by Jude Hardin
“Fuck it,” I said.
Herb drew his pistol and pointed it at me. “I’m not going to tell you again, Nicholas. Put. The. Weapon. Down.”
DANIELS
SUNDAY, 7:10 P.M. CST
I woke up in John Boggan’s apartment, lying on the same couch Herb and I had interviewed the good doctor on yesterday. My shoes were off, wrists and ankles were tied, tight, with medical tape, and some sort of improvised ball gag prevented me from shouting or screaming. After thinking about it for a minute, I figured Boggan must have shoved one of his racquetballs in my mouth while I was unconscious. Then he’d wrapped tape around my head to secure the ball. Crude, but effective. The sounds coming from the back of my throat were no louder than a kitten mewling. I figured the insulation in the luxury apartments was first-rate, and that Boggan’s neighbors would never hear me.
My brain was muddied from whatever drug they’d given me, but I tried to put it all together.
Boggan must have killed Shipman, because Mark had an alibi at Genario’s. But he and Renke had been in on it together.
The last thing Hitchcock from the M.E.’s office said was Shipman had been killed with a scalpel. It made sense. Sharper than a knife, and easily available in the dermatology clinic where the three men shared their practice.
The site of Shipman’s mortal wound made more sense now as well. Doctors were experts at human anatomy. Boggan would have known precisely where to make the cut. Precisely where it would have the most impact, bleed out the fastest. Cutting off his face must have been a way to make it look like a random maniac, to draw attention away from them. And then they’d killed Sheldon Lowe at the bus stop to make it look like a serial killer was on the loose. That meth addict, Terrence Rush, must have just been an unlucky coincidence.
“I see you’re awake.”
It was Boggan. He stood on the other side of the coffee table holding a glass of amber liquid. I smelled whiskey.
I stayed very still. Behind him, sitting on the other part of the sectional, was Renke. His shirt was off, and he was holding gauze to a bleeding wound in his belly, where I’d stabbed him with my pump.
Score one for Gucci.
Boggan set his drink on the table, walked over and knelt down in front of me. He reached around to the back of my neck, gently peeled away the tape, and then pulled the ball from my mouth with his fingers.
“Help!” I shouted.
Boggan slapped my face with his palm. Hard enough for me to see stars.
“Nobody can hear you, Jack. Kevin has a nice place here. Noise doesn’t travel. I turn my stereo up all the way sometimes, and nobody ever complains. So save your breath, and this will be a lot less painful for all of us.”
I looked at Renke. “How’s your stomach?”
“Fuck you, cop.”
“Physician, heal thyself,” I said. “Get it? Heel?”
For a moment he looked angry enough to get up and strangle me, but instead he just gave me the finger.
“Pussy,” I told him.
“You’re an interesting woman, Jack.” John looked bemused. “It’s a shame we couldn’t have met under different circumstances.”
“The feeling isn’t mutual. And you punch like a sissy.”
“Is this your plan? To anger us to the point where we beat you to death?”
Come to think of it, not a very good plan. I changed tactics.
“Why did you do it? Why did you kill him?”
He shrugged. “What difference could it possibly make?”
“I just want to know.”
“It’s irrelevant. Don’t worry about it.”
“People are going to be looking for me, John. You’re never going to get away with this. Give yourself up now, and you might be able to avoid the death penalty.”
He laughed. “You’re pretty funny, Jack. Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to find you. Not in time to save you, anyway.”
I wondered why he’d brought me to his apartment, of all places. It seemed like such a bizarre scenario. People tend to notice when you drag an unconscious woman, bound and gagged, through the lobby and into the elevator.
“How did you get me up here?” I said.
“I carried you in my arms. We’d been to Castaways together, you see. Lots of witnesses saw you drinking with me.”
“Pineapple juice.”
“It looked like a drink. Besides, you were already drunk when you arrived. There’s an empty bottle of scotch in the front seat of your car, with your fingerprints on it. Don’t you smell yourself? You reek of alcohol. The doorman and the elevator operator didn’t comment on it, but they smelled it for sure. Ever the gentleman, I brought you up to my place so you could sleep it off. Unfortunately, you got up and fell off the balcony. That was a good idea, by the way. You gave me that. Thank you.”
“Why?” I said.
“Why am I going to kill you? That should be obvious. Self-preservation, of course. The forensics on your dead suspect might come back positive for something, but not for my friend Bill Shipman. Not yet, anyway. I’m going to try to remedy that situation. I haven’t quite figured out how to go about it yet, but I will. And I made a huge mistake yesterday, something I knew you’d discover eventually. I’m a wealthy man, Lieutenant. Why would I put up with the inconvenience of having only one pair of running shoes? Everyone at the office knows that I keep a pair there for my lunchtime runs.”
“So going back to the office Thursday night was strictly to establish an alibi,” I said. “You intentionally let the alarm go off so there would be a record of the exact time you were there.”
“Clever, don’t you think?”
“Genius,” I said, sarcastically. “But aren’t you forgetting one thing?”
“What’s that?”
“My partner was with me yesterday. We conducted the interview together. He’ll figure out your little goof eventually, and then—”
“Don’t worry,” Boggan said. “All that has been taken care of. By sunrise, everyone who needs to be dead will be dead, and Mark and I will be in the clear. Almost. We still need to figure out a way to plant a new piece of evidence in Terrence Rush’s house.”
“The scalpel you used to kill William Shipman,” I said.
“Yes. It’s going to be tricky getting it into the crime scene, but we’ll figure it out. Anyway, let’s have a drink, shall we?”
He walked to the bar and poured another glass of liquor, brought it back and set it beside the one already on the coffee table.
“What are you waiting for?” I said.
“Pardon me?”
“Why haven’t you killed me yet?”
“Ah. A couple of reasons. I need to get you good and drunk first, for one thing. That way it’ll seem more plausible that you accidentally flipped over the rail outside. Plus, I need to allow enough time for the drug Mark gave you to metabolize out of your system. Just in case they’re able to do a tox screen on what’s left of you after the fall. Eleven will be a good time, I think. Eleven o’clock on a Sunday night. The drug will be gone by then, and it’s not likely anyone will be on the sidewalk when you come plummeting down. I don’t want any innocent bystanders to get hurt, you see.”
“How conscientious of you.”
“Well, I am a doctor, after all. It’s my responsibility to preserve life.” He smiled. “Most of the time.”
He picked up one of the whiskey glasses and held it to my face.
I turned my head away.
“You can’t force me to drink that,” I said.
“I don’t want to hit you again, Lieutenant. But I will if I have to. In fact, I’ll knock you out and administer the liquor through an NG tube if that’s what it takes. So come on now. Take your medicine like a good little girl.”
I knew he would make good on his threat to clobber me and deliver the alcohol down my throat through a tube if necessary. He could beat me all he wanted to, because the impact of falling sixty and hitting the pavement would, in effect, erase any evi
dence of prior trauma. I would be a pile of mush on the sidewalk. They would have to load me into the ambulance with shovels.
“What is it?” I asked.
“What is what?”
“In the glass.”
“Scotch. It’s a very nice Speyside single malt, a Balvenie.”
“I prefer bourbon.”
John seemed to consider it, and nodded. He finished the scotch himself, and then went to his bar. All the time we’d been talking, I’d been testing my bonds.
No good. The tape was tight. And unlike rope, it wouldn’t leave any raw ligature marks that would look suspicious on my corpse.
“I have Blanton’s, or Maker’s Mark,” John said.
Both were overproof bourbons, which meant I’d get drunk faster.
“No Jack Daniels?” I asked.
“Sorry. I don’t like the cheap stuff.”
Renke laughed, a little too loud.
“Stop being an asshole, Mark,” I told him. And to John, “I’ll take the Blanton’s.”
“It’s my preference as well.”
John filled his rocks glass, almost to the top. I realized I should have taken him up on his offer of dinner. Then my stomach would have been full, which meant I would have absorbed the alcohol slower.
But then, what did another half hour matter, really? I’d told Herb, and Laurie, I was with Boggan, but there was no reason to suspect any foul play. They might have thought it was a date. We all thought The Defacer was dead. When I showed up in the morgue, Herb would be suspicious, of course. But Boggan and Renke had done a pretty good job establishing alibis, and my death would look accidental. Herb had seen me get drunk before. It was no secret that cops drank, hard.
“Open up, Jack. Take a nice big sip.”
He held out the whiskey for me.
I considered my options. Realized I only had one.
Would I rather die drunk, or beaten up and drunk?
I took a sip.
COLT
SUNDAY, 7:42 P.M. CST
I stared at the gun Herb pointed at me. Normally, it was a very scary thing to stare down the barrel of a loaded weapon.
But I wasn’t scared. I was enraged.
“He killed Laurie,” I said.
“Let the courts deal with it.”
“Would you, if it was the woman you loved?”
Herb paused, and I could sense he was really thinking it over.
“Yes,” he finally said. “We’re better men than he is, Colt. And sometimes the only way to prove you’re better is when you’re in pain.”
I let out a deep breath. Then I lowered the .38 and swung out the cylinder, hitting the ejector rod to empty the casings. Then I set the gun on the floor.
Herb holstered his Glock.
“Give me five minutes alone with him,” I said.
“So you can beat him to death? I can’t do it, Nicholas.”
“Then let me talk to him.”
“You can talk to him, but I’ll be right here.”
I nodded. “Not a problem,” I said.
Herb took a few steps backward, giving me some space as I walked over and viciously kicked the handcuffed man in the head.
“Colt!”
“I slipped,” I said, spreading out my hands. “It was an accident.”
The man on the floor spit out some blood, then turned over onto his back to face me. He was short with black hair and olive skin and a thick black goatee. I guessed him to be in his early to mid-thirties. He was also wearing what looked like a police uniform. That is, a cheap police uniform worn by a male stripper. Tight black pants. Satin shirt. Fake badge. Toy handcuffs on his belt.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“My llamo Javier Sanchez. Soy de Colombia. No hablo Ingles.”
“Bullshit. If you didn’t speak English, how did you know what I just asked you?”
“Hablo un poquito,” he said, indicating that he only knew a little English.
“Why did you shoot at us?”
No answer.
“Easy, Colt,” Herb said, sensing my elevated fury.
“Did you pat him down?” I asked.
“No weapons, no ID. But he looks familiar for some reason.”
“Where’s the gun he killed Laurie with?”
We both looked around, and Herb found a revolver. “Got it, over here.”
“That’s not mine,” the man said.
“I gotta Mirandize him, Nicholas.”
Herb recited the suspect his rights, both in English and in Spanish.
“I want a lawyer,” he said.
“So suddenly you can speak Ingles just fine,” I said, rearing back to kick him again.
“Nicholas…” Herb warned.
“All right,” I said, trying to fight back the murderous rage pulsing through every cell of my body.
“What’s this?” Herb said. He was standing over a small, silver object. It looked like a utility knife.
“That’s not mine neither.” For some reason, the suspect seemed even more agitated about that than the gun.
“Let me explain something,” Herb told him. “I can already arrest you for impersonating a police officer.”
“I strip for the women,” the man said.
“A jury would believe I was a stripper before they believed you were a stripper,” Herb said. “Now here’s what is going to happen next. We’re going to check this gun for your fingerprints. Then we’re going to swab your fingers for gunpowder residue, to prove you fired the gun. Then we’re going to match the bullets in that gun to the bullets that were fired into my car. Then you’re going to go to a big, bad, American maximum security prison for life, where guys who do nothing but lift weights all day will share you like a bowl of mashed potatoes at Christmas dinner.”
The killer’s face paled. Then he said, “I can help you solve a murder.”
“It’s already solved, asshole,” I said. “You’re the murderer.”
He shook his head. “Dr. William Shipman. It was on the news and in the papers. I saw who killed him.”
“That case has been closed,” Herb said.
“No. They got the wrong man. It was a gringo. I saw the whole thing. In an alley next to a cigarette store. The gringo cut Dr. Shipman’s leg.”
“Why did you shoot at us?” I said. “And why are you dressed like a cop?”
“I will make you a deal,” the man said. “I saw who killed Dr. William Shipman. That gun and knife, they don’t belong to me. But I was there. You remember me. We roasted marshmallows over a barrel.”
Herb snapped his fingers. “You were there, with two black guys.”
The man nodded. “Yes. And I saw the killer. I did not say anything because I was afraid.”
“You’re lying,” Herb said.
“The gringo cut Dr. Shipman with a scalpel. Then he ran off, through the alley.”
“Tell it to your lawyer,” Herb said. “Colt, help me haul this garbage off to jail.”
DEL CHIVO
SUNDAY, 8:06 P.M. CST
Sergio Del Chivo was not afraid to die. At the age of seventeen, he’d seen more carnage than these gringos could even imagine. He’d watched as the dirty, sweaty policemen had their way with his mother and sister. Raped them, tortured them, killed them, drinking and smoking and laughing the whole time, as if the entire affair was part of a festival of some sort.
After the psychotic fiends had finally put the women out of their misery, they’d nailed Papa’s hands and feet to the top of a picnic table, cut his pants open and cut his balls off. To them, this was the funniest thing of all. Hilarious. They hooted and hollered and tossed Carlos Del Chivo’s testicles around in a macabre game of Hot Potato. Good catch, cabron! Ha! Ha! Ha!
They were going to kill Sergio, too, but they never got the chance. Sergio managed to free himself from his bonds, grab an automatic rifle that had been propped against a tree, and pepper the area with 9mm slugs until all the men from the Treasury Police were dead on the
ground.
Papa lay bleeding to death on the table, so weak he could barely string a sentence together.
“Kill me,” he said. “Please, my son. Do this for me.”
Help was miles away, and Sergio knew his father was not going to make it. So he honored his wishes and put a bullet in his brain.
No, Sergio was not afraid to die. He knew that death, when it came, would come as a blessing, finally erasing the horrors of that night in the Salvadoran jungle. The only reason he carried on was to someday be in a position to avenge the brutal murders of his family members, murders funded by the United States of America.
But he was afraid of going to prison.
He didn’t want to waste away and grow old in a cell, He didn’t want to fight with men twice his size who would use Sergio for sex—men with things as big as the toys in that adult book store. Most of all, he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in Los Estados Unidos. He’d only been here a few days and couldn’t stand it. Being here for years would drive him insane.
So he had to convince the marshmallow cop that he knew who Dr. William Shipman’s killer was. And he had to do it without incriminating himself.
The irony was, Sergio hadn’t killed Shipman. Some rich gringo had. Sergio had taken Shipman’s face when he was almost dead, after he’d been stabbed. It had been a lucky opportunity, and Sergio had seized it. But he wasn’t the killer.
There must be some way to trade on that information.
Sergio considered the lesson Shorty and Lawrence taught him. Namely, sleep on your valuables. Of course he never would leave his valuables at the abandoned house; those vultures would be waiting to pounce on them the moment Sergio left. So he’d brought them along. But, on the chance he would be caught, he’d hidden them in the vacant shop so they wouldn’t be found on his person. And on the off-chance he’d get arrested (not so off now considering the circumstances), he’d hidden various things in various places.
“I am telling the truth!” Sergio yelled as the fat cop hauled him to his feet. “I have Dr. William Shipman’s wallet! It’s beneath the crate, over by the window!”