Dead South (A Bryson Wilde Thriller / Read in Any Order)

by R. J. Jagger

  It wasn’t.

  There were no signs of searching.

  There were no signs of a struggle.

  On the kitchen counter was a bowl of fruit, still fresh enough to eat. In the bathroom, several pairs of stockings hung over the shower rod, long since dried to perfection. An ashtray next to the couch in the living room was packed with butts. On closer inspection, lots had lipstick but lots didn’t, possibly the earmarks of a man. Wilde squashed his butt on top of it all and lit a new one.

  “So what are we looking for exactly?”

  “Anything that shows she knew Sudden Dance,” he said. “That’s the big one. Or who else did she know? Who had a motive to kill her? I also want to figure out if she had a car or not and if so whether it’s parked around here somewhere or whether it’s missing.”

  “Whoa,” Alabama said. “Look at this.”

  This was a piece of paper.

  Handwritten on it were the words, Bryson Wilde. Directly below those words was his office phone number, written in the same feminine script. Nothing else was on the paper, only his name and number.

  “What’s this about?” Alabama said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did she call you?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Think.”

  “I am. No, I never talked to her.” He focused on her. “How about you?”

  Her eyes faded and then returned.

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Someone called last week when you were out. It was a woman but she never left her name.”

  “What did she want?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Did she say she’d call back?”

  “No, she asked for you, I said you weren’t in at the moment and she asked when you’d be back. I told her probably in an hour or two. She said thanks and hung up.”

  “How’d she sound?”

  “I don’t follow—”

  “Did she sound like someone was out to kill her or whether she was looking for protection or something like that?”

  Alabama wrinkled her forehead.

  “Not that I remember,” she said. “Actually her voice was sort of soft, almost like she was whispering.”

  “Like she didn’t want someone to overhear her?”

  “Possibly.”

  The paper was fancy, off-white and thicker than most, with a watermark. It had been folded. No others like it were visible. “This is from her work,” he said. “She wrote my name and number down while she was at work, folded it up and stuck it in her purse.” He shoved it in his wallet next to the photo of Sudden Dance and said, “Good thing we got here before Fingers did. This is a one-way ticket to jail. Keep looking around.”

  They found a black-and-white photo of Alley sitting behind the wheel of parked car. Her arm hung out the window. A cigarette dangled from her hand. A mischievous smile graced her face. It was a summer day.

  She was happy.

  The sun caught the edge of her face.

  Her hair was loose and windblown.

  The vehicle was white.

  A string of beads hung from the rearview mirror.

  13

  Day Five

  August 7, 1952

  Wednesday Afternoon

  Outside at Blondie something was off but Wilde couldn’t put his finger on what it was. It wasn’t until they got back to Larimer Street and he reached into the backseat for Sudden Dance’s briefcase that it came to him.

  The backseat was empty.

  The briefcase was gone.

  He said, “Someone ate the bait,” then stepped out, closed the door and lit a cigarette as he cast an eye up and down the street.

  Alabama looked at him over Blondie’s top.

  “Fingers?”

  Wilde shook his head. “No, we lost Fingers. We lost him good. This isn’t the work of Fingers.”

  “So, the killer then?”

  Wilde’s face tightened.

  Up the street on the opposite side was a man too stationary, a menacing man in a suit that Wilde had never seen before, now lighting a cigarette and leaning a muscular body against a building, his face turning in every direction except towards Wilde.

  “Get into the office and lock the door,” he said. “The gun is in the drawer. Use it if you have to.”

  “Wilde—”

  “What.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “About what?”

  “It’s my fault. I didn’t lock the car door.”

  “If you did he would have just busted the window. So actually you did good.”

  Then he turned and walked up the street with his head down and his eyes on the sidewalk, ostensibly just a guy in thought as he walked, not paying any attention to his surroundings, probably consumed with a dame.

  When he got to where the man was, he looked across the street for the first time.

  The figure was gone.

  He wasn’t up.

  He wasn’t down.

  He wasn’t anywhere.

  Up, that’s the way he probably went. That’s the way Wilde would have gone. He headed that way, now at a brisk walk and with his eyes high.

  Come on.

  Don’t be afraid.

  You want the money.

  Come and get it.

  It’s all yours.

  At the corner of 14th he looked to the left.

  Bingo!

  There he was, half a block ahead and moving fast. Wilde flicked his butt to the gutter and picked up the pace. The gap closed step by step.

  “Hey buddy, hold up a minute.”

  The man turned his head and then stopped. He was bigger than Wilde expected, with a flat-nosed boxer’s face and a fancy gold watch on his left wrist.

  “Yeah?”

  “I know you from someone,” Wilde said. “What’s your name?”

  The man hardened his face.

  “No, you don’t know me,” the man said.

  Wilde watched him turn and leave.

  Then he lit a smoke and headed back to the office.

  There the door wasn’t locked like he’d told Alabama to do. She was seated behind the desk with her legs propped up and her skirt pulled up above her knees. Her eyes lifted up from a magazine.

  “That was fast,” she said.

  “I told you—”

  She brought something off her lap and set it on the desk. It was the gun.

  “So the guy didn’t pan out I assume.”

  Wilde sat on the window ledge.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I got a close-up look at him. If he shows up again I’ll know him. Did you check the money?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s all there except for a twenty that I put in my purse.”

  Wilde pulled the photo out of his wallet, the one with the lawyer, Alley London, sitting behind the wheel of a white car. Not much of the vehicle was in view but from what was there it looked like a Packard. No white Packards, or white anythings, had been anywhere around the lawyer’s house, either in the side yard or on the street.

  He tossed the photo on the desk.

  “I have a dilemma,” he said. “I got this whole bait thing in motion without getting you out of the picture first. Now you’re at risk, at least until the guy gets his hands on the money.”

  Alabama adjusted her body and in the process managed to hike her skirt up to the danger point.

  “Don’t give up the money, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said. “Force him to come and get it and then take him down when he does. That was the plan. Keep it the plan.”

  Wilde tapped ashes out the window.

  Across the street was the man, replete with flat nose and the fancy gold wrist, leaning against a building with a smoke dangling from his lips. Wilde pretended not to notice and eased off the ledge.

  He motioned over.

  “Come here but stay out of sight.”

  She peeked through the corner of the window.
>
  “That’s the guy,” Wilde said.

  “He looks mean.”

  “Here’s what I want you to do. Sneak out the back way. Head over to the Down Towner and keep an eye on the witness.”

  “You mean the waitress.”

  “I mean both,” he said. “Jackie Fountain. Don’t come back to the office for any reason. I won’t be here and I don’t want you here alone under any circumstances. Meet me at four o’clock in front of the Daniels & Fisher Tower.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “Do some shopping.”

  She frowned.

  “All I have is that twenty—”

  He pulled bills from his wallet and forked them over. “Just keep yourself safe until four. Can you do that?”

  She ran a finger down his nose.

  “I’ll buy something sexy.”

  “I’m serious, ’Bama.”

  Five minutes later he was in Blondie heading south out of the guts of the city. The top was down. The sun was on his face. On the passenger seat was a shoebox. Inside that shoebox was $5,231, less whatever had stuck to Alabama’s fingers. Next to it, also on the seat, was the gun.

  The traffic got less congested.

  Still, it was too thick to tell if he was being followed.

  With any luck he was.

  He drove mile after mile after mile.

  The buildings got smaller and farther apart and then dropped off altogether as the topography morphed into nature. Magpies took to the air and little yellow butterflies jagged this way and that around prairie bushes. Every once in a while a squashed rattlesnake appeared on the asphalt.

  No vehicles were directly behind Wilde.

  There was one car, a white one, way back, going the same direction, south, but otherwise not of much interest. It only came into sight on rare occasions when both cars crested.

  Still, it could be following even from that far back.

  The crossroads were few and were either gravel or dirt.

  If Wilde turned down one a rooster-tail would kick up. A tracker would be able to follow.

  His chest pounded.

  The feeling didn’t go away as the miles clicked off. He made it all the way to the well without adventure; the well, the place where Alley London’s body got dumped.

  He pulled to the side of the road, killed the engine and got out.

  The sky was quiet.

  The sun was hot.

  The air had a soft scent of nature.

  Wilde lit a cigarette.

  Then he slipped the photo of Alley London under a wiper blade, grabbed the box of money, tucked the gun in his belt and headed up the almost-not-there road that led to the well and the dilapidated structures.

  The well was empty now.

  Fingers had pulled the body out thanks to Alabama’s anonymous report. Other than that the place was exactly as Wilde had left it.

  He took a seat in the opening of the house where the front door should be and leaned against the frame.

  The shade was an oasis.

  Suddenly a horn honked.

  He recognized it all too well.

  It belonged to Blondie.

  Someone was there.

  Someone was announcing that he was coming.

  He was coming for the money.

  He was coming with a brain on fire and murder in his heart.

  Wilde tapped a smoke out and lit it.

  He had a few minutes.

  He might as well use them.

  In ten minutes someone would be dead. If it turned out to be the other guy, Wilde would dump his stupid body in the well. The man would take the spot of the woman he killed.

  It would be poetic.

  14

  Day Five

  August 7, 1952

  Wednesday Afternoon

  Wilde set the shoebox on the floor in the middle of the doorway and then took a position behind the shed. Minutes later a man appeared; it was the man from Larimer Street, the one with the flat nose and the expensive gold watch.

  In his right hand was a black gun.

  He approached cautiously, keeping low, keeping quiet.

  Thirty steps away from the structure he stopped.

  His eyes fell on the money.

  Then he called out, “Wilde!” Wilde’s chest pounded at the realization that the man knew his name. “Wilde, all I want is the money. Don’t be stupid. I don’t want to kill you. There’s no reason you have to die. We can do this the civilized way. Do you understand?”

  Wilde said nothing.

  “The money’s not yours,” the man said.

  Wilde tightened his grip on the gun.

  The man stood straight up and lowered his hand.

  “My gun’s pointed at the ground,” he shouted. “Show yourself. I’m not going to shoot.”

  Wilde stepped out with the gun pointed down.

  He was fast.

  He was accurate.

  He could get the barrel up and a bullet flying before his brain twisted far enough to even know what his body was doing.

  “There you are,” the man said.

  Wilde jerked his arm up, turned to the right and pulled the trigger. The wood next to the money exploded. He fired again and this time the bullet landed where he wanted, on the shoebox, catching the corner and sending it spinning. Bills flew out and twisted wildly in the air before dropping to the ground.

  “There’s the money. Take it.”

  The man frowned.

  Then he dropped his gun to the ground.

  “See?” he said. “No threat here.”

  Wilde pointed his gun at the man’s chest.

  His finger tightened on the trigger.

  He’d killed men before but most had been from the barrel of a warbird. A nasty image flashed, an image of the man knifing Sudden Dance in the alley, knifing her hard, stabbing her over and over in the gut and then, when she dropped, driving the blade into her heart.

  The man took a step towards the money, then another.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll split it with you. Fifty-fifty. That’s fair, don’t you think? Just put the gun down and cool your heels. We’ll work through this. Remember, the money’s not yours. You took it.””

  Wilde didn’t listen.

  He needed to pull the trigger.

  He needed to do it for Sudden Dance.

  He needed to do it for Alley London.

  The trigger wouldn’t pull though.

  Then the man pointed at the ground next to Wilde and said, “Rattlesnake.”

  Wilde turned his head but not much, just enough to verify that it was a trick. What he saw he couldn’t believe. Not more than eight feet away a thick brown snake was coming directly at him. The body was brown with wicked spots and the head was a large thick diamond with nasty black eyes. Wilde’s eyes went to the tail. The rattle was there, blackish and hard; it wasn’t a bull snake.

  He shot; once, then again, and again and again, hitting it each time but not squarely until the last pull of the trigger, but hitting it good then, real good, right at the end of the head, hitting it so hard that the head flew off and gooey red guts squirted out of the hole in the body.

  He turned back to the boxer to find something he didn’t expect.

  The man was walking towards him.

  “That was six shots,” the man said.

  His face was hard.

  In his hand was a knife.

  “That part about not hurting you,” the man said, “I’m afraid that was a lie.”

  Then he charged.

  Wilde pulled the trigger.

  No response came.

  It fell on empty air.

  15

  Day Five

  August 7, 1952

  Wednesday Afternoon

  It took Wilde a long time to kill the boxer and when it was over his body shut down, collapsing him to the ground on top of the rattlesnake’s body, with not enough strength to even roll off. The snake’s head was by his head, mere
inches away, a foot at most, staring at him out of dead black holes.

  He closed his eyes.

  The darkness was whiskey.

  He was busted; how bad and how far and how deep, he didn’t know, but did know it wouldn’t be pretty.

  It took a long time before he got to his feet.

  He would have laid there longer but the sun was chewing him up.

  The boxer’s eyes were open and eerily shriveled.

  The juice was gone.

  He looked like a circus freak.

  Wilde nudged his face with a foot.

  It didn’t respond.

  He found a wallet in the man’s back pocket. It was stuffed with cash, a lot of cash, maybe over a grand. Wilde didn’t count it or take it out. He shifted through it for a driver’s license or identification papers and found nothing, only the cash. He put the wallet back in the man’s pocket, dragged him to the well and dumped him in like the little shit he was. “That’s your first step towards hell. Have fun the rest of the way.” The bloody knife went in too, thrown in on top of him, plus the gun.

  There, that was all of it.

  He grabbed the shoebox, gathered the money and got the hell out of there.

  Back at Blondie the photo of Alley London had been removed from the windshield wiper and tossed on the ground. Wilde picked it up and stuck it in his wallet.

  The boxer’s car was parked directly behind Blondie.

  Wilde expected it would be Alley’s white vehicle. It wasn’t; it was an old, blue piece of crap with a temporary tag taped in the rear window. The boxer must have ditched Alley’s car somewhere, not needing the risk.

  An unopened carton of Camels sat on the seat.

  Wilde threw them in Blondie.

  The asshole owed him at least that.

  The keys were in the ignition.

  A plastic dealer’s tag was on the ring—Honest Joe’s Used Cars. It was a place on upper Colfax. You could buy a car in the front and stolen cigarettes in the back.

  Mashed butts were in the ashtray.

  Underneath ‘them was a crumpled piece of paper.

  Wilde brushed it off and unfolded it.

  On it was a handwritten phone number.

  He shoved it in his wallet.

  Then he got in Blondie, lit a smoke, did a one-eighty and let the miles click off one after another back towards Denver.