Blood and Roses

by Douglas Pratt

  Turning my head to give him the idea that I was looking for prying ears, I whispered, “Let me ask you something first. Are you a cop?”

  “Me,” he uttered, “hell no.”

  “Good, I don’t like that kind of trouble,” I said.

  “No,” he assured me, “I’m not a cop. What do you have in mind? If it was worth it, that is.”

  “Since we’re talking about fruit,” I said, feigning caution. “I don’t like it too ripe. If you know what I mean.”

  He made one big gesture with his chin, assuring me that he understood.

  “You don’t mind paying up for it?’ He pointed at the bourbon in front of me. “You seem to like the good stuff.”

  The corners of my mouth lifted in a sly grin. “I like my girls the same as I like my whiskey.”

  “What’s your favorite whiskey?” he asked.

  Swirling the liquid in my glass, I answered, “There is a nice 15-year bourbon that I found. Smooth and delicious.”

  Mitchell’s pupils narrowed, and he stared at me for a second. The gears in his brain were turning. He took a quick glance at the hundred-dollar bill, still in my fingers.

  “Maybe I can’t help you after all, man,” he said. He flagged the bartender down. “Jay, my tab please.”

  Mentally kicking myself for underestimating Mitchell, I tried to think of a way to rein him back in. “Listen, what about just pointing me in a direction?” In a hushed tone, I added, “I don’t mind paying more.”

  He stood from his stool. “Sorry, Lee,” he used my pseudonym carefully, “it sounds like you might be looking for something less than legal. I can’t help you there.”

  He walked away from the bar, leaving me to stare at his back.

  “Damned subterfuge,” I cursed under my breath

  When the door closed behind him, I texted Leo. “No go, he’s heading your way.”

  A thumbs-up image came back.

  I wondered what the man had planned.

  23

  The night air was stiff and thick, pretty common for August in Memphis. When Leo pulled up alongside me, I climbed into the car.

  “What took so long?” I asked him when I slammed the door.

  Mitchell left the bar an hour and a half earlier. I waited at the bar and sipped another couple of shots of Four Roses while staring at the television. The warming effect of the whiskey was just starting to crawl through me when Leo finally said he was heading toward the bar.

  “Detailed surveillance takes time,” he explained plainly.

  “Think we need to watch him?”

  “We can,” Leo said, “but I have a feeling it would be fruitless. He came back from you and did a check of his stuff. Then, he made a call.”

  “Wonder who that would have been to?”

  “Bryant?” Leo suggested.

  “Possibly.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  I sighed. “Thought I had him stringing along. Guess I underestimated him. He got suspicious and left.”

  “You tried to be coy, didn’t you?”

  Furrowing my brow, I answered, “What?”

  “Coy. Subtle. Somewhat deceptive.”

  “I know what ‘coy’ means.”

  Leo chuckled quietly. “Most criminals are more upfront. They don’t do some verbal dance. They don’t try to be too smart or too careful.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Whatever. He must have thought I was a cop.”

  “Yeah, you might put off that kind of vibe,” he said. “If you were looking to arrest him, then you’d just need to do a search of his house. The inordinate amount of evidence in his house could put him away for a few years.”

  “Anything about Naomi?” I asked excitedly.

  Leo shook his head. “No, nothing about her. At least that I saw. I wrote down his call and text history from his phone.”

  “He left his phone at home?” I asked.

  “It was a cheap one. Probably a prepaid.” Leo added, “The stash of drugs I found in his bedroom made it look like he was always ready to party.”

  “Anything else? I knew he must have been dealing after talking to Shannon. That’s how he got his hooks into Madison. There’s no way he only did that once.”

  “Did he strike you as a user?” Leo asked me.

  I considered it for a second. “You know, not really,” I answered. “If I saw him from a distance, I would have said, ‘yes’ but talking to him, I’d guess he wasn’t an addict. Maybe recreationally.”

  He handed me a card. Holding it up to the window to let the ambient streetlight illuminate it, I read it. The card was bright red and the word “Trois” scrolled across it. Mitchell’s signature was at the bottom.

  “A membership card?” I asked.

  “Look it up,” he said with a smile.

  I did just that. “A swingers’ club?”

  Leo’s grin spread from ear to ear, and his head nodded enthusiastically. “I think we need to check it out.”

  “I bet you do. Is your new girlfriend not exciting enough?”

  Leo smirked. “Oh, she is. In fact, I think Mama would come with me.”

  He laughed at his own wordplay.

  “Why do I think you might be a bigger freak than her?”

  “It’s her job. For me, it’s more like a hobby. Everybody is more enthusiastic about their hobby. Of course, ‘they’ say do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

  I turned my head to look out the window. “Do you ever wonder if doctors do surgeries for fun?”

  “They might,” he said, “if cutting folks up gave them a satisfying feeling.”

  Who was I to argue with logic that solid?

  “I was wondering if the lieutenant might have a membership to the same club?” Leo asked.

  I considered that for a second.

  “He seems too uptight for that,” I said. “Besides, the website says that the membership fee is $2500 per person for a year.”

  “That is a lot,” he agreed. “Why would anyone pay that much for just a club?”

  “Weeds out the spectators. Plus, it might guarantee you some action.”

  “Then it’s settled. We should go,” Leo said. “That sounds like quite the party.”

  “We don’t stick out at all, do we?” I said. “The website says no single men.”

  “Plus, you might give it away if Mitchell saw you there,” he pointed out.

  The Trois card was still in my fingers. I tapped the edge against my index finger.

  “What are you thinking?” Leo asked.

  “How big a party could Mitchell throw with his ‘favors?’” I asked.

  “Pretty big one,” he answered.

  Waving the card at him, I said, “Mitchell doesn’t seem like the $2500 a year kind of guy. He might have it, but he isn’t going to fit into that crowd.”

  “He’s in charge of the party favors,” Leo said. “He gets to join in the fun but only because he’s the hired help.”

  “Did you see any cash in his house?”

  Leo shook his head. “I actually found that interesting. Cash would have screamed ‘Dealer!’ to me.”

  The card kept tapping across my finger. The pieces of the puzzle were still jumbled up. In fact, I wasn’t sure we didn’t have two or three different puzzles. Where did Naomi fit?

  “Wonder what would happen if Mitchell didn’t make it to the party?”

  “Probably the same thing that would happen if the caterer didn’t show up to a wedding.”

  “The person in charge would be screaming bloody murder,” I said.

  “Max, do you really think the girl is associated with this club?”

  He asked a good question. I considered what I said to Angela. My investigation techniques are pretty basic. Stir, stir, stir. Then scoop up whatever comes up the top.

  “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “Not sure what else to do though.”

  We rode along silently watching the streetlights pass us. />
  Breaking the quiet, Leo commented, “I keep thinking about what Manning told you. That these people seemed to disgust even him. How bad do you have to be to disgust a pimp?”

  “It might not have been disgust, as much as fear.”

  “Then same question. Who is a gangster pimp afraid of?”

  “Cops?” I asked.

  “Maybe, but he gave up Bryant fairly easily.”

  I responded, “I see two options if we want to disrupt the party. We can steal the drugs or get Mitchell arrested.”

  “He has Bryant in his pocket or, rather, vice versa.”

  “It might be telling to see how it plays out then,” I said. “We do this right, and we might be able to connect Bryant to this club.”

  “Remember, we don’t know that the club is anything more than what it seems.”

  “Time to separate the wheat from the chaff.”

  “That sounds biblical,” Leo stated.

  I smiled. “We need the police to search Mitchell’s condo. How do we do that?”

  “Given that he’ll call Bryant as soon as an officer with a search warrant shows up, that will be tough.”

  “Unless there isn’t a warrant,” I pointed out. “If they entered for another reason, and the drugs are in plain sight. They’d have the authority to execute a search, right?”

  “I think that’s right,” Leo said, “if I’m up on my constitutional law.”

  “We get the police called there for something else.”

  I sighed as I considered what he was thinking.

  24

  The plan was simple. Simple and stupid. Granted, not the stupidest thing I had ever done. Not even the most dangerous. We were just going to break into Mitchell’s home while he was there and without killing him or his killing us, make enough ruckus that a neighbor would call the police, and then leave Mitchell trussed up for the police to find. There would be no need for a search warrant if the first responders find the front door open and the occupant, Mitchell, in danger. Oh, and we had to get away without being arrested.

  “The drugs are in a closet in his hallway,” Leo said. “They need to be easily seen by the police when they come in.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  The best option, we decided, was to let Mitchell go to bed and get into a sound sleep. According to Leo, he could get in through the sliding glass door on the patio the same way he had entered earlier. Now, I was crouching behind a hydrangea waiting on him to open that door. The lights were all out in the house except a flicker in an upstairs window. Likely just a television.

  While we waited for the lights to go out, we debated whether we should cover our faces. Anyone awake might see two masked men and immediately alert the police before we wanted them to be called. On the other hand, if we were seen, then I didn’t like anyone being able to pick me out of a lineup. Leo assured me that we would not be seen. I think his exact words were “We will be wisps of wind.” I just shook my head at him when he said that. He pointed out that his concern was with video surveillance that we couldn’t avoid. It would be best if when the authorities review the footage that our faces aren’t tossed into some software that spits out our names and history. We opted for hoodies to hide our features from any surveillance.

  Leo signaled for me to come to him. The door made a slight squeak as he slid it open. Leo took the lead. He knew the house. He pulled the .45 from under the jacket he wore. I did the same with the 9 mm that I was carrying.

  The stairs were carpeted, and our climb was muted. The door to the master bedroom was ajar, a faint glow emanating through the opening. Mitchell was sprawled in only a pair of boxers across the bed. The television was playing a rerun of a show I recognized from twenty years ago. Leo pressed the barrel of his gun against Mitchell’s head. The pressure pushed Mitchell’s head into the pillow.

  “Time to wake up,” he said loudly.

  “Uh,” Mitchel groaned as he opened his eyes.

  The realization of what was happening hit him, and he instinctively started flailing around. Leo put his knee onto Mitchell’s back and pushed him down. The gun in his hand pushed down farther. Mitchell might find a bruise from the barrel.

  “Don’t move again,” Leo grunted.

  “Okay, okay,” Mitchell said. “What do you want?”

  Neither of us responded. Instead, Leo took a handful of Mitchell’s hair and pulled him off the bed. He howled in pain.

  “Stop,” he begged. “Please, stop.”

  “Shut up,” he rasped in his ear.

  “Sorry,” Mitchell sobbed.

  “I said, ‘Shut up,’” Leo snapped at him.

  “Get up,” I demanded. He obeyed, and Leo marched him downstairs.

  While we wanted to interrogate him, the worry was that he might remember the suspicious guy from the bar. As it was, I guessed that if Bryant was pulling Mitchell’s strings, then we were going to be his top suspects. No point in adding fuel to that fire.

  Leo pushed him onto a chair and leveled the gun against the back of his head.

  “What do you want? Please don’t kill me,” he begged.

  Neither of us answered. Instead, I took the new roll of duct tape that we brought and began securing him to the chair. When I was certain that Mitchell couldn’t move, I taped his mouth. Leo left for a minute, returning with a green plastic tote. Inside was quite a collection of powders and pills. He signaled that there was still more upstairs.

  “No money?” I mouthed silently.

  He shrugged and shook his head.

  I pointed my head to Mitchell, hoping Leo would understand that I wanted him to ask him.

  He did. “Where’s the money?” he asked as he ripped the tape off Mitchell’s mouth. Even in the dark, I could see the red marks that ripping the tape off had left.

  “There isn’t any,” he said.

  “How do you have this much,” Leo gestured at the tote, “and not get paid for it? Where do you keep it?”

  “I don’t have the cash. I’m just a middle man.”

  Leo and I exchanged looks. We both had the same question. “A middle man who doesn’t get paid?” Leo asked sharply as he put the barrel of the .45 between Mitchell’s eyes.

  Mitchell shook his head. “Not in cash.”

  The two of us locked eyes again. Leo stuck the tape back over his mouth.

  I motioned for him to wrap it up. We had been here too long.

  Leo stuck his index finger up to tell me to wait. He disappeared upstairs again, returning half a minute later with an extra gun, another 9 mm. Must have been Mitchell’s. Leo pointed to the front door. I opened it and left it ajar before moving back to the patio door.

  Gunshots echoed through the house. I counted ten shots before Leo came through the kitchen motioning me to go.

  Before we did the actual breaking and entering, Leo had examined every route from Mitchell’s back door through the condominium complex. He complained about how the rise in video surveillance made doing anything without being caught on camera near impossible. We sprinted the path he decided was the one on which we were least likely to meet anyone. It also had the worst angles for video surveillance. We took several turns between condos and parking lots until we reached the wooded area behind the complex.

  I followed Leo through the woods until we came out on the end of a dead-end road. We stopped behind an empty house with a “For Rent” sign in front of it. Leo had confirmed it was vacant before we started the evening’s adventures.

  We stripped the black hoodies and masks. Leo pulled a small garbage bag that was folded in his back pocket. I stuffed the clothes in them while he sent a text. Three minutes later, a car pulled into the driveway. We jumped into Malcolm’s Lexus.

  “That went well,” Leo finally said.

  25

  After spending the early morning hours gallivanting around, I was not ready for my phone to start ringing a few minutes after nine. Malcolm dropped me at the Preservation and took Leo back to Mama’s place someti
me around four. Collapsing on my bed, still dressed, I quickly fell asleep.

  “Hello,” I groaned.

  Jason responded, “Yesterday you ask me about Craig Mitchell, and last night, the man’s house is broken into. The police found him taped to a chair with thousands of dollars of cocaine and marijuana boxed up to-go.”