Next Last Chance

by Jon A. Hunt

  “I hate this place. It is the only place I ever killed an innocent man.”

  “The butler didn’t do it. He never does.”

  “Do not make jokes, Mr. Bedlam. I could merely kill you like the others.”

  “That’s not why you wanted me here.” I hoped. “I’m not on the list.”

  The fierce eyes sparkled with the flames. “There will be no more lists after tonight.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So whose favor, then? Yours or mine?”

  “Ah, you’ve already received so much! I changed my mind. I may let you live.”

  “….if?”

  A shuddering boom shivered through the heels of my wet shoes. Just thunder. I’m sure I jumped. Rico did not.

  “Protect her,” he said.

  The bouquet of burning plastic stopped me from asking. There could be just one woman Rico wanted safe. He’d executed two men today for her sake, to retrieve that damning film. Sandra’s inglorious past extended farther back than making love with JD’s daughter deep beneath Hillbriar. Everyone comes from someplace. What if she’d come from Las Vegas? What if Buck Dover’s hitman hadn’t escaped that car bomb alone? The girlfriend, the underage banker’s daughter….her name resurfaced in tiny microfiche text from an old scanned newspaper.

  “Harley—”

  “Ssh!” Emotion flavored Rico’s voice now—utterly controlled emotion—yet present. “That name died long ago in the desert. Do not destroy her by resurrecting it now.”

  The finger… The finger wearing Harley Jansen’s nail polish had been all the authorities could find to identify her remains. Sandra Donovan had all ten of hers. I’d touched them all. My blood chilled. Why not? I’d been associating with a lot of cold-blooded people.

  “You were looking for Nolman the whole time I was,” I said. And Sandra had known it.

  “The pictures had to be found. The tattoo would connect her to them.”

  Buck must have paid for Sandra’s—for Harley’s—pretty butterfly. But others in his circle had opportunity to admire it. Like an undercover cop named Barr. Like the hitman who’d spirited her out of Nevada and left someone else’s charred unrecognizable bones behind.

  “I could not go around asking questions. That would endanger her, too. A professional had to be hired. One who was discreet.”

  “Once I found Nolman and the film, you’d kill me, too. Tie up loose ends. I don’t suppose you’d have let me cash my check first.”

  Rico smiled. Enough firelight persisted for me to see that.

  “You said yourself you didn’t need the money, Mr. Bedlam.”

  Pennington might’ve had better luck searching for Rico under Sandra Donovan’s bed. I was glad Rico didn’t seem to be the jealous type.

  “All right,” I said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “She must leave Nashville. She must go someplace far from here, not west.”

  “Running didn’t work so well this time, did it? Why not turn yourselves in? Rafferty—”

  “—would see me only as a killer. And I am. Neither of us would be safe. Wicked eyes are everywhere. She must run, without anyone knowing. I must finish my business here. I cannot go with her, so you will. Match my favor with yours. Or stay and die with the rest.”

  Don’t argue with a guy who can kill you twice before you hit the ground. I nodded. Then I asked him when.

  “Today,” he said.

  “You’re sticking around?”

  “A lot of people will never leave Nashville. Your friend, Rafferty, will understand soon. Take her away from Hillbriar before what will happen tonight. Save two lives.”

  The fire went out with a sooty pop. I might have asked which two lives, but I already knew he meant Sandra’s and maybe mine. He was gone anyway.

  The rain finally slackened. Winds picked up and raked clouds away in sloppy gray furrows. Officer Poole found me walking not far from Neuhoff’s damaged gate. When I didn’t get inside, he slowed the patrol car and rolled down the passenger window.

  “You’re going to be too busy,” I told him. “There’s a dead guy inside that fence.”

  Poole swung around another pothole. His eyes lit up. “Are you sure? Who?”

  “Yes I’m sure, and he wouldn’t say.”

  The kid’s eyes abruptly narrowed.

  “I didn’t kill him,” I said. “But go on and run it by the Lieutenant. He’ll vouch for me.”

  Poole left the window down and scooped up the radio handset. As promised, Rafferty told him how harmless I was.

  “He never shoots anybody. Not sure he knows how.”

  “Tell Rafferty I’ll meet him back at Nolman’s place.”

  Poole did so, then rolled the window up and executed an admirable U-turn for such a large vehicle and sped toward the meat packing plant.

  “Where’s Pennington? I figured he’d have been here by now.”

  Rafferty scuffed a size fifteen shoe through the weeds to try and dislodge some mud. “He’s not coming.”

  “He’s running a stakeout at Hillbriar.”

  “You’re not supposed to know that.”

  “You sort of told me yourself, remember? The FBI’s watching the place. If Pennington won’t come for dead field agents, where else would he be?”

  Rafferty grunted. He generally preferred to be the one doing the thinking. “You gonna tell me whether Rico was in there?”

  “He was. We chatted a bit. I doubt he’s even in Germantown now.”

  The Lieutenant pivoted toward the porch. I stopped him from calling the detectives over.

  “Jerry. I need a favor.”

  The placid orangutan eyes studied me over one linebacker shoulder. “Aren’t you pretty much out of those by now?”

  “If I do something for Rico, he said he won’t blow designer holes in my head.”

  “Jesus Christ. You believe that?”

  He had a point. I’d been lied to a lot. Weird as it seemed, Buck Dover’s runaway hitman came across as completely sincere. I didn’t have much choice but to believe him. I nodded.

  Rafferty made frustrated sledgehammers with his hands and held them tensely at his sides. “What’s he want?

  “Can’t say entirely. Nothing exactly illegal. But if you’re planning on stopping me, you might as well just shoot me yourself.”

  “You’re a shitty negotiator, Ty.”

  “I’m just a private eye. I need to get into Hillbriar. Now, by myself, no questions.”

  “If this comes back to haunt me, you’ll wish I just shot you. All right. But the feds have all the ways in under surveillance.”

  “Maybe not all of the ways,” I said, half to myself.

  Twenty-nine

  The Donovan estate wouldn’t look like it was under siege. Pennington wasn’t stupid. Instead of helicopters and teams in Kevlar vests with assault rifles, the Bureau supplied out-of-towners who didn’t know better than to pull onto soft shoulders after a heavy rain, and overweight joggers none of the locals recognized. The stuck cars had plenty of firepower in their back seats, and the unfamiliar joggers appeared portly because they wore bulletproof vests under their sweatshirts. Hillbriar was a trap. I’d lost track of who was the bait.

  Guys in jackets loitered around a sedan in the ditch a dozen yards up the road off Franklin Pike. There were enough of them to discourage Good Samaritans. I didn’t stop.

  The track to Jetta’s shed looked no more inviting. A minivan waited there. The following intersection had a paved street that lead through an upscale housing development. I parked against the curb in front of a house that seemed more or less in line with the rich folk’s place up on the hill. The porch light was on, the windows dark, kids in school, mommy and daddy at work. I grabbed the spare magazine out of the glove box. When you’re sneaking into the O.K. Corral and the Earps are already there, you can’t bring too much ammunition.

  A riot of yaps erupted inside the garage when I opened the gate to the privacy fence. This set off every dog within a block. A
nyone in the neighborhood would think I was a stray cat.

  The grass had tracks that weren’t the owners’. A previous trespasser had clambered over the back fence and left muddy footprints. It bugged me that my idea wasn’t unique.

  Immediately beyond the fence a concrete storm channel ran. Runoff hurried downhill, sloshing over the channel’s edges. The jump wasn’t excessive and I landed with a splash on all fours on the far side. I wiped my palms on my jeans and started uphill through oaks and knotted underbrush with fresh leaves. The angled ground offered all the traction of a bobsled run. Constantly pausing to scan the hillside for the other guy didn’t speed the trip up any, but getting shot before I even reached Hillbriar would break my promise to Rico.

  Once the dog at the bottom of the hill shut up, I became aware of a faint itch inside the back of my skull, a growing sense that I’d forgotten something vitally important. Things moved too fast, stuff got missed. A guy could get killed by what he overlooked.

  Twigs rattled. I hauled the .45 out and crouched against a fat elm trunk. You can’t say you’re behind a tree if you don’t know which direction in front is. A squirrel scolded me from a bouncing branch. Not human. Probably not armed. I allowed my pulse to decelerate before continuing. The nagging internal skull scratches continued, too.

  Who else crawled up that hill? It didn’t seem a very federal route. Rico? I doubted that. Perhaps Nick had resurfaced. Or it could be any of those other West Coast bad-asses Rafferty had mentioned. The thing overlooked resolved into a question.

  How had they found Rico here again, after he’d hidden so completely for over a decade?

  Guessing would have to wait. I’d found another body.

  A slab of limestone jutted from the hillside, flanked by oaks. The massive trees might have been there before the rock. Jammed under the overhang were the remains of a man with a regulation crewcut. His camouflaged jacket and pants hadn’t seen regular use, judging from fold marks that persisted on sleeves and pants legs. His canvas utility vest was stuffed with clips for his assault rifle and, ironically, a small first aid kit. The rifle lay where he’d dropped it as he bled to death. That last act hadn’t taken long: his throat had been slashed ear to ear. I worked the jacket zipper with a stick till I spotted the official ID in its plastic sleeve, clipped to the shirtfront. Blood obscured the name but I didn’t need that any more than he did.

  Pennington did have snipers positioned, then. Just not very attentive ones.

  The slope had seen a lot of traffic. Boot tracks sliding down belonged to the stiff. I recognized the shoe prints from the fence as my fellow trespasser’s, travelling upward, evenly spaced, crossing over the sniper’s trail. A third set of tracks went both directions. Those must have been the killer’s. He’d have been a rough character to just creep down and slice a field agent’s jugular from behind. The agent’s radio and headset were missing.

  Either—or both—of the others might be waiting for me uphill.

  Moisture dropped without rhythm from the branches, dislodged by wind to make room for what started falling from the sky again. I hoped the rain would mask the noise of my ascent. Once I found the shed I’d be underground anyway.

  When I staggered out onto the single-lane road, a fresh downpour had erased any further tracks. The road’s surface slithered around my feet like a muddy conveyor belt. Jetta’s yet undriven sports car grinned between the shed’s parted doors with chrome teeth. Except for the car the shed was empty. But it hadn’t been empty all day.

  Yet another variety of footprints showed in the slanted gray light, crossing the dirt floor from doors to the false shelves. The tracks were too large for Jetta. The shelf door was latched, which didn’t prove anything. Sneaking into Hillbriar from the bottom didn’t seem all that clever.

  Outside, a sharp report tried to echo between the nearby hills. Rain beat the sound into the earth, not before I recognized it. Whether a good person or a bad one pulls the trigger, a gunshot sounds the same.

  …before what will happen tonight, Rico had said.

  People were getting ahead of themselves.

  I readied the Smith & Wesson and opened the door to the tunnel.

  I knew what to expect this time, or thought I did, and the penlight stayed in a pocket. Nothing invites trouble like flipping a light on in the dark where you weren’t invited. The darkness was incomplete, anyway. Pasty fluorescence brushed roof supports and posts, sufficient to establish their locations without revealing smaller stumbling hazards.

  Hewn bedrock redistributed sound weirdly. Rain on the shed roof seemed directly overhead. The slow plink of moisture falling into unseen pools seemed farther than possible. Around the rough corner where the light originated, a dry splintering racket tried to convince me it happened directly behind me instead. Crystalline crashes emanated from the same location.

  Jetta had seemed too shy for that kind of party. Who’d come to visit?

  Avoiding the light, I edged around posts, letting chilled tunnel walls serve as my guide. I was a big wet rat scuttling along the edges of things. I toed each step cautiously before committing. I hoped I wouldn’t bang my head into suspended distillery equipment. More glass shattered. Metal shrieked free of rotted wood. Someone was dismantling Jetta’s hundred-proof bedroom with a wrecking bar. Not the girl. She’d put too much effort into decorating.

  My stealth ended with a clatter. A board leaning against one of the posts toppled, banged an end and bounced to bang the other, and I couldn’t see to grab it. The crowbar wielder froze. He was definitely male and his shadow splayed over uneven stone, magnified, distorted. The bar showed as an enormous talon. I molded myself to the side of the tunnel and cupped a hand over the Smith & Wesson’s muzzle to prevent telltale gleams.

  “Where’s the girl?”

  My timing proved characteristically bad. The wrecking tool clanged to the floor. The lamp was kicked over and failed. Blackness only lasted a second before brief fire stabbed toward me with a roar. That was Jetta’s gun; snub-nosed .38 Special revolvers have a distinct report. Especially underground. They’re damned loud.

  The shot went wide. Shrapnel careened off bedrock and ringing metal. I dropped to one knee behind my semiautomatic. The next muzzle flash would give me a target.

  Or kill me. It could do that, too.

  Another flash came all right, only it was a thousand times larger than anticipated. Sheets of flame flashed from floor to ceiling, seared in razor-edged planes between planks of old moonshine crates. He’d torched the corn liquor! When the rest of those bottles burst every crevice beneath Hillbriar would fill with charging heat and death.

  More shots came and I couldn’t separate them from the general flambé. Fortunately, the man was a poor marksman with an erratic weapon, and in the fiery chaos he couldn’t see any better than I did. He was also more interested in just getting away. A man-sized shape darted behind flames toward the spiral staircase. His only way out happed to be my only way in.

  For the first time since Sandra and JD hired me, the Smith & Wesson went to work outside a gun range. .38 was loud, .45 brutally so. The gun galloped in my fist and spat its own fire. Brass casings chased one another up and away, flashing metal pills in the firelight. Iron sang with impact. The man’s shadow pitched headlong into the staircase. A jaw protruded in agony. He managed to twist and stagger upward. He was no giant, just a man without a visible face, scrambling up an upside-down fire escape from the underground conflagration he’d created. An irregular bang-bang-bang of feet pounding metal found my ringing ears. I lunged in pursuit.

  From the base of the stairs I recognized the den where Jetta had slept—where Sandra had once joined her—churning with flames. Gaseous fingers clawed at the wooden cubes. Tacked-up magazine pages curled and leapt into flame. Corks flew with hollow pops, murderous popcorn soaked in Prohibition’s favorite seasoning. Writhing metal was all that remained of the girl’s cot. On the cavern floor before it, a diminutive form huddled on smoldering squares of c
arpet.

  Jetta.

  She wasn’t dead.

  In fact, she breathed rapidly, tightened into a panting ball of incoherent grief or terror. Great spot to do it. The man fleeing upstairs, and the girl I was supposed to fetch, would have to wait. One of the carpet samples flared; I kicked it aside and got down on my knees next to her.

  “Jetta!”

  She whimpered without uncurling. I couldn’t be expected to understand with liquor bottles exploding and flames all around us.

  “Come on! I’ll get you out of here.”

  “Go away!” I heard that because she shrieked it.

  People who need friends most never act like they want any. Her shoulder felt hot under my hand. I’d drag her kicking and screaming if I had to. Timbers started smoking.

  “Jetta! Let’s go. I’ll take you to Daddy—”

  She uncoiled quick as a snake. Her face had a livid bruise across a cheek and bloody lips. The man with the crowbar must have backhanded her.

  “DON’T YOU DARE!”

  I don’t tolerate tantrums. I dragged her upright with me. “I’m here to help, damn it!”

  Wide red-rimmed eyes devoured me, bored straight to my soul….and had no clue what to do when they got there. The swollen lips trembled. Jetta Donovan teetered on the precipice of lunacy. Then she jerked her arm from my grasp and darted between blazing crates and vanished.

  At least she’d taken the way back to the shed.

  I swung toward the stairs again. Blood steamed on the steps. If he really did have Jetta’s gun, I couldn’t imagine she’d owned more ammunition than the five I’d loaded back into the cylinder myself. Minus three wasted, that left him two shots to my magazine and a half. Fair odds of you’re used to gambling with your life. Up I went.

  Firelight chased my shadow ahead of me for the first twenty steps. Beyond that the light failed and I continued by feel, the railing under my right hand, the Smith & Wesson in my left. Heat and disorienting fumes roared around me. I was climbing the inside of a chimney.