The Marble Kite: A Mystery (Alex Rasmussen Mysteries)

by David Daniel

  My breath heaving, I eased him down on the sidewalk. “Can’t you read? Members only.”

  46

  Grady Stinson was on the sidewalk under the burgundy awning of the Ritz Manor, pacing, when I stood on the brakes. He pitched his cigarette into the gutter and climbed in, and I was rolling again before he had the door closed.

  “You said ten minutes.”

  “I hit a snag. I’m here now.”

  He didn’t bother with the seat belt; his generation of cops never had. His outfit was black chinos and windbreaker. I didn’t ask if he was carrying a card with the image of a chess knight on it. I did wonder if he had a gun under there somewhere. He exhaled a strong peppermint smell that could have been mouthwash or schnapps, but I reserved judgment. He seemed sober, and that was all I could ask for.

  “That from the snag you hit?”

  I saw that my right hand, gripping the wheel, had several patches of blood congealing on the knuckles. “Yeah,” I said and left it at that. They were just abrasions, but my left elbow was another story. It felt like something inside was on fire. Maybe, I hoped, we’d get this next bit over with quickly and I could get myself some rest. For now, I kept my eyes open for pedestrians as I zigzagged through the crisscrossing streets, heading north toward the river.

  On the phone I’d told Stinson I was going to meet someone and wondered would he come along for the ride. He didn’t ask a lot of questions, not even inquiring what he’d be paid, or if he’d be paid at all. He seemed happy just to be asked. My plan had been to have him at the wheel—he was good at that—but time was too short to switch. He said, “Where’s the meet?”

  “Not far. The address is there on the dashboard.”

  He looked at what I’d scrawled on the back of my registration, then at me. “This a joke?”

  I glanced over. “It better not be.”

  “This address is bogus. I pulled patrols in this area.” He flicked the registration with the backs of his fingers. “This is Nagasaki after the fireworks. It’s Watts once the natives finished demoing it after the Rodney King verdict. Getting it?”

  I wasn’t.

  “This is Dresden after the weenie roast. This address is desolation row.”

  But he didn’t need to press the point. The long bulk of the Wannalancit mill, rehabbed and fitted to modern purposes, came into view, and I realized that I’d gotten the address right but had confused its location in my mind. The meeting spot was one street (and about fifty years) beyond what I’d imagined, and now I saw that Stinson’s mental map was better than mine. The old Boston Hosiery building came into view, its tower rising from the five-story brick shell, bearded with ivy windows blackened with time, and beyond it, hidden still, but there, was the one place in the city that I avoided the way Superman avoided Kryptonite.

  A shiver clenched my shoulders and ran down my spine. Could Duross have known about that night? It was well before his time, and yet his uncle, Frank Droney, had been the one who’d made sure that my cop career was over. No, I couldn’t buy that Duross knew that. It was coincidence. I refocused.

  I slowed and drew into a vacant lot at an angle to the front of Boston Hosiery and facing it, 150 yards away. It seemed right: not obvious, commanding a view of the entrance. I shut off the engine. Stinson looked over.

  “Okay, I want you to wait here and watch that gate.”

  “Sit and watch,” he repeated, sifting it for deeper meaning.

  “And one other thing.”

  I had to allow for the possibility that Duross was here ahead of me—he had obviously phoned from someplace nearby—but I didn’t think he was. His call had made clear that he felt vulnerable, given that he believed Travani had files that he thought, rightly or wrongly, could expose him. Duross’s goal would be survival. I found myself remembering Ed St. Onge’s remark about my standing alone. Strictly speaking, I was a loose end. But among dogs you had to be too big to eat; or at least make them think you were. Power isn’t only what you have but what your enemy thinks you have. What I had was Duross’s belief that there was incriminating evidence, and that I possessed it. Nicole had no intrinsic value to him; she was simply his lever. He’d be sharp enough to see that there wasn’t any reason to harm her, wouldn’t he? I didn’t pursue the logic of whether he’d feel the same about me.

  “I’m going inside, into the courtyard,” I said. “When the person I’m expecting shows up, let him get through the gate and then honk the horn.” I gave a demonstration, which echoed forlornly off the vast brick relics beyond us. “One honk. And be ready to wheel if I signal you.”

  “This person you’re expecting—a cop?”

  I nodded. “Duross.”

  He blinked, taking this in. “You’re heeled, right?”

  “No.”

  Stinson screwed his face into something between a grimace and grin. “Shit, you always this well prepared?” He unzipped his coat, exposing what I realized was a shoulder rig and the checkered walnut grips of a handgun. He gripped it. It took a while to clear the holster. In a crisis situation, he could probably have hauled it out in time for the ME to arrive and pronounce him DOA. It was a Ruger Blackhawk, with a barrel about a foot long.

  “What did you do, tell them to super-size it?”

  “Forty-four Mag. Makes a statement, don’t you think?”

  “So does walking around naked.”

  “If all I’m supposed to do is sit here with my face hanging out, you should take it.”

  I was wrestling suddenly with my doubts about having dragged him along. Sure, he was a consenting adult, with his own badass fantasies, but this had nothing to do with him. Never mind that it would be impossible for me to conceal his cannon. Frankly, though I didn’t tell him, I doubted I could hold it. My fingers were stiffening and my elbow felt hot and waxy, as if the joint were melting away. Besides, I rationalized, if things got tense, Stinson was the type to start throwing lead, and I had to think about Nicole. To his good, though, I remembered something about him that I had forgotten. Whereas a lot of cops hated having to wear a gun, couldn’t hit a barn door with one, and hoped they never had to, Stinson had loved carrying, had love lighting it up when the situation warranted, or not. He went to the range on his own time and practiced. So, okay, maybe the risk/reward factor ran about even; but right now I needed him to stay put. “Hang on to your testosterone and sit tight.”

  With sweat oozing under my shirt, I left the keys in the ignition and got out. “Remember, when he goes through that entrance, honk.” I started across the rutted vacant lot toward the empty street and the old mill.

  47

  I was winded when I reached the gate, from nerves more than exertion. I could feel my heartbeat in my palms as I gripped the vertical iron bars and peered through. Beyond was a passageway with an arched brick ceiling, a kind of tunnel about fifty feet long that led to an inner courtyard. I had a sick feeling in my core. Some of it could be laid to the beating I’d taken from Spritzer, and to the prospect of facing Duross, but I knew, too, that it was this place.

  I had the wild thought that I’d been wrong about the address, that this wasn’t where I was supposed to be. But it was. I knew that. And the gate wasn’t locked. I lifted the heavy iron staple and dropped it over with a clank that echoed in the tunnel. I pushed the gate open on grating hinges and went into the brick-arched entryway.

  I had been back here one other time since that long-ago night—on a March afternoon, with the members of an inquiry board: four men and a woman, moving around in a cold drizzle, hands in their coat pockets, expressions unreadable. I walked them through my version of what had happened. Only one of them, the woman, asked a question: “How does it feel to be here now?” A state trooper shot, a hit man killed, and me with a satchel of marked bills that no one seemed to be able or willing to account for. How the hell do you think it feels? I wanted to growl. But, no. Actually, it was a sensitive question, insightful even, and I’d answered it honestly, too naive to realize that the ent
ire inquiry was for show, that in two flips of a fish’s fin, as Phoebe might say, the matter had already been decided. Unbeknownst even to these five people, I’d been marked for occupational extinction. I hadn’t come back since.

  Now, with dread pooling in the pit of my stomach like seepage in a foul sink, I walked the rest of the way down the tunnel to the courtyard that opened beyond. As I stepped in, I faltered. I’d forgotten how large it was, almost imponderably vast, built to a scale that dwarfed people, even (the old brown-tint photographs showed) the thousands of workers who had gathered here to voice grievances that rang in feeble protest against the high enclosing walls.

  A big dead sycamore rose from the weedy lot to the left, a scrap of black plastic bag skewered on one of the bare limbs and flapping in the wind like a pirate’s flag. Below ran several rusted railroad spurs leading to long-defunct loading docks. Scattered about were piles of broken brick, and beyond that, cutting off a view of the river, the looming, neglected bulk of the Lawrence Manufacturing mill. To the right was an old canal, water moving in it even now, gushing past the rotted locks and down the long granite spillway to the river. The wind whined through the abandoned cloisters and tunnels of the mills in a melancholy hymn to another age.

  At a sudden movement high on one of the walls, I turned and realized it was a security camera. It didn’t do squat to reassure me. And just then I heard the car horn signal. Swallowing back a rising anxiety, I moved toward the entryway.

  If I went down, the papers would have a field day with the implications. “Full Circle: Ex-Cop Returns to Scene of His Infamy.” I wondered who’d play the part in the film. Outside of Mitchum, I could think of no one.

  At the crunch of footsteps on the stones, I hurried to the edge of the wall. A moment later, a uniformed cop emerged. Jill Loftis. She looked just as surprised to see me.

  “Whoa!” She spread empty hands.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She was slightly winded. “I’m glad I found you.” She waved me back around the corner. “Duross is on his way here. You know that, don’t you.” Her words came fast, pushed along by adrenaline. “I’ve been watching him. I think you’re right about him being involved in something.”

  “I know I am.” I started telling her about the scene I’d walked into at Judge Travani’s house. I had to. I’d been cute with the 911 call, but it was time to be level with what I’d done and what I knew. She listened with grim fascination, as if she were being presented with facts she’d prefer not to accept, but she no longer had that luxury.

  “You think he’ll have the girl from the carnival with him?” she asked.

  “That’s the purpose of this,” I said. “Are you alone?”

  “I couldn’t involve others only on the basis of …” She paused.

  “I know. On my say-so.”

  “Sorry. Plus, I have to wonder … what if there are others in it with Duross? No way can we handle a hostage situation.” She was right. There were just the two of us, and only one gun. She drew the walkie-talkie from her belt. Her face tightened with concentration. She couldn’t seem to make her hand unit work. She looked around, as if truly seeing the isolation of this place for the first time. “Damn it,” she murmured, and I understood. She couldn’t get a signal there in the enclosed yard. She looked momentarily helpless. “Maybe outside the walls I can try it. We have to let the department handle this. If you’ve got any physical evidence that ties Duross to what you’ve just told me, we have to bring it in.”

  Before I could tell her I didn’t have any, the horn blew again, echoing along the tunnel. She glanced at me. “He’s here,” I said.

  She hung the walkie-talkie on her belt. I ducked back, drawing her with me into the courtyard. We took cover behind a pile of bricks and faced the tunnel.

  A moment later Duross appeared at the outer gate, backlighted by the afternoon sun, and peered down the arched tunnel. He was alone. He wore plainclothes, but he was holding a pistol at his side as he pushed open the iron gate and started slowly in.

  Jill Loftis drew her sidearm.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this,” I said.

  “I’m not crazy about it, either, but I’m here.”

  “Twice as hard for half the respect.”

  She managed a faint smile.

  I told her I had to be the one to talk to Duross. He was expecting me. Just me. She didn’t argue. “Get the girl,” she said. “I’ll try to cover you.”

  I moved forward, away from where she hid, not having any idea of what I was going to say to Duross, just hoping that something would come.

  When he stepped out of the tunnel, he looked bulky in a dark blue sweatshirt, fade-washed jeans, and basketball shoes. He saw me, hesitated, then came my way.

  “You’ve gone way too far, Rasmussen. I warned you.” He was holding the pistol at his side though I couldn’t see it well. “I’m bringing you in.”

  “That’s funny,” I said, barely able to find breath for the words, let alone ideas, “coming from you.”

  “Don’t fool around.”

  “Don’t you fool around. We had a deal. I’ve got what you’re after.”

  He moved carefully, taking care as he stepped over the rusted tracks concealed in the weeds. His basketball shoes looked new. “A deal, huh? And what would that be?”

  He wanted to hear me say it, to reveal what I knew. I said, “Where’s the girl?” He was still holding the gun down, making no move to raise it. I kept my eyes on his, my hands where he could see them.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m taking you in.”

  Before we could joust any further, I saw motion off to my right, at the far end of the courtyard. A dark-haired man was running our way, making a reckless broken-field run over the weedy terrain. Stinson hadn’t signaled any more arrivals. Duross saw him, too. As the runner got closer, I saw he was Asian. He had a shiny automatic in each hand, and a memory flickered spectrally past my mind.

  Duross raised his gun, the motion lifting the bottom edge of his sweatshirt, and I was startled to see the blunt shape of his sidearm still holstered on his belt. He had two guns, too? Before I could make anything of this, Jill Loftis stepped from her concealment behind the pile of bricks, her gun drawn and held in both hands in front of her.

  “Put it down, Paul!” she shouted. The words came back at us with a flat echo.

  “Jill—what the hell are—”

  “Drop the goddamn gun!” Her voice was taut with alarm.

  “Jill!”

  She shot Duross twice. His knees sagged and he went down in the weeds. I saw one sneaker-shod foot kick out to the side and go still. The image stirred something in me, but I turned quickly half-deaf from her gunfire. The Asian had quit running and now moved toward us, waving the twin automatics. Instinctively I moved closer to Loftis; she was the only firepower we had. The man wore a green sport coat, jeans, and work boots. Work boots, not sneakers. I glanced toward where Duross lay, and then back.

  “He’s the one who shot Travani and Ouellette,” I warned her. “He’s Duross’s man.”

  She was at my side now, watching him.

  But she kicked me.

  48

  The blow wasn’t as hard as Bud Spritzer packed, but it did the job. A sideways kick, with the thick-soled boot, it took my knee out. My leg buckled and I went down, falling hard on one of the rusted rails. Before I could rise, she stomped me down with her foot. I managed to turn my head sideways, my brain swarming with firefly light and bewildering questions, chief among them: Just what the hell was going on?

  She stood over me, her gun pointed at my head. “I want the goods.”

  The goods? By some miracle, the ace I’d held before, I still held. My face was in the weeds, my body wracked with pain, and yet she believed I had taken evidence from Martin Travani’s sex chamber—evidence that could implicate not Duross but her.

  “We had an arrangement,” I managed. “It stands. Where’s Nicole?�
�

  Neither her gun nor her cold expression wavered. “Sok!” she called.

  Vanthan Sok came over. He had the weapon that Duross had been carrying, frowning at it, and I saw that I’d been mistaken in thinking it was a firearm. It was a Taser. Duross had been expecting that he might have to arrest me, nothing more. When he’d seemed bewildered by what I’d said to him, he wasn’t acting.

  I managed to change position slightly, turning onto my side, and looked at Loftis. “That was you on the phone?” I asked.

  “Fooled you, huh? The department has a voice-altering machine we sometimes use for taking testimony from reluctant witnesses.”

  “And you called Duross and tipped him that I’d be here.”

  “I told him you were ranting about him, wanted to meet him.” She shrugged. “It was your idea that Duross was dirty.”

  I looked at Vanthan Sok. “Is he dead?”

  Sok paid no attention. He was still marveling at the Taser. “It’s a fucking zap gun. Stupid fucker had his nine holstered the whole fucking time.”

  He stood over me, and I got my first close look at him. He was short, wiry, with high cheekbones and long dark hair. Under the green sport coat, which was made of some crinkly synthetic material, he wore a pink Polo shirt, with the crisscrossing straps of a double shoulder rig for his guns. He had one of his shiny automatics in his hand, a nickel-plated SIG-Sauer. St. Onge had called him a cowboy His face was unmarked by anything he’d done—he could have been eighteen or eighty—none of it mattered to him.