Assassin's Blood (The Alan Graham Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “Is that you, Mr. Graham?” he asked.

  “You know it is,” I said.

  His eyes squinted, like he was sniffing for a trap, but then he must have decided everything was all right because he smiled.

  “I read your letter,” he said and reached a hand up to tap his shirt pocket. “I got it right here.”

  “Theft of the mails is a serious crime, Mr. Dewey. Especially for an assistant postmaster.”

  Adolph Dewey shrugged. “Not as bad as murder.”

  “Are you going to kill me, then? Like you killed Clyde Fontenot?”

  “Pretty much the same. See, Staples won’t be coming out here, because he never got what you wrote. I saw it and I figured I better see what was inside.” He gave a hoarse laugh. “Damn glad I did. I knew I should of taken that damned metal detector and throwed it in the river. I meant to come back for it, but I was in a hurry. I figure I wiped my fingerprints off, but you never can tell. Besides, you had it figured out, so I had to come here and take care of you. I’ll take the machine when I’m done.”

  I shook my head. “Pretty poor pay, I’d say.”

  He nodded. “Ain’t worth a damn. But what’s a man to do? I don’t know where the stuff is buried. Clyde was bragging he knew. I was following him. Figured I’d take it away when he found it. But the stupid little bastard heard me behind him, wanted to know what I was doing, threatened to say something. So I shot him. Figured if they shut down this project, maybe I’ll have another chance to look.”

  I nodded. It was about as I’d figured.

  “How much is it?” I asked.

  “I’d say about a million and a half. That was what was in the letter.”

  “The letter from Doug Devlin to the man Staples killed when Staples was with the DEA.”

  “That’s right. They sent notes to each other. It was supposed to be in a code, but it was so goddamn simple-minded. My aunt sends you a million and a half kisses. Now I ask you if that ain’t the dumbest shit you ever heard of?”

  “It’s pretty bad,” I admitted. “But how did you get onto it?”

  “Rumors. I heard there was a dope ring. Some of the young people were into it, rumors, word of mouth. Then I seen Doug fixing up his place and flashing money around. Where else would he get it? So I started my own postal investigation. When all a man gets for years is envelopes with windows, you learn to pick up on the ones that don’t have ’em. But how did you figure out about old Doug?”

  “A bow and arrow,” I said.

  “What?”

  “He bought one with brand-new money. I wondered where he got that kind of fresh new money, too. I’d heard there’d been a dope problem around here while Staples was with the DEA. It seemed to have stopped once he got to be sheriff. I wondered if the sheriff before Staples hadn’t been looking the other way when it came to dope dealing. I remembered that the sheriff had resigned and Staples came in after a special election.”

  “I’ll be damned.” He shook his head. “But how did you figure me?”

  “Elimination,” I said. “And logic. You used to be a deputy sheriff, but you quit while the DEA dope investigation was going on. Then Staples came in and let you go. I wondered if things might not have gotten a little hot for you. Maybe you were on the take, too, and saw the writing on the wall. And the first time I met you, the others at the barbershop were joking about your steaming open letters. It seemed to me the post office was a good place to find things out. You told me yourself the DEA had been opening mail with a warrant during the big investigation. I figured you had to know something about who was involved.”

  He nodded. “Something.”

  “Then there was the mail delivery the day Clyde was killed. Cyn wasn’t home, but the mail still hadn’t come late in the day, because the box was empty and the flag was down, unless somebody had picked it up for her. I didn’t think about it then, but later it made sense. You figured on ambushing Clyde early in the morning, and that played hell with your schedule. At least, that was my guess.”

  “Yeah. I had to come back, clean up, take care of some things at the office. By the time I got out her way, it was late. But none of that’s proof.”

  “No,” I agreed. “I never had proof. Until now.”

  “But that proof ain’t going nowhere.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. Sheriff Staples will be here any second.”

  He frowned, the first glimmerings of doubt twisting his features.

  “What you mean? I got the letter. He never saw it.”

  I struggled to keep my voice steady. Staples should be here by now.

  “You still don’t get it, do you, Dewey? The letter was a setup. I wanted to see if you’d take it out of the mail when you saw who it was from. That’s why I wrote about the machine, the metal detector being here, and how I was going to turn it over to Staples, along with the other evidence I had. It was bait, and you swallowed, hook, line, and sinker.” I held up my cell phone. “I called Staples and told him to meet me here right now.”

  Dewey licked his lips and then the rifle swung up until it was pointing at my chest.

  “Get your hands where I can see ’em,” he said. “We’re going for a walk.”

  I raised my left hand slowly, wondering if I dared bring the pistol up quickly in my right and snap off a shot. But he poked me with the snout of the carbine when my hands were half raised.

  “What you got under there?”

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  “Nothing?” He reached out and flicked the poncho off my arm.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he swore, reaching to take the pistol out of my hand. “You didn’t expect to shoot me with that?”

  I shrugged.

  “You’re just like all of ’em,” he said. “So smart, so high-and-mighty, you think you can just walk out here and everything’ll go your way. Just like Doug Devlin. He never had to work. Had everything handed to him and he still couldn’t make it without selling drugs to high school kids. And Clyde. He was so smart, with all that education. Never could help but try to make you feel stupid. A college degree and he was better than anybody else around here.”

  “There’s always an excuse for murder,” I said. Damn it, where’s the sheriff? He said he’d come. Has he blown me off as some kind of crank?

  “I guess Staples fits in that category, too,” I said, trying to buy time.

  “Staples. You know what they call the outfit where he used to work? The Drug Enjoyment Agency. Bunch of phonies in suits running around playing cops and robbers. Staples doesn’t know what’s going on in this parish. He just sits in his office and writes reports to the feds. In the old days …”

  “In the old days everybody had his own little sideline, right?”

  Dewey bared his teeth. “Move. Unless you want to get it here.”

  “You mean down to the creek, so I can fall in, too, like Doug and Clyde?”

  “Mover.”

  My guts went cold, and I started forward down the slippery slope.

  Now I knew: Staples wasn’t going to make it. It was just the two of us, Dewey and me.

  I’d never been one for rough-and-tumble, but it was as clear as the stream below: Unless I did something sooner, in three minutes I would be dead.

  It was halfway down that I made my play. I was on a slippery stretch, with my hand out to catch a bush, and I allowed myself to totter for an instant as I let go. Dewey came behind me, the barrel of the rifle thrusting forward as he reached for the bush I’d just released. At that second I grabbed the barrel of his carbine and pulled.

  He gave a yell, and at the same instant the weapon went off, the muzzle blast deafening me. He let go, and the rifle went tumbling down the slope. I grabbed his legs, and he fell down on top of me. Locked together, we rolled down the slope toward the river bank.

  I got up first and aimed my fist at his head, but he ducked and caught my hand. A foot pumped out, caught me in the chest, and sent me backward into the brush. I struggled up i
n time to see him yanking at the pistol in his belt. I launched myself at him, but my feet went out from under me, and all I caught was his ankles.

  It was enough to send him off balance, and he went down with an oath. He came up with a rock in his hand, and it slammed the side of my head. The earth spun, and I felt myself reaching out, but there was nothing there.

  Then I caught a piece of cloth and pulled.

  He went over the bank with me, and we fell into a pool with a splash.

  Water rushed into my mouth and I spit it out. His hand pressed down on my head, but I ducked away and grabbed him around the waist as he rose from the water. A knee came from nowhere and pain knifed through my jaw.

  When I pulled myself upright from the water, he was standing over me with my father’s pistol.

  “End of the line,” he hissed.

  I looked at the water pouring from the little pistol.

  “That thing hasn’t been fired in thirty years,” I said. He thumbed back the hammer and I closed my eyes.

  Then I remembered what Buck had said:

  It’s still got part of the cleaning rag in the barrel.

  He raised the pistol, squeezed the trigger, and I heard a dull pop, followed by a cry of pain. When I opened my eyes, Adolph Dewey was holding his right hand, trying to staunch a flow of blood.

  “Goddamn thing,” he choked. “It blew up!”

  I watched him squeeze his injured hand for a few seconds and then I splashed over to the sandbar and picked up a chert cobble. I was halfway to him when I heard movement on the bank above.

  “Don’t think you need to do that,” Staples said. “Just push him over to this side, so Cooney can’t say I was out of my jurisdiction.”

  THIRTY

  It was cool in the sheriff’s office, and I was still shivering, despite the blanket they’d given me. I told myself it was from the dip in the creek, but I knew there was another reason. Staples read my statement, nodded, and asked me to sign.

  “I guess that’ll about do it,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m not saying I wouldn’t have cracked the case.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Cooney’ll be upset. He wanted to solve it on his side of the line,” Staples gloated.

  “Well, Sheriff, it’s all yours.”

  “Reckon so.” He rocked back in his chair, and I thought for a second he was going to congratulate me, but he didn’t.

  “I guess this’ll be the end of that Oswald business,” he said.

  “I hope so.”

  “From what you tell me it was all just guilt on the part of Blake Curtin.”

  I nodded. “He and Oswald met in the Marines. Oswald got out and went to Russia. When Curtin was discharged, he came home to Jackson. He was friends with Doug Devlin, who, as far as I can tell, avoided the draft, thanks to old Timothy.”

  “Timothy had pull,” the sheriff allowed. “Besides, this was before Vietnam. It wasn’t such a big thing.”

  “Then, one day a few years later, Curtin was in New Orleans and who does he see but his old Marine buddy Oswald, standing on the corner of Canal Street, passing out pro-Cuba leaflets. He tells Oswald he’s working at the mental hospital and that there’re some jobs there. A few days later Lee shows up in Jackson.”

  “Looking for a job,” Staples said.

  “Exactly. Oswald’s got one child and another on the way. His marriage is at the breaking point. He can’t hold down a job. To his mind maybe he just needs to get away for a little while, start over.”

  “From what I read, he was always starting over.”

  “Right. Curtin sends him to a few local politicians, and maybe Oswald even registers to vote. He and Curtin go to the cabin in the woods owned by Curtin’s friends the Devlins. They drink some beer and relive old times. Then Oswald tells Curtin something. He admits that in April, he took a shot at General Walker in Dallas.”

  I imagined the two men in the lonely camp house, Oswald bright-eyed and intense, with that quirky smile, bragging, and how Curtin must have felt hearing the words come out.

  I almost got the son-of-a-bitch. One shot. That’s all it takes.

  “Curtin thinks it’s just talk. He remembers how in the Marines Oswald was always bragging. The men laughed at him, called him Ozzie the Rabbit. Now he’s ranting about how he can change the world.”

  You think I can’t do it? Look at Lenin: One man. He changed the world. Look at Marx. Look at Jesus Christ …

  “And Curtin does the unforgivable: He laughs.”

  “Ozzie, you’re full of shit, just like you were in the Marines.”

  “You think so?”

  That glassy stare …

  “I know so, podnuh.”

  “You don’t know a damned thing. You don’t know about the time I spent in the Soviet Union. You don’t know about my contacts with the KGB, with—”

  “You didn’t do jack, fella. If you ever went to Russia it was as a tourist. If you’d of defected to over there you’d be locked up. Besides, what do you have the Russians want?”

  “You won’t believe until you see it, will you?”

  “See what? Look, Ozzie—”

  “Don’t call me that—”

  “Then don’t bullshit me. So you got some old piece of shit Italian rifle. You’d blow your dick off.”

  Oswald’s face flushing as he rises, empty beer bottles crashing to the floor …

  “You won’t believe till you see for yourself …”

  “You got that straight. Have another beer …”

  “And Oswald storms out,” I finished. “Curtin forgets about it until three months later when he hears about the Kennedy assassination and sees his old friend’s name in the news.”

  Staples shook his head.

  “I can see why it shook him up.”

  “So bad he lost his speech. I guess a psychiatrist would say it was because in his mind what he had to say was too terrible to come out.”

  The sheriff shrugged. “Of course, Oswald would’ve done what he did no matter. It wasn’t Curtin’s fault.”

  “No. And maybe he realizes that at some level. But he’s like the kid who threw the rock at the street lamp just before all the lights in New York went out. It looked like cause and effect to him.”

  “Hell of a thing,” Staples said. “But you do have to wonder: What if Oswald had stayed here, gotten a job? Maybe he wouldn’t have been in Dallas that day.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s a pretty scary thought.”

  “Who he might have shot instead?”

  “No. I was thinking of all the other Oswalds running around out there.”

  It was ten-thirty when I got to Cyn’s. The lights were off downstairs, but the upstairs bedroom window was lit. I rang the front doorbell and waited.

  A long time later I heard movement, and then the door opened on the safety chain.

  “Alan. What are you doing here?”

  “Just tying up loose ends,” I said. “I’m kind of cold. You got a towel?”

  She hesitated, then the door closed and opened again.

  “What happened to you?” she asked, eyeing my mud-spattered clothing.

  “I took a dip in the creek.” I told her about Adolph Dewey and how I’d trapped him and almost been killed for my cleverness.

  She sighed.

  “So you can throw away your list,” she said, and I wondered if I heard relief in her voice.

  “No, I don’t need it anymore.” I walked into the parlor, vaguely aware that I was tracking mud. The hallway ahead was bright and smelled of fresh paint “Blake did a good job,” I said, touching the painted surface. “Better than he had to do.”

  “He’s a perfectionist,” she said. “He’s never satisfied unless he’s working on something.”

  “Funny,” I said. “Did you notice the hall really didn’t need refinishing?”

  “So?”

  “He even put an air vent in.” I pointed to the top of the wall
where it joined the ceiling.

  “Air vent? But—”

  “I know. You have window air conditioning units and space heaters.”

  “Then why?”

  I walked to the kitchen and pulled the footstool into the hallway. I stood on the top and grasped one of the screws to the air vent between my fingers. The screw turned. Once I’d gotten it out, I did the same with the other one. Then I lifted the aluminum vent frame out.

  “What’s going on?” Cyn asked. “Why are you taking it apart?”

  I reached into the hole, and when I pulled it out again I had a small metal box. I placed it on the stool in front of me and opened it. It was filled with crisp fifty-dollar bills.

  “Here’s what’s going on,” I said. “I’d say there’s about half a million here.”

  “My God. Is that Oswald’s money?”

  I climbed down and plucked out one of the bills for her to see.

  “A 1976 bill?”

  “Then what?” She seemed honestly puzzled.

  “You know what it is,” I said gently. “It’s the money your husband stole from his partner in the drag trade. The money Doug hid in the cabin. This is what Adolph Dewey was looking for. Dewey told us all about it. Fontenot was looking for it, too. He put out the story about Oswald’s treasure, but it was really this money he wanted. I think he figured out that Blake had it and that’s why he called me.”

  “But Blake …”

  “Curtin found it in the cabin. He figured out about the drag business. But he cared about you. My guess is he was saving it for you so you’d always have it. Sort of a savings account.”

  The color drained from her face.

  “I don’t want that kind of money,” she declared. “Even if it costs me this place.”

  I shrugged. “Well, that’s your business.”

  She frowned. “Don’t you understand? It’s dirty money.”

  “I understand,” I said. “And you’re probably right.”

  “I’m going to take it out tomorrow and burn it,” she said. “I want to get rid of everything that reminds me of the past.”

  I nodded.

  “And after that …” Her eyes sought mine, looking for an answer.

  “After that there’s still Adolph Dewey,” I said.