The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set

by Elizabeth Sims

  Now, nearing midnight at the ABC Mission, Rowe stepped into the chemistry room and greeted Dale Vargas, who was sitting on the sofa reading a book in the dim light.

  The Whale smiled. “I love a man who’s early!”

  The clock said 11:55. The Whale was alone.

  Shiny blackness pressed in from the bare windows. The room smelled foody and stale, as if someone had eaten a bacon pizza here recently. Vargas did not rise, but closed his book. The boldly lettered title: Leadership Is Only Gut-Deep.

  This time, Rowe did not extend his hand to shake. Vargas noted it. “You’re learning my customs.”

  “I’m a quick study,” Rowe boasted quietly.

  “I see you looking at my book. This is a good book, you know this gentleman, Irving Sessions? He invented the Hydro-Cooker, and then all those choppers that women buy, one for every kind of food. He’s a multimillionaire, and he wrote this.”

  “Ah,” said Rowe.

  “He has an empire.”

  “I should say.”

  “You know how I got my start reading?” Vargas’s hands holding the book were so pink and chubby they looked like baby hands, except for the scale of them—along the lines of moon gloves. Rowe noticed what looked like a smudge of blood on the heel of one hand, where you might miss washing if you’re in a hurry.

  “How?” asked Rowe.

  “From my great-aunt Lois. She started me on the newspaper, then she stole some books out of the library for me and said, Now you read these! Yours to keep, not every boy gets books to keep!” Vargas laughed. “The Little Red Hen. I’ll do it myself, said the Little Red Hen. Now that’s a lesson I’ve never forgot. I’ll do it myself. My aunty taught me that books can make you powerful and smart. Maybe she had a different path in mind when she started this little guy on reading, but I learned that any path can come easier by reading.” Vargas’s eyes danced. “You hear what I’m telling you?”

  “I do,” said Rowe. He glanced at the bulletin board with the picture of Einstein with the slit in his throat.

  _____

  Neneng got a jolt of energy when her hands came free. It took me another few minutes to unbind her ankles, at which point she jumped to her feet.

  I told her, “I can get you out of here, but I have to stay and capture the fat man. That’s what I came for.”

  She nodded. “OK, which way out? I wait outside.”

  “No, don’t wait! You have to get to a doctor as fast as possible. Get on the bus uptown and go to the medical center, or flag down a cop. Ask anybody to point the way.”

  I could not interrupt tonight’s enterprise for any reason, because I had no way to get a message to George. He was going to launch the whole thing, and he needed me, otherwise he’d very possibly die at the hands of the Whale. I had to get going; my time was getting short.

  “Bleeding is less,” noted Neneng, her voice hoarse but strong. She was one tough broad, I’ll tell you.

  “Where—where is your nose?” I thought I could wrap it up for her.

  “Thin man, he kick it out the door.”

  “What thin man? What was his name?”

  She shrugged. We searched the bloody floor outside the little room among the buckets and junk, but did not find her nose. I pawed around, noticing the opened package of zip ties on the floor.

  “Never mind,” said Neneng. “I go.”

  “Up the stairs, then turn right.” I told her how to get out to the street via the gym, which wasn’t used at night.

  “I hide outside,” she said. “If a policeman see me, they come in here. First, you kill the fat man. Then I go to doctor. Police can come then.”

  She staggered off and I heard her clumping rapidly up the stairwell.

  I checked my watch—shit!—12:02. I was supposed to be in position by now, and I still had to change clothes and get upstairs to that chemistry room. I washed my blood-slick hands in a nearby scrub sink and dumped out my duffel.

  As fast as I could, I scrubbed off my latex and makeup, pulled off my raccoon-pelt wig, brushed my hair, and changed my clothes. As I worked, I wondered who Neneng’s “thin man” was. It couldn’t be Denny; he and Gina were probably just starting back from the concert in Ventura, sixty miles up the coast. I turned to race upstairs, then froze in my tracks as I heard someone rapidly descending the stairwell. The steel-and-concrete staircase gave off one low bong per step.

  I leaped to a hiding place behind a tanklike turbine thing. The person’s tread quickened and didn’t sound heavy enough to be the Whale’s.

  From the shadows, I peeped out.

  A man came in, a thin one, and he didn’t have dreadlocks. He was black and he wore black clothing, and I could see a rim of white at the back of his neck. Oh, no way.

  Perceiving the door to the little room to be wide open, the Reverend Bill Culpepper spun around with a loud “Huuh?” Yes, it was the one-thumbed former stevedore who pestered Amaryllis about various chores and said “amen” a lot.

  I almost made a sound of startlement; I almost popped out to say hello.

  “Oh, shit,” he panted. “Shit. Shittin’ Jesus, shittin’ Jesus.” He stepped to the little room’s threshold, not wanting to look, looking, then staggering back a few steps. His eyes were stark as they scanned the suddenly menacing jumble of pipes and junk, rife with hiding places.

  He stood in a pool of murky light for at least a full minute, breathing audibly, trying to calm himself. My pulse pounded as the seconds raced by. I have to get moving.

  I watched him get hold of himself. He moistened his lips and swallowed. He spoke again, this time with malevolent self-assurance. “OK, where are ya, bitch? Where are ya?”

  I watched him reach a lean hand to the top of a metal cabinet and feel around. He drew out a slim knife about a foot long, like a kitchen fillet knife. He looked relieved, as if he’d expected it too, to be gone.

  Now armed, he squared his shoulders and decided to prowl the boiler room. In the dim light, I saw the ropiness of his neck muscles.

  I stepped from the shadows.

  _____

  Rowe thought about how often he’d successfully used toys to distract, charm, or divert. Vargas was immune to toys in the typical sense, but Rowe knew that Vargas considered weapons to be the ultimate toys. Which is, of course, the way of it with men prone to violence.

  Vargas went on, “Reading a book just opens up your entire mental capacity.”

  Rowe nodded.

  “You’re looking neater, Jimmer.”

  “I realize grooming is important.”

  “But if you’re going to be working Beverly Hills and beyond—Hollywood Hills and the like—I do foresee that in your future, you’ve got to step it up a notch higher.”

  In fact, Rowe’s clothes tonight were almost as nice as the Whale’s, and he had shaved. He still wore the ridiculous reddish curly wig and buck teeth, but he had washed the wig and combed it nicely. He looked, he thought, like a high school class president.

  _____

  “Freeze! Drop it!” I commanded in the deepest, toughest voice from my inner universe.

  Culpepper stared me all the way from the peak of my LAPD hat to the bright oval shield on my chest, down to my thick-soled black tactical shoes.

  The shock to his system was so great, I don’t think he could’ve moved if he wanted to.

  Given the fact that my gun was fake, I had no choice but to make this work. “Drop it!” I barked again, and the two seconds it took him to decide to do it felt like a week.

  The knife hit the floor point first, doinng, and clittered to the corner.

  Covering the Reverend with one hand, I hit the fake transmit button on my fake radio and barked, “Got him! Send the guys down!”

  When I’d received my two hours of coaching for my work as a police extra in The Canary Syndrome, they’d shown us how to take down a suspect and apply handcuffs, which some of us were supposed to do with the protesters.

  “I didn’t do anything—” Culpeppe
r began in a high voice.

  I over-yelled him, “Get down! Down, down down!” as if I were so excited I might pull the trigger without knowing it. “Facedown, spread your legs, goddamn it!”

  He was the Whale’s money man, I realized, which is why he’d been part of the interrogation of Neneng.

  The gypsum powder clinging to the raw wallboard absorbed and pinkened her blood that had been smeared on it.

  Once you’ve ordered your suspect down, you kneel on his back and grab up his wrists one at a time. In the case of the Reverend Bill Culpepper, I used a handy zip tie from the package on the floor, reserving the steel cuffs on my belt for my work upstairs—if I got there in time. I talked loudly, harshly, and cursingly.

  He talked back. “Oho, now, what you want to do this for? I’ve done nothing, praise God.” He’d blipped right back into his phony preacher persona. Who ever gets fooled by that stuff? Well, I had been, for a while.

  “There’s been a little mix-up, sister officer, is all. I just came down here to check on—these machines, you know…” He actually put a cajoling smile into his voice, even as he grunted with my knee in his back.

  I worked as fast as I could, fumbling for a moment with the stiff zip tie.

  It was then he decided to struggle: I felt his leg slide sideways, as if to gain leverage to flip me off.

  My anger flared so strong I almost saw it, like a bright-gold curtain billowing in my face for a second.

  I bashed his face into the floor with my elbow.

  He really wasn’t expecting that.

  “Oooh!” A primal, unnerving squeal. His body flexed enough for me to finish cuffing him. “Oooh!”

  “Pile of scum.” I zipped the plastic strip tight against his wrist-bones and half kicked, half rolled him into the little white soundproof room.

  My heart was going like a string of firecrackers. “Scream as loud as you want, you goddamn coward! You’re all cowards.”

  I used a second tie to attach his wrists to the heavy steel ring. This took some doing, as I didn’t want to face him and have to reach around him, but it’s amazing how pliant even a strong person’s body is when they’re discombobulated from pain and fear. I was able to yank him into position and lock that second tie.

  “The Whale upstairs,” I told him, stepping back, “just let slip that you were the one that took care of those two guys.”

  “H’h,” he spat. He knew enough not to say anything incriminating. But he didn’t say, “Which two guys?” like an innocent person would. He knew which two guys, all right: the sorry dead sons of bitches Nathan Cubitt had referred to, the ones who’d tried to threaten the Whale about what had happened in Tucson. He writhed, damning me to hell.

  I didn’t bother to glance at him as I headed for the door, although just before I slammed it, I said, “And you have a blessed day!”

  _____

  “I know you don’t have all night,” said Rowe, one thigh up on a lab counter.

  The Whale rose laboriously from his seat, went over to the next lab counter, turned on the faucet, and bent to drink from it. He kissed the back of his hand. “So?”

  Rowe began, “Self-defense is what we’re mostly about.” Vargas loved that. “It all boils down to self-defense, doesn’t it?”

  “I mean,” Rowe went on, “even the demise of Sgt. Annette Soames was self-defense in a way, wasn’t it? In a proactive way?” The Whale laughed, and Rowe joined him, his lips retracting from the fake buck teeth.

  “You really hated her!” observed Vargas appreciatively, still not saying anything incriminating. He studied Rowe, standing now only a few feet from him. “You know, I’d like to spot you some dental work at some point, some point soon. Your spirit feels wrong for that mouth of teeth. No offense, as I know a man can’t help the way he’s born. Yeah,” he mused, looking at Rowe closely, “the teeth don’t fit you, somehow. They don’t seem right, somehow.” He approached Rowe, his belly rolling from side to side, his nose lifted slightly, as if detecting a new odor.

  Instantly, Rowe pulled a large semiautomatic pistol from beneath his shirt. With a smile he held the muzzle up, finger on the guard. The Whale’s attention snapped to the gun. “Ever seen one of these?” Rowe asked with enthusiasm. “It’s a Siegfried Series B, forty-five caliber. It’ll stop a grizzly bear, not to mention the chump on the street. The fishing guides up in Alaska actually use these for backup. I put some hollowpoints in.” He dropped the magazine, showing that it was full, then rammed it back home.

  It was a beautifully made gun: polished stainless steel, sharply checkered walnut grips.

  “Four-and-a-half-inch barrel,” said Rowe, “enough to aim, but not so much to get in the way of concealed carry.”

  The Whale admired the gun. “I thought you said U.S. Olympic team.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I thought they used small caliber. Rifles, twenty-twos, I’ve watched it on TV.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s mostly, but they’ve added a large-bore division. Because more and more combat shooters are starting to compete. So, given your plans for expansion and eventually being legal, you need weapons that, if they’re traced, won’t lead back to you or your people in any way.”

  Vargas nodded.

  “Here,” and Rowe passed the gun, butt-first, to Vargas. “The safety’s off.”

  The fat man took it comfortably, and, like everyone who grasps a new gun, he wrapped it in his palm and looked at its profile.

  Rowe coughed loudly.

  The lines of the gun were smooth, the machining perfect, and the satin finish made the steel glow.

  A scuttling sound occurred near the front blackboard, near the door to the teacher’s office—the sickening, unmistakable movement of a large rodent.

  The Whale turned alertly toward the sound, shifting the gun in his hand.

  A large gray alley rat nosed along the wall. It moved steadily, as if on a mission somewhere.

  “Kill it, Dale!” shouted Rowe.

  As reflexively as he had flicked the knife at Albert Einstein, Dale Vargas extended his arm and, leading the moving rat by just a hair, squeezed the trigger.

  The rat leaped straight into the air, came down on four feet, and rushed for cover under the nearest cabinet.

  The report concussed Rowe’s ears, and after a moment the wafting gun smoke opened up his sinuses.

  “Hell!” cried the Whale. Then he laughed at the splintered hole in the baseboard where he’d missed. “Hahaha!”

  Rowe took back the gun and replaced it in his waistband. “You almost got him.”

  “I hate rats so much.” The Whale was still laughing. “Get that broom, will you, Jimmer? See if we can poke him out of there.”

  Rowe stood watching Vargas.

  Vargas said, “You’ve got to be hard on a rat, or else in three days you’re gonna have his kids dropping down into your cereal. Ha!”

  Rowe coughed again, loudly, in the direction of the teacher’s door between this classroom and the next.

  That door opened, and Diane Keever appeared, sitting expectantly in her wheelchair, which was pushed forward by Amaryllis.

  Mrs. Keever looked at the men. “Where’s the bingo?” she asked querulously. She twisted around to Amaryllis. “You said there was bingo.” Her hands plucked at a checkered wool lap robe.

  “Wrong room, I guess,” said Amaryllis. She let go of the chair and stepped to the side. The Whale was too surprised to speak.

  Rowe set himself, aimed the Siegfried Series B at the old woman, and fired.

  The report was, again, earsplitting. The frail Mrs. Keever rammed backward in her seat, and a gout of blood and tissue burst from her chest. Her head, having whipped back, now wobbled forward, as if she were trying to see her wound, but suddenly her eyes went blind. Blood seeped from the corners of her mouth.

  Dale the Whale stood speechless, eyes bulging. His jaws worked silently.

  “Uff!” he grunted at last.

  Amaryllis stood imp
assively as Mrs. Keever took one last ragged breath. Her head tipped sideways, and her eyes rolled back. She stopped breathing.

  Amaryllis turned the wheelchair sideways as if to leave the way they had come in.

  “Wait,” said Rowe.

  “What the fuck,” shouted the Whale, “did you do that for?”

  “I hate being interrupted,” Rowe said.

  “Little Jimmer, Jesus Christ, she’s just an old lady! What—what—wait a minute, isn’t she the one—the one from—goddamn it! Goddamn it, what the motherfuck is going on?”

  Rowe strode to the main classroom door and flung it open.

  _____

  George gave me a wink as soon as he opened the door, to signify so far so good. I’d barely made it, sprinting all the way from the basement, my heart in my mouth as I heard the shots. Others in the building hadn’t reacted yet.

  Still catching my breath, I swaggered in, took a wide stance, and told Vargas authoritatively, “You’re under arrest! On the floor, facedown.”

  George said, “Oh, hello, Sgt. Annette Soames! Hello, hello!”

  Seeing me, seeing the policewoman back from the dead, stunned the Whale into incoherence.

  “Ahhh, waugha!” he cried.

  With his bulging eyes and stopped-open jaw, he looked like the guy that mistakenly eats the radioactive potato chips in Up For Down, that French existentialist sci-fi movie that was so big last year.

  “I survived,” I said, “thanks to my body armor. The department put out my obit anyway, thinking it’d make you feel more relaxed. You tried to have me killed. I take that personally, you know? And now I’m busting your ass, and it’s a true pleasure.”

  He managed to blubber, “What for?”

  “For the murder,” said George, “of Mrs. Diane Keever here.”

  “What! But you shot that old lady!”

  “Get down! On the floor facedown, down, down!” I shouted, flexing my crotch and aiming my gun with both hands, like cops are taught. By now I felt like an old pro.

  Vargas stood perfectly still, beginning to come out of his shock—I could see his mind regaining function. I honestly believe his brain had been so overwhelmed that he hadn’t even heard me command him to drop. He had no volition, yet, over his body. I was afraid he’d lose control of his bowels, he was that gut-level astonished. And with a guy his size—well, you don’t want to think about it.