Lovely Night to Die

by Caleb Pirtle III

“Before the big hand hits eleven,” he said, “I’ll be walking out of here.”

  She frowned. “You have that much faith in me?”

  “No offense, ma’am,” he said. “But you have nothing to do with what happens to me.”

  “I’m your lawyer.”

  “That’s what I’m told.”

  “The odds are stacked against you.” Eleanor opened her case files.

  “They always have been.”

  “The indictment says you killed a man.”

  Denton shrugged. “You wake up in the morning. You take your chances with the rest of the day.” His grin broadened. “Some days aren’t as good as others.”

  “There was a witness.”

  Denton tugged at his ear lobe and watched a fly circle the lights above the defense table.

  “He has identified you,” she said. “He’s a minister, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Falls Creek. He’s a pillar of the community. His eyesight is twenty-twenty. He watched you pull the trigger. He will put you on death row.” Eleanor threw up her hands in despair. “Frankly, I can’t prove you didn’t kill the man. I can’t prove you weren’t in the convenience store that morning. If you want to face the truth, Mister Denton, we don’t have a chance.”

  The man was standing behind Eleanor Trent before she realized he had walked down the aisle and reached the defendant’s table. She felt his presence, heard the sound of his breathing in the quiet courtroom, and looked up. He was tall, middle-aged, and had hair the color of a corroded quarter. His face was tanned, his nails well-manicured. His suit and cologne both screamed Armani.

  “I’m James P. Harper,” he said in a low melodious voice. He handed her his card. “Attorney at Law.”

  “I don’t believe I know you.”

  “Chicago,” he said.

  “What can I do for you, Mister Harper?” she asked, a suspicious frown forming on her lips.

  “At the moment, the most you can do, my dear, is quietly get to your feet, pack your satchel, and walk briskly back to the Public Defender’s office.” He pulled out Eleanor’s chair for her to stand. “I have been retained to handle the case for Mister Denton. I have a letter of authorization if you want to see it.”

  Eleanor stood, her jaws clenched. She pushed her dark hair out of her eyes. “I should have been properly notified,” she said.

  “Then please accept my sincerest apology for tramping over proper courtroom etiquette and protocol.” He smiled, and it would have looked better on a crocodile.

  “The lady here’s worried about the preacher,” Denton said softly.

  “Reverend David Lancaster?”

  “Never heard his name.”

  “You have no reason to worry about him,” Richards said.

  “Why not?” Eleanor asked.

  “Reverend David Lancaster is dead.”

  “How?”

  “House fire.”

  “When.”

  Richards looked at his watch. “Thirty-eight minutes ago,” he said.

  Lovely Night 3

  THE ONES WHO came to get him were quite good at blending with the shadows of night and taking a man who had no intention of being taken. They made him wait. They were in no hurry. Catch him today. Track him down tomorrow. Chase him into a dead end on some nondescript hour of some nondescript day and quietly remove him from the face of the earth as easily as if he had never walked the back streets of Durango. It did not matter to them. They could be patient. Death might be inevitable, but it was never in a hurry.

  Roland Sand saw the black SUV pull against the curb an hour or so before the sun was scheduled to make its appearance. He waited for someone to climb out. No one did. He expected the bullet from a sniper’s rifle to shatter the window. The shot didn’t come. He immediately eased away from the window and back into the black interior of the room.

  Sand crouched in the corner and listened to the silence of the night, which was never silent. The air conditioner hummed. Tires crunched on the pavement in the parking lot. Some coming. Some going. The shabby side of Denver was restless. Sand heard a man coughing, brakes squealing, the distant sound of a siren growing more distant by the moment. A dog barked. A cat howled. A car door slammed. Those were the noises of the night, and he paid them little attention. He was desperately trying to make out any sound, no matter how indistinct that might be out of place for a Sunday morning.

  Footsteps padded down the hallway outside his door.

  Sand pressed his back against the wall and held his breath. He gently slipped the Sig P320 from his belt.

  He knew he wouldn’t last long in a firefight.

  But he wouldn’t die alone.

  Sand smiled. It was the same kind of smile he had seen on a corpse.

  The footsteps shuffled past and died away in the shag carpet.

  The ice machine clattered.

  A woman laughed.

  He breathed easier.

  Cornered animals, he knew, survived solely on instinct. Nothing in the wild sat and waited for the hunter to track them down. They were immediately on the move as soon as they caught the smell of blood, leaving quickly and headed in the way no one expected them to go. Sand had no interest in being the duck in a carnival shooting gallery. Things never went well for the duck. When the boys in the black suits tore the door down, they would find the shooting gallery empty.

  He pulled a black windbreaker over a lightweight knit sweater. Durango could be cold when the winter rains descended out of the mountains and crossed over the desert. The growl of thunder was growing louder, sounding more and more like a misplaced band of angry kettle drums. The rain was turning to snow.

  His trousers and tennis shoes were as dark as his eyes. He glanced over the roll of bills he pulled out of the desk drawer and stuck them in his pocket. They would be able to get him out of the country if he had enough guile and good fortune to make it out of sight.

  He took enough time to check the pistol in the yellow glow of the streetlight angling through the bedroom window. Its magazine carried twenty-one rounds, and he had three more magazines stuffed in the pocket of his jacket.

  In the wrong hands, the Sig P320 was an ugly and deadly creature.

  In his hands, it was a gift from God.

  Sand cracked the door open and glanced quickly down both sides of the hallway. It was empty. The ice had stopped clattering. The woman was no longer laughing.

  He figured the men in black suits would be waiting for him in the stairway. He took the elevator. Only a fool would take the elevator. The cornered animal was too cunning to ever take the elevator. That’s what the Association’s handbook said on page eighty-three. He had memorized the book. Most cornered animals did not know it even existed.

  Sand rode the elevator to the basement. The door slowly slid open. He waited for the guns to start firing. He might get off two shots if he were lucky, and he would be shooting blind.

  No sound.

  No shots.

  Nobody was there.

  Sand took the fourteen steps up the stairwell to the lobby. The floor was stained with tobacco juice and smelled of cheap wine.

  The night desk clerk leaned back in the easy chair beside the Coke machine, sleeping. A day-old Denver newspaper lay across his chest. Sand made sure he was snoring and not gagging to catch his last breath, a bullet in his lungs.

  An aging blind man lay on the sofa. His dark sunglasses hung crookedly on his nose. A German shepherd rested on the floor beside him. The dog opened one eye and watched Sand walk past and toward the door.

  Sand lingered in the shadows as his gaze swept across the parking lot. He saw old cars and dirty cars and cars that looked too wrecked to run. The black SUV had gone, and its untimely disappearance worried him. Two taxicabs sat parked just outside the front door. Slow night. Maybe someone was catching an early flight.

  Sand recognized the driver of the second cab. Short. Round faced. Bald. He had a face full of gray whiskers and needed a shave. Both eyes didn’t alwa
ys look the in the same direction at the same time. He had driven Sand from a small barbecue rib joint to the hotel two nights ago. He might be crooked as a chicken snake, but at least he was a known commodity.

  His eyes were closed when Sand opened the rear door and climbed in the back seat.

  “Los Lunas,” Sand said.

  “That a hotel?”

  “A town.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “You may never hear of it again.”

  “Can’t take you there.”

  “I’ll pay cash.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “I’ll pay twice what the meter says.”

  “Sorry,” the cabbie said. He opened the door and stepped out.

  The blind man with the German shepherd eased beneath the steering wheel.

  He didn’t look back at Sand.

  There was no reason.

  Sand saw the barrel of the Glock .45 caliber pistol jammed in his face before he saw the man who held it slide into the backseat beside him. Tall. Thin. Lanky. Narrow face. Sharp nose. Black suit. A look of empathy or maybe it was pity etched on his face.

  “I’ve been expecting you, Richard,” Sand said.

  “It could have been someone else.”

  “No.” Sand smiled wearily. “I knew it would be you.”

  “We’ve shared a lot of whiskey together.”

  “I don’t presume we’re going for whiskey.”

  “Not tonight.” Richard’s voice was cold as the sleet on the windshield.

  “I’ve worked with a lot of operators over the years.” Sand shrugged and took his hand off the handle of the Sig P320. It was too late to come out shooting now. His finger would never reach the trigger in time. “Some were good. Some were damn good. They would find me, shoot me, and regret it for a long time. But you, Richard, well, you’re not quite like the rest of them.”

  “What makes you say that?” Richard pulled the brim of his black hat down over his eyes.

  “You like what you do.”

  Richard grinned and licked his lips. He used his tongue to move the toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other.

  Sand had seen the look before. It belonged to a gravedigger.

  “I’m good at what I do,” Richard said.

  “You ever dream about the ones you terminate?”

  “Not unless they have a pretty wife.”

  “Then you won’t remember me.”

  Richard’s laughter came from deep in his belly. “I’ve already forgotten you,” he said.

  The taxi eased out onto a street headed west. The blind man still wore his dark sunglasses. The dog sat on the seat beside him, his eyes never turning away from Sand.

  “Where we going?” Sand asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Probably not.”

  Sand stared out the window and watched the graffiti-painted facades of convenience stores, pawnshops, liquor stores, and porn shops as the taxi passed them. The neighborhood Exxon Food Mart was closed permanently with broken glass and smoke-stained walls.

  Only the porn shop was open, its windows full of promises and lies.

  A drug deal was going down on the corner. Kids, nothing but kids, slowly killing themselves on white powder, dirty powder, powder as lethal as a forty-five slug at close range. The tall kid was laughing. The short kid was down on his knees and vomiting in the gutter.

  A teenager shivered in a faux fur jacket. She was wearing a skirt too short for the weather and high heels. She was probably looking for another trick before the coming sunlight revealed the tired creases of a face worn down by a weary life on the streets.

  Richard lit a Royale Cigar and blew smoke toward Sand’s face. “There’s no reason you should be here,” he said.

  “My bad luck.”

  “You should have killed Conway.” Richard rested the barrel of the Glock on his knee. “It was a menial assignment if you think about it. Small fish. Big pond. Easy come. Easy go. One second, and Conway had nothing else to worry about.”

  “He was a nice little guy.”

  “He opened the wrong file.”

  “He knows the one-eyed Bohemian’s secret.”

  “He tell you what it is?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Richard laughed. “Not anymore.”

  The taxi turned down a narrow alley behind Durango’s version of an Irish Pub. Cobblestones. Trash cans. Cats on the prowl. Rats too big for the cats to scare. It would be a miserable place to die, but then, most places were.

  “You find Conway?” Sand asked.

  “Last night.”

  “He had a family.”

  “I hope he had a will.”

  “You’re a real bastard, Richard.”

  Richard laughed again. “Some people are born that way, Sand.” He shrugged matter-of-factly. “Me? I’m a self-made man.”

  “You leave the body where anybody will find it?”

  Richard took a long puff on his cigar. “A good man cut down in the line of duty. His wife will receive a nice commendation from the government.”

  “She should know the truth.”

  “Truth,” said Richard, “is what we believe it to be.” He crushed the burning ashes from the cigar on the heel of his Italian boots. “I hope you take it as well as Conway did. Stood tall. Didn’t beg. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t have time to say goodbye.”

  Sand watched Richard caress the black barrel of his Glock like the face of a wanton woman as he waited for the taxi to roll to a stop. The cats fled. The rats didn’t. A lethal weapon. A magazine full of bullets. It only took one. Richard would not bother to use a silencer. In this part of Durango, what was one more gunshot?

  Sand had a hard time figuring out men like Richard Santana.

  He was good.

  He was arrogant.

  He was deadly.

  He was a man who was sometimes careless. It had something to do with pride going before the fall.

  Arrogance had killed more men than bullets.

  When Richard drew his last breath, the kill shot would be self-inflicted.

  The self-professed bastard took his eyes off the target. The taxi hit a pothole in the cobblestones, and he glanced toward the windshield, splattered with rain, mud, sleet, and shards of light.

  It was only a second.

  It was time he would never get back.

  He would never see Roland Sand again.

  In one swift motion, Sand threw himself across the back of the taxi and had a big hand wrapped around Richard’s neck. He wondered if the gunman had heard the sickening crack and doubted if he had. In that brief span of time between one breath and the next, Richard took his last one.

  Sand ripped the Glock from the dead man’s hand and fired once. The bullet caught the blind man just behind the left ear. He slumped across the steering wheel, and the German shepherd began howling as the taxi swerved out of control, tore through the garbage cans, and slammed into a decaying brick wall.

  Sand crawled out of the car, glanced down the alley, didn’t see any movement, and opened the passenger’s door.

  The dog leaped to the cobblestones, and Sand watched him disappear down the street and into the night. Sand smiled. The shepherd had every right to escape. He was the only innocent in the car.

  Sand walked out of the alley and looked toward the faint, dismal crease of another sunrise. He wondered if it would be his final one. He leaned with his back against a metal lamppost as rain and snow, mist and sleet, fell gently upon him. He watched it for a good ten minutes before a dark cloud came to swallow the ragged remnants of daylight.

  The thought came from somewhere deep within his psyche as he turned to walk away from the taxicab where men died with the meter running. A sunrise was like life. It came and went and never stayed nearly long enough.

  Lovely Night 4

  SAND MADE HIS way back down the sidewalk to the teenage girl, her back pressed against the peeling gray paint of a dingy gray building tha
t should have been condemned or probably torn down. The chill of a night wind had wrapped itself around her thin shoulders, and she shivered slightly when she saw him walking toward her. She had the fake fur coat buttoned tight under her chin.

  The mist from the rain was already beginning to untangle the damp curls in her hair, dyed the color of black shoe polish. Her lipstick was too red and too thick. She had chewed most of it off. Her polyester purple dress was a good eight inches too short, her black heels, no doubt rescued from some garbage dump, too large for her feet. She ran her tongue slowly and seductively across her lips. Her mascara ran with the rain down her face.

  The girl placed both hands on her hips, leaned forward and said, “You look like a man who has not had a good night.” Her voice sounded as if it were being played on the wrong keys of a second-hand piano. “I can change that for you.”

  Sand stopped, thrust both hands in the pockets of his windbreaker, and looked her over. “Got a name?” he asked.

  “Somebody put Rebecca on my birth certificate,” she said. “You can call me anything you want.”

  “How old are you, Rebecca?”

  Her smile faded. “Old enough to know what you want.”

  “What do I want, Rebecca?”

  “A better time than you’ve had so far tonight.”

  “No, Rebecca.” Sand spoke slowly and softly. “I want you to leave the streets and go home before something bad happens to you.”

  “Can’t,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Home is a long way from here.”

  “How far?”

  “Monroe, Louisiana.”

  Sand pulled a roll of bills from his pocket, removed the rubber band, and peeled off five one-hundred-dollar bills. “This will buy you breakfast, a new dress, and a bus ticket to Monroe,” he said.

  Rebecca frowned and her hands were shaking as she reached out to take the money. “What do I have to do to earn five hundred dollars?” she asked. Her voice cracked.

  “Go home.”

  “You’re crazy, Mister.”

  “There are a lot of people who would agree with you.” Sand forced a laugh.

  He braced himself against the winter winds and walked away. The rain had slackened to a gentle drizzle. He pulled the collar of his windbreaker up around his neck. His back ached, and so did his chest – where a long-ago bullet went in and where a long-ago bullet came out. Bad weather was a bitch for old wounds. It didn’t do the newer ones any good either.