Upside Down wm-2

by John Ramsey Miller

  “I love you, Turo.”

  “Love is a weakness. It will get you killed, Marta. That is my sermon to you.” Arturo turned and left the bathroom.

  After they ate the steaks Marta cooked for them, and while she washed the plates, Arturo sat at the table smoking a cigarette.

  “I thought you quit,” she said, concerned.

  “I quit all the time,” he answered. “I'll quit again tomorrow.”

  “It's bad for your wind.”

  “It relaxes me. I work hard so I deserve to feel good.”

  “Things that feel good aren't always good for you.”

  “You know, you should preach on television.” He crushed out the cigarette and turned on the big plasma-screen set. A reporter was standing in front of an old building.

  “Look!” he said excitedly. “I made the news!”

  “… And we understand that police are searching for a twelve-year-old girl, one of the victims' daughter, who my sources inside the police department tell me might have witnessed her mother and another woman being murdered. Authorities are not releasing the names of the two victims yet, but as soon as they notify next of kin I hope to have that for you. If you are wondering how the police can effectively enlist the community's help in the search for a young girl whose name they won't release, so am I. It looks like it's going to be up to the department to resolve this. New Orleans detective Michael Manseur is leading the investigation. He should be familiar to New Orleanians as the detective who arrested Terrance Woodhouse last year for the murder of…”

  “Fuck!” Arturo screamed. “There wasn't no kid! I searched the place. It's a trick.”

  The telephone started to ring.

  “Fuck!” he yelled. “That's Jerry. What I'm going to do, Marta?”

  Arturo stared at the ringing telephone like it was a rattlesnake.

  9

  Faith Ann removed her clothes and dropped them into the hamper in the hall bathroom. Then she sat on the edge of the tub, swung her legs in, and turned on the water. As she scrubbed her mother's blood away with a washcloth, tears ran down her cheeks.

  She mustn't be sad, she told herself. She had to think things through. It was as though her mother was talking to her, because she had always talked to her, advised her. First thing is I can't trust the police. I have to get the evidence to someone who can stop the execution. Okay, Mama said that's Uncle Hank, because he knows the judges and the attorney general. He is coming here this afternoon to see his old friend.

  She thought hard about what her mother had said and remembered only that Hank and Millie were staying at a guesthouse. Maybe she could still catch them at home. She needed Uncle Hank to tell her what to do next.

  Faith Ann dried off and went to the den, where she picked up the list of telephone numbers her mother kept on the side table. She lifted the receiver and dialed Hank's number. It rang three times and the answering machine picked up. Millie's gentle voice asked for her to leave a message. “Y'all, this is me, Faith Ann. I don't know where you're staying. I need to know because can I see you as soon as you get here because it is really, really important.”

  If Aunt Millie and Uncle Hank were on the way they wouldn't get the message. How would she find them? She would have to call guesthouses and ask if the Trammels were staying there. She fought down a sob. She lifted the yellow pages book and opened it.

  The doorbell's melodic tones froze her. She stood there in only her panties, phone in hand, afraid to breathe. After a few seconds there was a pounding on the door and a voice calling out, “This is the police, is anybody home?”

  A second voice, that of a woman, joined in. “Faith Ann Porter, are you in there?”

  Faith Ann backed slowly up and peered down the hallway. Through the sheers, which filtered the light coming in through the glass panel in the front door, she could make out two dark shapes.

  More banging.

  A barely audible discussion for several seconds.

  The doorbell rang again.

  The police twisted the knob, and for a panicked second Faith Ann was sure she hadn't locked it. But she had, and turning the knob was a waste of the policeman's energy.

  The dark forms seemed to shrink as the two police left the porch.

  Heart thundering, Faith Ann tiptoed to the front door and picked up her backpack. By peering around the edge of the curtain she could see a parked police car at the curb. She put the backpack over her shoulder and moved stealthily to her bedroom. She eased open her drawers one by one and removed jeans, a shirt, and a hooded Tulane sweatshirt. Sitting on the braided rug beside her bed, she got dressed as quietly as she could. She finished and looked up to see a policeman standing outside her window. He cupped his hands like blinders, and as he started to press his wide face against the glass Faith Ann ducked.

  “Don't see anybody,” a man's voice reported.

  Faith Ann waited several seconds. Then she slowly raised her head to look at the window, which was empty. Would they break in? She wasn't sure, but she didn't think they could enter the house without permission unless they had a warrant. She knew that cops had to get warrants from judges, but she had no idea how long that took: on TV shows, it only took a few minutes. She didn't have much time.

  Slipping her old cross-trainers on and lacing them up, she grabbed the backpack again and crawled out into the hallway. She sneaked to the front window. The two cops stood at the gate with their backs to her, talking to another policeman in another police car that had pulled up beside the one already at the curb.

  Faith Ann moved back down the hall and, remembering the money, stopped long enough to get it from the pocket of her jeans in the hamper. She saw her mother's cell phone charging on the counter beside their computer and pocketed it. She also took the small Mag-Lite her mother kept beside the phone charger in case the electricity went out.

  At the back door, Faith Ann looked out into the backyard, which connected to a city-owned basketball court. As she opened the door and stepped out, she heard the cops coming up the gravel driveway and saw a patrol car on the next street. Quickly, she pressed the locking button, eased the door closed, heard it snap, and slipped off the back steps. Then she pulled out the hinged lattice panel that allowed access to the space underneath the house but kept animals out. She crawled inside, then froze. Two pairs of uniform pant legs stopped inches from the crosshatched lattice panel.

  “Watch this door until the detectives arrive. I'll get the car out of sight and take the front and side from around there.”

  Faith Ann crawled slowly and carefully toward the front of the house, the deep dirt absorbing the sound.

  10

  The patrolmen had searched the building and the streets for ten blocks around and there was no sign of Faith Ann Porter.

  Manseur sat at the conference room table. The women's corpses had been processed in situ by Manseur and CSI, then rolled and examined again before being carted out by the medical examiner's staff. CSI was still processing the scene for fingerprints and other trace evidence.

  Ten minutes before, a locksmith had popped open the safe and Manseur had gone through the contents.

  As he mentally reviewed what he had learned, trying to finish building a clear picture of what had taken place around six-thirty that morning, he looked up to see Captain Harvey Suggs, the commander of Homicide, peering in at him from the hallway-leering was the most accurate description of the captain's expression.

  Captain Suggs was heavyset in the way of powerfully built men whose steely bulk had shifted with age into thickly padded sinew. His wide neck supported a square head-hard features covered in red skin. The white flattop and bushy eyebrows added to the overall effect, which was that of a battle-scarred old Marine spoiling for a barroom brawl. His suit looked like it had been applied to him with a brush, and the buttoned collar and narrow tie looked in danger of choking him. On a daily, sometimes hourly basis, Suggs's facial expressions ran the spectrum from distracted to nuclear-powered raging. His r
are smiles had nothing to do with any sense of humor or internal pleasure. If he laughed it was only because a superior officer told a joke.

  “So, Mike,” Suggs said, entering. “Give it to me in big spoonfuls.”

  Manseur hated being called Mike. His name was Michael. His parents called him Michael. His brothers called him Michael. His wife called him Michael. His partner called him Michael. Everyone else called him either Detective or Mr. Manseur.

  The big spoonfuls took only a couple of minutes to lay out. Suggs listened intently and asked very few questions. Manseur went over what he had discovered in general terms. For ten minutes after that, he gave his boss the details, ran the film he had pieced together for an audience of one. He told Suggs that he was convinced that Faith Ann Porter had witnessed the aftermath of the killings, maybe even seen them happen, and might know who had done it.

  Suggs had asked for the specifics leading to that conclusion, and Manseur went over that in detail.

  “I see,” Suggs said.

  “Amber Lee had a warrant out for her arrest,” Manseur said.

  “And you know this how?”

  “The sergeant told me. She embezzled from Jerry Bennett.”

  Suggs exhaled noisily. “Mike, I see how you got where you got to, but I have to say that I think it is far more likely that the kid is the perpetrator.”

  “I'm sorry?”

  “She was here, and she didn't call 911. Her prints are on the safe in blood.”

  “They might not be her prints at all, sir. That has yet to be established.”

  Suggs leaned back in his chair. “I'm betting Amber Lee was there about the child. Maybe the girl was in trouble for something, and when Amber brought it to her mother's attention the girl snapped. Shot them and scrammed. She's out there armed and dangerous. I'm sure we'll find out she's unbalanced. You can't tell me that's not a distinct possibility. You postulate there was a professional killer who did this, but there's no proof. He was a good shot, you say. Or lucky. At this point it's just theory, and the theory you select now is going to affect the whole investigation.”

  “It's preliminary. Investigations change focus as facts come to light. I'm basing this on what I think is most likely at this moment.”

  “I know that Horace Pond was Porter's client, but there's nothing to tie that case to this. Some vague conversation that someone had evidence that would free some convicted murderer. That client isn't Pond, Mike. He's going to die tomorrow night. I was the primary on the Williams case. Everything was done by the book. We never laid a glove on Pond. The evidence was one hundred percent incontrovertible. I know Arnold and Beth Williams were your friends.”

  “I never imagined that client could be Horace Pond,” Manseur said. He felt like laughing, but he couldn't definitely say that Suggs was wrong. Not yet, but he felt it wasn't at all probable that the girl had killed her mother and Amber Lee.

  For ten minutes, he and his boss discussed the collected evidence and how it fit or didn't fit into each man's theory. There was no cassette tape on the desk, which Suggs said didn't mean one had been in the machine at all. Everything was supposition, but it occurred to Manseur that Suggs was systematically closing the doors that didn't mesh with his own interpretation of the homicides.

  “I tell you what,” Suggs said finally. “I'll make this easy for us both.” He held out his beefy hand. “Notes?”

  “I'm sorry?” Manseur said, confused.

  “I want your notes.”

  “My notes?”

  “You're not thinking right, Mike. You've been working a lot of cases and your partner is out of town. I'm assigning this one to Tinnerino and Doyle.”

  Tinnerino and Doyle? “It's my case.”

  “You're done with this one, Detective. I'm making it a direct order. Don't make me write you up for insubordination. You'll take the next case.”

  Manseur had no hope of winning. The thought of Suggs taking this case away from him was stunning, and his mind reeled from the blow. “You can't do that. I'm the primary. If I need a partner, I can work with Lieutenant Caesar.”

  “Can't spare her.” Suggs smirked. “I think I understand why you are looking at this from a skewed perspective. You have two daughters. It's difficult for you to imagine a daughter could murder her mother.”

  Suggs intended to give the case to two of the meanest, least intelligent, and most incompetent detectives who had ever carried a shield in New Orleans. The team of “Tin Man” and Doyle had the poorest clearance rate in the department and more complaints lodged against them than the rest of the squad combined.

  “You can't do this,” Manseur said.

  “I sure as hell can. One more word and I will suspend you for insubordination. You want a vacation that badly?”

  Manseur slammed his murder book on the table and stormed out of the office and down the stairs to the lobby. He went outside, climbed into his Impala, twisted the key, jerked it into gear, and punched the accelerator, squealing the rear tires.

  11

  The eavesdropper, Paulus Styer, had shed the hairpiece with its long gray ponytail and the loose-fitting clothes designed to hide his physique. He drove to Greensboro and flew to New Orleans first class, getting onto the airplane before the Trammels, who were flying coach.

  Before boarding, Styer had taken a seat next to the couple in the terminal and had planted the C-13A long-range transmitter in the band of Hank Trammel's Stetson. Styer had asked the old guy if he might have a look at the hat, saying that he wanted to buy one like it for his father. As he had talked to Hank, Styer had slipped the tiny bug in place. The gray C-13A was smaller than an aspirin tablet and a quarter as thick, and Styer was sure Trammel would wear the trademark hat in New Orleans.

  The Walkman in Styer's carry-on was turned to the transmitter's frequency. The receiver was armed with a Beatles tape in the event that the security officers wanted a demonstration. The officer had merely looked at the Walkman, asking him only to turn on his laptop.

  Even if the Trammels had noticed Styer earlier in the restaurant they would not have recognized him at the airport. Now his hair was short and he was dressed in an expensive and professionally tailored suit. A driver's license identified him as Phillip Dresser, a thirty-eight-year-old from Chicago. His business cards, gold American Express, and MasterCard, supported the fact that he was the CEO of a company that sold commercial fire protection systems.

  Of all the numerous characters he had created over the years, Dresser was a favorite, because Dresser traveled first class all the way. He often hired limousines, ate in the finest restaurants, and stayed in the best hotels. Most of his other covers made less money and lived closer to the bone than Dresser. All of the identities he had would hold up well enough under police scrutiny. In the unlikely event that he did get into a sticky legal situation, his organization would free him by whatever means required.

  When the plane landed in New Orleans, Styer was among the first off. As he strode into the baggage area, he spotted his contact near the terminal doors holding a hand-lettered sign that read DRESSER. The man was short and stocky and wore a cheap dark blue suit. His square face sported thick lips, a nose that was no stranger to being broken, and eyes with irises like bullet holes. His white shirt looked as though it might have recently been stored in the glove compartment of a car. The knot in his too-short tie was the size of a lemon.

  As Styer stood at the luggage carousel, he spotted the private detective, chewing on a toothpick, who waited outside the gate to meet the Trammels. Styer had obtained Green's driver's license picture by hacking into the Texas DMV. Green's hand rested on an ebony cane with a brass doorknob for a handle. The private detective wore a royal-blue jacket with white piping, a cowboy hat, and boots with high, sharply sloped heels. His eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. And he was completely hairless. Styer knew that Green suffered from a condition known as alopecia. Green's lack of hair and eyebrows gave him the permanent look of a man who had just been startled out
of a deep sleep.

  The intelligence file on Green was being updated now by Styer's researchers, arguably the world's best, since they had immediate access to almost any database-including channels into sensitive government agencies worldwide. The file had told him that Green had been kicked in the knee three years earlier by the enraged lover of a client's wife. The man had objected to the alienation-of-affection lawsuit that Nicky's investigation had made possible. The karate kick, delivered from the front, had destroyed his knee and given him a permanent limp, which is why he always carried a cane.

  Green had spent his tour of duty as an MP, where he had learned investigative techniques, but his service record was merely average. According to his tax returns, Green had made one hundred sixty thousand dollars the previous year; not a bad living for a single man without bad habits.

  Styer didn't expect any surprises. He could stay light-years ahead of men like Green and Trammel without breaking a sweat.

  With the Trammels standing six feet to his left, Styer plucked his leather suitcase from the carousel. He walked briskly to the short man holding the sign. “I'm Dresser,” he said curtly.

  The man spoke without looking directly into Styer's eyes as he took the suitcase from him, using English that reflected his Eastern bloc heritage. “You are having a Range Rover. Your equipment is in it.” He smiled broadly.

  “That should be fine,” Styer said in a perfect Midwestern accent.

  In the short-term parking garage, the driver placed Styer's bag into the rear of an immaculate dark blue Range Rover and handed him the key.

  The man handed over a slip of paper with a phone number written on it. “It's my portable phone number,” the man said in Russian. “The aging Cadillac you wished to locate is parked now just over there.”

  Following the shorter man's pointing finger with his ice-blue eyes, Styer easily located Nicky Green's red 1965 Cadillac convertible some fifty feet away. “I will need you later, so remain available,” Styer told him.