Niceville

by Carsten Stroud

  The words were indecipherable to her, but the tone was pretty clear—malice and threats have their own unique cadences—and the interview ended with Thad having his own front door slammed in his face hard enough for the sidelight windows to rattle in their custom-built frames.

  Inge oozed out into the hall in her sky blue one-piece yoga suit and her hot-pink bunny-eared slippers and the couple stood there staring at each other as the sound of a big sedan wheeling around in their circular drive and spraying pricey quartz gravel all over their Arts and Crafts front porch gradually faded into a pressure-filled silence.

  “Who was that awful man?” Inge had asked, in tones of brass, while Thad stood in the front hall, drooping before her like an under-watered fern.

  “His name was Phil Holliman, Inge,” Thad had replied, in a small scorched voice. “He works for Byron Deitz.”

  “What did he want at this ungodly hour?”

  Thad, who had not been totally frank with Mrs. Thad on the matter of the supplementary income which was allowing them to maintain this shady retreat, was at a bit of a loss how to reply.

  Watching his eyes dart to and fro while his nose twitched and his lips quivered, Inge, no slouch herself when it came to calculations of self-interest and knowing her husband pretty well, had decided that what she didn’t know wasn’t going to get her indicted.

  She harrumphed at him twice, her lips pursed, and then turned sharply around on her suffering bunnies and swept regally back into her yoga room, slamming the door behind her and leaving her husband to contemplate the finer points of domestic discord.

  What that awful man had wanted at that ungodly hour, Thad was now trying to cope with, was that he should be ready to pop like a jack-in-the-box out of his cubicle at the First Third Bank in Gracie within a few heartbeats after he saw Byron Deitz’s yellow Hummer lurch into the bank’s parking lot.

  This, according to Phil Holliman, would happen around noon this day.

  And it had just now come to pass, exactly at noon, exactly as the unpleasant Mr. Holliman had predicted it would.

  Not surprisingly, the sight of Deitz’s Hummer had nearly given the excitable banker a stroke of his own, and he took himself off to the bathroom to have a drink of water and pop a couple of what he called his Happy Caps as a way of girding his loins for the fray.

  Deitz, sitting in the Hummer and grinding his molars in that way he had which filled his bony skull with those mysterious walnut-cracking noises he was always at a loss to explain, got another phone call on his OnStar system, which made him jump a yard and swallow his gum.

  The call display read BELFAIR CULLEN COUNTY CID, so he punched CALL ANSWER and said, “Deitz here.”

  “Byron, this is Tig Sutter.”

  Jeez. Now what?

  “LT, how are you, sir?”

  “I’m good, Byron. I’m good. You got a minute?”

  Deitz looked out the window as the glass doors of the First Third swung open and out popped the reedlike figure of Mr. Thad, holding a red umbrella over his head and scooting in pixie steps across the wet pavement towards the Hummer.

  “About to go into a meeting, Tig, but anything I can do—”

  “Nick was going to call you about this, but he’s sorta tied up on a Missing Persons case—”

  Thad Llewellyn had reached the passenger door and was now standing outside, peering in through the tinted glass, blinking at him, looking mournful but resigned, and even a little bit dreamy-eyed.

  Deitz reached out and popped the locks and Thad scooted inside, settling into the passenger seat with his back up against the door.

  He nodded weakly at Deitz as Deitz held a finger up to his lips, letting Thad know that he was to remain silent until required to speak.

  “Always happy to hear from you, LT. How is Nick?”

  “He’s good,” said Tig, in a distracted tone. “Look, you following this hostage thing at Saint Innocent?”

  Deitz, who had been following nothing but his own doom-laden lines of thought ever since yesterday evening, had to admit that he had no idea what Tig Sutter was talking about.

  Tig laid it out for him, the anonymous e-mail accusing the custodian, Tig’s decision to wait for Maryland to get back to him, and then the sudden explosion of publicity, the Live Eye Seven truck and the newspapers and the subsequent cluster-fuck now taking place on Peachtree.

  Deitz listened, aware of Thad Llewellyn’s rapid breathing and smelling his minty-fresh cologne. He buzzed a window down while wondering where Tig was going. He was sensing an incoming request which he might just be able to exploit for reciprocal info on the bank job, so he was paying close attention.

  Tig reached the end of the narrative, and there was a hesitant silence.

  Deitz made the leap.

  “You want this anonymous creep traced, Tig?”

  “Well, that was where we were going. I mean, we could send it down to Cap City, but everybody down there is involved in what happened yesterday, and we just don’t have the technical resources—”

  “Tig, we have a whole IT section at our disposal. I gotta brilliant guy, name of Andy Chu, he’s just sitting around on his butt playing Grand Theft Auto. I’d be happy to offer whatever help you need to follow this thing. Pro bono. of course. I admit we’re kinda caught up in doing whatever we can do to find out who pulled that bank job—”

  “Well, that’s a federal thing now, Byron—”

  “True, but a lot of the funds belonged to Quantum Park and as you know—”

  “Yes, I do, that’s your client, and of course if your guys hear anything—”

  “Cap City got any leads yet?”

  “Like I said, CID’s not in on this. From where I’m sitting, they had insider info, so Boonie Hackendorff is looking at that, at the bank staff and the people at Wells Fargo. And it’s pretty obvious the shooter was a pro, and the likely weapon was a Barrett .50—”

  “That ought to narrow the list, sir, you know, cross-check Barrett sales with military and professional shooters?”

  “Yeah,” said Tig, with a sigh. “And that narrows it down to a couple of thousand people, even if we stick with the continental United States. And that’s not even counting private civilian shooters, some of whom are as good as any pro. Speaking of that, your guy Holliman is giving us a hell of a headache.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Well, from what I’m hearing, he spent most of last night going through Tin Town and the club district like General Sherman, putting people up against walls and raising holy hell with all our snitches and CIs. He’s back at it right now, down by the Pavilion—apparently it’s all about the robbery—which I totally get—like we said—but I gotta tell you, Byron, his methods really suck. Boonie Hackendorff is going to be calling you about him, and Marty Coors is ready to have State CID bust him on interfering with police, so maybe you’ll wanna jerk his chain some?”

  “Jeez, Tig. I’m real sorry about that. I did tell him to get on the street and talk to people, but not like that. I’ll get him to back off, okay?”

  “Yeah, well, that would be good. He’s getting people all stirred up and too scared to talk. Anyway, this is not why I called. You really think you can help us trace this e-mailer sleazebag?”

  “You can confirm it was the same guy who contacted you who sent the e-mails to the press?”

  “Yes. I mean, that’s the way it looks. We asked for the Niceville Register copy, and the one sent to Channel Seven, and the one sent direct to the church. They’re all identical. The one we got was sent last night around two in the morning. The other three went out this morning before ten.”

  “Maybe the guy got impatient. Was looking for something to happen.”

  “He got the reaction he wanted, in spades, once it got to the television guys. They contacted the church, the pastor was already looking at his copy of the e-mail—had just sent for Dennison, who was already in the building—they were talking about it, still pretty calm—and the news guys start
ed showing up, Dennison freaked, and things went straight to shit. I want this asshole taken down, Byron. When can you get a guy here?”

  “Don’t need to. Just forward everything you’ve got to—you got a pen?—okay, write this down—techserve—one word—techserve at Securicom dot com slash AndyChu. Got that?”

  “Yeah,” said Tig, reading the address back. “And the name again? Andy …?”

  “Andy Chu, only it’s one word, AndyChu, in the e-mail address. Okay?”

  “Got it.”

  “I’ll call Andy right away, give him a heads-up. Andy’s the best there is, could have something for you by the end of the day, maybe even sooner.”

  “Thanks, Byron. I really appreciate this.”

  “Happy to help. And you know, while I got you, if you think of it, anything you can let me know, how the investigation into the Gracie thing is going—you know, way off the record, cop to cop?—well, I’d take it as a professional kindness. My clients are pretty spooked and I’d like to be able to reassure them. So far, it’s just the money, right? Nothing else you’re hearing about?”

  There was a silence, during which Mr. Thad secretly swallowed his third Happy Cap of the day and Byron ground his molars some more, thinking that he had pushed this too far.

  “Don’t know what else there could be, Byron. It was a straightforward bank job. Why, has one of your companies reported anything missing?”

  Shit, thought Deitz. Guy’s much too quick. Just shut the fuck up, will you?

  “No. Nothing like that. Just trying to narrow the field, see if there was anything that stood out.”

  “Well, now you know what I know. I hear anything, I’ll give you a call. And I’ll get that e-mail stuff to you right away.”

  Tig clicked off, and for a moment the two of them—Thad and Deitz—sat there listening to the rain pattering on the roof and to each other breathing. Deitz suppressed the urge to call Phil Holliman right then, and turned to the banker.

  “Okay, Thad, we gotta—holy shit, you okay? You look kinda fuzzy.”

  Mr. Thad, now almost completely zoned out on his Happy Caps, a few minutes away from being totally blotto and feeling quite serenely invincible, gave Deitz a Buddha-like smile.

  “You, my Byronic friend, my … my Byronic Man … are far too intense.”

  Thad blinked in slow motion, giving Deitz a slow and clinical once-over.

  “Look right there,” he said, pointing languidly. “A vein is popping out on your forehead. Your complexion is dangerously flushed. You need to relax, Byron, you really do. Would you like one of my Happy Caps? They are bliss in a bottle, Byron my boy. Bliss in a bottle. Try one?”

  Thad held out his bottle, his loving spirit rising to the moment, the Brotherhood of Man welling up in his drug-saturated soul.

  Deitz blinked down at the bottle, read the label—ATIVAN—and then looked over at Thad.

  “Shit. How many of these have you had?”

  “I,” said Thad, giving the matter some thought, blinking back at Deitz. “I may have had three. Yes. Three it is.”

  Deitz reached over, plucked the bottle out of Thad’s palm, held it up—it was half full of little beige nuggets—frowned censoriously at Thad—Deitz disapproved of drugs, particularly when used by other people to blunt the Byron Dietz effect. He tossed the pill bottle into the cup holder on the seat divider.

  Stared at it for a moment.

  A kind of Zen pause here.

  Then he backhanded Thad across the right cheek so hard Thad’s head bounced off the passenger window with a musical bonk. The pink clouds in Mr. Thad’s mind parted briefly and a bolt of clarity pierced the rosy mist.

  Deitz saw his opening.

  “Just one fucking question, Thad. Did you tip anybody off to what was in my lockbox?”

  Thad put a hand up and touched the red mark on his cheekbone.

  “No. How could I? I didn’t know what was in the lockbox. You only told me to keep an eye on it. You never said what was in it. Why? What was it?”

  Deitz chewed that thought for a while. Thad was right. He’d never told the banker what was in the box. Why the hell would he?

  “None of your fucking business. The guys who did the bank, any idea who they were?”

  Thad labored to bring his mind to bear upon this question.

  “No. There was nothing … two white men, both with those masks on … one large, with blue eyes, and another, dark eyes and … and …”

  His voice trailed off and Deitz reached out, pinched the man’s nose between his index finger and his thumb, twisted it hard, and let it go, wiping the blood off on Mr. Thad’s shirt. Then he took him by the throat and started squeezing.

  “Give me something to go on,” he said in a grating snarl, his eyes slitted almost shut and his look inhuman, a hot glare his family knew pretty well. “Or I’ll snap your fucking neck right here.”

  Thad, tears of pain on his cheeks, eyes welling up, a trickle of blood running from his red-tipped nose, stared back at Byron Deitz with the totally absent look of a man with less than three brain cells still firing. He could no longer feel his toes and a warm numbness was creeping up his torso.

  Deitz shook him like a rag mop, but even Deitz could see that the banker had left the building.

  The guy blinked a few times, and then his lids closed and his head fell forward, held up only by Deitz’s rigid forearm. After a long silence, and in a dreamy murmur, Mr. Thad said, quite distinctly, “Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius.”

  Deitz grunted in disgust, let go of his throat, and Thad commenced to pour himself down into the passenger footwell.

  “Boots,” he muttered, a moment later, from the depths of the footwell. “The big man wore navy blue cowboy boots. I have never seen navy blue cowboy boots …”

  His voice receded into a sighing whisper. The rest was silence, broken only by the sound of one man seething.

  Boots? thought Deitz, picking Thad’s pill bottle up again and, almost absentmindedly, turning it in his hands.

  Beth, his unsatisfactory wife, was always popping Ativans to counter the Deitz Effect. Her Ativans were sort of squared-off little white pills with a T-shaped notch pressed into the top. These looked different, like little beige nuggets, but what the hell. Maybe he could use one himself.

  He was sure as hell stressed out enough.

  He held the bottle in his thick fingers, listening to Thad Llewellyn wheezing away in the footwell. Obviously the little banker could not handle his meds at all. He sighed, felt a moment of pity for himself, for all the ways in which people in his life were disappointing him. He threw the pill bottle back into the cup holder and started up the truck.

  What Deitz was unaware of, wheeling out of the parking lot with an unconscious banker in his passenger seat footwell, was that “the meds” the little banker was currently failing to handle well were not lorazepam, the chemical term for Ativan, but a substance known to chemists as 3,4-methylene-dioxy-methamphetamine and to overstressed bankers wheezing in footwells as Happy Caps. Its more general name in the wider world of recreational drugs was ecstasy.

  In the meantime, round and round again, inside his head, to the accompaniment of that mysterious walnut-cracking sound, ran the little mantra:

  Blue cowboy boots?

  Merle Zane Rides the Blue Bus

  The Blue Bird school bus—painted, a long time back, a bright robin’s egg blue—wheezed into the Button Gwinnett Memorial Regional Bus Depot station in downtown Niceville, coming to a stop under the platform’s tin roof in a squeal of bad brakes.

  The driver, an elderly but military-looking black man with yellow eyes and snow white hair, turned to smile a gold-toothed smile at the passengers, about two dozen roughly dressed leathery-looking workingmen of varying ages and races, who had either been on the bus when it pulled up to the gates of the Ruelle Plantation or had climbed on at Sallytown or Mount Gilead or had just flagged the bus down from the side of the road at various places along the rural routes
to Niceville.

  “Niceville, gentlemen,” he said, standing up and addressing the crowd in a practiced manner. “End of the line. Gathering is at eleven this evening, here at the dock, for those of you going back up the line. Most of the seats are taken, got us a full load, so you be sure to get your return ticket punched on the way out, otherwise you might not get a seat. It’s a long weary walk in the dark and many folk get themselves lost. God bless and you all have yourself a fine time in Niceville.”

  Merle, his back aching and his wound throbbing from five hours of pounding along backcountry roads, got slowly to his feet and picked up his bag, the old Army kit bag that Glynis Ruelle had loaned him. He shuffled slowly down the aisle, following the other men, his boots clanking on the tin floorboards.

  Inside the kit bag was a change of clothes, and a 1911 .45-caliber Colt Commander, loaded, along with two spare magazines. Glynis Ruelle could find no ammunition for his 9 mm Taurus, but she had several boxes of .45 rounds for the Colt.

  The weight of the bag hanging from his shoulders was comforting, since he was now back in Charlie Danziger’s home territory.

  There had been heavy rain downstate, but the sky was clearing as he stepped off the bus. When his foot hit the wooden boards of the bus station platform, he could feel the powerful flow of the Tulip River on the other side of the station, now at full flood after all the rain.

  The bus station reeked of damp and mold, of cigarettes and cigars and rotting garbage. Beyond the station doors, Niceville crowded around, a decaying old-fashioned city netted over with a black tangle of telephone and power lines.

  It looked like a random city, full of narrow lanes, needle-tipped church towers spiking above the ragged rooflines, wrought-iron filigreed galleries held up by ornate cast-iron pillars creating shaded cloisters under them that ran for blocks along the street level.

  The quality of the light as the clouds melted away was hazy and luminous, making Niceville look like a calendar shot of prewar America. The humid warmth of spring gave the whole town the earthy aroma of a freshly dug grave.