by Jim Nesbitt
He put the Colt down by his left boot. He peeled off his jacket, grunting with the effort of keeping his body out of the line of fire. He flicked the jacket up and out, like popping a fresh sheet over a bed, tossing the coat like a matador’s cape onto the hood of the Saab with his right hand, palming the Colt with his left and rising above the roof of the car, praying to the whiskey gods his sucker’s play would draw the shooter’s eye.
As he flattened into a shooting stance, bringing the sights of the Colt onto the shooter’s body, his mind registered a small item — the trick didn’t work. The barrel of the shotgun, big as the mouth of a cannon, was pointing right at him. He squeezed off two quick rounds, figuring this would be the last act in a bumpy and checkered career, assuming he was a dead man, the thought icing his nerves instead of making him flinch.
The shotgun boomed at the same instant his Colt roared through its first round, filling his ears with sound. The buckshot wanged into the roof of the Saab, less than a foot from his left elbow. The luck of a blind pig and the miss was his acorn.
Everything was moving slow. The shooter working the pump. Burch drawing his bead. The slow spin of a spent shell, yellow against the black of the shotgun. The sound of two pieces of machined brass, hot Corbon casings from his Colt, bouncing across the trunk of the Saab. The bright yellow splinters where two 230-grain hollow points smacked into the rail of the balcony — Flying Ashtrays that missed their mark. The shooter swinging the shotgun out and down, pointing at Burch.
Blooming into the Novak combat sights of Burch’s Colt, the red-and-black checkered shirt of the shooter. He ignored the black hole pointed at his head and squeezed off four more shots, sending the Flying Ashtrays downrange.
The shotgun boomed again but the barrel was jerking up and to the shooter’s right, the buckshot whickering into the trees limbs above and behind Burch, the shooter slamming into the glass door of the balcony, a slug shattering the window next to that door, another thunking into the reddish-brown wood of the condo’s outer wall.
Burch kept the Saab between himself and the balcony as he walked toward the gate and the card slot. Two rounds left in the Colt. Two spare magazines in the shoulder rig’s ammo holder, dangling under his left armpit.
He kept scanning the upper-floor windows and the wooden stairway to the second floor as he slapped in the card and the gate started humming and rattling its way open.
Two rounds left. He pocketed the card and grabbed a full magazine, shucking the one in the Colt and slapping the fresh one home. The smashed window next to the balcony door, black and backlit by the late afternoon sun, was his biggest worry. Perfect place for shooter Number Two to set up shop. He kept the Colt pointed that way as he moved across the grass as quickly as heft and bad knees would let him.
The stairs. He hated the stairs. Any kind. Particularly the metal sort used for fire escapes, the ones with the diamond-patterned stipples. Like the one his partner was walking up, gun in hand, the night he got gunned down by the compadre of a dead border narco named Teddy Roy Bonafacio. Gunned while Burch was watching, helpless with a shotgun in his hand and the naked body of a curvy young Chicana blocking his line of covering fire.
And here he was, gun in hand, a Colt 1911 instead of his partner’s Smith & Wesson revolver in .44 Special, walking up a set of stairs. Wood instead of iron. But a damn set of stairs. Climbing toward an open door.
He couldn’t see shit beyond the threshold. Nothing but black, just a dark hole as he lumbered up, sure he was walking right into a waiting gun barrel. He kept moving, his eyes shifting through the quadrants of the door’s darkness, banking on the ability of peripheral vision to pick up movement no matter how dimly lit.
His ears were cocked for the slightest sound. He could hear the buzz of traffic on Kirby, the sobs of Ol’ Butterscotch and the clank of the gate as it slammed shut, cutting the silence that always follows gunfire and a killing.
He entered the room in a rush, his boots skidding slightly in the thick tan carpeting, his gun tracking through a three-quarter turn, taking in a living room where barnyard animals would feel at home, free to root through the upturned furniture, the ripped cushions, the shattered dishes and potted plants.
Lots of earth tones for the dirt and stuffing to rest upon. Lots of tasteful umbers and siennas and ochers. Kind of Santa Fe-ish. But not too fadishly Southwestern. Done before northern New Mexico became a net exporter of style. A couple of O’Keefe skull prints hung on the walls.
He could feel his gun hand swell against the Pachmayr grip. He shifted to his off-hand, his right. Not a big problem. He always was a half-assed lefty, with one foot or hand hanging loosely in the majority world of the right handed, the other tugging him into the space of the twisted and temporally different.
Should have been a full-blown lefty. Would have been except for that day in first grade, when Miss Smythe, all bouffant and creamy skin and high-rising tits and tears on the playground the day John Kennedy’s brains got blown out ten miles from their school, noticed him holding that long, yellow Eberhard Faber No. 2 in his left hand and said to him: You don’t want to be different from the other children, do you?
Different — he wasn’t sure what that meant but the tone of his teacher’s voice told him he didn’t want to be that. He shifted the pencil to his right and suffered lousy penmanship for the rest of his life. His first bad experience listening to a woman whose tits caught his eye.
A half-assed lefty. Bat left. Throw right. Best moves to the left on a football field. From a right-handed stance. Athletically confused, one coached called him. And not truly ambidextrous. But able to shoot a Colt with either hand. He felt his body ease behind the new gun hand, his weight shifting, his feet shifting in mid-shuffle as he crabbed his way down a hallway that was half in sunlight from a skylight at his end, half in shadow down by a closed bedroom door.
Muffled thumping from the other side. Like a headboard banging against the wall of a no-tell motel. Or somebody getting their head staved in. He hopped into a short run, ignoring the pain in his knee and hand, gathering himself for the jarring impact of his shoulder smacking into a hollow-bodied bedroom door. His left shoulder, of course.
It took two tries. The door splintered at the lock and he tumbled into the bedroom, sprawling across the foot of the bed, drawing a mouthful of rose-colored satin and a faceful of matching quilt comforter as he slid to a halt just inches from the painted toes of bound-and-gagged Savannah Devlin Crowe.
A spin to the left. In a crouch. Gun up as he turned and covered the room. Three steps to an open bathroom door. Nothing. Steps to the closet. Nothing but clothes and shoes. Savannah’s eyes following him through every move. Savannah’s head banging into the wall. He stepped to her side and grabbed an end of the duct tape that had gagged her screams, popping it off her mouth with a quick yank.
“Shee-it, that hurt, you fuckin’ cocksucker! You enjoyed that, didn’t you, you peckerhead shitbird!”
“A hero’s welcome, lover — I expected no less.”
“Ain’t nothin’ but a sandwich, bud. And in your case shit on rye.”
“Why the head bangin’, darlin’? You’re starting to knock the veneer off that classy broad act of yours. Bang another time or two and you’ll be talkin’ real up holler. All ready to call the hogs to slop.”
“Fuck off, Big Boy. If you’d been here two days ago like I asked you to be, that cowboy wouldn’t have barged in like he did. And I was bangin’ my head so the cops would know I was in here and some dumbass rookie wouldn’t walk in and blow me away. Instead, I get you sprawlin’ across the bed like some spastic muffdiver.”
“Hey Irish — all the muscle in the world ain’t gonna keep you from getting clipped in your girlfriend’s condo. I thought you said you were gonna get out of town. Instead, I find you hangin’ out near the Rice campus. Probably blowin’ up Kirby in a convertible, wavin’ to the frat rats, stoppin’ to get ribs at Goode Company’s.”
“You know I’m a vegetarian, lover.”
“Ah, the rich girl’s purr is back in your voice. You must want something.”
“Untied?”
“Naw — you look natural that way. Safe, too.”
“Goddam your ass, Eddie! Get your fat-bellied self over here and untie me! If you don’t right now, I swear to God I’m gonna kick your balls from here to Dallas when I get free.”
Burch picked up a pillow and jammed it into her face.
“Chew this while I check out your visitor.”
Burch eased through the glass door and stepped onto the narrow balcony. The shooter was slouched to his right, his black boots, pointy-toed and spangled with the chains and silver caps favored by Austin rockers like Joe Ely and Tejano toughs found on any barrio corner, were splayed toward Burch.
The torso was half in and half out of the shattered balcony window, the geometric sharpness of the shirt’s red-and-black checks blurred by blood from two chest wounds. The shotgun rested against the balcony’s wooden railing, upright and steady, just beyond the shooter’s lifeless outstretched hand, as if put there with care.
Dead meat. Burch bent down to check for a pulse at the neck out of habit. Nothing. He rolled the body’s right hip toward him and pulled out a thick black biker’s wallet, joined to the belt by a short chain. A grand in cash. A license with peeling laminate. Roberto Guzman Delgado. DOB 2/01/69.
Young and cheap. Cowboy, probably — low-level freelance talent. Emphasis on low-level. Not on talent. Sent by a low-level player. Or an amateur pissed enough to go for a hired gun but not connected enough to hire the McCoy. He pocketed half the money, put the rest in the wallet and put it back on the dead man’s hip.
More trouble where this one came from. And from other places. From other people able to hire far better gunhands than this one. Burch felt a sudden tug of fatigue. In seventeen years on the Dallas police force, he had killed four times. As a pee-eye, five times, including a black hitman in the Hill Country just outside of Mason, Texas. That one still rode with him — a shot to the forehead, the Third Eye, unblinking and powder-grimed, just below the toupee, slamming the hit man’s head into the bat guano and the flesh-eating beetles that lived in the filth.
And now, Roberto Guzman Delgado. Number nine in his nightmare parade. Less than nightmares, these days. More like unwelcome visitors that shook him out of uneasy sleep. Not that scary, really but still unfriendly. Any night now, ol’ Roberto would come to call. Terminated by two Flying Ashtrays from a Colt that was new two decades ago, back when Roberto was in grade school and Burch first got his detective’s shield.
He slowly dropped the hammer on the semi-automatic and holstered it, the gun’s weight restoring a sense of balance. He rose from his crouch, his gaze shifting to the driveway below. The green Saab still sat there, engine stalled, driver’s side door open now but the driver still inside. He could see the shattered windshield and the gouged metal where the buckshot struck, quicksilver on a shade from the forest. He could hear Butterscotch sobbing. He could see her legs splayed on the concrete driveway, too weak to let her walk.
Out on Kirby, the backbeat hum of traffic carried a new tone — sirens. He could see flashing lights turn onto the tree-lined side street that would lead them to this spot. He stood still, his hands on the rail, watching them roll up, knowing they would be on the muscle, guns drawn, juices flowing.
He was no longer one of them. He wasn’t even a citizen — theirs to serve and protect. He was a pee-eye. On foreign turf. And that was one rung lower than a wiseguy, one rung above a total lowlife. At least he wasn’t automatically planted at the foot of the cop’s narrow and cynically colored ladder of humanity — an asshole.
Worst word a cop could say of somebody. A label applied with a smirk, a stone face or totally unmasked venom, its target the sudden bearer of a ticket to the street blue’s extra-nasty chamber of hell.
Cops were quick to pass out such tickets. But usually for good reason. Something that wasn’t in the legal codes, something entirely rooted in interaction and instinct, a person’s vibes and a cop’s gut. What somebody says underneath what they say. The pause or the look before they answer a question. The whiff of wrong or right they give.
Burch knew he wouldn’t get flagged with an asshole ticket unless he did something stupid or provocative. He knew he’d have to earn that special shade of damnation — really work at pissing them off to slip his boot heels completely off the ladder. But he also knew this was something well within the scope of his meager people skills.
The first cruiser whipped into the driveway entrance, nosing forward heavily as the driver hit the brakes hard. Showtime, Double E. Time to be rock steady and earn that blood money, wherever it came from.
Maybe they’d be in a good mood. Maybe they wouldn’t be steamed at having to clean up a bloody mess left on their doorstep by a Dallas pee-eye.
Maybe. But not likely. Not likely at all. And he’d still have to stick his hands in the air and have some blue with terminal halitosis get in his face and rip the Colt out of his shoulder holster.
His left leg started to shake. His left hand felt like something you could dribble on hardwood.
He felt like shit. And knew he looked even worse.
ELEVEN
Cider Jones thought nothing could surprise him. Nothing seen on the job. Nothing seen while off-duty. And damn sure nothing that rolled through his imagination while awake or asleep.
But the last sight he expected to see as he walked into the homicide bullpen was Ed Earl Burch, slumped, torn and gripping a mug of black coffee like his life depended on it, sitting beside the desk of Jack Grunwald, giving monotone answers to Grunwald’s questions. It caused the cop’s mask to slip a little — a slight tightening of the jaw, a small uptick in the brightness of the eyes. Nothing a citizen would notice. Everything a cop would. Or an ex-cop.
Burch was looking right at him. Noticed Cider before Cider saw him. Noticed Cider’s slip too, damn his ass. And knew that Cider was surprised and unhappy — unhappy to see him, unhappy to be caught unaware. Points to the pee-eye, grayer, balder and heavier than he last saw him, out by that Hill Country bat cave, leaning over him, wrapping a compress around his shattered shoulder and gaping chest wound, draping his dead partner’s jacket over the bandages to keep him warm.
Cider Jones didn’t feel gratitude. Not then. Not for the bandages. And not for the ex-cop’s courtesy of not allowing his crazy Tennessee honey to finish him off and leave no witness. A seething anger sliced through his pain; he wanted Burch dead or hung with a Murder One rap, guilty or not.
But he drew air. Zilch. Zippo. Bradford PA.
Guilty or not, Burch was a wrong guy in Cider’s book, the man metaphysically responsible for Perez’s death. And now the sumbitch was drinking coffee in his office, talking to Numbnuts Grunwald, a cop doing the zombie rhumba toward a twenty while sporting the worst closure rate in the department. And the bastard caught him when the small tells of surprise slipped across his face.
Huge ball droppage, as one of the young studhosses would say. Cider behind in the count.
Swing for the fences, cabron. Perez whispering in his ear. The voice of a dead partner.
Cider slapped his briefcase flat on his desk, startling Grunwald. Burch sipped his coffee, keeping his eyes level on Cider, the lids half closed behind the glasses, the orbs lightless but bloodshot, giving nothing away, not even the gotcha-buddy of a few seconds ago.
“Damn it to hell Cider, you sure do make an entry.”
“Oughta start screenin’ the scumbags we let in this office, Jack. You’re not careful, you wind up scratchin’ under the armpits and the crotch and start sniffin’ the air like something died under your desk.”
“You know this ol’ boy?”
“We got a bit of history.”
“Care to tell me about him? He shot the shit outta some Tejano gunhand out by Rice. Nice part of town. Just off Kirby. Too damn nice for a shootout between barrio lowlife and shitkickers. Usually save that
for Telephone Road. Not these two — buckshot and .45 slugs scattered through the Spanish moss and into some rich gal’s Saab.”
“Any collaterals?”
Cider winced inside as he heard himself use this phrase. He hated all the tough-guy military slang infiltrating the cop’s patois — collateral damage, another word for innocent bystanders caught in the cross-fire; neutralized, another word for blown away. Even some of the Marine jargon that was as inspired and twisted as any Corps lifer — fragged, meaning assigned to some shit duty, not booby-trapped to death in an I Corps latrine; brain fart, as in a dumb idea; goat grope, as in things or a situation in minor disarray; Boy Howdy, as in a surprising fuckup or an unexpected bonus.
As in: Ain’t that a great big Boy Howdy. As in the correct response to Grunwald telling him that no bystanders were hit in a firefight where nine rounds were exchanged. Surprise! Nobody else got iced! Well ain’t that a great big Boy Howdy! Yew bet!
But even this was RoboCop bullshit in Cider’s mind, another corrosive way to keep distance between your job and your innards. A moral dilemma for the cop. Humor — a great cushiony mitt for the nasty short hops of the blue’s field of reality — could also fry the circuit of a cop’s sense of ethics and responsibility. Too close a margin, cushioned by too little humor, and the cop gets early burnout; too far, buffered by one too many tasteless jokes that reinforce the notion that all citizens except your parents are lowlifes — and you better check Mom’s yellow sheet again — you get the Rodney King tapes and one-liners about Gorillas in the Mist.
“Real fine. Bad enough we got this Dallas asshole poppin’ our lowlifes for us. Don’t need him nailin’ citizens, too. Although if we don’t boot his fat butt back to Cowboyland, just plain folks will start turnin’ up dead too.”
“Sounds like the voice of experience.”
“Yessir, it is. Remember Perez and that bat cave where him, me and them yokel deputies got all shot up? This here’s the pile of shit that drew all the flies in that deal.”