Dying Embers

by Robert E. Bailey

“What the fuck is this?” he said.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I said, trying to sound breezy and sincerely inquisitive, but it came off smug and accusatory.

  “A police officer,” he said. “Get out of the car.”

  Matty yelled, “Hold it right there! What the hell are you doing?” She had her FBI windbreaker on and her credentials in her hand.

  I ended up in the back of the Kentwood Cruiser. They left my pistol on the roof of the Jag and stood around yelling at each other and pointing fingers at their own badges. That’s when I saw the white van that had pulled onto the shoulder about fifty yards back. The cargo door on the passenger side slid open and the heavy barrel of an M60 with a folded bipod came out. I pounded on the window and yelled. Detective Flynt gave me an evil face but looked where I was pointing.

  24

  I HIT THE FLOOR and got a shower of glass as the windows of the cruiser exploded. “You can shoot back anytime now,” I said to the floor of the police cruiser. Nothing. “Hell, just show ’em those badges.” The second burst from the M60 cut through the seatbacks of the cruiser and hammered into the dash before I heard the .40 caliber bark an answer. Syncopated yips of 9mm followed, and the church mouse sneeze of Van Huis’s detective special. I decided that spreading flat against the floor had it all over rolling into a ball.

  I heard the van accelerate and the M60 lift its leg on the front of the cruiser. The tires exhaled, and the cruiser banged down on its knees. The handguns fell silent, doors slammed, and two vehicles scratched out in pursuit of the van.

  I rolled my eyes around, trying to direct my hearing without moving my head. An approaching siren grew louder. I flexed the muscles in my arms and legs—nothing felt numb or wet. Pebbles of safety glass cascaded off my back as I eased onto my knees.

  The backseat of the cruiser was devoid of door handles. I reached through the air where the window had been, opened the door from the outside, and shook glass from my suit as I walked back to the Jag. Traffic had resumed and motorists rubbernecked the cruiser. People yelled as they passed. Horns honked. I ignored them. A whiff of cordite hung in the air.

  The Jag had emerged unscathed. I did my best Eddie Izzard; “Dashed decent of the chap on the stutter gun.” My pistol and DA 2818 had been cast onto the driver’s seat, but the key was nowhere in sight. I stuck my hands in my pockets to consider the situation as a Kentwood Fire Rescue truck pulled up with its rollers on.

  Billy Clements had said I’d find a spare set of keys in a magnetic box in one of the bumpers. I was thinking how much I really didn’t want to lie on the ground and look for it when a med-tech ran past me to look into the shot-up cruiser and I realized that the steel peg in my pocket was the key with the black shank. I hadn’t been searched, just sort of sent to my room so the adults could argue.

  The med-tech looked at me and then back into the cruiser. He wore yellow turnout pants with suspenders and a white shirt but had left his hat with his jacket in the truck. He opened the back door of the cruiser. Glass pebbles splashed onto the street.

  “You see what happened to the guy that was in here?” he said, his face incredulous. In his late twenties, he wore his full head of sandy hair cut in a flattop except for the back, which he’d let grow long enough that he’d had to tuck it down the collar of his shirt. “They said there was a guy in here.”

  “I opened the door from the outside,” I said. “The window was gone.”

  He walked toward me, surveying me as he came. “You were in there?” I nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “Drive-by shooting,” I said.

  “I was a Navy medic assigned to the Marines,” he said, and pointed at the cruiser. “Somebody stitched that up with a machine gun.”

  I laughed.

  “No, really,” he said.

  “The pun,” I said. “You were a medic … and they stitched …”

  “Yeah,” he said. He smiled and shook his head. “Well. I mean. Why’d they do that?”

  “Detective Van Huis went after them. I expect he’ll ask.”

  “We got the call from a state police dispatcher,” he said and made it sound like a question.

  “Van Huis and a patrol officer left with a couple of state cops,” I said, “their car being under the weather and all.”

  “So, you’re all right? I can look you over.”

  I pointed to my nose brace and said, “No, I think I’ve had all the medical attention I can stand for a while. I think I’ll just go home and quit hanging around policemen.”

  I reached through the window of the Jag, picked up my pistol and put it on my hip. The med-tech watched me from the corner of his eye, his face doubtful.

  “I’m a detective,” I said.

  “Not from Kentwood,” he said.

  “Private.”

  “Cool,” he said. He fondled the Jag with a hungry gaze. “You have any openings—you know, like part-time?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I need someone to take beatings for me and occasionally sit in the back of police cars.”

  “That’s okay,” he said and started back to his truck. “My old Dodge gets me around just fine.”

  • • •

  Rusty met me at the door and leapt straight up in the air—all four feet off the floor. I caught him in my arms. He rubbed his neck on my face and ran his fat red tongue over my cheek and across my ear. It knocked the brace on my face loose and a rainbow of colors burned out of my sinuses into my eye sockets.

  “Damn! Dog!” I set him down and caught the now whirling house by the handrail on the stairs. I inspected my nose with tentative fingers and found it still intact. Dancing a circle, Rusty stepped on my foot. “Geeze, dog! Whose side are you on?”

  “He’s been searching the house for you for three days,” said Ben. “He got up on the bed and dug through the comforter and the pillows looking for you. Mom had to put your coat on the floor before he’d lie down and go to sleep.”

  Wendy met me at the top of the stairs. I pushed the brace back in place with one hand while I hugged with the other. She wore one of my knock-around flannel shirts over a sleeveless white sweater and red slacks.

  “The roast is ready to come out,” she said.

  “See?” I said. “Right on time.”

  “I waited half an hour before I put the meat in.”

  “You’re a better man than I,” I said.

  Wendy whacked me on the shoulder.

  “Ow! What the dog missed, you caught up with.”

  “Serves you right for not being home,” Wendy said.

  “You weren’t supposed to consort with the likes of me.”

  She squeezed me and said, “I like to consort with you.”

  I kissed her on the side of her head; it was all I could reach. “If they find out I came here, you’re in big trouble.”

  Wendy rubbed my back and said, “Nope.” I let her go and she headed for the oven. Pulling on her oven mitts, she said, “The guy they’ve had parked at the end of the drive knocked on the door after you called. He said the hearing was canceled and we could take the tape off the gun safe and my file cabinets.”

  “What brought that on?”

  “He said he didn’t know. They just told him to give me the message and clock out because he was on overtime.”

  “You didn’t tell me about the surveillance,” I said.

  Wendy pulled the roaster pan out of the oven and set it on the counter. “Given everything that’s happened I would have needed my people if the state police hadn’t been out there.”

  I stepped up the last stair. The table was set for three.

  “Where’s Daniel?”

  “Burger flipping,” said Ben. “He’s working the dinner shift ‘til close.” He walked up to check my face. “Looks better—sort of a uniform yellow brown. You look like an albino raccoon.”

  I should have roped a headlock on him and issued the Dutch rub. A couple of years ago I might have, but now he was as tall as I am, and the d
og had already worked me over.

  “Cuts down on the glare,” I said. “I’m saving a fortune on sunglasses.” I shrugged out of my suit jacket and hung it in the closet. “Why don’t you cue up that tape your mother has for me?”

  “I gotta find a place to save my game,” said Ben. He had a role playing game on the TV.

  “Tape’s on the end table,” said Wendy. She looked at me. “I need you to slice this.”

  I took my pistol off my hip and set it on top of the refrigerator. Rusty followed me, lock-step, into the kitchen. Wendy hung up her mitts and laid a platter on the island counter next to the roaster pan. I washed my hands in the sink and found the carving set.

  “Get out of the kitchen, dog,” said Wendy, and waited for him to move so she could open the refrigerator for the milk.

  Rusty walked around the end of the counter, made a u-turn, and sat at my feet. I forked the roast out of the pan—a pork roast Wendy had rubbed with sage and cooked in a nest of potatoes, carrots, and fat slices of onion with a little garlic salt—and set it on the platter. Rusty studied my moves with bright, expectant eyes and about an inch of pink tongue lolling from his open mouth.

  “Okay, here it is, Pop,” said Ben. The TV set showed Hank Dunphy, ersatz fiduciary for Light and Energy Applications, climbing into a silver Mercedes SL with a shoebox under his arm. In the lower right of the screen the time rolled continuously—10:15 A.M.

  I sliced a steaming sliver off the end of the roast and pushed it aside with the fork. Rusty reeled in his tongue and danced his front paws on the linoleum.

  “He only begs because you encourage him,” said Wendy.

  “I am the soul of canine discipline,” I said. “Your guys shoot this out of a car?”

  “Rented a van,” said Wendy.

  I winked at Rusty and mouthed, “Too hot.” He wiped his nose with his tongue.

  The next shot was Dunphy walking into the Old Kent Bank branch on Twenty-eighth Street in Grand Rapids. The trip had taken twenty-two minutes.

  Wendy took the roaster pan and spooned the potatoes and carrots into a serving bowl. I made half-inch slices of roast. The scene on the TV wiped, nine minutes had passed, and Dunphy was exiting the bank with a fat white plastic bag the size of a football, rolled up and tucked under his arm.

  “You want to fast forward this?” said Ben. “He just goes to lunch.”

  “Let it run,” said Wendy. She mixed cornstarch in a cup of water for gravy.

  Dunphy wheeled his Mercedes into Popeye’s Chicken on South Division Ave. Rusty’s nose did the boogie-woogie around the end of his face. I flipped him the sliver I’d let cool. Dunphy backed his car into a space at the rear of the building. The surveillance vehicle had obviously pulled into the drive-thru line.

  “Risky,” I said.

  “You. Are. Feeding. The. Dog.” said Wendy.

  “Little piece of fat,” I said.

  “What’s risky?” said Ben.

  “Pulling into the drive-thru line,” I said. Rusty wiped his muzzle, his tongue as big a dishrag. “If the subject pulls out, you’re stuck and your surveillance is over.” I cut another small sliver. Two men walked up to Dunphy’s car.

  “Right there,” said Wendy. “The guy in the windbreaker gets the shoe-box and the guy in the suit gets the bag. I hope you know who they are, because this surveillance tied up two of my people and cost Lambert over a thousand dollars.”

  “Cheap at twice the price,” I said. “The guy in the windbreaker made an appearance at my office the day I left for Brandonport—done up like a deliveryman—and said he had a package for me. I saw him again when I got back. He drove the ‘cable truck’ the cops found in the gravel quarry. I think he’s on the FBI’s short list of things to do.

  “The guy in the suit is a fellow by the name of Luis. I don’t know his last name, but he’s the leader of the Chingos. I’m told his street name is Poco Loco.”

  “What’s a Chingo?” said Ben.

  “Street gang,” I said. I flipped Rusty the sliver. Wendy picked up the platter.

  “Let’s eat while we still have some roast,” she said.

  • • •

  After dinner Ben re-embarked on his video odyssey, Wendy fixed a plate for Daniel, and Rusty tidied up the scraps. I retired to the bathroom, made a pile of my clothes, and filled the bathtub—an oversized fiberglass number with waterjets.

  With the jets on full whoosh, I reclined in the hot water with a wet washcloth on my eyes—the nose brace had come completely unstuck—and replayed the surveillance video in my mind. Deliveryman/Andy had done the talking, finger pointing, and instructing—made Dunphy sit in the car while he loomed over him in the open door.

  Luis, in the same suit I’d seen him wearing at The Rabbit, had taken the white plastic bag and made an insolent face. Deliveryman/Andy had leaned into Luis’s space and made slow instructions—maybe threats— around an index finger hovering scarce inches from Luis’s nose.

  Deliveryman/Andy had slammed the door of the Mercedes, made some last pronouncement, and walked off with Luis, the shoebox under his arm. They had departed in a pale green sedan—a disappointment—I had expected a little more style from Luis. Wendy’s operative had zoomed tight on the license plate: Wisconsin, MKT … something, I’d jotted the number into my notepad.

  The bathroom door opened and closed. The lights went out.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” said Wendy.

  “Everybody has to be somewhere,” I said and lifted the washcloth off one eye. Moonlight frosted the room with a silver glow. Wendy stood beside the tub in her robe.

  “Where are you?”

  “Hoping for an out-of-body experience,” I said. I rinsed the cloth, folded it, and put it back on my eyes.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because the fit inside this body has a few pinches, just now.”

  I heard Wendy’s robe hit the floor and felt her step into the tub, a foot on either side of my hips. She whispered, “Let’s check the fit in this body.”

  • • •

  I don’t know if Dunphy had more lumps than I did, but his were fresher. He sat, catatonic, on my office sofa. His hand clutched the handle of the briefcase. Blood dripped from his wrist onto the upholstery.

  Marg sat at her desk, her eyes mostly whites and her face pale. She shook her head at me as I opened the door.

  Dunphy wore sunglasses and the same suit I’d seen in the surveillance film. His collar loose and his tie at half mast, he turned his face toward me. The left side of his face was purple and a half-size larger than the right. His lip was torn but had stopped bleeding. The left sleeve of his tan cashmere suit coat bore a rust-brown stain from the elbow to the wrist, probably from wiping his lip. I couldn’t see his eyes.

  I asked him, “Why did you come here, Hank?”

  He said, “I’m sorry.” His hand began to tremble on the handle of the briefcase.

  “The briefcase,” Marg squeaked.

  I slipped my hand around his and tightened his finger against the handle. “Don’t do it; you won’t have to be sorry.”

  “They have my wife and daughter.”

  I looked him straight in the sunglasses and told him, “Ten seconds after this goes off, they’ll kill ’em.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Think about it,” I said. “Once you do this—give them what they want—they’ll have no use for your family.”

  The telephone rang.

  Marg picked it up. “Peter A. Ladin Agency.” Her voice would have sounded calm to anyone who didn’t know her. “No, Mr. Hardin isn’t in yet … He called. He had to stop at the courthouse. … Maybe an hour or so. … Would you like to leave a number? … Certainly.”

  Marg shook her head, her mouth not quite closed.

  I told Marg, “Just go. And pull the fire alarm on the way out.”

  “No,” said Dunphy.

  I squeezed his hand. He winced.

  “He’s out there,” said Dunphy, h
is voice an octave high and strained through glass shards. “He’s watching. He can set this off.”

  I eased up.

  “If she leaves, he’ll set it off. If there’s a fire alarm, he’ll set it off. If he knows you’re here, that’s it.”

  “I had to have walked right by him,” I said.

  “I wasn’t sure when you walked in,” said Dunphy, “not until you spoke. When we met, you had a moustache. They said you had a brace on your face, and walked with a cane.”

  “Is there a trigger in the handle?”

  “There’s a piece of fishing leader … it goes,” Dunphy swallowed, “from my thumb … through a hole in the briefcase. It’s on a spring. If I pull out, it goes off. If I let it go slack, it goes off.”

  I inspected the handle. They had installed the line into Dunphy’s palm with a fishhook sunk into the base of his thumb.

  I looked at Marg. “You can go to the far end of the building. Get up to the ground level.”

  “If I don’t answer the telephone, they might set it off,” she said.

  “I’m taking Hank into my office,” I said, and nodded toward the open doorway. Dunphy eased off the sofa, my hand still clutching his hand to the handle of the briefcase.

  “They said I had one foot in prison and the other in the grave,” said Dunphy. “Said if I did this they’d provide for my family. If I didn’t, they’d just kill us.”

  Marg pushed a pink message slip at me as we passed her. She took the telephone and climbed under her desk. The message was from Detective Van Huis: “Call me.”

  I sat Dunphy in my desk chair, the briefcase on the desk, and picked up the telephone. I pecked out the number for the direct line into Van Huis’s desk.

  “Van Huis, Kentwood Detectives,” he said.

  “Hardin,” I said. “This is important.”

  “Not anymore,” he said. “Wrote my report this morning and some fed came in with the chief and took it—made me sign some paper—if I mention the incident they’ll send me to Allenwood to play shuffleboard with Mob guys.” He hung up.

  I dialed back. Van Huis had it in the middle the first ring. “Better not be Hardin,” he said.

  “Listen,” I said. “This is important.”