Spare Parts: A Ted Mitchell Detective Novel (Ted Mitchell Detective Novels Book 4)

by Jeffrey Kinghorn

  “Hold on here,” I said, “are all those rabid religious people right about homosexuality? Are you trying to recruit me?”

  “Gay is the new communism,” said Adrienne. “Yesterday’s terror. A non-issue today.”

  “I’m calling Joseph McCarthy.”

  “Don’t bother,” she said, “behind every McCarthy is a Roy Cohn.”

  “Evil attracts evil,” I said, and was ready to go again. Adrienne sensed it and moved against me. “Whatever the hell it was that just happened,” I said, “a siren is now sounding in my head warning of danger.”

  “Look at you,” she said. She was referring to my anatomy.

  “What about it?” I said.

  She said, “Nice equipment, P.I.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” I said. “Government issued.”

  She said, “You sure know how to use it.”

  “Well,” I said, “you weren’t stingy with your confection either.”

  “Guess we’ve both been around the block,” she said.

  “Once or twice,” I said.

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” she said. “It was what is was.”

  I said, “So why does it feel like I’m being reeled in without quite realizing it?”

  “Decisions, decisions,” she said. “Men can’t abide a moment’s doubt.”

  “Everything in its place,” I said.

  “You know where I stand,” she said. “I have made an offer. I don’t intend to beg. Or to push.”

  “Much,” I said.

  “Right,” she said, “much. But as long as we’re connected the way we are at the hips, presently.”

  “Once again,” I said, “I am clear about why champion boxers keep themselves away from women before their big fights.”

  “That’s bullshit,” said Adrienne.

  “We are lying in this bed like we have nothing else to do,” I said. “Reznikov is on the run, and we have dissipated our resolve in carnal dalliance.”

  She whispered, “Let’s do it again.”

  “Have you forgotten what put us on this path?” I said.

  “No.” Adrienne sat up straight, groaned in pain, and lay back down next to me. “The incision’s back,” she said.

  “Time to start using our heads,” I said. I got up and began collecting my clothes. Socks first. “That sharp pain in your side is the real world knocking on the door of the lustfully derailed.”

  “No argument from me,” she said. “Who jumped whose bones here?”

  “I think it was you who seduced me,” I said.

  “Seduction?” she said. “Felt more like an appointment in Sumatra.”

  I said, “You going to be okay here on your own?”

  “Like you said,” said Adrienne, “if they were going to kill me, they had their chance.”

  “I’m going out to find Seldeen,” I said.

  “Why?” She said.

  “Because he’s out there after Reznikov,” I said, “and, like you, I don’t like anyone doing my work for me.”

  “He’s got a partner to avenge,” she said. “I’d say he’s working for himself.”

  “And you have a daughter,” I said.

  “Had a daughter,” she said. “Now I’ve got Grace.”

  “About that,” I said. I finished pulling myself together as Adrienne pushed herself up slowly to a sitting position, no longer oblivious to pain while in the throes of sexual congress.

  “About Grace?” she said.

  “What you see in me when I look at her,” I said, “is a deep pit of quicksand I am always just about to step into where children are concerned.”

  “You’ve got a few demons,” she said.

  “A few,” I said.

  “I’m all ears,” she said.

  “No point,” I said. “But I don’t intend to confuse my own need for a little redemption with the potential of her future. Or to complicate it either.”

  Adrienne said, “Whatever that means.”

  “It means what you see is only part of the story,” I said. “I’d be a fool to forget it.”

  “And what am I supposed to say to that?” she said.

  “Looks can be deceiving,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, though it sounded anything but.

  “Where,” I said, “at whom, and how I look, and what you see in it.”

  “Okay,” she said, with even more intonation.

  I tried to close with, “It’s a long story.”

  “Guess you’re going to keep it to yourself,” she said.

  “I’ll call you,” I said.

  “I’ll be here,” she said.

  The moment of parting grew awkward. We were not in the habit of kissing each other goodbye. Recent activity in the bed and on her living room floor had everything askew.

  “Go,” she said. “Just go.”

  And so I did.

  Twenty-five

  I went from vowing to work alone, to allowing as how I could work with Seldeen, to working for Seldeen, whose determination to get Reznikov because of Mulcahy’s murder was not to be overestimated. We were in his car, a Volvo S60, sporty, safe─good for family. The inner parking lot at the Sandpiper Motel had three cars in it, arrayed around it in front of rooms it was assumed were thus occupied. We parked in front of room seven. It was far enough away from the registration window so that I would not be readily identifiable from behind the glass which was no doubt bullet proof.

  Seldeen described the fellow who registered him. He did not sound like either of the clowns I had encountered there on my previous visit. He paid for an hour’s use of the room and came back and shielded me as we entered the room, which was to say he stayed between me and whoever might be looking out the registration window.

  Inside I led Seldeen directly into the bathroom, where we yanked open the wall heater and entered the carpeted passage-way that would let out in the motel office, having bypassed barred doors and impenetrable glass enclosures. I had a small LED pocket light that did a good job of lighting our way.

  Seldeen followed as we made our way toward whatever awaited us at the hot end of the tunnel. There was no telling if whatever muscle was guarding the fort had been vigilant about monitoring any video that might have broadcast our entrance into the room.

  I was familiar with the straight run of the passage-way as it followed the outside wall on that side of the building. I had not gotten as far as the egress end-point before and did not know what to expect. I hoped, but only tentatively, that we would just spill out into a room of unsuspecting, slow-to-react thugs. Barring that, I prepared for a slug-fest. Seldeen was ready for a fight to the finish. He grabbed my belt and tugged to indicate that I should hold up as he maneuvered around me into the lead position. Nothing to be gained by grappling for the point. But it was not lost on me that I had become a kind of Seldeen to his spirited Mulcahy.

  Better, I suppose than should I have been cast as Taggart and he as Ebbersole, which, eerily in the moment, informed me as to just how exposed Taggart was out in the field. Never could shake the suspicion that Ebbersole’s elevation had been more political than hard-earned, and Taggart seemed to know he was going to have to pick up some slack if he were going to stay alive, let alone protect her. What comes and at which moments never ceases to surprise my bent toward making connections of things. I shook it off and stayed close behind Seldeen.

  We turned the corner at the far end of the passage-way and came to a large louvered panel that on the opposite side, from inside the office, probably looked like a return vent as part of an HVAC system. We had doused the flashlight and could hear more than we could see. I thought I recognized the voice of a woman fielding orders like a man, which is to say, her authority was not to be questioned, nor did she communicate tolerance for non-compliance. As I suspected, it turned out to be Rain. Last I saw of her, she was inflicting physical punishment on the young girl in the mobile unit up in the 1960 enclave. Here she was running the show downtown. In
the time since I had been stitched up by Garrett Saunders at the Bayou Urgent Care Clinic, the confusion over who was in charge must have found some clarity.

  Seldeen remained ahead of me. I eased up next to him so that we were both looking through the vent, but were back far enough from it so as not to be conspicuous. We looked in on a pass-through room containing a photocopy machine and a water-cooler kiosk with a large, inverted, empty bottle. The coffee maker on an opposing counter shone a green on-light, indicating the half-filled carafe on the warming plate continued to receive heat. The coffee smelled scorched. Beyond the wall to the right would have been the glass-enclosed registration desk facing the inner parking lot. Straight ahead through a wide, open entryway was a cheaply paneled room that looked to be mostly empty, save for a folding work table and several scattered, metal, folding chairs. Not a window in sight.

  Rain came out of that room with an ether-net phone the size of a palmetto bug clipped to her ear. “He’s not here,” she said, “but I am, so do it.” She came directly to the vent behind which we lurked and opened it as if it were a hinged door. Not unlike school boys discovered up to no good, we were more surprised at her physical directness in revealing us than she was by our presence. Crouched at the end of the confined tunnel space, we didn’t have a lot of options. She indicated with a hand gesture that we should crawl down into the room as she continued to give orders via the telephone, “Because I said so!” she barked. “Are you going to need a demonstration of who’s in charge now, or are you going to do what you’re told?”

  As if it were all part of one continuous movement, upon opening the vent and clicking off the phone at her waist, she reached behind her back and presented a Sig Sauer, the barrel to which we presently looked down. Popular choice of weapon. At virtually the same moment, still inside the HVAC tunnel, Seldeen and I each produced our own weapons, the barrels to which she was presently looking down. “What the fuck is this?” she said.

  Our mission had been to breach the locked gates. We were expecting some muscle, not Rain. Not by herself. Not so visibly in charge. Not packing. We climbed down out of the tunnel. Rain backed up to give us room. “Where’s Reznikov?” said Seldeen.

  With the Sig still aimed in our direction, she called, “Hey, a little help out here!”

  Muscle appeared, one from the enclosed registration area, and another from the room she had just vacated. So far, she was the only one on their side with a gun, which spoke to the authority with which she comported herself.

  “Reznikov,” said Seldeen, “where is he?”

  “Disappeared,” said Rain.

  “What about the van?” I said. “His running crew?”

  “My van now,” she said. “Soon as I can find it. You know where it is?”

  “Is he still alive?” said Seldeen.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Rain, “he’s as good as dead.” Already invisible, I thought, now he just plain never existed. She added, “Guess I should thank you yahoos for thinning out the wannabes up at the ranch.”

  “That girl live through the beating you gave her?” I said.

  “That was you,” she said, “fired those shots?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Rain snorted and said, “Bitch thought I was playing or something.”

  I said, “She wise now?”

  “That gash had half a brain,” said Rain, “she’d be dangerous.”

  The tattooed gym-rats who had answered her call stood by waiting for direction, or an obvious move. The three principals remained at point blank range. It was stating the obvious, but it had to be done. “You even look like you might fire,” I said, “and you do realize there’s no way you can live?”

  She said, “And only one of you will.”

  The fellow closest to me telegraphed his intention to launch. I kicked him in the groin which folded him forward in my direction. I’d been holding the gun with two hands. I used my right to deliver a knife-blade blow to the back of his neck which put him all the way down. That he was so easily dispatched torpedoed Rain’s continued try for a power play.

  “Oh for Christ sake,” she said, as she lowered her gun and re-holstered it at the back of her waist and stood facing us with her hands on her hips. We followed her lead in re-holstering our weapons. She turned to the other guy and indicated the fellow on the floor with a fisted thumb jerked in his direction. She said, “Get Numb Nuts out of here.” We all gave way while the one side of beef dragged the downed side of beef back through the opening into the larger room. “You want to search the place?” said Rain. “Go ahead. He’s not here. And he’s not going to show up on the street unless he has a death wish.”

  I said, “What’s he hiding from?”

  “His shadow,” said Rain.

  “And me,” said Seldeen.

  “Whoever the fuck you are,” she said. “He’s not here.”

  “Meanwhile, you’re in charge?” I said.

  She said, “Until they send a posse.”

  “Who’s they?” said Seldeen.

  “Won’t know that,” she said, “until they show up.’

  “You think he’s dead,” said Seldeen, “Reznikov?”

  “Make my life a whole lot easier if he was,” she said.

  “Why don’t you cut out?” I said. “Let the others go?”

  “I know how to run this show,” she said. “And I just might get away with it.”

  “And if you don’t?” I said.

  She said, “I’ve got nowhere to go.”

  “Meantime,” I said, “you intend to prove yourself.”

  “You guys going to try and screw me up?” she said. “Let’s play it out now. Right here.”

  There didn’t seem much point in that. “Reznikov,” said Seldeen. “Nothing else matters.”

  She gave this next to me, “You know what I am. What I was to Juice. I took care of her until she climbed by herself up onto the table. It gets to that, it’s assumed you’re free and clear. I figured she’d found her way out.”

  “She almost did,” I said.

  “Her baby still alive?” said Rain.

  I said, “Yes.”

  “Grace, is it?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Rain absorbed that and was visibly buoyed by it. She said, “I could have made Juice mine, you know. It was like that between us.” I stayed locked on her but said nothing. “I should have kept her,” she said, “made her my wife.”

  Why did that suddenly hang out there as a viable choice for Allison, now grievously lost? A preferred one, even? Past all understanding. Still.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to that child while I’m in charge,” she said. It was enough to support her play to become the boss. She left us standing by ourselves as quickly as she had opened the louvered panel on us. Nothing roundabout in her, no nonsense, straight ahead on. She was not the first person for whom I had an inexplicable admiration, in whose manner it was abundantly clear that at every turn a good moment to die had presented itself.

  There didn’t seem much point in searching the place room by room after we’d seen the computer monitor that broadcast closed circuit video of virtually every square inch of the motel. It was in the large room Rain had come out of and had gone back into, and into which the one side of beef had dragged the other, latterly referred to as Numb Nuts.

  Seldeen had gone into the fortified registration desk area. I had proceeded straight into the room everyone else had disappeared into. Rain was at a computer work station on the near wall. She toggled several keys on the laptop which displayed the sexual activities under way in the rooms she monitored. Each shown what appeared to be out-of-shape, milquetoast men rutting on disinterested prostitutes of male and female persuasion, likely using lunch hours for relief from middle management lives that gave them no joy. At best, the sex looked to be momentary tension reduction, especially as regarded those receiving blow jobs fully clothed, most of them standing just inside the room doors. As it was mid-day,
business was brisk. All of this from three parked cars in the lot?

  Rain told the uninjured fellow to get back to the registration desk. She referred to him as Hammer, which I took to mean he had come up through the ranks off the streets, having been assigned his moniker in the customary manner Rain had told me about at the cemetery. Numb Nuts sat on the end of a tired patchwork sofa with his head collared in his hands, rubbing out the blow I’d landed on the back of his skull. He looked up at me from under his lowered head in a way that, again, telegraphed what he was thinking. Murder. Mine. An easy read. Seldeen came in, marked the non-event that was the room, and said, “I’m going to check outside.”

  I nodded. Rain started speaking but not to me; she was on the phone again that was clipped to her ear. She stood up and stepped away from the computer, making way for me. She had pointed to the arrow keys on the southeast corner of the keyboard. I sat down and used the arrow keys to switch the coverage from room to room. “Get her down here now,” she said “And let her know what’s in store when she gets here.” Where she had known which numbers to punch in order to monitor occupied rooms, the keys she had pointed out to me scanned the rooms in a predetermined order, even the empties. “No,” said Rain. “I want her scared. That’s right.” She moved about the floor as she talked, stalking. “And send in someone else,” she said, “boy, bitch, whatever he wants. We don’t give refunds.”

  The digital monitoring of the rooms brought home again how Hollywood does a good job of making sexual congress look attractive; in reality it looked like a grueling hydraulic exchange, executed in a lot less time than romance would have us think, accompanied often by grotesque facial rictus, indicating anything but pleasure.

  Rain went on, “I just told you we didn’t! If you were talking to the Russian, you wouldn’t be giving him this truckload of crap. Now shut up and do what you’re fucking told!” The last several frames revealed the passageway systems in every quarter of the complex, including a clear view of the louvered portal from behind which Seldeen and I had watched for those several moments, priding ourselves with a stealth it turned out we did not possess. “What you have to do to be heard by men,” said Rain.