“I understand,” he said. “Thank you.”
She left the room and he walked to the bed. Burke was breathing evenly, the machine beeping rhythmically.
Talk to Polly was all he had. “I need more, old man. Come on, wake up.”
He didn’t.
“How’s he doin’?”
He turned, saw Telemaco standing in the doorway.
“Resting,” Sangster said. “They tell me that’s the best thing he can do.”
“Has he said anything?”
“No,” Sangster said. “He hasn’t come around.”
“And downstairs?”
“I told you what he said when you bought me that great cup of coffee.”
“I know,” Telemaco said. “I just thought maybe ya’ll might have something to add.”
“No,” Sangster said, “I’ve got nothing.” He turned and looked at Burke. “I was hoping he’d wake up and talk to me.”
“Well,” the detective said, “I’m gonna leave a man on the door in case he does wake up and say something.”
“Or in case somebody wants to hit him on the head, again?”
“Yeah,” Telemaco said, “that, too.”
“Mind if I keep in touch with you?” Sangster asked. “In case he asks for me?”
“I’d actually prefer that,” Telemaco said.
“Fine.”
Telemaco started to leave, then stopped.
“You comin’?”
“Yeah,” Sangster said, with a last look back at the man in the bed, “I was just leaving.”
Telemaco walked with Sangster to the front door, and out.
“Can I drop you anywhere?” he asked.
“I’ve got a car,” Sangster said.
“Okay, then.”
“Where’s your partner?”
Telemaco jerked his head toward the curb. There was a Crown Victoria there with Williams behind the wheel.
“Oh,” Sangster said, “glad I didn’t need that ride.”
“I’ll see you . . . Stark.”
As the detective started away Sangster asked, “Your partner find anything in Pirates Alley?”
Telemaco just waved and kept going.
When he was sure the cops were gone Sangster turned around and went back inside.
He found Nurse Claire O’Malley in the emergency room, standing at the front desk talking to the nurse behind it.
“Mr. . . .” she said, as he approached.
“Stark,” he said. “Can we talk?”
“Sure,” she said, “I have a few minutes.”
They walked off to one side and stood against a wall. There was plenty of activity going on around them, and no one was paying much attention to them.
Sangster noticed that while she might be called a plain woman, there was still something very attractive about her. Maybe it was the white nurse’s uniform. He’d never understood the appeal of the Catholic school girl look, but a nurse . . . well, that was different.
“Can I assume that you’re the one who spent the most time with Burke?” he asked.
“Well . . . maybe other than the doctor who actually worked on him.”
“Can you tell me if he had any other bruises?”
“Bruises?”
“Yes,” Sangster said, “maybe around his ribs, or torso—”
“Are you thinking he might have been beaten?”
“Or kicked, while he was down.”
She thought a moment, then said, “No, there was no indication of that. Are you . . . a policeman?”
“Just his friend and neighbor.”
“A rather good friend, I’d say, for him to ask for you.”
“That’s another question,” he said. “You told me I was his emergency contact. Did he have something on him, in writing, I mean, to that effect?”
“No,” she said, “he told me specifically to call you, and gave me your phone number.”
“Was he able to say anything else?”
“Like what?”
“Well, anything that might be helpful in figuring out who did this to him.”
“No,” she said, “nothing . . . but isn’t that the job of the police?”
“Yes, of course,” Sangster said, “I’m just trying to be . . . helpful.”
“Really?” she asked. “You seem to know what kind of questions to ask.”
“I read a lot of mysteries.”
She looked at the tiny watch on her wrist.
“I have to go back to work.”
“Of course,” he said, “thank you for talking to me.”
“No problem.” She stood there a moment more, then said, “Call me . . .”
“What?”
“. . . if you think of anything else you, uh, want to ask me,” she finished.
“Oh,” he said. “Yes, okay . . . thanks, again.”
She nodded. As she walked away he suddenly had the urge to see what she looked like with all those red curls down.
FOUR
He made sure the hospital had his phone number, in case anything went wrong, and left to drive back home to his house in Algiers. He’d return later in the day, during visiting hours, hopefully he’d find something out by then.
When he got home there wasn’t much to do except catch a few winks. He removed his shoes, laid down on the bed fully dressed and fell asleep.
He woke several hours later, ravenously hungry. He made himself an egg sandwich, washed it down with two cups of strong coffee. Finishing the last cup, he looked out the window at Burke’s house, next door.
Polly was a middle-aged woman who cleaned Burke’s house for him. As for his own house, Sangster cleaned it himself, not wanting anyone inside at any time, even though Burke had recommended Polly several times.
He sometimes saw Polly arrive in the morning between eight and nine a.m., other times saw her leave about three or four in the afternoon. However, he didn’t know her, or what her exact schedule was. So he wasn’t sure if she’d be cleaning Burke’s house on this day, but that was the only place he had to start.
He rinsed his empty cup out, grabbed the extra key Burke had given him some time ago, and went next door.
In the almost four years he had been renting his house on Algiers Point, across Lake Ponchartrain from the French Quarter, he had played chess with Burke at least three times a week. They alternated porches for their games, turning their matches into a home and away series.
The two houses were similar: two story wood-frame structures that had survived both the fire of 1895 and Hurricane Katrina. Sangster rented his, but Burke owned.
Before using the key he knocked, in case Polly was inside cleaning. When there was no answer he used the key to let himself in.
Burke also had an extra key to Sangster’s house, but it had taken the two men a long time to trust each other that much. Sangster, the ex-hitman, had been shocked to find that Burke, the ex-lawman, was a kindred spirit, and the two had formed a bond—the kind of bond Sangster had never experienced, and never could have experienced, before that morning when he woke to find that he suddenly had a soul.
It took only seconds to ascertain that Polly was not around. However, the house was clean, so he assumed she had been there in the past day or so.
There wasn’t much he could do for his friend until he spoke with Polly. That meant finding her. Burke had a small office, with a desk and one file cabinet. Sangster went through the cabinet. In the first drawer he discovered Sheriff’s Department files, all of them unsolved cases. But he wasn’t interested in those at the moment. In the second drawer he found what he wanted: copies of paid—and unpaid—bills. He had to go through gas, electric, mortgage and other monthly bills before finding some canceled checks that had been written to Polly. He pulled the folder out, leafed through it, and finally found Polly’s address. He didn’t recognize the street, but it was also an Algiers address. He kept the piece of paper it was written on and returned the file to the cabinet. Then he left Burke’s house, lo
cking the door behind him.
He went back to his house, using his landline to call the hospital and check on Burke’s condition. A woman at the nurse’s station told him Mr. Burke’s condition had not change—no better, no worse.
“Can you tell me if there is still a policeman outside his door?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, there is.”
“Thank you.”
He hung up. There was no reason for him to rush to the hospital right away. So, he decided to go find Polly, and then see Burke during the evening visiting hours.
After locking up his house, Sangster set off on foot to find Polly.
Algiers was home to many pubs and restaurants—no fast food places allowed—many of which, like the Old Point Bar, had live music. Some of the Mardi-Gras troupes had warehouses there. In addition, there were many Catholic and Baptist churches in the area. The population was about 2,200.
As Sangster walked, he discovered that Evelina Ave, where Polly lived, was also in Algiers Point, but on the other side of the ferry landing. When he reached the address he saw it was one of the older shotgun style houses, so-called because there were no hallways inside. You could fire a shotgun through the front door and the bullet would come out the back door.
He stepped up to the front door and knocked. After a few moments the door was answered by a small boy about eight.
“Hello,” he said, looking up at Sangster.
“Hello,” Sangster said, “does Polly Bourque live here?”
“Yeah,” the boy said, “she’s my ma. I’m Hugo.”
“Hugo, is your ma home?”
“Naw,” the boy said, “she’s at work.”
“Work?”
“She cleans.”
“Are you here alone?”
“Naw,” Hugo said. “My sister’s here.”
“Is she older than you, or younger?”
“She’s older.”
“Can I talk to her?”
Instead of answering, the boy turned and ran back inside the house, yelling, “Octavia!”
Sangster waited and after a few moments a teenage girl wearing tank top and cut offs, came to the door. She was dark-skinned, pretty, with pointy little tits and not an ounce of fat on her. She looked him up and down, pushing her pokies out at him.
“Where y’at?” was the traditional New Orleans greeting, only she said, “Where YOU at?”
“What it is,” he said, giving the standard response.
The girl smiled and said, “You ain’t no Algerine.”
“No, I’m not,” he said. “I’m looking for your mother.”
“Why?”
“A friend of hers is in the hospital,” Sangster said. “I just want to let her know.”
“I can tell ’er.”
“I’d like to tell her myself,” he responded. “Where she is?”
“She’s workin’.”
“Your little brother told me that much. Can you tell me where?”
“It’s Tuesday, so I think today she’s doin’ the schools.”
“The schools?”
“Yeah,” the girl said. “She cleans a couple of the schools.”
“Which ones?”
“I think she’s on Old Aurora today,” she said. “That’d be Alice M. Harte Elementary or Edna Karr High.”
Sangster didn’t know the schools in Algiers, but he could find them.
“Thanks for the information, Octavia.”
She cocked her head to one side and said, “You wanna maybe come in, have a drink?”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Call me in four or five years, Sweetheart.”
As he walked away he heard her say, “Chicken.”
Back to TOC
Here’s a sample from J.L. Abramo’s Circling the Runway, a Jake Diamond mystery.
ONE
James Bingham stood at the curb in front of the high-rise residence, talking with the taxi driver who had dropped off the occupant of apartment 3501 a few minutes earlier. Bingham was inquiring into the availability of deeply discounted cartons of cigarettes. The cab driver assured Bingham he would hook him up that weekend.
Bingham walked back into the lobby as the cab pulled away.
As James Bingham approached the security desk he heard footsteps approaching from behind. Before Bingham could turn to the sound, his head was clamped between two large hands and with the twist of two powerful wrists Bingham was dead.
The woman opened the door leading from the stairwell to the thirty-fifth floor apartments only wide enough to see the hallway in both directions. Finding the hallway deserted, she pushed the door open just enough to slip through. She moved down the hall to the right and stopped in front of the door marked 3501. She pulled a plain white letter-sized envelope from the pocket of her coat and slipped it under the door. She returned to the stairwell doorway, passed through it and started down the stairs. She looked at her wristwatch—it was twenty-six minutes after midnight. She walked down to the thirty-second floor and took the elevator to the lobby. She glanced out of the elevator door. The security guard station was still unoccupied. She quickly exited, nearly colliding with a man walking a dog in front of the building.
The dog walker, Ethan Lloyd, would later say he saw a woman wearing a long blue coat at nearly half-past twelve, alone, sporting sunglasses. A blue scarf wrapped around her head. Ethan considered the coat unnecessarily heavy for such a mild evening, thought the dark glasses were oddly inappropriate for the time of night, and added that the scarf did a very good job of hiding her face and hair. He watched the woman as she moved away from the building along Third Street. Lloyd lost sight of her heading north toward Market Street.
Ethan Lloyd entered the building wondering, as he had wondered going out less than twenty minutes earlier, why James Bingham, the lobby doorman, was not at his post.
Bingham was actually there, but Ethan Lloyd could not see him. James was on the floor, hidden behind the large desk with a broken neck.
The man who had unceremoniously snapped James Bingham’s neck moved to the door of apartment 3501 and he used a key to enter. Less than three minutes later he was about to open the apartment door to leave when he saw a white envelope slide under the door. He stood perfectly still. He heard footsteps moving away from the door and he heard the stairwell door close. He waited a full fifteen minutes before leaving and, as instructed, used a shoe found in a hall closet to keep the door from shutting completely.
The man left the building through the parking garage and he walked calmly down Third Street to Howard Street. Before reaching the intersection of Third and Hawthorne, just beyond the Thirsty Bear Brewing Company, the passenger door of a parked Cadillac opened to the sidewalk and he was invited by the driver to get in.
“Well?” the driver asked.
“Done deal,” Sal DiMarco answered.
“Did you ditch the key?”
“I did.”
Fuck me, Sal thought—remembering he had forgotten to ditch the key.
He carefully slipped the apartment key from his pocket and dropped it under the seat of the Cadillac while the driver was occupied watching for an opening in the busy street traffic.
“Any problems?”
“A bit of collateral damage, no worries.”
“Tell me about it,” the driver said as he pulled away from the curb.
The woman in blue continued walking up Third Street to Market Street, crossed Market to O’Farrell Street, went west to Powell Street and circled back down to Market.
The woman disappeared down into the Powell Street BART Station.
At half-past midnight the raucous crowd at Johnny Foley’s Irish Pub and Restaurant was so deafening that Tom Romano, Ira Fennessy and Jake Diamond had to escape. They clawed their way out onto O’Farrell Street heading for the Powell Street BART Station one block away to grab a taxi.
“Did you see that woman?” asked Ira, as they crawled into a c
ab.
“What woman?” Tom asked.
“Going down into the station. Did you see her, Jake?”
“I can’t see anything, Ira. What about her?”
“She was all in blue.”
“And...”
“Should have been green, don’t you think.”
“I can’t think,” Diamond said.
“Where to?” asked the cabbie.
“O’Reilly’s Bar, Green Street, North Beach,” Ira answered.
“Jesus, Ira, have a heart,” Jake pleaded. “Let’s end this nightmare.”
“Not until the fat lady sings Danny Boy.”
“God forgive us,” said Diamond. “We should have played pinochle.”
“Anyone in the market for cheap cigarettes?” the taxi driver asked as he pointed the cab toward Broadway.
Benny Carlucci stumbled out of The Chieftain Irish Pub on Third and Howard Streets. Carlucci was asked to leave—not very politely. He found himself out on the street alone. He tried to remember if he had arrived with anyone, but soon gave up trying.
He walked west on Howard Street toward Fourth, passing the Moscone Center on his left and the Metreon to his right. Benny walked down Fourth toward the train station at King Street. He spotted a black Cadillac parked halfway up on the sidewalk between Harrison and Bryant under the Highway 80 overpass.
There was definitely something not right about that car in that place at that time.
Benny was a curious kid. The vehicle stimulated his interest.
Carlucci casually approached the Cadillac, looking up and down Fourth Street as he moved. Other than what appeared to be three teenage boys horsing around a few streets down toward the train station, the area was deserted.
Benny expected to find another drunk, like so many others running and falling all over town—this one most likely passed out cold behind the wheel of the big car. Carlucci peered into the passenger door window. The vehicle was unoccupied and the keys dangled from the ignition. He quickly surveyed the street once again and tried the door. It was unlocked. Carlucci pulled it open and slipped into the driver’s seat. He was thinking a ride home in a Coupe de Ville would beat the hell out of a long drunken trip on the train and then a bus ride from the train station to his place on Cole Street off Fulton. The car started with the first turn of the key.
Death is Not Forever (Barefield Book Book 3) Page 29