by Matt Coleman
Thompson snarled, “I should put you both down right here.”
Shelley was starting to cry. “What? Like you did Dante?”
Thompson kept his gun trained on Shelley, but laughed under his breath. “Your brother dug his own grave, sweetheart.”
Shelley shook and gripped the gun tighter. Marlowe stepped between them with his hands up. “Nobody else needs to get hurt. Put the gun down, Shelley.”
Shelley was talking through snot now, spitting and fuming and trying to shout with a cracking voice. “He killed him, Marlowe. They killed Dante.”
Marlowe nodded. “I know, Shelley. I been knowing.”
Thompson cleared his throat. “I got one chambered for your other brother if you don’t put the gun down.”
Marlowe swiveled and stared Thompson down. “And then what, detective?” Sirens started to drone in from several blocks away. Marlowe pointed to the air. “You shoot me, Shelley shoots you, cops swarm this bank and start putting pieces together? Is that what you want?”
Thompson shook the gun at him. “I want the copy your brother made of the video. I get the copy, this all stops.”
Marlowe nodded. “And we’re gonna get it.” He looked back at Shelley and clasped his hands together in a plea. “We’re gonna get it. Ain’t we, Shelley? We’re gonna get it and this is gonna all stop.”
Shelley closed her eyes and let tears roll. She lowered her gun.
Thompson put his gun away and smiled. “Go find my tape.” He turned and ran for a beat-up little Celica and drove off in a squeal as Marlowe helped Shelley to his borrowed SUV.
Marlowe drove away from the sound of sirens as Shelley sobbed in the passenger seat. He zigged and zagged down alleys and back roads until he relaxed into a cruise and turned to Shelley. “Shelley, I’m sorry. I thought I was helping. I didn’t know what they were capable of.”
Shelley shook her head. “But you were right. About Dante.”
Marlowe pursed his lips and nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t want to be.”
She laughed a little. “I was stupid enough to think they were going to help me find him.”
“Is there anybody we can trust? Somebody who can help us?”
Shelley shook her head.
“I’m at a little bit of a loss here, Shells. I don’t know how to end this without us getting dead.”
She jabbed at her eyes with the cuffs of her sleeves and turned in her seat to face Marlowe. “Do you think Dante made a copy of his film?”
Marlowe shrugged. “You know Do Right. He was always filming everything.” He cocked his head and nodded. “But yeah. The things he got on his phone? Stuff he liked? He always copied it to some digital format—something he could edit and do all his shit to.”
Shelley nodded to herself. “’s’all we can do, then. We got to find it, ‘lowe.”
Marlowe frowned. “And just hand that shit over, huh? I been trying to work with these assholes, Shelley—to save you. And look where it got us. Almost got Cary killed. Got us into some standoff in a parking lot. Getting chased, threatened. What happens when we hand it over?”
Shelley shook her head. “I’m not talking about handing it over. I’m talking about leverage. We find a copy and we might get ourselves out of all this. Cary is somewhere right now trying to make somebody believe a crazy-ass story. We show up, with Dante’s film? Her crazy-ass story gets credible real fast.”
Marlowe laughed to himself.
Shelley squinted at him. “What? You got a better idea?”
Marlowe shook his head. “Nah. It’s not that. I was laughing about you scheming. Like Dante. Remember all Dante’s schemes?” They both chuckled and shared a nod before he continued. “I remember one. You wouldn’t remember. You were young—doing school stuff. Me and Dante were in prime hooligan age. We got up to all kinds of shit back then. Nothing serious—no drugs or gang banging bullshit. Messing around, you know? Dante always had some scheme on how to get over.
“One time, Do Right, he was out filming what he called “B roll” in this junkyard. And he found this old fish tank. Like, an aquarium, you know? Beat to hell. Dirty. So a few days later, Do Right asked me to drive him and one of our friends to Walmart. I didn’t think much about it. I mean, Walmart. What could be wrong with that?
“So I picked up this friend of ours first—Justin was his name. And me and Justin drove over to pick up Do Right.” He laughed at the memory, trying to catch his breath to keep talking. “Do Right comes walking out carrying this huge fish tank, all green on the sides and shit. Big nasty thing. And he’s telling me to pop the trunk. Of course, I’m asking him why I gotta have this gross-ass fish tank in my car for. And you know Do Right. He kept saying, ‘I got this, ‘lowe. Trust me, brother.’”
Shelley laughed and nodded. Marlowe continued, “So I kept bugging him and he kept dodging. When I wore him down, he pointed off to some dirt lot and told me to pull in. He got out and called us around to the back of the car and popped the trunk. Do Right points at this fish tank and he’s like, ‘Boys, we’re going to procure me a new fish tank today.’ He’s all serious. Do Right’s like George Clooney in Ocean’s Eleven or some shit. He gets this stick and starts drawing out a plan in the dirt.”
Shelley laughed and said, “A plan? For what?”
Marlowe nodded. “Yeah. Whole plan. So the way he drew it up, I would drop Justin at the front door of Walmart. Justin would walk in, grab a buggy, and go to aisle thirty-seven. Do Right knew the damn aisle numbers. And Justin was supposed to push his buggy around and pick up a ninety-dollar aquarium and put this new fancy-ass fish tank in his buggy. He would walk around so his buggy was facing out on aisle thirty-six. And then leave the buggy sitting there with this new aquarium. Walk away. I was supposed to pick him up at the other entrance, where I would drop Do Right off. Do Right would walk in with his old-ass fish tank in a buggy. Get a sticker from the old man at the door. Tell him he needed to exchange it. And Do Right would proceed to aisle thirty-seven, take the little sticker off of his fish tank, and leave this old stanky aquarium sitting in the middle of Walmart. He’d stroll around to the buggy Justin left, put the sticker on the new tank, and walk right back out. Tell the little old man they wouldn’t let him swap it. I pick him up, and we all drive off with a brand-new fish tank for free.”
Shelley howled with laughter. She shook her head. “No way that works. Did it work?”
Marlowe gasped, laughing, and nodded. “Hell yeah, it worked!”
They both laughed until they were wiping at their eyes. Shelley said, “Do Right didn’t have no fish.”
Marlowe shook his head and tried to talk. “No! That’s the thing. He never got fish. I went over to his place a couple of weeks later and there sat the fish tank—right in his bedroom—full of socks.”
Shelley scrunched her face up. “Socks?”
Marlowe nodded. “Socks. Every pair of socks the boy owned was thrown in there. Filled up damn near the whole tank.”
Shelley shook her head. “Why the hell did he keep his socks in a fish tank?”
Marlowe shrugged. “I have no clue. I asked. I looked around at his bedroom furniture. I mean, he had a full dresser and a chest of drawers. I pointed to all them drawers and asked, I said, ‘Do Right, you got all these drawers, and you keeping your socks in a damn fish tank?’ He said, ‘Marlowe, they’re drawers meant for more important things than socks.’”
Shelley nodded. “That’s Do Right.”
Marlowe let his laughter fade into a distant look. “Yeah. That’s Do Right.”
Shelley stared off and sniffed. After a beat she turned to Marlowe. “Wait a second.”
“What?”
“Think about the fish tank story. Those cops—Thompson and Jolly—they would’ve tossed Dante’s place, right?”
Marlowe shrugged. “I figured, yeah.”
She nodded. “But Dante had a whole studio and shit, you know? He had equipment and everything. If I tossed his place, I would’ve looked there. Torn it
up, right?”
Marlowe nodded. “Yeah.”
Shelley pointed at him. “But would you have searched his sock drawers?”
A huge grin spread across Marlowe’s face. “No. No I would not have.”
Chapter 34
Officer Jean Reynard sat in his patrol car twirling an electronic cigarette. He hated the thing. It tasted like melting plastic and made his tonsils burn. But he couldn’t smoke a real one in the car. There were strict departmental rules against tobacco use.
Jean started smoking at age fourteen. Starting high school in a bigger town—where no one knew your family—came with challenges. All the kids pronounced his name like Gene. They made fun of his throaty Cajun accent. He was a small ninth grader. Short and bony. Jean was the type of kid who showered with his underwear on in gym class. Every day after school a cluster of older kids would group up by a tree down past the practice baseball field and smoke. Jean would wait for his bus marvel at how tough they all looked. So he swiped a few packs of cigarettes from an old neighbor lady and spent a week training himself to smoke without coughing.
The day he tried to join them was a Friday. He missed his bus on purpose and walked down to the tree to light up. A senior with tattoos on his arm stole Jean’s cigarettes and pissed on his backpack in front of everyone while they all laughed. Sent Jean home crying with a bloody nose. He had to walk four miles through a couple of sketchy neighborhoods. But he still smoked.
The video had been his fault. He accepted responsibility. Thompson and Jolly picked him out because he had potential as a detective—he was sure of it. After all, he tracked down what the Trubody girl drove. And he zoned in when he spotted it. He also found her house and the little shit, Dante’s house. He had done more than his share of the leg work. But when it all started, his job was to clear the area. Make sure none of the local hood rats were scurrying around to size up what was going on. And he did—he hit the neighborhood hard, bracing every kid who even jaywalked. The problem was Dante.
Dante was no neighborhood punk. He was basically passing through. Said later he was shooting what he called “B roll” of some street art. And he was packing it up for the day. His camera was put away, so he snuck about a three minute shot with his phone. Jolly blamed Jean pretty hard, but if it hadn’t been for his still-sharp-patrolman eyes, they never would have seen Dante. Jean caught sight of him filming from behind a pillar and gave chase. Dante slipped through a Mexican market and got lost. But Jean put those detective skills to work then, too. He noticed the bag, and he recognized it as film equipment. So he asked around until he found some people who told him about this guy they called Do Right. And he tracked the nickname all the way to Dante’s doorstep.
So Jolly could kiss his ass. Maybe he helped mess things up a little, but he sure as hell helped clean up the mess. The girl was the last mistake he planned to make. He had been so sure she was dead. Thompson and Jolly could fuck right off with their condescending bullshit, too. Like they had any room to talk. Maybe if they were capable of cleaning up their own messes he would be a little more willing to take shit off them.
The first time was all about money. Both of those assholes worked vice then. And Jean caught their eye when he went a little too far arresting a mid-level drug dealer. Broke both of his wrists. Jolly let the prick walk to keep him from calling in the ACLU. Jean wasn’t even grateful. He was pissed. Broken wrists or not, the shit-heel dealt to teenagers. Seven of them sold for him in local schools. Thompson and Jolly pulled Jean aside and broke down the world for him. Mid-level dealers were interchangeable. Taking out mid-levels was like trying to rid your house of termites with a fly swatter.
They took him under their wings a little. Showed him some things. For the first time in his life, Jean was part of something. Thompson and Jolly let him smoke with them under the tree. And it worked. Maybe he didn’t push drugs out of those seven schools, but he sure as hell pushed them out of the two in his neighborhood. Turning a blind eye to certain areas was hard to stomach, but Jean accepted the necessity of it. Thompson told him he could work with the inmates to control his cell block, or fight the world and suffer the prison crumbling around him. It made sense. Clicked. Jean sensed progress for the first time since he joined the force.
Even the first clean-up job felt right. Jolly called him one day to let him know some low-level dip shit called Papa Money had stopped playing well with others. Jean knew what that meant. Papa Money had stopped living up to his name. He no longer lined the right pockets. The morality of being a dirty cop never bothered Jean too much. He was in the loop, but not really. He got little payouts for taking care of things every now and then. And he had the steady promise of making influential friends in high places. But he didn’t care about the money or the prospect of advancement. He enjoyed it. Human waste like Papa fucking Money needed their tickets punched. Jean couldn’t give two shits about missing payments. He enjoyed being taken off his leash to rid the city of one more low-life.
Real justice was why he became a cop. He grew up in government housing, watching drug dealers and prostitutes and all the worst the world has to offer run rampant. Unchecked. Crawling under the floorboards of the city and spreading filth and disease. Crime disgusted him. Jail was a revolving door to these people. Putting them down was more effective. More humane. So dropping Papa Money into the spillway was like drowning a rat. Nothing about it made him feel sick or guilty or anything. He was doing his job.
Prostitutes were harder. No doubt. Something about a woman made the act more difficult. And always so up close and personal—choking, beating. Always in some seedy motel room. They were drug-addled filth, but sometimes they still looked like women when they cried. Those sensitivities made him hold back on the girl, Cary Trubody’s friend. He pulled his punches because she looked so feminine in the end. They always do.
And to be honest, he carried as much disdain for the cops and politicians who used them and threw them away like garbage. It was always the same call: some senator or high-ranking officer got his dick sucked one too many times. The whore put things together and got smart. Jean was the guy they called in to end whatever blackmail scheme the girl cooked up. Sometimes she had some guy working with her, and Jean could put a bullet in his gut, let him die slow. While her pimp bled out, Jean usually convinced the girl to leave town and never look back.
One of those jobs was when he picked up his Walther P22. Thompson called him and gave him a name—fake name he stopped remembering months ago. The girl doled out blowjobs to a couple of state senators and the mayor at a campaign fundraiser. As it turned out, she was sixteen at the time. Jean was supposed to silence her slander before it became scandal. He tracked her to a shitty apartment complex—converted hotel from the fifties. He snuck into the girl’s bedroom with a garotte in hand. She was fast asleep, which made everything so much easier. Jean never detected the lump of covers next to her move as he snapped the garotte tight around the girl’s neck.
Before the girl stopped moving, the lump rose up and went for something in the bedside table. Jean acted fast. He jerked the girl up and around, tossing her out of bed and onto the floor. Her head whipped around and flopped limp like a ball on a string. The body looked like when he was a kid in Louisiana and his grandmother would wring the necks of chickens. The guy in bed with her was naked, and he swung up with something he pulled from a drawer. Jean took a lamp and clocked him across and eyebrow. When the naked guy raised up again, he was struggling to focus through the blood squirting out of the cut on his head.
Squinting to see so he could aim.
Jean brought both hands down hard and buried the gun into the bunched up covers on the bed. He lunged forward and cracked the guy’s nose with his own forehead. It was disorienting enough to send the naked man wobbling back toward the wall. Jean advanced to him and pinned him against the window frame. Taking hold of his ears, he rammed the guy’s head into the thick wood frame until the body below stopped wiggling. Jean retrieved the garotte f
rom the girl’s neck and finished him off. But before he left, he went to the bed and found the gun.
The guy had a nice Walther P22, unregistered. Perfect throw away gun. A month later, he talked Jolly into finding a suppressor for it. Told him the little pistol would make clean-up a million times more efficient. And he was right. Jean was careful when to use his Walther. He didn’t want to part ways with the gun by having to toss it into a body of water somewhere. But all love stories have endings. The Walther may had seen its last dance. Or, next to last. Jean shoved the gun down next to his driver’s seat. Sooner or later, the last stragglers of this mess would come back to the house he was watching. And the Walther was going to clean them up.
Chapter 35
Dante “Do Right” Holliverse had lived in a sublet apartment behind an old rental house. It was a freestanding structure about twenty feet into the backyard. There were two apartments—one upstairs and one down. Dante rented the top floor from an old man who paid rent for the whole property to a wealthy property owner. The old man signed Dante’s check straight over, and it covered his entire rent. It allowed the old man to live off the grid like he preferred.
Bright learned all this after a rather tedious search to find where Dante had lived. Her suspicions that Thompson and Jolly had traced these same steps was confirmed by the sight of a car camped out in front of the old man’s rent house. And if she saw it, she figured Dante’s siblings would see it too. She kept a wide berth and circled around to the back of sublet, looking for where Dante would have parked. An alley ran from street to street parallel to the street with the cop staked out on it. Down a couple of yards from a cluster of trash cans, there were a couple of carved-out ruts in the gravel and dirt.
Making the block, Bright noticed a vacant house backed up to the alley. The driveway ran all the way to a carport butted up against a back chain link fence. She pulled up and parked under the carport, in clear view of the back entrance to the sublet where she expected Dante’s siblings to park. Bright slunk down in her seat and waited.