The Adventures of Doc Daye, Book 1

by Tommy Hancock

  “One day,” I said, smiling more sincerely at Lawrence Tate, “you’re going to throw a stroke in front of everybody just to make ‘em think you really don’t care for Doc and me.”

  “You I don’t care for,” Tate rumbled, his blue eyes shining with schoolboy playfulness. “And besides, you can rush me upstairs or into one of these cubby holes if I ever do collapse and Tempus can work his magic.”

  Although it may seem totally unnecessary to hide the fact that Lawrence Tate not only tolerated, but greatly respected and thought highly of Doc Daye, trust someone who was there. It was essentially necessary. One reason was buried in our collective pasts. The other was that even though the Daye family, Doc in particular, had lent his great mind and faculties to many things that made Sovereign a city beyond compare, it wasn’t just the common man or the money makers that resented the wunderkind who employed me. The current political administration, although machine was probably the more appropriate term for that outfit, at the time did not look wistfully on the works of Doc Daye. That made it a little tense for Lawrence Tate if he appeared to be playing ball with Sovereign’s resident hero.

  Tate’s eyes softened. “I’ve not seen him in awhile, not since that lost tribe in the subway caper. How is he, Tom?”

  I hated that question, grew to hate it even more every time someone who knew Doc well asked it. Not only because of what it referred to whenever someone asked it, but also that it was a question that only had one answer. “He’s…He’s Doc Daye. Pluggin’ away at the latest invention, solvin’ the latest of the world’s ills, and thrustin’ me out in front of oncoming cavemen and exploding movie stars.”

  Tate nodded, not wanting to go where that question could take us anymore than I did. “Any of that relate to why Rothguard is lying dead out there with a sinkhole in his chest?”

  I shook my head. “That one, Chief, is a total and complete mystery. At least to me. For all I know Doc may already have an explanation, suspects, and solution well in hand and all before quitting time.” Neither of us smiled because we both knew how true this might be. “There’s something unrelated brewing upstairs, too.” I didn’t offer details concerning our corpse in miniature in the mailbox and, at least one on one, Tate knew not to pursue any. I only ever held out on the good officers of Sovereign City until Doc and I had all the information we needed. Well, usually.

  “We don’t have much,” Tate admitted, “except that this is probably linked to the Biltmore and Greerson deaths.”

  I tried to fight it, but I know my left eyebrow arched inquisitively at the Chief’s comment. “Biltmore? Greerson?” Those two names flickered dimly in my recent memory. They’d led off the last half of Doc’s morning memorandum I’d found on Mabellyn this morning. They indeed flickered, but didn’t cast much light beyond that. That would be up to Lawrence Tate.

  He led off with a single nod. “Like Rothguard, two men who probably should have died choking on rolls of dollar bills. Biltmore worked in pharmaceuticals and Greerson in construction. They and Rothguard were three of the ten richest men in Sovereign.”

  “Which means among the top fifty or so on the globe.” I once more showed off my expert dexterity at finishing off obvious thoughts. “That’s a top ten that boasts a pretty hefty list of names. Fergus, Walken, Olliman-“

  “Daye,” Lawrence interrupted. “At the top.”

  This time I nodded. “So, Greerson and Biltmore. They go the same way as ‘Mustaches’?”

  “Biltmore, not at all. His wife rolled over one morning and laid that fabulously diamond adorned hand of hers in a pool of blood. Someone had slit little Johnny Biltmore’s throat from lobe to love. While he slept.”

  “And while she lay beside him.” I wondered if Tate could hear my rusted wheels turning.

  “Greerson bears some comparison. He was making a toast at a luncheon about three weeks ago. He said a few words, lifted his glass to his lips, and drank his wine in one swig.”

  “Yeah.” This one I remembered reading about. I thought then that it might pique Doc’s curiosity enough that I’d be sent to chase down leads, but we had bigger fish to fry then. Giant killer fish. “Down the gullet goes the wine and within minutes up same said gullet comes blood and what remained of Greerson’s stomach.”

  “Other parts, too,” Tate said, a sickened pallor passing over his face. “I watched the doc split Greerson for the autopsy. It looked like a war zone, nothing left but pieces.”

  “Anything else that ties all of these together?”

  Lawrence grimaced. “Nothing solid. There’s been some major shake ups within Greerson’s and Biltmore’s companies since the deaths. In both instances, sons stood to inherit both the estates and the positions of their fathers. The money, it seems, they will get, but each company has announced it will be ran by ‘an interim committee of concerned investors.’”

  “Yeah,” I sneered, “that sounds honest and above board. Rothguard didn’t have children.”

  “And he was widowed. We expect investors to suddenly become concerned and form a committee in his case, too.”

  “All right,” I said, mentally making sure every sound and nuance of this conversation was solidly committed to memory. If Doc was not present, I’d learned a long time ago I saved a lot of time and shoe leather by being able to recite as exactly as possible everything my five senses detected anytime we were working on anything. “Mind if I look over the body?”

  “It’s expected,” Lawrence said, moving away from the wall as I did. “I’ve already blustered about it and yelled how I was going to give you a good talking to about interference in police matters. That way I can just act grumpy and perturbed when you do saunter over and take a gander.”

  I laughed as I waved my hand at the wall. “Sauntering is not for corpses. That’s reserved for those who live, breathe, and call me “Tommy” from between full, red lips.”

  The panel slid open as Chief Lawrence playfully punched me in the back, prompting me to sort of stumble into the lobby as he said, “Get movin’ ‘Tommy.’ I stifled both a smile and the urge to give as good as I got and took a quickstep to right myself, turning toward the last place August Rothguard ever fell.

  This time Chief Lawrence was the one who took point and cut me a path through the mingled official and non official types littering the lobby. As I followed him past the desk, I realized Frank Yemen was no longer there. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw him near the elevators leaned against the wall talking to Benny Bettetinni, one of the best badged detectives I’d ever known. I could hear Benny’s thick Italian accent soothing Frank, pouring out like Mama Bettetinni’s marinara. Frank nodded, holding his still oddly colored hand with his other one, his face glistening with perspiration. I hoped Benny finished soon so Doc could put an eye on the young guard.

  “Madam,” Chief Lawrence said through clenched and nearly grinding teeth to the woman from before, “if you do not move so Mister Pariah here can continue to muck up my day, then I will arrest you and your three darling children for vagrancy!”

  The woman mumbled something that sounded both stricken and fearful, but I ignored it as I knelt down and lifted the sheet that covered the body. Not by choice really, it just happens that way when I lay eyes on what I know is as of yet unexplained, even impossible. It’s definitely a skill I honed while working with Doc, but really the ability to block out all else and almost make a mental recording of conversations, scenes, and otherwise had always been part of my bag of tricks. It made school really easy, being able to glance over Miss Grenata’s shoulder in math class and commit every answer on that test key to memory.

  August Rothguard’s eyes were closed, probably by some sympathetic beat cop who got to the scene before everyone else. But no one had closed his mouth. It gaped, blood now dried all around it. It was wide open, stiff with rigor, frozen in stark raving madness. His left mustache lay limp against his sallow cheek, the right one jutting out, hardened by caked blood. His neck, gory with what had once been his i
nternal organs, dropped off into a gaping maw that had minutes before been his chest and upper abdomen. His spine was visible from my vantage point, hunks of meat and tissue dangling from his vertebrae. I looked past the obvious cause of death and over what remained of his stomach and down past his waist to his legs. A loose thread caught my eye and then about a half inch below that, another one. I looked up and down both pants legs twice to be sure. And found on each leg a series of what might have been mistaken for spots of wear and tear on an old pair of slacks. Except these were tailor made slacks for one of the richest men in the world. And these were not random holes, but pulls and cuts made in a consistent repeated manner. And the existence of a four inch dead man upstairs in my office clinched that these weren’t just loose threads.

  “Chief,” I said quietly, sensing he was standing just behind me, “these little places on his pants. See them?”

  “Yes,” Tate replied. “Benny noticed them, but we got nothing that tells us what they are. Like he ran a wire brush over them or something.”

  “No,” I said, “but there’s something I want to check that might explain it.” I started to stand as my eyes worked their way up Rothguard for one last study. They halted on the remnants of his lower belly. Nothing much there except ragged shards of skin. Skin the color of pennies.

  “Frank!”

  My yell was overshadowed by the fact that I knocked Sovereign City Chief of Police Lawrence Tate flat on his back as I exploded upright. I turned as I stood and barreled across the lobby. Someone shouted behind me and two policemen, one uniform and the other a detective, swarmed at me from left and right. I raised my head, looked beyond them as Benny Bettetini helped Frank Yemen toward the elevator. The first uniform to reach me tried to grab my left arm. He got it, but not the way he wanted. I flailed with intent, slapping the poor kid hard enough against the head to knock him aside. I yelled again at Frank as the detective, one I didn’t know, raised his left hand. Before he ever formed a fist, I lowered my shoulder like Knute Rockne and planted it with an assist from my head in his neck. He garbled some curse at me as he fell to one knee. Bettatini was looking now, turned to face me. As he did, Frank Yemen went to his knees, both arms clutching his stomach.

  Benny tried to do double duty, holding onto Yemen and reaching for me at the same time. I had no time to explain, but the look on my face as I charged Bettetini like a drunk for the last drink must have said enough. Benny wrapped both hands around Frank and slung the now quivering man’s body at me. I bear hugged Yemen and turned around toward the wall behind the lobby desk. Chief Tate ran up to the desk, yelling for all his men to cease and desist. I faced the wall behind the desk and slapped the wall with my left hip hard. As I waited for the door to open, I felt something. Something rumbling through Frank Yemen’s body. Tremors like when I worked cattle back in Oklahoma as a kid. I couldn’t explain it but something was stampeding through Frank Yemen’s body!

  Before the panel slid completely open, I flung Yemen through the gap, this time slapping the sensor in the wall hard with the flat of my left hand. “Sit tight, Frank,” I offered, knowing I was yelling while trying to calm him down, “This’ll all be over in the next few minutes.” The kid looked up at me, his eyes half lidded, and nodded as the panel slid shut. Where I expected to see terror, I saw trust. I just hoped the kid had put it in the right place.

  “Keep back!” I yelled as I put my back to the wall concealing the panel. The detective I’d waylaid was back on his pins now and coming at me. Lawrence Tate stepped between the charging rhino of a man and me, Benny Bettatini at his shoulder. Tate held his hand up and the detective, one that I found out later had been working the east side of Sovereign for ten years, knew his boss well enough to know what a raised hand meant. He stopped dead in his tracks and very nearly came to attention.

  “What is it?” Tate asked, not bothering to cloak anything in false bravado and anger. “What did you see?”

  “Copper,” I answered. “His skin was colored like copper. Like Frank’s hand.”

  Voices murmured, but Benny Bettatini’s conquered the rising din. “Then that kid was about to, what, explode?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But the room he’s in has certain…properties that sometimes help with physical issues.”

  “And just exactly what does that mean?” snapped off the detective who probably would have a chip on his shoulder where I was concerned for the rest of his career.

  “It means,” chided Chief Tate, “that Mister Pariah has to go upstairs and see his boss so Doc Daye can tell him if there’s still a man in that room…or just a godawful mess to clean up.”

  END OF BOOK ONE