The Last Man to Die (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “You’re telling me to go easy on the investigation?”

  He shook his head vigorously. “Not at all. I hope you find something out. I’m just saying there are some things in life you can’t always change. It comes from sitting by this window. Sometimes I’ve played with the idea that if Uncle Max had had a seat like this he’d still be alive. But then I tell myself, No, that was just the way Max was—an irresistible force. Trouble is, he came up against an immovable object.”

  He came forward, hand outstretched.

  “Good luck, Mr. Dunn. And I mean that. Because you remind me of him, you know.”

  After I left Levinthal’s office I stood on the steps, looking at the river, for a few minutes, reflecting on what he’d said. A wind whipped in from the water and a faint chill crept over my skin; then I realized the chill didn’t come from the breeze at all.

  Because Max Chantry and I were alike, perhaps in too many ways, and what bothered me was that the pattern of violence was beginning to repeat itself, forty-three years later.

  Damn it, Max, I thought for a single irrational instant, what’s going on? Why did you have to pick me?

  Then I took control of myself and headed for my second call of the morning: the offices of Julius Chantry.

  CHAPTER 13

  He was on the fifteenth floor of the Trade Mart. An ornate wooden wall sign said “Chantry, Guynes and Associates” in antique script. I glanced around; it looked as if they owned the whole floor, sort of like the governor’s office in Baton Rouge. I stopped in front of a desk and asked if Mr. Chantry was in.

  “It’s about the funeral arrangements for his late father,” I said, keeping my face sad. “It will just take a minute.”

  The receptionist, who must have spent half her monthly salary on her face, nodded with equal sadness, lifted a phone, and cupped her hand around the mouthpiece for privacy, but I could still hear what she was saying:

  “There’s a gentleman from the funeral home to see you. A Mr.…”

  “Dunninger,” I said.

  “Dunninger.”

  She nodded into the phone, replaced the receiver, and motioned for me to take a seat in one of the padded chairs.

  “He’ll be with you in a minute.”

  The minute passed, became five, then ten. I picked up a copy of Legal Economics and read about new systems of billing, and how to keep track of every minute you spent on your client’s case. At the end of twenty minutes I had finished the subject of billing and was halfway through the evils of no-fault when the phone buzzed and the receptionist nodded to me.

  “Left and all the way to the end,” she said.

  I floated down the hallway, my feet gliding over a carpet so soft I thought it might be compressed air. Original artworks decorated the corridor, the kind of things the cognoscenti buy cheap and hope to make a fortune on later. When I reached the big door at the end I halted, momentarily enjoying the view of the city through the big plate-glass window behind Julius Chantry’s desk.

  Then I took a deep breath and stepped in.

  It was about what I expected: more thick carpet; a mahogany desk; and a fireplace with a small bar next to it. The shelves were filled with lawbooks, and the walls held more paintings by Great Unknowns.

  Julius Chantry was staring at me through the rimless glasses and before I could take a second step into his inner sanctum he half-rose.

  “You!” he said.

  “Me,” I agreed. “Look, I’m sorry to take your time, but you asked me not to disturb your mother, so I thought I’d come here. There’re one or two questions that popped up and I thought maybe you could help.”

  “I don’t owe you anything,” he croaked. “Now get out of here.”

  “Look, Mr. Chantry, there’s been a murder, and somebody took a shot at me. That puts me squarely in the middle of this. You can talk to me, or you can talk to the police. Which is it?”

  It was a bluff but it worked. He let himself sink back into his seat and frowned.

  “A murder? What do you mean?”

  “Woman named Gourrier, over on Nashville. Somebody cut her throat.”

  “So?”

  “Yesterday the same person who killed the Gourrier woman took a shot at me outside my office. I don’t like being shot at. I tried to figure why they’d want to do it. Then I thought of another encounter I’d had at the Gulfland Funeral Home. Turns out the place is owned by the Mob. Did you know that, Mr. Chantry?”

  “How in the world would I know who owns a funeral parlor? Even if it were true?”

  “I dunno. You’re in real estate. I thought maybe you kept up with these things.”

  “Are you insinuating—”

  “No. I was just wondering why that particular funeral parlor was selected for your father’s burial.”

  “Of all the—!”

  “Surely there’s a simple answer.”

  “Of course there is. As if it’s any of your business. I have a policy there and so does my mother. Friends have used it. We didn’t ask for the list of owners.”

  “Of course not.”

  The hard expression melted slightly.

  “After all, the Gulfland is an institution in this city. If it’s owned by the people you say, it’s probably changed hands in the last few years. As one in real estate law, I can tell you that these things can be done very quietly. Naturally, if I’d heard any such rumor, I would have gone elsewhere.”

  “Of course.” I looked around the office and spotted the photo of a matronly looking woman with several smiling teenagers on the table behind him. Beside it was the likeness of a younger Lydia. “You must be very proud of your father, Mr. Chantry.”

  He frowned. “Proud? Well, yes, as a matter of fact I am.”

  “For one man to stand up against the Mob and City Hall takes a lot of guts.”

  His head nodded assent.

  “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Chantry. I’m sorry to have bothered you. How’s your mother?”

  His expression showed that he wasn’t sure how to take the question.

  “She is in very frail health. I’m very concerned.”

  “Please give her my best.”

  I left him at his desk, with the city to his back, and slid out the way I’d come. The receptionist ignored me and it was just as well. I didn’t want to have to pay Julius Chantry’s rates, not even for five minutes of his time. Especially when he’d spent it lying to me.

  I drove over to Geofind. The names were still tumbling through my mind: Fortier, LaMatta, Landry, Dennehy, Angelloz, Marconi. There was another name I kept looking for, one that wouldn’t shake loose, and I thought maybe if I talked to Carol Busby it would materialize. Besides, it was time to relieve Sandy.

  I saw her car when I pulled up outside the office, and got the same suspicious stare from the old black man on the porch. When I knocked Sandy came to the door, only opening the grille with a key when she saw who it was.

  “You came just in time,” she said. “I was getting hungry and I didn’t want to leave Carol here alone.”

  I checked my watch. It was just after eleven.

  “If you’ll pick me up a hamburger and fries, you can be on your way,” I said, handing her some money.

  Carol came forward from her place behind the computer.

  “Don’t you think we could go out?”

  “Later on,” I said. “Right now I want to relax a little, and I have a little more confidence in your front door than I do in some restaurant anybody can walk into.”

  “God,” Carol said, “if I’d known I was getting into this we never would’ve bid on the Ship Island contract.”

  Sandy went out and I locked the iron bars after her.

  “So how’s Sam?” I asked. “Any news?”

  She sighed and shook her head.

  “He’s being a real asshole. He’s pretending he’s about to die—and they said he ought to be out of there in a day or so. But every time they offer to release him he says he has head pa
ins or blurred vision and they do another test. He wants me there every second, next to his bed, and when I called and explained I couldn’t come he got childish.”

  “He’ll get over it,” was all I could think to say.

  “I doubt it,” she muttered, and flopped into one of the big basket chairs. “Well, where do we stand? Have they caught the man who shot at you yet?”

  I shook my head. “He’s still out there and I’ve been warned off the Gourrier case. But nobody said anything about the Chantry murder. They think that’s too old to worry about.”

  “Dimwits,” she said.

  “No, just practicality,” I said. “Most murders are pretty simple. The husband, the boyfriend, the neighbor. The cops’ll go after the obvious lead, the guy who went running out. They don’t have the manpower or the time to reopen a file forty-three years old and sift through every shred of evidence.”

  “But you do.”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  Her face softened. “I’m sorry I got you into this, Micah Dunn.”

  “Maybe it was fate,” I said with a half-smile.

  “Do you believe that?”

  “No, not really. But I’ve been in the Orient and there’s a strong dose of fatalism over there. Sometimes I catch myself wondering if they don’t have something.”

  “Tell me about what you’ve found out,” she asked then.

  I took a seat on the edge of the computer table and told her.

  Sandy came back with the hamburgers and we ate.

  “I was hoping you’d help me with the names,” I said, giving them to her. “I keep feeling like there’s one I’ve heard but left out.”

  “I’ll call you tonight,” Sandy said as I walked her out to her car. She leaned close. “By the way, who’s paying for all my hours? Not these people: They don’t have a pot to pee in.”

  “We’ll work something out,” I said limply.

  “Shore.” She got in the car, shaking her head, and I reminded myself how lost I’d be without her.

  I spent the rest of the day reading and talking archaeology with Carol. I’d picked up a fair amount from Katherine and I found myself listening to some of the same explanations and arguments that Katherine had tried on me. Once or twice I turned around and actually pretended it was Katherine in the room with me and not a girl in cutoff jeans, young enough to be my daughter.

  The trouble was that, away from Sam, Carol was fun. And I admired the way she had fought to stay in her field, scrambling for government contracts instead of succumbing to economic pressures and chucking it all to be an urban planner or government bureaucrat. It was the same reason I admired Katherine.

  We had lots of time to talk, because nobody called with more jobs, and she said that was typical, that in contract archaeology you were in a business the same as if you were an engineer or builder. You went for days and even months with nothing and then everything came at once. After a time we found ourselves talking about Max.

  “So he was a Communist?” she asked, crossing her legs so I could just see the inner, untanned portion of her thighs.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Not everybody who was against Franco in the Spanish Civil War was a Communist. It was sort of like being pro-Russia, the in thing for intellectuals.”

  “That was right after the First World War?” she asked. “He must have been young.”

  “Right before the Second,” I corrected. Suddenly I felt very old, because when I’d been in school the Spanish Civil War was something that had happened when my teachers were young.

  “So maybe Max would have been burning flags at Berkeley in the sixties,” she surmised. “You think?”

  I smiled, because this was her history and I remembered it all too well.

  “Somehow I don’t think so. I think the times were different.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded. “I think people in Max’s time trusted government more, whether it was theirs or somebody else’s. They got involved in causes that somebody’s government declared were good causes, even if it was the Soviet government. I think that was pretty much over by the late sixties.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I was born in ’sixty-six.”

  I started to tell her I was serving my first tour in ’Nam then, but it would have sounded patronizing.

  “Another difference,” I said, as the thought came to me. “I think a lot of the protesters in the sixties were pacifists. Or, at least, they claimed to be. I don’t think Max was one in any sense of the word.”

  “Because he fought in the war?”

  “Not just that. Levinthal told me he came from the Irish Channel. That was a rough area back then Max even got his nose broken as a kid. And if he was at Tulane on a football scholarship, he was as competitive as hell. Most of the kids who go there are from rich families. I’ll bet he had some hard times. You have to be a fighter to get that far, and keep swinging.”

  “I know,” she said. “I made it through on a scholarship and it was still tough.”

  A car went by slowly and I got up and walked to the door to make sure it kept going.

  “How long do I have to live like this?” she asked. “The rest of my life? I feel like a protected witness.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, this man with the bad face—Frake—can’t hide forever.”

  “No,” I agreed, and didn’t bother to mention that they could always find somebody else.

  “You think Max got too close to them, don’t you?” she asked.

  “It’s possible,” I said. “But who’s the them? The Mob? City Hall? People in state politics?”

  “Whoever it is, they must still be afraid.”

  “I know. But it doesn’t make any sense. None of them are still around. The man who won the 1950 D.A. race is dead. Max’s wife, Lydia, remarried and made another life. And Julius was too young to even know what was happening.”

  She smiled then, a funny little smile that seemed to come out of nowhere.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Julius,” she said. “You ever wonder what Max would’ve thought of him? This fat, rich lawyer who does real estate?” She leaned toward me, eyes intent on my own: “Or even worse, what if Max had lived? Do you think somewhere along the way he would have changed and become a Julius?”

  It was something I hadn’t thought about: Max had never had a chance to become disillusioned. Finally I shook my head.

  “Not Max. The sixties protesters maybe, but not Max.”

  I wanted to keep a few illusions.

  Sandy came back at six-thirty, a blast of late-afternoon heat sweeping into the room with her.

  “Can’t do anything with the names,” she announced. “At least, not in one afternoon, and everybody’s gone home for the weekend now. But I did have one piece of luck.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I found the name of a political science professor at Tulane. He’s written some books and articles about the Morrison era and the late Long period. I haven’t talked with him yet, but one of my friends downtown said he’d been doing some checking in old records for some project. Here’s his name, and I found his number in the book.”

  I took the slip of paper.

  “Thanks, Sandy. I’ll try him.”

  I left Sandy to help Carol close up. They were headed for the hospital, after which Sandy was taking Carol to her place for the second night. I thought of going back to my office, but I couldn’t make myself do it: What if there was another letter from Katherine? What if there wasn’t? What if there was somebody like Kelso waiting for me? Then I’d have to make talk and I didn’t feel like it right now.

  But I remembered Kelso was at the camp with his daughter, and felt relieved. He was a good old man, and I didn’t want to be responsible for his death.

  I ate in a dark little hole off the river, hunched in the corner over a glass of draft beer and an oyster po-boy.

  Had Max Chantry ever been here? I wondered. M
aybe seated at this table? Then I caught myself: These places didn’t last that long, and this one certainly hadn’t been around then.

  I called O’Rourke, mainly because I wanted to hear his voice.

  “Where are you?” he asked. “I hear music in the background.”

  “A place with atmosphere,” I said, and told him about the last few days.

  “My father probably knew him,” O’Rourke said. “But I never heard him mention his name.”

  It was an interesting thought: O’Rourke’s father had been a war veteran and district attorney in the fifties, which put him in Max Chantry’s generation. But John Senior had died in the seventies, disgusted with his war-protester son. O’Rourke’s father had had a reputation for honesty among one section of the citizenry, but there was another that felt he had set up his own machine.

  “Well, Chantry was long dead by the time your father took office,” I said.

  I fished out the sheet of paper Sandy had given me and held it up to the light so I could see the name.

  “By the way, ever hear of a Professor William Mann, at Tulane?”

  “Sure. He wrote an article about my old man. I thought it was fair to him, but the old man would’ve screamed. He came to ask me some questions five or six years ago. I heard he was working on a biography of Chep Morrison. Why?”

  I told him what Sandy had said.

  “Yeah, well, he may know something. But, look, Micah, does it seem you’re going a little overboard on this thing? I mean, you don’t really have a client, just this girl, and whoever killed Chantry’s probably dead.”

  “Probably,” I said.

  “Well, keep your back covered.”

  We said our good-byes and I returned to my table and finished my po-boy. Fifteen minutes later I parked under a camphor tree on Fontainbleau.