Wrong Place, Wrong Time

by W. Glenn Duncan

  When he had finished drilling, Mimi took one of those rechargeable vacuum cleaners out of the tool bag. She used it to suck up the concrete dust and chips.

  Cowboy banged masonry anchors into the holes and bolted two heavy metal brackets to the wall, one on each side of the door. When he had grunted the bolts down tight, he went to the tool bag and removed a solid steel bar about three feet long. He held the bar horizontally across the closed door and lowered the ends into the brackets. The bar made an impressive clunk as it settled into place. Nothing short of a tank was coming through that door.

  I said, “Now, there’s a man who hates room service.”

  Cowboy dusted his hands and thumbed his big hat back on his head. “Well, now, Rafferty,” he said, “I never did like this siege shit, but if we’re gonna do her, by God let’s do her right.”

  “Don’t drill in the other room yet. Thorney’s on the phone.”

  Cowboy grinned. “I did that room a couple of months ago. We was babysittin’ a nervous bookie; that’s when we found this place. All I got to do is dig the putty out of the holes and bolt the whatnots on.”

  “You ought to peddle this mobile Maginot Line gadget, Cowboy. The bookie could give a personal endorsement.”

  Cowboy took the masonry bit out of the drill and wound the power cord around the handle. “Wal, it sure did keep him cosy and safe for that week. Then he decided it was safe to go back on the street.” Cowboy shook his head and tsked, tsked.

  “And?”

  Cowboy put the drill in the bag and looked around to see if he’d forgotten anything. “Oh, a couple days after he paid us off, they blowed up his car.”

  “Was he in the car at the time?”

  Cowboy looked at me quizzically. “Well, of course, he was in the car! Otherwise, they wouldn’t have blowed it up now, would they?”

  Silly me.

  After Thorney finished talking to Beth Woodland, Cowboy fitted another gizmo to that door. I made a phone call.

  “Judge Gortner’s office,” a pleasant voice said.

  “Well, hello there, you sweet thang. Put me through to Judge, darlin’.”

  I don’t care what you say, when you’re imitating a down-home, friends-and-neighbors, southern politician, you cannot be too hokey.

  “I’ll see if he’s in, sir,” the voice countered quickly. It might have been Gortner’s secretary, Caroline. “May I tell him who’s calling?”

  “Why, shore you kin, sugar,” I said. “This’s Daniel J. Fendermann, way over here in Waycross, Georgia.” I chuckled with what I thought was a conspiratorial air. “Fact is, that’s Mayor Fendermann, tell you the honest-to-God truth. Now then darlin’, Ah need to speak with Judge about a … well Ah suppose you could call it a delicate political matter.”

  Across the room, Mimi rolled her eyes.

  The phone was briefly silent. Oh, damn, she knows who the mayor of Waycross really is.

  Then she said, “Certainly, Mr Mayor. One moment for Judge Gortner.”

  I hung up then and turned to Cowboy. “He’s there and he’s where we start. Shall we let Mimi watch the store while you and I go do that little thing?”

  Cowboy test-fitted the security bar and nodded. “Shore nuff. My, we are coming up in the world. Gonna go thump a judge.”

  “This is only a fake judge, and he may not even be the bad guy. Still, it’s a place to start.”

  “Suits me,” Cowboy said. “Hell, maybe this job won’t be as borin’ as I thought.”

  Chapter 26

  “Goddamn muffler sounds like a zillion horse farts all at once,” Cowboy grumbled. “Whyn’t you ever get this car fixed up decent.”

  We were in my Mustang on the way to Judge Gortner’s house. I said, “Well, I’ve been seriously considering seat covers.”

  “’Bout time,” Cowboy said. “It looks pretty tacky with this duct tape all over the place.” He lifted his fancy riot gun out of his lap and carefully put it on the backseat.

  “You’ve missed the point. Duct tape is surprisingly cool on a hot summer day. Very refreshing.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet,” Cowboy said. “All the new models gonna have duct tape as standard equipment next year, huh?” He pried an enormous Ruger revolver out of a shoulder holster under his jacket. He flopped the cylinder out and checked the loads.

  I said, “You know, I have a shotgun with a shorter barrel than that howitzer.”

  Cowboy sniffed. He pushed the Super Blackhawk’s muzzle somewhere down by his left hip, then levered the massive hand cannon back into the shoulder harness. The process resembled a man shoplifting a step ladder.

  “So, boss-man,” he said, “what do you want done with this Gortner dude’s hard men? Are we talking shoot or stomp or mollycoddle?”

  “There probably won’t be any hard men, Cowboy.”

  “Sounds like mollycoddle to me,” he said. “Doggone.”

  “What can I tell you? I only know of four people at the house where we’re going. There’s Gortner; he’s a talker, not a doer. There’s a blond woman, tallish, handsome. She’s the office manager or appointments secretary, whatever. There’s a guy named Cayman. He’s too pretty to be anything but a talker.”

  Cowboy retrieved his shotgun from the backseat and held it vertically between his knees. “Where you takin’ me, Rafferty? Spring trainin’ camp for wimps?”

  “Well, Dave’s no wimp. He’s an ex-pug. A little slow, maybe, but he’s built like a leather sack full of rocks. Don’t try to box with him. Now, I don’t see him either carrying a gun or going up against one, but I could be wrong.” I shrugged. “Oh, Gortner’s wife may or may not be there. I don’t know.”

  Cowboy said, “’Course, depending on this and that, the mall shooter might be in there. Or a couple dozen heavies.”

  “Or an armored division,” I said. “With tactical nukes.”

  “Damn right,” Cowboy said. He squirmed in his seat. “You know, I purely love this line of work.”

  We crunched onto Judge Gortner’s pretty gravel drive a little after six o’clock. I drove all the way in and stopped opposite the front door, behind a pale green BMW four-door.

  We got out of the Mustang—it didn’t make the hissing sound. Was that an omen?—and went up three steps to a broad, columned porch. Cowboy held his riot shotgun loosely by the handgrip, letting it dangle and slap lightly against his leg. I’d left my shotgun at the motel and had only my old .45 tucked in the back of my belt. Classic understatement, that’s my style.

  We were still ten feet from the front door, barely halfway across the porch, when the door opened and Rod Cayman stepped out. He didn’t see us at first, and when he did, he didn’t recognize me.

  Cayman tried a big smile and a booming greeting first. He had trotted out only fifteen or twenty teeth and three words when Cowboy flipped the shotgun up to point at his face and said, “You hush, now.”

  Cayman’s voice stopped dead, his smile froze in a grimace, and his eyes slowly rolled back up into his head. He collapsed like a puppet with the strings cut.

  Cowboy clucked his tongue and said, “My, my, my. Ain’t he the fearsome one?”

  “We’d better do something with him,” I said. “If we don’t, he’ll wake up soon and go screaming down the street.”

  “Got my K-tel handcuffs,” Cowboy said.

  “Do it.”

  Cowboy had a dozen large plastic cable ties curled up inside the crown of his big hat. He tied Cayman’s wrists and ankles together, then rolled him off the porch into the surrounding bushes.

  The front door was still ajar, so we walked in.

  “Whooee,” Cowboy said. “Man, could you stack a bunch of hay in here!”

  “Here” was a marble foyer two stories high. Arches to the right and left led to the rest of the ground floor. Straight ahead a wide staircase climbed and curved its way to a second-floor landing.

  “If you’ll keep an eye on things down here,” Cowboy said, “I’ll do the top floor.” He started up the stai
rs, surprisingly quietly for a man wearing boots.

  Cowboy had been gone three minutes, maybe four, when there were footsteps in a room beyond the left-hand archway. Dave the boxer appeared, carrying a dark gray suit on a clothes hanger. He saw me, stopped, and looked at the suit as if to decide whether he should drop it, throw it, or what.

  By then I had the .45 out and it was all over.

  You’d be surprised how often professional boxers make that mistake. They’re waiting for a bell, I think, or for someone to yell, “Round One!”

  “Dave.” I said, “there’s nothing personal in this, but I can’t fight you now.” I held out the .45, not quite pointing it at him. “There’s only one way I can go today, so let’s not mess around, okay?”

  Dave nodded. “I gotcha,” he said in his high, wheezy voice. “Listen, I don’t get paid that much, hey? So, uh, tell me what I’m s’posed to do.”

  I told Dave to lie facedown on the foyer floor. He did. Soon Cowboy came downstairs and used his cable ties on Dave’s arms and legs. Then he said to me, “I’m one up on you, boss-man. Want to make it twenty bucks a head?”

  “Who was up there?”

  “I don’t know, some woman singin’ and splashin’ in the tub. I locked the bathroom door.”

  “Well, you’re not one up on me, then. Locking a door doesn’t count. And your first one fainted, for god’s sake. Ten bucks a head, and we’re even now.”

  “Oh, fair enough, I s’pose. Now what?”

  “Hang on,” I said to Dave, “Judge is still here, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” he wheezed. “Inna office where you was before.” He breathed in and out noisily.

  “What about that blonde, uh, Caroline?”

  “She … she left twenny, thuddy minutes ago.” Dave’s wheeze had become labored. I finally realized why. Facedown with his arms tied behind him, most of his weight was crushing down on his chest and stomach. I rolled him over onto his side.

  “Oof, thanks,” he said. He snuffled in a few dozen cubic yards of air. Dave was tough as old steak, but he sure was a dumb son of a bitch.

  “Is there anyone else in the house?”

  “Naw,” Dave said. “Cayman left awready, too. Hey, you sure you didn’t hurt Miz Gortner.”

  Cowboy answered him. “The bath lady? Hell, she don’t know she’s locked in yet.”

  “Well, okay then,” Dave said.

  Dave had told the truth. We didn’t find anyone else when we checked the rest of the house.

  “Show time,” I said, and opened the door to Judge Gortner’s office. He was lounging in his fancy judge’s chair, holding a half-filled Scotch glass, and watching the evening news on a TV set built into a bookcase.

  When Cowboy and I walked in, Judge jumped. A dollop of Scotch slopped onto his dignified tie.

  Cowboy killed the TV set and flopped into a deep black leather armchair. He laid the shotgun across his knees and pulled his big hat down low on his forehead.

  I sat down opposite Gortner and smiled at him.

  He didn’t smile back.

  Chapter 27

  Judge Gortner had good nerves. Except for that one jump when I had startled him by opening the door, he never wavered. For a long moment he looked at Cowboy, seemingly asleep in his armchair, then he turned to me with a bland expression on his face. Only the bunched muscle along his jaw showed he was less than totally relaxed.

  Without taking his eyes off me, he slowly reached out to an intercom unit on his desk. He pressed a button and said, “Dave, would you come in here, please?” His voice was slow and even. He released the intercom button and leaned forward with his elbows on his desk blotter. He could have been a character portrait. Waiting for Dave.

  After a very long three minutes I said to Gortner, “Well, how about that? I guess Dave must be tied up at the moment.”

  He blanched. “What have you done to Leonie?”

  “If that’s Leonie upstairs in the bathroom, she doesn’t even know we're here.”

  He nodded slowly and glanced sideways at the telephone.

  “No,” I said.

  He nodded again and eased himself deeper into his high-backed chair. He put his arms on the armrests, lowered his chin and scowled at me through his eyebrows. “Well?” he said. He really was very good at that.

  “Who was the shooter you sent after Thorney?”

  He frowned even more. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What does that mean, a shooter?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Be difficult. You do remember Thorney, the old man your grandkid picks on?”

  Gortner started to argue about “picks on,” then he nodded. “Yes, all right, the old man. What about him?”

  “Someone tried to shoot him today.”

  “Ridiculous! If you think I would …” He clamped his mouth into a tight line and glared at me. High indignation. But was it real?

  “Why shouldn’t I think that?” I said. “Last week your trained gorilla tried to bounce me around on—”

  “Whaatt?” That was out of character for Gortner; maybe we were getting somewhere. Maybe.

  I told him about Rocky 27, the street-theater routine Dave and Cayman had gone through outside my office. I went through it quickly. I don’t like situations like that, where I’m probably being conned, and while I’m telling them something they already know, they’re using the time to think up the next lie.

  And Hilda thinks I’m out here having fun.

  Judge Gortner listened to the story of my sparring with Dave, then said, “And because Dave, er, exceeded his authority, that’s why you have broken into my home tonight?”

  “Of course. What do you expect? A knock on the door and ‘Beg pardon, Mr Judge, sir, did you hire the gentleman who tried to kill Thorney and me today? No? Okay, then, you have a nice day.’” I shrugged. “How was I supposed to know who you had stashed away in here?”

  Gortner said, “I see. Well, I’m sorry about the incident with Dave.”

  I gave him a little while, then said, “Would you care to expand slightly on ‘sorry about that’?”

  He shook his head. “I can administer my own staff organization, thank you.”

  “Well, you’d better get hot, for Christ’s sake!” Now I was angry, for several reasons. I had a niggling suspicion Gortner was telling the truth but I couldn’t penetrate that slick facade to find out. And, of course, if he was telling the truth, if he or his family hadn’t sent the shooter after Thorney, then I was in trouble. Because I didn’t know where to go from here.

  I said, “So you keep this pro head-knocker around, but if he—how did you put that?—if he ‘exceeds his authority,’ it’s not your fault? Bullshit. Which makes me wonder who else you have in your little zoo. Have you noticed anyone running around here with a rifle and their fingers crossed?”

  Gortner grimaced and wiped his mouth.

  “Maybe that was only little Jerry, apple of your eye and all-round bad-ass grandkid. Did you buy him a rifle to replace the slingshot I took away?”

  Gortner pursed his lips and blinked both his eyes at the same time, knotting his eyebrows and cheeks for an instant. It looked more like a nervous tic than a blink.

  “I don’t hear you talking to me, Judge.”

  There was an antique student’s lamp on Gortner’s desk. It had a swiveling glass shade and a brass frame. The lamp made a loud noise when I threw it against the far wall. Hilda would have cried if she’d seen that.

  “Wasn’t me,” I said. “King’s X. ‘Sorry’ makes it all right.”

  “Easy boss-man,” Cowboy said from under his lowered hat. “No need for that. The man’s gonna tell you now.”

  Gortner wiped his mouth again and nodded quickly, almost nervously. “Uh, yes,” he said, “perhaps I should be, well, a trifle less secretive.”

  How can Cowboy tell when they’re going to crack like that?

  “Rod Cayman is the problem, I’m afraid,” Gortner said to his desktop. “He’s a very ambitious you
ng man, but not, ah, entirely straightforward.”

  “He’s out front in the bushes, by the way,” I said. “In case you want to be groveled to, later on.”

  Cowboy snorted. “Candy-ass.”

  I wasn’t sure whether he meant Cayman, Gortner, or me.

  Gortner didn’t seem to care where Cayman was. He went on in a sorrowful monotone. “Perhaps I’m getting old; I never used to have problems like this. Well, you’re not interested in that. Ah, it seems my grandson, Jerry, realized he was in trouble after you and, uh, the old gentleman caught him and his friend. Jerry and his father don’t, er, get along very well, so Jerry phoned me to ask for help. He thought he had been arrested or something and had escaped or … well, he’s young and he was upset and confused. I calmed Jerry down and assured him everything would be all right. Then I asked Rod Cayman to find out what had happened, who was involved, and so on.”

  Gortner seemed to realize he still had a drink on his desk. He picked up the glass and took two quick gulps.

  “Perhaps Rod thought I expected independent action; perhaps he misunderstood my instructions. I don’t know. In any case, he reported back to me. I know now that was a very sanitized version of Jerry’s misdeeds, but I didn’t know that then. I understood you were acting as, uh, Mr Thorneycroft’s agent and I thought that you might be, well, more logical and less emotionally involved than he. So I told Rod to set up an appointment for you. I assumed we’d be able to, um, work it out.”

  “Meaning you’d show me how well you had the kid’s ass covered and I’d give up.”

  He shrugged. “It was … That’s the way it’s …”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Why did you send Dave after me?”

  “I didn’t!” Gortner said. “Not the way you mean, at any rate. Look, you have to understand about that. A few months ago, Rod brought me a proposal based on one of those rehabilitation programs, a fresh start for ex-convicts or something.”

  “Well, well, well,” I said.

  “Oh it’s not what you think,” Gortner said. “Dave isn’t a real criminal. There was an unsanctioned prizefight; Dave’s opponent died in the ring. This was over in Mississippi, as I recall. Or Alabama. In any case, a zealous county attorney had Dave charged with manslaughter. He served only five months.”