Dead Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 5)

by Phillip DePoy

  I had to admit that the gold tooth significantly lowered his IQ, and the glasses, remarkably unflattering, took a lot away from his much-touted demeanor.

  “Okay, then — Curtis.” I smiled. “I’ll be looking at the moon …”

  He nodded. “… but I’ll be seeing you.”

  That was a sample of the game that Mug and I had played since the old days when my band used to grease up a few of the dance floors around town. We played old jazz, swing — before it was an MTV craze — with a kind of a punk sensibility. What else could you do if you were young, playing jazz, and the Sex Pistols had just come to Atlanta? But I digress. Mug was a fan from those times, and we’d often try to stump one another with occasion-appropriate lines from the great songs.

  Mug stood, kicked back the last of his scotch, and adjusted his coat so that his pistol wasn’t too obvious.

  “Ms. Oglethorpe.” He smiled at her.

  She didn’t move.

  He was out the door like a ghost, vanished into the shadows.

  *

  Now, ordinarily, that would have been the kind of exit to end a moment — clear and clever and clean. But there was nothing ordinary about that night — and nothing clean. Before I could even sit down on the barstool closest to me, three quick shots, like firecrackers in a barrel, ripped the air just outside the place, and something heavy bumped against the door.

  I thought, Now there really are two good reasons to call homicide.

  21. Moonlight

  Soft moonlight in the doorway spilled across the dead man’s face, stopped at the collar of his short-sleeved, loud Hawaiian shirt. I hated seeing it. Mug stood over him, his automatic still in his hand, the hand shaking a little.

  “Man.” He had the voice that most people get when they kill somebody, no matter how tough they are: hollow and cold. “He just came right up on me. From behind. He got his arm around my neck, and I was pretty sure he had it in mind to squeeze until I couldn’t breathe anymore. I started to black out. I don’t even remember firing, exactly.”

  There was a black ooze coming from the guy’s middle that proved Mug had, in fact, fired. I was glad the moonlight didn’t go far enough down to make that any clearer than it was.

  “This isn’t by any chance,” I asked Mug slowly, “the person who delivered our package inside?” I was afraid that the answer was really not what I wanted to hear.

  He stared, but I could tell he couldn’t quite get his eyes to focus. “I don’t know.”

  “You know him?” I said softly, staring down at the face myself.

  “Looks familiar.” Mug lowered his gun hand at last.

  I looked around at the streets. “The police’ll be right here, you know.”

  “I know.” He managed to get his gun back inside his coat. “I’ve always been wise as to what kind of guy you are, and I know that since I’ve asked you to keep my presence here mum, you’ll do it. So this is the kind of guy I am: I’m going to give you a good reason to do it.” He reached into his coat. “So I’m a customer, get me? Take the money.”

  I wouldn’t. He stuffed it into my outside breast pocket anyway.

  “That’s not going to do any good in a court of law.”

  “I know,” he agreed, “but I know you’ll keep quiet about it as much as you possibly can, and I appreciate it — economically.”

  He jammed the money farther into my pocket. I didn’t object. Never resist a man with a tough nickname when he’s got money in one hand and a gun in the other. That’s another one of those rules you always hear about.

  “Okay, then.” He looked out toward the street. “I’m gone.”

  And before I could explain just how much I wanted him to stay, he was. I didn’t really even see him move. He was just there one second, and in the next second I thought I could hear faint footsteps behind the building, moving away — but it could have been a bird. Dally feeds the birds out back.

  Then, her voice: “Flap?”

  “I don’t know if you want to come out here or not,” I said. “It’s another body …”

  “… not Mug?”

  “No. Mug’s gone.”

  “Then … he shot somebody?”

  “Somebody attacked him, and Mug shot the guy, yes.” She was standing right there at the door, I could tell — but there wasn’t a chance she would come out.

  “Is he dead?”

  I tried not to think about anything, I just leaned over and put two fingers at the side of the guy’s neck. Nothing. Nothing at all.

  “I guess so.”

  “Who is it?” Her voice was barely audible. “Do you know?”

  I stared at the white face. “I know,” I told her, “but could you just wait a second for the rest of this little talk. I can hear the cops …”

  “… this is certainly shaping up to be quite a night.”

  I tried to sound lighter — I didn’t succeed. “I’m wondering what Detective Huyne will say about this.”

  “This new wrinkle.” She was game too, or trying to be.

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “I don’t think he’ll see the humor.”

  “Don’t all policemen like gallows humor?”

  We both knew we were just talking because we didn’t want silence, didn’t want to talk about another dead body. Neither one of us really knew what we were saying at that point. Shock makes any conversation stupid.

  That’s why it was almost a relief to see the flashing blue lights appear in the parking lot and the men with drawn service pieces charging my way.

  “Stand real still, there, Tucker.” Huyne’s voice was almost friendly.

  I held my hands out in plain sight and made as much like a statue as I could.

  Police swarmed. One knelt beside the body. Huyne was close behind, staring down at the body next to me. “I thought you said he was on the floor inside.”

  “Well, see,” I began, hoping not to sound as hapless as I felt, “this is new.”

  “New?”

  “I mean there is a body inside — from when I called you a moment ago, all right — but this one just got here … at the door.”

  Huyne looked up at me. “There’s another body inside?”

  “Yes. There is.”

  “Besides this one?”

  “Look …” I began.

  But he was suddenly in no mood to hear anything else I said.

  “Check him for weapons,” he told the man standing closest to me.

  The guy moved fast, patted me down carefully, then shook his head.

  “Tucker,” he began again, steel-voiced and razor-sharp, “if I look around in these bushes and leaves around here, and I find any sort of a gun …”

  “… it won’t be mine because I don’t have one; it won’t have my prints on it because I don’t even touch the things anymore; and I won’t know whose it is, because I’m too stupid tonight to know my own middle name. Okay?”

  “You don’t know who this is lying here?” He looked down at the body at the door.

  “Oh, yeah.” I closed my eyes. “I know that.” Funny how images of the guy were zooming through my head whether I wanted them there or not. Funny how I’d just gotten reacquainted with the guy — only to look at him dead.

  “So?” Huyne had no patience with my sojourn down memory lane.

  I opened my eyes. “This used to be a guy called Jersey Jakes.” That was also a surprisingly difficult sentence to get out. Who could ever have imagined that I would get attached to the guy?

  “I’ve heard of him.” He let out a heavy breath. Then: “Ms. Oglethorpe inside?”

  “Right here.” Her voice was strange, muffled by the closed door. I didn’t know whether she’d heard who the stiff at the door was or not.

  “Are …” His voice was high and he moved his hand quickly to the door handle, then stopped and shot a quick look to me, like he’d given something about himself away. Then, calmer: “Are you all right?”

  “All right?” Her voice was beginning to get an ed
ge of hysteria that any person might have achieved under the circumstances, and it grew worse as she continued to talk. “Well, no, Detective. I can’t say that I’m all right. I can’t say that at all. I have no idea how I am, in fact. Are you coming in this door? I only ask because I’m using it to hold me up at the moment, and I guess I’ll need to step back if you are coming in, to keep from getting knocked down, see? Which would just make me even less all right than I am now. That is, if I were on the floor, here, beside …” and she trailed off.

  I didn’t wait for Huyne’s response, which, given that there were still guns pointed at me, I probably should have. But I heard the terrible shatter of her voice, and I just moved.

  “… that’s right, sugar” — I touched the handle, spilling moonlight into the club — “we’re coming in now, so take three steps backward.”

  I heard her move right away, and I was inside, holding her in my arms, before anyone else took another breath.

  22. Hearts

  Much as I might have often wanted to, I’d hardly ever held Dally as tightly as I was holding her then. Our hearts were beating against each other like one big drum.

  Even Huyne could see the righteousness of the moment, and remained mute.

  After a second that lasted a lifetime, I stood back. “Let’s go sit down.”

  She nodded, I put my arm around her, and we made it to the bar. She sat. I grabbed the scotch and poured her a shot. Not ordinarily her drink, but it seemed called for.

  I turned. Huyne had stopped at the package on the floor.

  “This is Ms. Oglethorpe’s …” He spoke softly, like he was in church, in the direction of the corpse.

  “… yes,” I finished for him. “And you might want to check the little letter in his pocket. It’s got my fingerprints on it since I just handled it a little while ago to read it to Ms. Oglethorpe.”

  Other policemen were coming in. Some were making calls, arranging for wagons. Some were checking out the door, the floor. Some were still outside. Huyne bent over, picked the note out of the dead man’s pocket with a gloved hand, and read it silently. His men began to swarm all over the place then. How many men were there. Six? A hundred?

  After what seemed to be an interminable degree of activity around us, Huyne found his old voice again.

  “I don’t suppose you’d even care to try to explain this?” He had a little smile on his face.

  “How could anybody explain something this bizarre?” I looked around.

  “Well” — he absently scratched the back of his neck — “I’m going to have to try — you know.”

  “I guess.” I wasn’t sure what he was saying.

  “I have to consider you a prime suspect in the deal, at this point.” That’s what he was saying, but he didn’t mean anything by it. He was just stating a fact.

  “I know.” I shrugged. He had his job to do.

  “And you know I’m not going to bother Ms. Oglethorpe much tonight.”

  I wasn’t quite sure why he said that, but she responded.

  “Can we just get it over with?” She was sounding really tired, at that point, so her voice was more harsh than ever.

  It even startled Huyne, I could tell.

  “Just tell me what happened,” he said, moving toward her, getting out a small spiral pad.

  She related the facts as coldly and quickly as she could, and Huyne kept quiet, except for the scratching of the pen on the paper. She told him about the delivery. She omitted Mug. She described the gunshots at the door. Then she stopped talking.

  The ambulances arrived. Men moved. The air stirred. It all had the feel of a dream. Sounds were disjointed, images were blurred, voices didn’t seem to be speaking English. It was all in slow motion. I felt every nerve ending in my body — and it wasn’t good.

  By the time the room was emptying out, I felt like I had the worst case of the flu on record: fever, achy, dizzy, thirsty, and cold.

  “Tucker?” Huyne could see I was in a state. He got a firm look in my eye and tried to speak as clearly as possible. “I’m not taking you in.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But don’t go anywhere.”

  “Except home to bed,” I agreed.

  He stayed frozen on my eyes one more moment. “We’ll talk.”

  “I’m sure we will.” I turned to Dally.

  She had her head down on the bar. Maybe, I thought, she was even sleeping.

  Huyne gave her one last glance, lingered a second too long, then split. He was the last one out.

  I felt myself moving toward the bar, and I ended up beside Dally.

  She lifted her head then, and an alien’s face met mine.

  “Flap?”

  “Yes?” I was afraid, from the sound in her voice, of what she might say next.

  “You didn’t do this — did you?”

  “Do what?” But I knew what she was going to say, even though it defied everything I knew to be true in this life.

  “You didn’t kill my husband, did you?”

  23. Broken

  There’s not much you can say to a question like that. Denial would have sounded a lot like I was being defensive, given the mood I was in. And my traditional blend of cool shots and laugh lines seemed out of the question.

  So I did the only thing I could do. I stared back at her like I didn’t know who she was. And in that silence, I felt a circle break between us.

  “I’ll find out who did this.” It didn’t remotely sound like my voice.

  “I’m tired.” Her voice didn’t even sound exactly human.

  So I drove her home, and we didn’t talk anymore.

  *

  The second I got to my place, instead of dropping in bed like I should have, I found my old band contact book — under books and magazines and unpaid bills — and dialed up an old phone number. I hoped it would still be current.

  “What?” That’s the way he answered the phone, but it wasn’t mean or tough, it was just a question.

  “Daniel?” I tried not to sound too surprised to get him. “It’s Flap Tucker.”

  “Flap? What on earth are you doing calling me at … five o’clock in the morning?”

  “I’ve got a problem and I need help.” A sentence that seldom came out of my mouth. I was always the one who was supposed to solve problems and give help. I was thinking what a, pardon my language, coincidence it was that I had only recently considered taking on partners.

  “Oh. Well. That’s different.” His voice shifted gears. “Tell me what your problem is.”

  “Dalliance.”

  “I think I know the nature of this problem.” He smiled into the phone. “I should have such a problem.”

  “No” — I let go of a hard breath — “I don’t think it’s what you think it is. Dalliance is currently under the misimpression that I killed her husband.”

  I was glad he didn’t answer right away, because I needed a little moment to adjust to having said such a thing.

  Then: “Well, Flap — that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? Let’s start with ‘I didn’t know she was married,’ and end up with ‘he’s dead’?”

  “Not just dead” — I closed my eyes and slumped down into the blue sofa — “dead and delivered to Dally’s club. Dead on the floor. Wrapped in brown paper, like a present. And there was a note.”

  “A note? What do you mean?” He was completely awake, even though I knew my call had gotten him up. God bless him.

  “The body had a note in the pocket. Said something about a final payment.”

  “I see. Somebody’s trying to be what they call ominous.”

  “Or something.”

  “Well, Flap.” I heard him sitting up. “This is a problem, and you do need help. And so if you’re asking me to lay on the aid, I’d have to say, ‘Can do.’”

  “Daniel …” I started.

  “… Flap.” He stopped me. “When I needed gigs, and wasn't worth much, who hired me? And when I got a coke habit that wouldn’t lay off, who
thumped me in the back of the head until I quit? And then … when I wanted to bust up Lorraine’s marriage …”

  “… I see where you’re going with this, Danny …”

  “… no, I don’t think you do, Flap. Let me finish. My thought has a different ending than you think it does.” He shifted a little. “The answer to all the above questions is: Flap Tucker. Now my debt quotient is high in this regard, but you don’t ordinarily give a person any shot at returning the favor. You’re like the Lone Ranger, see? No thank-you-masked-man …”

  “… to quote Lenny Bruce,” I finished for him. “But I don’t do these little things so that …”

  “… so that a guy will owe you, I know that. But what I’m talking about is not you. I’m talking about me and my sense of what’s right. You don’t quite get that this will be doing me a favor — if I help you. Like I’ve got something broken and this will fix it. It’ll release a little of my karma, as you and the mystics of Asia are always saying. Don’t you want me to have a little karma release, Flap?”

  And God bless Daniel Frank again. He made me smile.

  “Yes, all right, Daniel — I want very much for you to get off the wheel of death and rebirth. And if, by helping me out with my little situation here, I can be of some service to you in that regard, I suppose it would be selfish of me not to make you help me out.”

  “My point exactly. I’m glad we got that settled. You want sleep or you want me to come right over?”

  “Well” — I sighed and smiled deeper — “I’ve said it to myself but now I say it out loud: God bless Danny Frank. I think what I need now is a little shut-eye. See you around noon?”

  “Noon’s good. At where? Mary Mac’s?”

  “How about Krispy Kreme? I predict I’ll be needing fried sugar when I wake up.”

  “There at noon. Get some sleep.”

  “Daniel …”

  “… no thank-you-masked-man either way, okay.”

  “So … good night then, Danny.”

  “Well,” he said quietly, “okay. Good night, then, Flap.”

  24. Hot Doughnuts Now

  Whenever the red neon sign was lit, you knew the doughnuts had just come out of the cooker. But if you had been a blind man, you would still have known, because the smell lifted the air like low-rent lilies, and the spirit would rise. That smell was yeast for my soul — the taste was my communion.