BEAT to a PULP: Hardboiled

by Garnett Elliott

  "Something like that. Only not blackmail to use against me—instead, something to use against Po'boy. After Hurricane Katrina, see, the mob territories down in New Orleans got sorta shifted around from the way they'd been for years and years. Hell, the whole freakin' city damn near got flushed out into ocean, you think the mob bosses had their shit together any better than anybody else? Records got washed away, people got washed away—some by Mother Nature, some by guys looking to take advantage of the situation and give Mother a helping hand, if you catch my drift.

  "So anyway, the way things got restructured left a little bigger slice for some of the newer guys—Cubans, Mexicans, Asians, even a few Russkies and the like from those old Communist countries. They'd all been latecomers to the show after the original boundaries were set, so they were stuck sucking hind tit until Katrina gave them an opening for something better. When all was said and done, it naturally left some of the old-timers with a smaller piece of the action. Been hard feelings ever since. Trouble simmering. Po'boy, he didn't lose hardly anything so a lot of those simmering hard feelings by other old-timers have been aimed at him."

  "Let me guess," I said. "The guy you whacked was associated to one of those old-timers who were harboring bad feelings for Po'boy."

  "Bingo," Garma responded. "He was some kind of hotshot lawyer or something. Nobody from the ranks I would've ever heard of or been able to recognize, but still important to their organization. And it was one of the old-timers from a different outfit—never mind names, just another one who was jealous of what Po'boy had been able to hang onto—who set me up. His message to Po'boy: Cut me a slice of your action to help balance out what I lost and none of this goes any farther. Otherwise we do it the hard way and I see to it So-and-So gets a copy of the video, showing your top hitter taking out one of his men. Then I'll sit back and watch the war break out. When the dust settles, I step forward and still claim that bigger slice I'm after—from the loser."

  Thunderbringer gave a low whistle. "You boys play rough down there."

  Garma shrugged. "Part of what keeps the juices pumping in an old gunslinger like me, I guess."

  "Which sorta makes me wonder," I said, "why you're up here when it sounds like things are getting ready to pop down in the Big Easy. You don't strike me as somebody who runs away from a fight."

  "Not hardly." Garma's eyes narrowed. "Been up to me, I'd've called the bluff of those video peddlers in a heartbeat. And that's a fact. Told 'em to go ahead and start the ball rolling and we'd meet whatever came with it in the war zone. Put an end to all that your-slice-is-bigger-than-mine business once and for all. Whoever's left standing wins the pot and that'd be the end of it."

  "But I take it Po'boy didn't want to play it that way."

  "No, he didn't. He's mellowed in his old age. A lot. Says he's seen too much of bloodshed. Thinks it's time we learn to handle things smarter. Thinks this dispute—his word—can be worked out with talk, avoid jumping to battle lines like in the old days. Figured he'd have a better chance of negotiating a peace settlement—his words again—if I was out of town, off the radar while he was trying to get it done."

  B.U. managed a dry chuckle. "And everybody knows you can't get much farther off the radar than Nebraska. How came you to choose our little corner of the world, anyhow?"

  "Might surprise you to hear I'm practically a hometown boy," Garma answered. "I grew up over near the little town of Brule, off to the west a ways. When I was a kid my pop would bring me out here to Lake Mac for fishing and camping. It was one of my favorite places." Garma's voice took on a trace of wistfulness. "Kinda funny. Living down where I do now, with the ocean right there and about a gazillion lakes all through Louisiana, I still always thought about coming back here again some day." He gave another shrug. "So when Po'boy said I needed get out of Dodge, well, I guess I saw it as my chance."

  We were back at No Name Bay now. B.U. cut the engines and started to coast, expertly nosing the Let 'Er Buck in toward the boat ramp.

  Nobody said anything for a minute, all of us going quiet along with the throttled-down engine noise. Thunderbringer and I exchanged glances. The next question for Garma was pretty obvious, only for some reason each of us seemed reluctant to say it.

  Garma saved us the trouble. "The only one who knows where I'm at," he said, "is Po'Boy."

  "So where did those shotgunners come from?" I wanted to know.

  Garma held up a hand. "In a minute. Let's get to land and make sure I don't have any kind of welcoming committee waiting for me, then we can pick this up again."

  B.U. arched a brow sharply. "What do you mean by 'welcoming committee'?"

  "Not to sound like I'm bragging or anything," Garma said, eyes scouring the shoreline and surrounding waters intently, "but anybody seriously wanting to take out a guy like me won't settle for one try and they'd be smart to send more than just one team to get the job done. You were there for round one. I figure there's probably a back-up bunch lurking around somewhere for the next attempt."

  * * *

  We got the Let 'Er Buck to shore and loaded onto B.U.'s trailer without incident.

  As he was getting ready to pull away, B.U. leaned out the window of his pickup and eyed each of us in turn before saying, "I'll leave you fellas to finish talkin' over...whatever it is you need to talk over. I know you're all pros at what you do and where this goes from here is way outta my league. I probably don't need to say this, but I'm gonna anyway—especially to you, Joe. This is a nice little community with good people coming in and out of here all the time. If there's gonna be more shootin', you got to find a way to steer it somewhere else and make double-damn sure somebody undeserving don't get hurt."

  He drove away without waiting for any kind of reply.

  "That was a good speech, but an unnecessary one," Garma said, squinting against the cloud of dust kicked up by B.U.'s departing tires. "Give me five minutes to pack, I'll be gone from here and take my shit storm with me."

  "You sure that's smart?" Thunderbringer said.

  "It's the smartest move right for the moment. And that's a fact."

  "What about whoever sent those shotgunners after you? And that second team you talked about?"

  Garma scowled. "There's only two ways those shooters could have found me here this quick. Either somebody got to Po'boy and forced my location out of him...or he sent them himself."

  "What sense does that make? Why would he do that?" Thunderbringer said.

  "Fail safe," I answered.

  Thunderbringer gave me a look. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  "Old movie," I explained. "From back in the sixties I think. Henry Fonda plays the President of the United States. In the story, a squadron of U.S. bombers carrying nuclear warheads on a training exercise gets a wrong signal and think they're on a mission to bomb Moscow for real. Once they go past the Fail Safe point, there's no calling them back and the Russian defenses aren't good enough to stop all of them. One of our bombers makes it through. In order to prevent a retaliation and the full-out nuke war that would follow, President Fonda makes a sort of quid-pro-quo deal with the Russian prime minister—their main city for ours. He sends another bomber up over New York City and right after Moscow gets vaporized he orders it to drop its payload and the Big Apple is wiped out, too. Even Steven. No winner, only equal losers and a larger, more destructive war is averted."

  "Now that," Thunderbringer said, "is hard and cold."

  "Maybe so," Garma replied, "but I think it's also a damned accurate comparison to my situation. Po'boy is hell bent on avoiding a war at any cost. He made that real clear. I never saw it coming, but if what it cost was me—quid-pro-quo for the guy I mistakenly whacked—then, yeah, I think he's determined enough to make that call if he saw no other way."

  We all went quiet again for a minute, letting everything sink in.

  Garma broke the silence. "Look, there really ain't no more to talk about. You guys got no stake in this. You already stuck your necks out
once to help me, and I appreciate it. Best way I can show that appreciation is to get clear of you and make sure, like B.U. said, nobody else gets hurt in the bargain."

  "Seems to me," Thunderbringer said, "since we did side with you out there on the lake we oughta have some say about what role we play from here."

  "I'm an outlaw, for Chrissakes. A hired killer. You nuts? We gonna turn into Christmas card buddies or something if I make it out of this alive? I might be good, but so are the guys Po'boy would pick to send after me. I'm on the wrong end of the gun barrel this time, man, I'm the one with the bull's-eye view for whatever comes next and I know it ain't gonna be pretty. Why the hell would anybody be lookin' to share that view with me?"

  He'd barely gotten the words out before Garma gave a little grunt, like he was trying to suppress a cough or something—and then a finger-thick stream of bright red arced out from the hole that suddenly appeared in the center of his chest. He buckled at the knees and started to sag. The booming report of a high-powered rifle and another round arrived simultaneously. The second shot hit just above his left collarbone, tearing away meat, shattering bone and cartilage, spraying more blood.

  Thunderbringer launched himself into Garma, wrapping his arms around the wounded man's waist, twisting and dragging them both to the ground. A third heavy slug tore a long gouge in the sand where Garma had been standing an instant earlier. I hit the ground, too. Together, Thunderbringer and I scrambled toward the water, tugging Garma along with us as we squirmed down in behind the concrete base of the boat ramp—the only cover anywhere close at hand. The rolling boom of the third shot rang in our ears as we huddled tight together in the shallow, reddening water.

  "Fuck!" Thunderbringer bellowed. "Fuck! We never should have been standing out there in the open like that. What the fuck were we thinking!?"

  He had his Glock drawn. I had my .45 in my fist. But it was too little too late. Garma had taken two bad hits. He was losing blood like crazy, too weak to pull his own piece, and barely able to hold his head up out of the water.

  Thunderbringer risked a quick peek up over the edge of the boat ramp. He drew no further fire.

  "How do you make it?" I asked when he ducked back down.

  "Long range rifle. Scoped, most likely. Came from a good distance, somewhere off in those scrub trees along the shoreline to the east there. Out of range for our handguns, even if we could see anything to fire back at."

  "Told you Po'boy would send somebody good," Garma rasped. "Some shootin', eh? Bet it was that fuckin' Grouchet. Never did like that Frog fruitcake, but he sure can shoot, gotta give it to him."

  "Screw that," Thunderbringer said. "He didn't get the job done, did he? You're still—"

  "I'm bleeding out, man," Garma interrupted him. "Don't pretend I'm gonna make it. You think I don't know better?" He emitted a thick-sounding cough and more blood spurted from the hole in his chest. "Like you said, we never should have got caught out in the open like we were. Must be losin' my edge That happens, just a matter of time before somebody was gonna punch my ticket anyway."

  He coughed again. I pressed the palm of my hand down on the wound but it didn't do much good.

  Garma rolled his eyes up at us. One corner of his mouth lifted in a crooked smile. There was blood on his teeth. "That bull's-eye view I was talking about before? It sucks the big one, boys." His voice was weakening fast. "Lots more fun being on the other side of the crosshairs. And that's a fact."

  Then he was gone.

  * * *

  There was no way to keep the cops out of it after that, of course.

  Thunderbringer, B.U., and I all played it dumb as far as having had any idea who Garma really was before the shooting started. Abby kept our little secret, too. And no mention was ever made of the first shooting, the one out on the water.

  Saying anything more than we absolutely had to wasn't going to do Garma—not to mention ourselves—any good. I felt a little bad about holding out on Keith County Sheriff Gene Knaack, a good cop who'd always been square with me, but that was the way it had to be this time around.

  Deputies were able to locate the spot the rifleman had fired from, a brushy point jutting out about seven hundred yards down the shoreline from the boat ramp. But other than some flattened twigs and a few ground markings, the killer had left behind nothing traceable to himself.

  It didn't take long, however, for Garma to be ID'd via his fingerprints. From there the conclusion as to what had gone down seemed perfectly clear—a notorious hit man's past had caught up with him. And since the threads to whatever exactly was behind him getting gunned down undoubtedly led back to New Orleans, the local authorities didn't have a whole lot of interest in pursuing it much further.

  Whether or not Po'boy Meechum had somehow been forced to give up Garma or if it was strictly his own fail safe idea to prevent wider-spread warfare, we could never be certain. But the fact that reports had him continuing to conduct business as usual down in the Big Easy seemed like a pretty good indicator which way it had been.

  Then one day, just short of six weeks after Garma got taken out, Thunderbringer called me and read aloud a brief article he'd spotted in one of the Denver newspapers. The piece related how one Po'boy Meechum, a reputed long-time mob boss from New Orleans, had been shot to death while vacationing in the Bahamas.

  "Guess he couldn't manage to stay clear of mob warfare after all," Thunderbringer commented when he was done reading.

  "Guess not," I replied. "Let's just hope that, before he went down, he had time to appreciate the same bull's-eye view he arranged for Garma."

  Wayne Dundee lives in the once-notorious old cowtown of Ogallala, on the hinge of Nebraska's panhandle. He relocated there after spending the first fifty years of his life in the state line area of northern Illinois/southern Wisconsin.

  A widower, retired from a managerial position in the magnetics industry, Dundee now devotes full time to his writing.

  To date, Dundee has had eight novels, five novellas, and over two dozen short stories published. Much of his work has featured his PI protagonist, Joe Hannibal. He also dabbles in fantasy and straight crime, and has recently been gaining notice in the Western genre. His 2010 Western short story, "This Old Star," won a Peacemaker Award from the Western Fictioneers writers' organization; and his first novel-length Westerns, Dismal River and Hard Trail To Socorro, appeared in 2011.

  Titles in the Hannibal series have been translated into several languages and nominated for an Edgar, an Anthony, and six Shamus Awards. Dundee is also the founder and original editor of Hardboiled Magazine.

  †