Ray Tate and Djuna Brown Mysteries 3-Book Bundle

by Lee Lamothe

  The Statie nodded at Djuna Brown. “Her. She can find the place. No offence, Ray, but there might be some guys in there with guns, and … Well, you know? Besides, we want to keep this Statie, right? Rub shit into the city’s head and make ’em bleed?”

  “Naw, naw. That isn’t right. We’re partners. You just want her as a hostage to wear the hat in case it all goes sideways.”

  “Ray,” Djuna Brown said, “it’s okay. I’ll take it.”

  Ray Tate thought about it. He’d just wanted to give the whole steaming pile of shit to someone else and take her back to one of their places for the night, to get up the next day and start his paperwork to dump out of the job. Book airline tickets and learn from a book how to buy condoms in French.

  She said, “C’mon. Think of the skipper’s face, the dep, when this hits the press while they’re still pulling their pricks.” She gave him a deep look. “Then it’s bohemian Paris for me and you, Picasso.”

  “Yeah, okay.” He looked at the Statie and said, “Hang on a sec. Back it up.” When the truck rolled back, he got his door open, climbed out of the rental and into the passenger side of the truck.

  The Statie said, “Is this beyond partners, Ray? This is something else, right?”

  “Maybe. Maybe. I dunno. But I’ll tell you this: I like you. We had some good times on the training courses. But if she doesn’t come out of this in the same condition she went in, I’m coming looking, okay? You can think what you want, her and me, and you might be right and you might be wrong.”

  The Statie looked at Djuna Brown through the two windshields. “She’s a good-looking woman, Ray. With all the stories, I expected a fucking big behemoth. She’s cool, right?”

  “She’s beyond cool.”

  “No heavy lifting, I promise you. If this works out, maybe a little something for her, I don’t know. We’ll take it slow. We’ll get the stash and if it’s there, then we’ll set up on the lab.” He stared at Ray Tate for a moment. “Look, you’re not in the city now. We don’t do those things to our own, in spite of what happened to her up north. That’s a fucked place, Ray, that’s Indian country. She’ll be okay with me, man.”

  Ray Tate got out of the truck and into the rental.

  “Okay, he’s taking you. I’ll head back to town, see if Harv or anybody shows their faces. If I’m lucky, I’ll spot him and follow him up to the lab. We’ll be having bacon and eggs ready when you guys roll in.”

  “Over medium, crispy bacon, don’t forget.” He could see she was shaky as she opened her door and climbed out. But she said, “Don’t worry, Ray, okay?”

  “I mean this, Djun’: don’t think of Paris, don’t think of gin and taps, okay? Just go hard. Listen to that guy, he’s square.”

  She gave him a small grin, biting her lip. She leaned over and gave him the softest of kisses. “Cool-ee-oh, Bongo.”

  * * *

  Alone, Ray Tate headed the rental back to the city. When he got in range his rover picked up the skipper on the base station, voicing out for him. The skipper voiced out to the mutts, Wally and Bernie, but they had no time for him. He shut off his rover and headed for home, resisting the urge to turn around. But he didn’t know where Phil Harvey had made the drop. He wasn’t even sure where the super lab was. Just at some stinky place north of Widow’s Corners.

  At his apartment he couldn’t paint. He’d been up for two days and he stretched out on the futon. He got up. He stood by the window and watched trees shedding their leaves. He saw the back half of a grey sedan parked on the street, a wisp of exhaust coming from the tailpipe. He wanted to go down and pull the fuckers out of the car through the grill, but there’d be other cars around, headhunters from the Swamp looking for a bump and a serving of fruit salad on their shoulder boards. They were vermin and they worked away like chisels on the best blue job in the world. He made a gin and tap and sat watching nothing on television. He found some old stale cigarettes, lit one and choked on it, and called his daughter. His wife answered and when she recognized his voice, put the phone down and called Alexis.

  “Dad. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Just having a drink, here, wondering how you’re doing.”

  “Mom says they partnered you with a black lesbian.” She made a little laugh. “She said she beats cops up.”

  “Well, she’s a tough biscuit, all right.”

  “You used to call me that. A tough biscuit. But she’s okay, though? You’re safe with her?”

  “Ax, she’s fine. She’s a little odd, but you’ll like her.”

  “Cool-ee-oh.”

  Ray Tate laughed. “Funny you should say that. She says that.”

  Alexis was silent for a few seconds. “You want me to drop by? Or you want to come out here? We can go out for dinner.”

  “Naw, we’re in the middle of a case. It’ll be done in a day or two, then …”

  “Then? Then what?”

  “Well, I’m thinking of quitting.” He cleared his throat. “Moving, maybe, to Paris.” He waited and cleared his throat again. “Ah, ah, with … her?”

  “A black lesbian? I didn’t know you were so cool, you know? Very subterranean.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  They spoke for a few more minutes about her plans for a photo trip to Asia and made plans for dinner later in the week. For the first time that day he told someone he loved her.

  He took his drink to the window. The grey car was gone. The phone rang and the display showed the skipper’s home number. He ignored it. A few seconds later it rang again. He ignored it. When it rang a third time he saw Djuna Brown’s mobile number displayed.

  “Ray? We got them. Just like Harv said. There must be close to a half-million of them, all with double Chucks on them. Bags of the fuckers. Beautiful.”

  “You’re okay, right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, this guy is okay, this pal of yours, old pal ’o mine. We’re setting up up north of Widow’s Corners. Gonna take the lab in the morning.”

  “Cool-ee-oh,” he said. He told her about talk to his daughter, what he’d said about moving to Paris with a black dyke.

  “What’d she say?”

  “She said —”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “I got someone knocking. You okay? Stay close to that guy, okay? He’s a good guy.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you in the morning when we’re going. Tomorrow night, gin and taps on me. We can take French language courses, mon ami.”

  The knocking on the door was louder. A cop’s knock. The skipper. He went to hang up. “Hey, Djuna? Wait a sec.”

  The knocking on the door became louder, more insistent.

  “What, Ray?”

  “I, ah …”

  She laughed. “You’re crazy about me, ain’t you, Ray? I gotcha, Bongo.” She was gone, whooping.

  Ray Tate hung up the phone. It was close enough to telling her. He smiled as he cracked the door.

  The first bullet took the lobe of his right ear off. He reeled sideways, ducking away.

  The second missed him completely but he felt it buzz, hot.

  The third went in low, above his belt buckle on the left-hand side, and then he was lying on the floor, crabbing for cover and scrabbling for the gun in his ankle holster and going in his mind: Fuck fuck fuck.

  There were more shots fired that might or might not have missed him.

  Then he felt a burning punch in his left shoulder and thought, Oh, cocksucker, cocksucker, you got me that time.

  He had his gun out and began rolling to triangulate on the open door and the shape filling it.

  The shape standing there was enveloped like a magician in a cloud of blue smoke. Yellow flame reached into the room, looking for him.

  He heard screaming although he hadn’t fired a shot.

  He thought: Is that me?

  Then he thought: I hope this isn’t another black guy.

  He said to himself, Fuck him if he is.

  Then he unloaded his gun into
the crowded doorway until he passed out with a mouth full of copper pennies.

  * * *

  Phil Harvey didn’t wait for anyone to pick up the pills. He’d left them where he told the little black cop they’d be, behind the fourth tree on the north side of the county road running east, exactly 4.2 miles south of Widow’s Corners. He’d done what he could. Hopefully the pills would take the heat off him and the crazy Captain and the rest of the crew. Harv didn’t care, really, but he couldn’t live calmly on his mountain with the thought of someone going behind the pipes for something he’d done.

  He had a couple of things to do that night and then he’d be done with it all. The life would be gone and another one would begin. Harv knew he was a season and in change. Cured logs, he thought. Fresh raw logs would dry out and contract for months after he built his house then the window frames would have gaps around them. He’d read that, slowly tracing his finger across the page of a book. He’d have to buy weathered logs that wouldn’t shrink.

  Heading south to the city with his bag of lightnings in the back of a rental van, he debated with himself about whether to get one of the new enamel-looking wood stoves or shoot a wad on a fireplace and chimney. A different life, where a gun was long and not cut down to fit under a coat or in a bag. A life where a gun was a tool not a weapon. The gases, he’d read in a book left in the shelves of the farmhouse, the gases of sunset were caused by pollutants irradiated by the setting sun. What was that all about? He’d have to think on that one.

  Passing the town where Frankie had lived he thought of pulling off the highway and visiting the girlfriend. Frankie died in the life, he’d tell her, and maybe he’d invite her to a better life. He’d need someone, he thought, to talk it out with, to reveal his ideas and insights. He didn’t want to become a wandering muttering fool traipsing the hills and valleys, talking to himself. He could, he thought, try to write them down but he’d been writing some letters backwards all his life, back in the days when it was called stupid instead of dyslexia. He wished he could talk some more to the little black cop. She’d instantly understood the roots of the tree and the tree itself. He believed her when she said she had the tube of vitamin E cream in her hand when he spoke to her on the phone. Tommy, she’d said the boy’s name was. Her partner, Harvey thought, that was one bad old-time copper. There was something between them, he’d intuited immediately. The old-time copper was going to Paris. Was that his mountains and valleys? He reminded Harv of all the good-time old coppers who’d battered him, thinking they could change a soul. A bullet in the face, Harv thought, that would put the copper in his place, show him in a sunrise flash of gunsmoke how things were.

  He continued through. Frankie’s town was gone after a trio of defaced off-ramp signs.

  He swung into the city inside a blaze of roaring trucks and complex designs of tail lights that looked like little red galaxies ahead of him. City traffic was light. Harv made it into east Chinatown quickly. He had no backup and there was no point in bringing the buyer’s thugs out into the city: they wouldn’t let him walk away twice. He drove directly to the restaurant and parked illegally in front. There were young guys inside the place, visible though the wide front window with Chinese characters painted onto it. With the heavy bag of lightnings in one hand and his ribbed .44 inside a sweater in the other, Harv went inside and up to the doddering old fool sitting on a stool at the cash.

  “Fifty thousand for one seventy-five.”

  The old fool looked at him. “You the crazy guy. Out with your dirty business.” But he smiled and reached for a mobile phone under the counter.

  Harv grinned tightly back at him and went through the restaurant, past blue-haired toughs sitting at a round table and sat at the back. He put the bag on the floor beside him and the sweater on the table, easing back the cloth to reveal the long ribbed barrel. He felt a little insane and asked a waiter for tea.

  He’d come to like tea over the past month. Coffee wasn’t something that fit into his life anymore, although Agatha Burns had begged for it, begged for anything that would give her a boost. He’d given her tea as she screamed and worked her way through the cellular adjustment she’d had to make to get out from behind the crazy Captain’s imposed habit. At times she said he should have killed her. At times, in pity, he wished he had.

  She’d said, Harv, I was beautiful once.

  He’d said, Ag, you’re beautiful now.

  She’d said, What about Connie? Does Connie know you didn’t off me?

  He’d said, Don’t worry about Connie.

  She’d seemed obsessed when she said, What he made me do, that night in the hotel, I’m ashamed, Harv. I never …

  He’d said, I’ll be back to get you. I’ll take you home to your parents, you’ll be okay.

  She’d said, Can I go with you, Harv?

  Of course she couldn’t go with him. He felt something for her. That’s why the old broad at the camper truck had to be incinerated. Agatha and Connie Cook would be left behind like the old black leather bat coat he’d come to hate. He’d read that trees and flowers grew subtly in the direction of the heat and light of the sun. He’d find himself a new sun out in the mountains, a sun that would —

  The old man behind the counter walked over to the table of blue-haired young guys and muttered. One of the blue-haired guys nodded, punched a key on his cellphone, and carried it over to Harv, handed it to him without comment and returned to his table.

  “Mr. Harvey? Mr. Harvey?”

  “I’ve got fifty thousand at one and three quarters.”

  “Sure. No problem. I’ll send someone. But at one, for fifty.”

  “One fifty is a very good price. These egg rolls are like the others.”

  “We would pay more, say, even two for fifty, in return for a favour.”

  “What favour?”

  “The big fat one, the one who burned the children? Who sent you to steal the drums? A favour for six fingers, you know who I mean?”

  Six fingers, three on each hand, straight up: WW. Willy Wong. One of his faces was as the protector of Chinatown, shepherd of students from Canada, of Triad fugitives. Everyone would know that Willy Wong had been robbed, that the students had been tortured. Everyone would watch to see how strongly he reacted. Chinatown would require an extravagant public corpse.

  “Six fingers would like to spend some Chinatown time with this fat man. If you arrange it, we will send two for fifty.”

  Harv watched the blue-haired guy watching him. A hundred thousand. With what he had set aside, he could live in mountain mists forever on that kind of dough. He could burn it in the fireplace or stove to keep warm when he was too tired to go out for kindling. He thought of Barry the gym owner and his crew, of their look of distaste in the basement in east Chinatown. He thought of Agatha Burns being made to lick his face, suck his fingers. And tonight’s target for the sick prick, whoever she was, would just feed the cycle of the crazy Captain’s escalating appetites. It would be easier to just let him die at the hands of Willy Wong. But Harv believed there was a way to stop his madness without putting the Captain in the ground or behind the pipes. He had to get away clean, at peace with himself, with no prisoners or bodies left behind.

  “Done.” He nodded into the phone and said, “Done. But cash, and tonight.”

  “Perfect, Mr. Harvey. Give the phone back to that fellow who gave it to you. He’ll go and get your money then you take him to where this fat man is. After this, you shouldn’t come anymore into Chinatown, okay?”

  Harv put the phone on the table and pointed at it. The blue-haired guy got up and took it back to his table. He listened and gave Harv an A-OK sign. The guy beside him laughed. Harv, though, knew that in their world the A-OK finger sign meant You’re worth nothing. Zero. The blue-haired guy made a smiling show of getting up and shrugging into his leather jacket. He drank off his teacup and with his car keys jangling in his hand, walked towards the kitchen exit, winking at Harv. Harv knew the blue hair was dust sprayed on.
It was technique. If the guy had to do something and run, he could shake his head hard as he made his escape, shaking out the blue, looking like one of a thousand other young guys loitering on California Street.

  When the blue-haired guy came close to the table Harv stood up and shot him through the middle of his face. The guy went straight down, a haze of blue dust and red mist rose like a rainbow in the air where his head had been.

  For a moment everyone was frozen except Harv.

  Inside that moment he wheeled like a dancer and shot another blue-haired Viet in the middle of his chest. He pegged a round at another guy but knew he’d missed even though the guy hit the floor yelling in pain.

  Harv left the bag of pills and the sweater on the table and headed for the door, the gun dangling in his hand. People scattered, rocking the tables, dumping the chairs, and diving to the floor. The room was full of blue smoke and, he thought, the noise was impossibly loud and endless.

  The old man at the cash stood up and said, his voice very faint to Harv’s hollow ears, “Oh, you crazy guy,” leaving his mouth open.

  “When you see him, tell him I’m no rat.” He fired into the open mouth and the wall behind the man became textured with bits of bone, a splash of blood, and grey matter.

  * * *

  He was early to do the pickup for the crazy, lovestruck Captain. There were several SUVs in front of the house and some sleek sedans parked on the curb. He backed the van up to the Lexus with the personalized plate, the rear doors a few feet from the sedan’s trunk. On a quick walk-past he looked through trees and Connie Cook’s stone gates, saw the large, bright picture windows, the shapes of people moving around with drinks in their hands. He wanted to creep close, to hear what they were saying. What did rich people talk about? What was so fucking interesting? A book club, Cookie had said, where people talked about reading. What the fuck was that all about? Harv had read a lot of books in the joint, read them slowly, knowing his lips were moving but keeping his hand over his mouth so no one would see. But he’d never had the urge to discuss a book with anyone.

  Back when he’d snaffled up Agatha Burns for the crazy fat fuck he’d wandered the curving streets and cul-de-sacs, figuring out the best place to grab her, the best route out onto a busy street that would lead to the Interstate that led north. The Captain hadn’t told Harv then about the purpose of the kidnapping. No worries, Harv, I’ll have the parents over to dinner. Get the girl. Take her north. Wait for me. Harv had thought maybe it was a kidnapping for ransom and by the time the Captain had started turning Agatha into what he wanted her to be, it was too late. Harv had done shit but he’d never wished he hadn’t done any of it, never wanted to roll back the clock as if anyone could. But with the Agatha Burns snaffling, he found himself trying to unwind his life.