said. “So I came here to talk to him. I ran into Mechum outside and he explaine
d it all to me.”

  “I knew Greer was the mob's point man in Biddleville,” Mechum added, “and I assumed he'd killed Dunhill. I arrested Locklear for his own safety, because I worried they might go after him next, and if the City Police got him, he was as-good-as dead. The Police Chief works for the mob, along with a few of his detectives."

  Jack tried to reach for his notepad, but he didn't have the strength.

  “I came here with a Federal search warrant hoping to get something on Hall and Greer. While I was talking to Helen outside, Burkeheimer got the drop on us. While Greer was working me over he told me the whole score. He liked to brag and I guess they planned to kill me when they were done."

  The deputy looked back toward the door to the kitchen. "I should go check on Mr. Greer and see if he's still alive.”

  “I shot him,” Jack said. The chill of shock was clear in his voice.

  “You got him in the shoulder,” Mechum said. “He'll live. But we don't want him crawling away before the Calvary gets here.”

  Mechum pushed himself up and limped toward the back of the house. In the distance Jack heard the faint whine of sirens. Two men appeared in the doorway, weapons drawn and badges in their hands.

  “Federal Marshals,” one said, walking in the house.

  “This way,” Mechum called, and led them toward the back.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jack drifted back into unconsciousness. One of the Federal Marshals was checking his pulse.

  "You alright, Miss?"

  Tears filled her eyes and blurred her vision. Jack couldn't die, not now, not here. Sirens filled the air, it sounded like an army of ambulances. Steve came running in the door. He knelt down beside Helen and put his arm around her.

  "He'll be okay, Helen. Jack's tough." But he didn't sound convinced. "The ambulance just pulled up. They'll take care of him."

  Helen couldn't let go of his hand, even when the medics laid him down in the floor and cut away the leg of his trousers. They loaded Jack on a gurney and carried him out, Helen following beside.

  "I'm sorry, Miss, you need to let us put him in the ambulance."