Murder Mystery McKenzie (Frank McKenzie complete collection so far)

by Luis Samways

  “But that’s suicide, boss! Nobody hits the feds, sir.”

  Harry took a second or two to take another bite of his donut. And then he smiled a double-glazed sugary grin.

  “That’s the beauty of it, Fred. Nobody hits the feds. Don’t you think it’s about time somebody did?”

  Four

  The scene at the warehouse was a messy one. The attending officers found the victim, Bobby Sanders, dead from one clean gunshot wound to the head. They hadn’t found much in the way of shell casings or other forensics, but when they obtained a warrant to search the warehouse the victim seemed to be guarding when he was killed, they found a mother lode of drugs and hooch.

  Detective Frank McKenzie and his partner, Santiago, arrived at the crime scene about the same time as the warehouse doors were being busted open. From the inside of their Ford Capri, McKenzie and Santiago got a front-row seat to the ballgame that was Boston’s biggest drug bust in ten years.

  “Looks like we are in for a long one, San! We just hit the jackpot of all cases,” McKenzie said to his less than enthusiastic partner.

  “I don’t know, man. Drugs busts like this can only mean one thing, my friend.”

  Frank took his hand off the steering wheel and checked his eyes in the mirror. Bloodshot red from a few sleepless nights dreaming of a new case. That sort of thing kept him up. While most cops would savor the downtime, Frank needed the thrill of a hard case to crack.

  “And what could a drug bust like this possibly mean, Mr. Silver Lining?” Frank asked.

  “Drugs like these, operations like this one, can only mean bad people are behind it. And bad people means looking over our shoulders and making sure we don’t end up with a hole in the head like polo-mint over there,” Santiago said, getting out of the car and stretching his legs. The cold breeze made his fair hair flap in the wind. Frank just smiled at his partner and gave him a wink.

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but I signed up to police work for all the gunfights and car chases!”

  Santiago nodded his head and shrugged his shoulders in defense.

  “I guess I signed up for divorce papers and a beer gut!”

  They both laughed, and Frank got out of the car second. They strolled over to the dead moonshiner on the floor and watched as the CSI guys finished up on the corpse.

  “He took a clean bullet to the dome. We haven’t found any casings, but taking into account the size of the hole in this fella’s head, I’m guessing nothing more than a 9mm pistol here, gents,” a tall CSI guy said as he got up from the floor and brushed himself down. He was holding a flashlight and managed to shine it into Frank’s face. Frank didn’t say anything, but he didn’t appreciate blind spots showing up in his vision. For the next couple of minutes he had light smears in his eyes. All he could see were spots of hot light, shadowing over his normally clear vision. He rubbed them a few times, but it was useless.

  “You okay, buddy?” the CSI guy asked.

  “Yeah, just dandy,” Frank replied, giving his partner Santiago a wide look.

  “Maybe you can tell us more about the killer?” Santiago asked.

  “I thought that was your job!” the CSI guy replied, laughing a little, bobbing his flashlight some more.

  “What angle did the killer come in from?” Frank asked.

  The CSI guy pointed in the direction in which Frank was standing.

  “From behind? But the vic has a bullet hole to the forehead. How can that be?”

  “I reckon the killer knew the vic and got his attention somehow. He then blasted the fella — that’s why he landed on his side. He must have been turning around when he got shot. Hence the corkscrewed position of his corpse.”

  Frank nodded his head. The smearing lights were finally gone. The little nagging voice in his head was beginning to stir. He didn’t like living with his unstable mental ailments, but he had pills for them. Pills that made his life that much more interesting - made his life that much more normal.

  “Excuse me,” Frank said as he grabbed his pill container out of his inside jacket pocket and chucked a few into his mouth. He swallowed them dry and put the container back in his pocket. He saw how the CSI guy was looking at him, as if Frank were hiding something. Frank didn’t appreciate such an accusation. Even if the accusation was not even spoken, he could tell when somebody suspected something. After all, he was a homicide detective!

  “They are antacids tablets,” Frank found himself saying in defense.

  “Okay,” the CSI guy said. He then looked at Santiago, who was a little uncomfortable. San knew of Frank’s mild schizophrenia. He knew how much it bothered Frank. There had always been rumors of Frank’s aliments and the exact name of those ailments, but he was never one to rat his friend out and discuss his personal demons with the other cops. If anything, Santiago felt a certain defense mechanism toward gossip about Frank. He didn’t know why, but he cared deeply for Frank McKenzie, even when others didn’t.

  “I get bad heartburn, too,” Santiago said out of the blue.

  The CSI guy shook his head and pointed at the big warehouse doors behind him. They were covered in blood spatter and brain matter from Bobby Sanders.

  “Go through there and talk to the DEA dude. He said he wanted to talk to the senior detectives on this one,” the CSI guy said, still pointing ominously at the wooden doors.

  “Man, they got here fast,” Santiago said.

  “Fucking vultures,” Frank replied.

  “Don’t let them hear you say that!” the CSI guy interjected.

  With that, all three men fell silent. The awkwardness of the crime scene was alleviated when Frank and San made their way into the warehouse. What they saw crushed all sorts of doubts as to whether the case was a big one or a small one. Because when they entered that warehouse, there was no doubt about just how big that case was going to be.

  “Holy mother of God,” Santiago said, looking up at the piles and piles of cocaine, stacked to the rafters.

  “Somebody call Scarface — he wants his stash back.” Frank laughed.

  Five

  Big Harry Donavon was in his limo, riding down West 9th Street. He didn’t normally take suburban streets in his limo, but he decided that, given the circumstances, he was going to ride where he thought it was safest. He didn’t know what the cops had been processing down at his warehouse. They could have already put two and two together, and that made Harry Donavon the number-one suspect.

  He wasn’t exactly sure who had popped his delivery driver, Bobby Sanders. He didn’t really care either way. But what he was curious about was who made that police call. He didn’t know anybody in that area who didn’t know that the warehouse was his. If somebody had gotten messed up in that immediate area, no one would bother calling the police. It was agreed on! Everybody in that area knew if they called the five-o, then there would be trouble. That was what was getting to him. Who was trying to cause him trouble? In his mind, someone was being a rather brave soul, and he knew that the brave person who’d caused all this mess would pay for it dearly. He wondered how brave they would be when he showed up at their doorstep with a few of his men and some bolt cutters.

  “I don’t like it, boss.” Harry was interrupted by his lackey, Fred. The guy in the dapper suede suit was only good for two things: delivering bad news and pissing Harry off. But Harry wasn’t interested in busting Fred’s nose quite yet. He did value the little pipsqueak’s incoherent spiel once in a while.

  “What don’t you like, Freddy?” Harry asked, watching as the suburban houses passed on by through the tinted limo windows.

  Fred was sitting opposite Harry, sipping on vodka and looking real nervous.

  “I don’t like the idea of taking it to the feds,” he said bluntly.

  “What’s there not to like, Fred?”

  Fred didn’t answer. He knew it was obvious that his boss wasn’t in the mood for realistic conversations regarding the likelihood of the organisation being able to take on the feds.r />
  “You gonna answer me?” Harry asked, his bulk flexing under his tremendous vocal chords.

  “It’s just…you know…the feds, Harry. They tend to be pretty well-prepared. How on earth are we going to take them? They have locked-down evidence rooms. They have buildings with snipers and searchlights on them. I don’t see how we can just stroll into a damn federal building and take them out. Not to mention I don’t see the point in the whole thing, either!”

  Harry cracked a smile and poured himself a drink. He knew Fred wasn’t on the same level of thinking as he was. He wasn’t mad at Fred for being stupid. He saw it as a luxury, a luxury that Harry didn’t have.

  “We aren’t going into a federal building, you idiot. We are taking them on - on our turf!

  Fred nearly spat out his drink. He was careful not to get any on the interior of the limo.

  “What? Where? The warehouse?” he asked, wiping his mouth dry of the alcoholic residue.

  “Bingo. Not so stupid after all, are you, Fred?” Harry said, downing his drink in one gulp.

  “I guess not,” Fred said, not entirely sure if his boss was still ribbing him or being serious. Either way, Fred didn’t care. He was far too worried about the prospects of facing off with the police. He didn’t want to go to prison. He hoped Harry had a crew lined up, because he wasn’t stepping foot into that warehouse. Of that fact Fred was entirely sure.

  “Driver, take me back to the lockup. We’re meeting a few of our friends down there - ready to bring it to these damn pigs,” Harry said as he looked out of the limo window expectantly.

  The limo sped up, and Harry and Fred made their way to a safe house in preparation for the big operation they had planned.

  Six

  “That is a lot of coke, that’s for sure!” the DEA agent said as he approached both Santiago and Frank. Frank forced a smile as the agent greeted them. Chief Shaw had warned Frank and San earlier of the likelihood of the DEA showing an interest in the case. It made Frank mad to think that they’d already caught onto the case before he and his partner had even showed up.

  “How the hell did you guys get here so fast?” Frank found himself saying out loud, much to the annoyance of the agent.

  “We have our ways. We knew this building was suspicious, and we had a team watching the building from afar. We saw the murder on tape. Thing is, you can’t see much of it, just a muzzle flash and a body hitting the deck pretty hard. It caught us off guard, and we had to watch it a few times until either of us believed what we had just seen. It isn’t every day that you manage to catch a break on something you’ve been working on for a while. It usually doesn’t get handed to you on a plate like that,” the agent said. He was a tall man of lean physique. He had a crooked nose; it looked as if it had been broken a few times. Maybe more than a few dozen times. It made Frank wary of the agent. Either he was a pencil pusher who provoked motherfuckers into hitting him, or he had been a policeman once before he sold out to the feds.

  “How interesting,” Santiago said, sharing the same opinion of the situation they all found themselves in.

  Looking around, Frank could see the DEA were making themselves comfortable. They had half a dozen guys in the warehouse, taping up evidence and bagging stuff up. It made the blood boil in Frank’s head. He could feel his eyes bulging out, and he wanted to crack the crooked-nosed DEA agent just for being so smug.

  “Last time I checked, the feds didn’t have jurisdiction in a murder case on the streets,” Frank said, nearly spitting out the words as he let them fall from his mouth.

  “Last time I checked, the feds had federal law on their side!” the crooked-nosed DEA guy said, giving Frank the finger with his facial expression, avoiding the actual middle finger.

  Frank took a deep breath in. The confrontation was starting to make him see red.

  “Last time I checked, the DEA were full of assholes whose only purpose was to disrupt the law enforcement of every damn city in the US. Why don’t you guys go and suck the DA’s dick some more, and then maybe some of this cocaine will come in handy when you all are fornicating with each other in those ‘dinner parties’ you guys seem to have,” Frank spat, this time actually spitting as he talked. He was reeling in anger, and the rest of the men doing their work in the warehouse noticed it.

  By then there weren’t many Boston P.D. men present. They had obviously been sent away by the almighty government suits, but Frank was determined to not get kicked out of the case or the warehouse. He would much rather be arrested for caving the crooked-nosed DEA agent’s head in. That seemed like more of an honorable way to go out.

  Santiago had to hold his partner back when he saw the venom in Frank’s eyes. San knew when Frank was going to do something stupid. He was accustomed to picking up the broken pieces from time to time. Santiago didn’t feel like picking up pieces of broken DEA agents anytime soon.

  “Come on, Frank. They obviously don’t need us here. Let’s go back to the precinct and watch a porno,” San said. Half joking, trying to lighten the already cloudy mood, half telling the truth. San had a weakness for big-breasted women.

  “Fuck the porno. I’m thinking I’m gonna fuck this guy up right now,” Frank said, balling his fists.

  “Easy, Detective. You guys need to cooperate. We are dealing with this case. You can assist. I am not denying you of that privilege.”

  Frank went red. He couldn’t believe the audacity of the DEA agent in front of him. The rest of the men in the warehouse had stopped working and were idly looking on, watching Frank dig himself into a professional hole. It wasn’t as rare as people would think; police and homicide would always show their disdain to the DEA and FBI when they would try to muscle their way into cases that fell on the P.D.’s turf. It wasn’t anything new or anything to write about, that was for sure. Many good detectives were lost in the process of losing their shit and attacking smug feds in suits. Not lost in reality, but lost in the sense of being canned. And one thing Frank McKenzie wasn’t worried about was being canned.

  “I just find it convenient that you guys take over my goddamn crime scene just because you were in the area? Do you have a decree from the D.A.? Do you have a damn warrant? I didn’t think so. Now get the hell out of my crime scene, and stop tampering with the evidence.”

  The DEA agent looked even more smug as he brought out a piece of paper with a signature on it.

  “You got to be kidding me! It’s 12 a.m., and you managed to get a search warrant? Do you have those things pre-signed in your pockets, just waiting to stiff over a couple of real homicide detectives?” Santiago said.

  “Gentleman, I did offer you an assist, but I’m afraid regarding your behaviour and disdain for the federal government, that assist is no longer active, and I would kindly ask you two to fuck off,” the DEA agent said, to a few chuckles in the warehouse.

  Frank stood there in complete anger. He was going to sock the son of a bitch but decided against it. He and Santiago left the warehouse and effectively gave up their crime scene. It looked like the sleepless nights were going to continue for Frank. He didn’t have a case anymore. All thanks to the DEA and their love for hostile takeovers.

  “Fuck them, Frank. Let’s go and get drunk,” San said as he drove the two of them off the crime scene and off to a titty bar for some drowning-their-sorrows fun!

  Seven

  Dapper Fred and Big Harry pulled up to the safe house just outside the city. It was surrounded by wire fencing and smelt of burnt timber. The safe house was fronting as a lumber mill just outside Boston. It made Harry a few grand a month as extra uptake, and he employed big heavy men. The guys who worked the lumber mill wouldn’t bat an eyelid at crime but were very clean men. They weren’t the thugs that Harry dealt with. He wanted people with clean records attached to the mill. As Harry and Fred got out of the car, the legitimately employed big men paid no attention to Harry or dapper Fred in his suede suit.

  “God, you got some mean-looking motherfuckers around here, boss
,” Fred said, walking past a couple of hard-looking lumberjacks.

  “Keep them mean, keep them keen,” Harry said.

  “Mean? But why?” Fred asked.

  “These guys are clean guys — they don’t have records. This is a legitimate business of mine. I can’t have meatheads walking around who like to kneecap people. I need to keep that part of my life separate from this part of my life. How else am I going to convince the IRS about my vast income?”

  Fred didn’t understand what his boss was trying to say. Fred hadn’t paid a dime to the IRS in the thirty-eight years he had been walking the planet.

  “Taxes? You pay taxes?” he said in disbelief.

  “Of course I do. How else am I supposed to get the damn feds off my back?”

  “And here we are now, about to devise a plan in which we fuck the feds up. Doesn’t sound like you want to get them off your back, boss!”

  Harry stopped dead in the middle of the yard. They were a few feet away from his personal office. He turned to Fred and clipped him around the ear. It was a light clip, but heavy enough to knock the sunglasses off Fred’s head. It was amusing to some of the men working close by.

  “Keep your damn opinions to yourself, Freddy. We need to concentrate on getting a plan in action. We haven’t got much time,” Harry said, taking a few massive strides in front.

  “Wait up, boss,” Fred said, still holding onto the back of his head like a child who had just been spanked.

  “Hurry up — Mickey and Gus will be here soon. I don’t want them to see you sniffling at my ass all day. Let’s get a hustle on.”

  Fred rolled his eyes and walked by a few of the hardworking lumberjacks, who were cutting some timber in two. One of them blew a kiss at Freddy. Freddy didn’t appreciate it.

  “What the fuck are you looking at, you prick?” Fred said, stopping in front of the towering man.

  The lumberjack looked surprised at the tenacity of Fred, and his surprise was painted across his face. That was the thing with Fred — he might have been picked on by the guys he worked for, but the man could fight, and he’d fight anybody. He let the guys do what they do because it was the right thing to do. Respect was a tremendous asset in the business they worked in.