AHMM, July-August 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  When things calmed down a bit, George brought his mom over and said, “Go ahead, show her."

  "Show me what?” I asked.

  "The treasure, the treasure Hank wanted so bad,” George said. “I want to show you how you earned your money."

  I was still feeling groggy, having been whacked upside of the head by the girlfriend carrying a length of firewood.

  "Sure,” I said. “Let's look at the treasure."

  So George and his mom took me into the storage room, and mom got on her knees and deftly played with the safe's dial, and when she had spun the it to her satisfaction, she tugged at the thick handle, and with a heavy click, opened the door.

  "There,” George said proudly. “There's mom's treasure. What do you think?"

  I looked in at the safe, saw nestled in rows and rows, little sculptures of gnomes. Dozens and dozens of gnomes. I thought about what I had done, the eighty bucks I made, and I looked to the happy and content faces of George and his mom...

  "Think?” I asked. “I think it's wonderful."

  Copyright (c) 2008 Brendan DuBois

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  Fiction: CODE BLACK by John H. Dirckx

  The telephone in the doctors’ lounge at Chalfont Hospital emitted a series of short sharp screeches. Rachel Noach opened her eyes to see cartoon figures chasing one another across the screen of the muted mural TV, glanced at the digital clock on the wall, which said 4:10, and picked up the phone.

  "We have an adult male from a car crash, Doctor. Don't run."

  Dr. Noach pushed some of the hair out of her eyes, pulled some of the wrinkles out of her scrubs, and headed for the emergency department ten steps away.

  Two rubber-gloved paramedics were packing up their equipment in the corridor. In Treatment Area C, Nurse Walther was idling with a clipboard, a clear indication that the man on the gurney was beyond medical help.

  He was African American, in his thirties, dressed casually, wearing a windbreaker appropriate for the early spring weather. Severe head wounds distorted his facial features, and his clothes were soaked and spattered with blood. A cardiac monitor showed only a flat line of tracing. “They say he had a pulse when they picked him up,” said Ms. Walther.

  Dr. Noach put on rubber gloves, checked the chest leads to make sure they were properly applied, felt the victim's neck for a pulse, shone a light into each of his lifeless eyes, pulled off the gloves.

  One of the paramedics, who looked as if he should still be in high school, appeared in the doorway with a form. “Can I get you to sign off on him, Doctor?” he asked. “We've got another call."

  The doctor scribbled a signature and returned the form. “Code black,” she yawned. “We'll notify the coroner.” She headed back toward the lounge, already half asleep again.

  Ms. Walther caught the paramedic's look of indignation and reproach. “It's just slang,” she said. “She means he was dead when first examined—no resuscitation efforts indicated. It's got nothing to do with his skin color."

  She drew a curtain around Treatment Area C and went to the telephone to report the death of Malabar Lewis to the coroner's office.

  * * * *

  For the third time that morning, Cyrus Auburn measured a section of basement wall with a spring tape, looked at a stack of two-by-fours on the floor, and made a mental calculation, which a combination of intuition and experience warned him would eventually turn out to have a flaw in it somewhere.

  As he began arranging pieces of lumber in order on the floor, his thoughts turned once again to his Uncle Talmadge. When he was ten years old he'd spent most of one summer on his uncle's farm in Alabama helping build henhouses and repair enclosures for other animals. The family troubles that had caused him to be lodged temporarily with his uncle had also put him into a deep depression, characterized by lots of crying and very little eating or sleeping.

  "You got to ride it out, my man,” Uncle Talmadge had told him, over and over again, “you just got to ride it out."

  On several occasions since those dark days, Auburn had found the discipline of an absorbing task therapeutic. He consulted his drawings, stretched his measuring tape along a twelve-foot two-by-four, and began marking off sixteen-inch centers for wall studs.

  The doorbell was ringing. Since Auburn wasn't usually home at ten o'clock on a weekday morning, he had no idea what to expect as he went upstairs to answer it. Somebody selling vacuum cleaners door to door? Offering a discount on lawn treatments if he signed up before the weeds started growing? A misdirected pizza delivery?

  Peering through the window in his front door, he could see a man and woman on the porch. The woman was looking back over her shoulder as if to be sure their arrival wasn't observed. When Auburn opened the door on the security chain, she twitched abruptly around. “Sergeant Auburn?"

  "That's right."

  "Agent Thawl,” she said, flashing an ID past the crack in the door so fast that Auburn couldn't read it. “Can we come in?"

  "What's this about?” he asked, not very cordially.

  The man leaned sideways so as to bring his heavy features into view, and Auburn saw that he was carrying an attache case. “Your Lieutenant Savage referred us to you."

  "Yes?"

  "We understand you're on political suspension—accused of favoritism toward a black suspect and undue force in dealing with—"

  "That's been in the papers for the past two weeks,” Auburn told him, still less cordially than before. “And Internal Affairs is handling the inquiry."

  The woman moved in line with the crack again. She was a tall angular blonde with a face like a Barbie doll and a voice like a chain saw. “Here's something that wasn't in the papers,” she said. “When you were at the Police Academy you were turned down for undercover work because you, and I quote, ‘dressed like a yuppie and talked like a Harvard Law professor.’”

  Auburn took the chain off the door and stepped aside to let them in. He turned on lights in the living room and cleared newspapers and a bathrobe off the couch.

  "Sit down, please. Would you mind showing me that ID again?"

  She complied and Auburn learned that she was Agent Kristi Thawl of the Drug Enforcement Administration. As she sat down on the front edge of the sofa, her associate presented evidence that he was Agent Wade Wickham with the same organization.

  They both refused coffee. “We're here in connection with a homicide that occurred last night in Hamburg Township,” said Wickham. A big man in a blue serge suit, he looked as if he were ready to pose for the cover illustration of a book entitled Your Federal Government in Action. “A fellow named Malabar Lewis was murdered on Route 21 around three this morning."

  "I heard something about that on the early news,” said Auburn, “only they said he died in a one-car crash."

  "Right. With three slugs in his head.” Wickham had small eyes and a square face with fair, blotchy pink skin. From time to time as he spoke, a smile twitched briefly across his lips like a tic, but never awakened any answering flash of warmth or mirth in his eyes.

  Agent Thawl had unbuttoned her blazer but still sat hunched forward in her seat as if she were waiting for a fire alarm to go off. “Lewis was a drug dealer in a pretty big way,” she said, “and a very slippery character. We've never been able to find out anything about his connections or his sources. Whoever killed him probably knows all about that. But we don't investigate homicides."

  "Well,” said Auburn, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness, “neither do I when I'm on suspension—"

  "Let me finish. Your Sergeant Moffat is handling the police investigation—Why are you smiling?"

  "Have you met Moffat?"

  "Not yet. Why?"

  "Well, she isn't my Sergeant Moffat, that's all. She's a bodybuilder and a martial arts expert and she'd flatten me if I ever called her Sandy instead of Sandra. You were saying—?"

  "Lewis was murdered about a quarter of a mile from a bar called the Teutonia Grotto. Ever bee
n there?"

  Auburn not only knew where it was but also immediately knew what they wanted and the reason why they had come to him. And he was confident that that reason would never be mentioned officially or otherwise by anyone involved in the operation.

  Hamburg Township, now part of the city, had been founded in the nineteenth century by German immigrants whose descendants had long ago sold off their farms to developers and moved away. During the past two decades the district had gradually become more and more densely populated by African Americans.

  The Teutonia Grotto was an old stone castle of a place on Route 21. It had been a roadhouse in the early automobile era, a speakeasy during Prohibition, and at other times in its long history a restaurant, a dance hall, a bingo parlor, and a fleabag hotel. Currently it was just a low dive. Like similarly isolated places in other suburban areas, it was under continuing surveillance by the Vice Squad and was the focus of recurring complaints about gambling, illicit drugs, and juvenile drinking.

  "We want to know if Lewis was in there last night before he got killed,” explained Wickham. “And who was with him, who he hung out with, who or where his contacts were, and especially—"

  "So where has affirmative action got us?” Auburn interrupted. “Don't tell me you haven't got any black agents."

  "None available on short notice,” Thawl assured him, “and nobody who's familiar with this geographic area and the local crime scene. We figure Lewis was killed either by his supplier for holding out receipts or by a customer for not delivering straight goods. If you're willing to take this on—"

  "My picture has been in the paper just about every day for the past two weeks,” said Auburn, “not to mention TV."

  She tipped her head back and examined Auburn critically. “Not dressed like that. How long has it been since you shaved?"

  "I don't know. What day is this?"

  "You'll do,” said Wickham.

  "When were you thinking of starting?"

  Thawl looked at her wristwatch. “I hear they do soup and sandwiches at the Teutonia."

  Auburn stood up.

  She didn't. “Are you sure you want to do this? You're going to be swimming with sharks, you know. The guy that runs the Teutonia is Eight-Ball Zook. He did six years for armed robbery back in the eighties. He's as rough as a wire brush. On the street, ‘eight ball’ means—"

  "I know,” said Auburn. “Cocaine mixed with speed."

  "There's just one thing,” said Wickham. “You do sort of talk like a professor. Do you suppose you could turn that off for a while?"

  "Well, sho nuff, Mista Big, ah kin do dat."

  "If you talk like that in the Teutonia,” said Wickham, “you'll be the next stiff on the coroner's slab.” He picked up his attache case. “I'll need to see your driver's license and get your Social Security number. If you want to get paid."

  "My wallet's in the bedroom,” said Auburn, going for it.

  But my badge and my revolver, he thought to himself, are downtown.

  * * * *

  As things turned out, it was after two p.m. before Auburn was ready to go, by which time he'd had lunch (two sandwiches, no soup) at federal expense. From the telephone booth of the restaurant where the narcotics agents had taken him, he dialed the cell phone number of Nick Stamaty, the coroner's chief investigator.

  "What can you tell me about Malabar Lewis, Nick?"

  "Just about anything you want to know, including the shape his liver was in. I'm watching the autopsy right now. You back on the duty roster?"

  "Yes and no. What's this about three slugs in his head?"

  "Shot at point-blank range in the right temple. Probably twenty-two caliber, but they haven't got the slugs out yet."

  "Shot by somebody in the car with him?"

  "Possibly. But nobody walked away from that car."

  "What did it hit?"

  "One of the supports for the overpass where Route 21 goes under the interstate. Lewis left half his brains on the inside of the windshield. It looks like the killers stuck him in the driver's seat after he was dead—without buckling his seat belt—and then sent the car rolling.” Stamaty fell silent for a moment. “How come you're asking me all this stuff? Don't you guys talk to each other anymore?"

  "Thanks, Nick. It's not the homicide I'm working on,” said Auburn, and rang off.

  From the restaurant, agents Thawl and Wickham drove him to the empty parking lot of a church about a mile from the Teutonia Grotto. There, in the cargo compartment of a panel truck ostensibly belonging to the Continental Bakery, they found Sergeant Kestrel, evidence technician and director of the forensic lab for the Department of Public Safety. Kestrel fitted Auburn with a compact microphone and transmitter and ran some tests while Auburn walked slowly away from the truck, discussing the weather with Agent Thawl.

  Kestrel's manner seemed a little stuffier than usual. Maybe he thought he shouldn't have to work with a detective who was under suspension. Or maybe Auburn's appearance put him off—three days’ growth of beard, a stainless steel neck chain, and a khaki fatigue jacket with frayed sleeves and a side pocket torn nearly away.

  "I couldn't manage dreadlocks at short notice,” Auburn told him. “And I clean forgot my do-rag."

  Kestrel held an earphone to one ear while smoothing down the microphone under the tattered lapel of Auburn's jacket with his other hand. “Try not to let this get wet. And don't bump it if you can help it. We don't want any ruptured eardrums."

  "Where will you be?"

  "Someplace where you won't see us."

  Wickham and Thawl were sitting up in the cab portion of the truck. “So what's my story?” Auburn asked them. “Who am I supposed to be? These folks aren't going to give away much to a stranger just because he happens to have a black face."

  "Lieutenant Savage assured us,” said Wickham, “that you're a fellow of unlimited resources."

  "Sure. That's why I'm on suspension. What kind of drugs was Lewis dealing in?"

  "You name it. Heroin, crack, speed—"

  "Did he have any drugs in the car with him?"

  "No drugs. Just a green tennis ball stuffed full of gravel through a knife slit."

  "Aquarium pebbles,” said Kestrel, with whom verbal precision was something of a mania.

  It was 2:10 p.m. when Auburn started walking west along Route 21. The Teutonia Grotto sat back a considerable distance from the highway, surrounded by unkempt woods where some of the trees were just coming into leaf. With its freestone facade and gabled tile roof it looked like Hollywood's idea of an Alpine ski lodge. There were six cars in the parking lot.

  Inside it was dark and chilly. The very large room to which the time-scarred oak front door gave admittance had been considerably abridged by a a row of curtains, thick with dust and cobwebs, that hung along one side like a wall. The old-world charm of the interior was somewhat spoiled by the rap CD blasting through the sound system and the mingled aromas of fried onions and disinfectant that hung in the air like a November fog.

  One elderly man hovered at the end of the bar in an advanced state of befuddlement. The other customers, eight in all, were seated at tables in morose little groups such as one usually finds in a bar in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. One group of three was playing cards. All conversation ceased when Auburn entered, and he could feel eight pairs of eyes on the back of his neck as he approached the bar.

  The man behind the bar, head shaved and eye-patch adorned with a silver number 8, was unmistakably Solomon Eight-Ball Zook. He perched motionless on a high stool, both hands resting flat on the counter, his solitary eye raking restlessly back and forth in unceasing vigilance.

  He fixed Auburn with an inquiring and vaguely hostile look.

  "Double vodka."

  Eight-Ball Zook didn't reveal, by so much as a change in the rhythm of his breathing, that he had heard anything until Auburn placed a ten dollar bill on the counter. Then he snapped and rubbed the bill, spirited it into a drawer, poured the vodka, and
stared off into a distant corner as if daring Auburn to ask for change.

  Auburn took his drink to a table near the huge stone fireplace. A fire fueled by newspaper, cardboard cartons, and what looked like the remnants of a wooden folding chair flickered fitfully on the hearth but shed no warmth. Glazed tiles above the carved mantelpiece bore heraldic emblems—lions rampant, dragons, a sword clenched in an armored fist, a menacing and imperious German eagle. Long-handled corn-popping baskets hung on the wall. The scent of stale smoke here contained an unmistakable tang of cannabis.

  From somewhere beyond the wall of curtains a waitress appeared and moved among the tables, gathering up dirty glasses and paper napkins and pocketing tips. Her hair was red—as in tomato juice—and she was wearing spiked heels, wide-mesh stockings, and an apron the size of an airline ticket. Her high-octane jasmine scent easily vanquished all the other smells in the place as she brushed past Auburn to flick a twisted scrap of paper off the stone curb around the fireplace. “Musta been a man been cleanin’ up ‘roun’ here,” she said.

  "Hey, baby,” said Auburn, “you lookin’ all cold an’ blue ‘roun’ the lips. Maybe you oughta set by the fire an’ warm up?"

  She gave him a long, cool glance of appraisal. “You gon’ buy me some antifreeze, honey?"

  Auburn put a twenty on the table.

  She sat down opposite him, took a sip of her drink, and looked at him more sharply over the rim of her glass. “Who you dentist?” she asked.

  He knew at once that the whole operation had been a mistake and that his cover was now about as thin as the peel of a grape. “Spencer D'Arcy,” he said. “You his helper, ain't you?"

  "Hygienist,” she nodded. “Was."

  She took another sip and stood up. “'Scuse me a minute, honey."

  Opposite the fireplace was a raised bandstand about eight feet square, dark and deserted at this hour except for a man who was puttering with speakers and microphones and from time to time manipulating the CD player. The waitress stepped across to the bandstand, spoke briefly to the man, and returned to Auburn's table.