Devil With a Gun

by M. C. Grant

  Warrick gulps and blurts, “Twenty-two, on the second floor.”

  I nod. “Is Lebed here yet?”

  Warrick gulps again and moves his head in the same useless gesture that doesn’t answer my question. I head for the stairs, deciding and/or hoping that he means no.

  “I like the spleen via anus threat,” says Pinch as we climb the stairs to the second floor. “Mind if I borrow that sometime?”

  “Be my guest.”

  He chuckles. “You surprise me, Dixie.”

  “In what way?”

  “This,” he says. “You’re normally so passive, but I just saw you leave a room full of hard men quaking in their salty boots. I like it. You’d make a good contractor.”

  “Uh, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You should.”

  On the second landing, I open the door and peer down the hall. There are no bouncers standing guard outside any of the rooms, which is likely because of the video surveillance inside. If anyone starts trouble, whoever monitors the cameras will sound the alarm.

  We head down the hall to Room 22. Outside, I stop and tell Pinch about the cameras.

  “You shouldn’t be seen,” I tell him. “No point you getting on Lebed’s radar, too.”

  Pinch’s grin practically breaks his face in half. “Curiouser and curiouser, Alice.”

  I wrinkle my brow in confusion, but don’t want to waste time asking exactly what he means. Instead, I try the handle. The door is unlocked.

  Inside, Roxanne is on all fours on the bed while the drunken ox is mounting her from behind. The man still doesn’t quite appear to know where he is, as his eyes roll around his skull and ribbons of drool drip from the corners of his mouth. He’s operating on autopilot, pure primal instinct. He also has the hairiest ass I’ve ever seen outside of a zoo.

  “Get dressed,” I tell Roxanne. “We’re leaving.”

  She rolls her eyes at me like a teenager caught kissing a boy in her bedroom. “I told you, I’m working.”

  “Red Swan is on his way and he’s not happy.”

  Roxanne pales but tries not to let her fear show. The ox, oblivious to anyone else in the room, continues to thrust into her in a rhythm that would confuse Ringo Starr.

  “This isn’t open for debate,” I say, cutting off any argument. “We’re leaving. Now.”

  She stabs a thumb over her shoulder. “And what do I do about him?”

  The ox shows no sign of finishing anytime soon. I turn to Pinch, who’s standing in the hallway.

  “Any advice?” I ask.

  He reaches into his pocket and tosses over a scuffed leather blackjack. I catch it and instantly feel the weight of a lead core surrounded by dense sand. Pinch points to a soft spot just behind his ear, indicating that I should swing the weapon with everything I have.

  I move behind the ox, careful to avoid the sweaty slap of hairy buttocks. Then I wind up my pitching arm and let loose with the sap. It lands with a heavy thud that stops the ox’s eyeballs from rolling in all directions. In a brief respite of clarity, he turns his head. His pupils center and his lips curl into an angry grimace before his eyes roll skyward and his body begins to fall.

  I quickly shove him from the side so that he lands on the bed beside Roxanne rather than crushing her beneath him.

  “You have ten seconds,” I tell her. “Move.”

  This time she doesn’t argue.

  Fourteen

  Pinch drops Roxanne and me in front of my building after coercing a promise that I’ll call if I need assistance.

  “It’s been fun,” he says. “I didn’t realize how much I missed the rush.”

  “Personally,” I say, “you can keep it. Forget rush, I’d rather lie on a sandy beach with a handsome mute waiter bringing me Long Island ice teas and touching up my sunscreen with strong but amazingly soft hands.”

  Pinch grins. “You have such specific fantasies.”

  “Details are important.”

  “Like I said, you’d make a good contractor.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  After Pinch drives away, I take hold of Roxanne’s arm and lead her up the stairs to my apartment. Inside, she takes one look around and asks if she can take a bath.

  I point the way while slipping off my jacket and heading for the kitchen phone. Before reaching it, however, I’m distracted by the unfinished glasses of wine still standing on my coffee table. I make a detour to pour both half-sipped glasses into one and carry the full glass to the bathroom. The door is ajar, but I knock softly anyway.

  “Come in,” says Roxanne. “It’s your house.”

  I enter to find her naked again, leaning over the sink and scrubbing the makeup off her face. Cigarette burns and bruises, both old and new, run the length of her body from shoulders to ankles amidst a confection of tattoos that I didn’t have time to examine in the hotel room.

  Two of the circular burns form the eyes of a lifeless baby curled above her right hip, while the largest tattoo is a length of barbed wire that wraps around her spine. The artist has created the illusion that the wire cuts into and under her skin on one side of the spine before appearing on the other, continuing in a series of intertwining loops. Growing from the wire in three random spots are delicate red poppies.

  On the back of her left calf, the tattoo is of a partially open zipper. Peeking through the zipper’s gap is the green eye of a black cat. Her right calf is bare, but her right buttock is inked with a small rectangular sticker that reads: Your ad goes here.

  “Is that for me?” Roxanne asks.

  My gaze lifts from her body to her freshly scrubbed face, and as I hand over the wine I can’t believe how old she still looks for being barely twenty. The spider web wrinkles around her eyes and mouth are not from laughter or joy; they go so much deeper.

  She sips the wine and sighs before brushing past me and stepping into the tub. After switching off the taps, she leans back, closes her eyes, and balances the lip of the glass on the lower lip of her mouth to take long, noisy sips, as if attempting to filter errant grape seeds through her teeth.

  Leaving her to it, I head for the kitchen to call her sister.

  There’s a knock at the apartment door just as I hang up with an excited Bailey. The door opens before I get to it, and Kristy rushes in to give me a big hug.

  “You survived,” she squeals. “I was so worried. That neighborhood is scary.”

  Releasing me, Kristy steps back to study my face. “No new bruises,” she says with a smile. “That makes a change.”

  “It went fine,” I lie. “No problems.”

  “Did you find the sister?”

  I nod toward the bathroom. “She’s taking a bath.”

  I flash back to when I was in the bathroom earlier and suddenly realize what is missing.

  “Have you seen Prince?” I ask urgently. “He never misses a chance to get under my feet as soon as I get home.”

  “He’s with me,” says Kristy. “It’s OK. I was lonely when I got home, so I took him over to our place.”

  I exhale in relief but still jump in alarm when the phone rings.

  “Relax, Dix,” says Kristy. “Where’s that bottle of wine gone? We deserve a glass.”

  With a chuckle, I reach for the phone and lift it to my ear.

  On the other end of the line, Frank says, “Did you piss him off?”

  “Who?”

  “Krasnyi Lebed. Your Russian.”

  “How do you know that I met with—”

  “There’s a car downstairs,” Frank interrupts. “Hate to disturb your evening, but I need you to join me.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll tell you when you arrive.”

  I glance toward the bathroom. “I have company.”

  “Just you. The driver’s waiting.
”

  “But, Frank—”

  The line goes dead in my ear.

  With an irritated sigh, I cross the room to the front window and glance down at the street. An unmarked patrol car is idling at the curb. The driver—a young, handsome man in a two-piece suit picked off the rack by his mother and sporting a ten-dollar haircut from the same barber as his father—looks up and tilts an invisible hat in my direction.

  I hold up five fingers and he nods in acknowledgment.

  “Everything OK, Dix?” Kristy asks.

  “I need to go out,” I say.

  “But you just got in.”

  “And I need a favor,” I add.

  “So long as it’s not babysitting the naked prostitute who is currently butchering Lady Gaga in your bathtub.”

  “Just don’t let her leave,” I say with an apologetic grin. “Her sister is on her way over. Keep both of them here until I get back. Please?”

  “I’ll need more wine.”

  I grab my jacket as I head for the door. “I’ll pick up a bottle on my way back.”

  “Make it two,” says Kristy.

  Fifteen

  The driver rolls past The Russian Tea House and I notice the place is packed. From the few tables I can see through the lace-draped windows, most of the clientele appear to be older gentlemen with a penchant for moustaches, tailored finery, and escorting much, much younger women.

  “Father-daughter night at the tea house?” I ask the driver, who introduced himself as Detective Russell Shaw. Before getting in the car, I asked to see his badge just to make sure it wasn’t made of cardboard and crayon.

  Dixie’s Tips #15: Just because a police officer looks like a high school hall monitor doesn’t mean that we ladies are getting older. Men use moisturizer now, too. We’re still young and gorgeous.

  Shaw smiles. “I had to observe that place for three weeks last year. Every night is like that except Thursdays.”

  “What happens on Thursdays?” I ask, intrigued.

  “The same men come, but with their wives. There are so many mink shawls and coats that I kept worrying some PETA fanatics would show up with buckets of red paint.”

  I picture it in my mind. Scantily clad vegans throwing fake blood over spouses of the Russian mob. It wouldn’t be any animal’s skin they’d have to worry about after that.

  We turn left at the next intersection and head down a few blocks to where the neighborhood starts to shed some of its old-world charm in favor of modern survival. Shaw pulls to the curb and points to a nearby alley.

  “Detective Sergeant Fury’s down there,” he says.

  I look around at the absence of streetlights and police activity, the bars and metal shutters on the store windows, and the unnerving stillness of it all. It’s like everyone is huddled indoors in expectance of a storm. Had I missed the weather warning?

  “This isn’t a crime scene?” I ask, figuring that’s the usual reason Frank calls me after the sun goes down.

  “It is, but the sergeant wants it kept low-key for now.”

  I study the deserted street and the yawning mouth of the dark alley. After the day I’ve had, I’m not in the mood for any more surprises.

  “Er—not to sound too girly, but are you planning to escort me down there?”

  Shaw flashes a smile and his teeth are like bleached corn nibblets on a summer’s day. I wonder if he tastes of salt and butter, but then quickly blink the thought away. He must be ten years my junior. But then again …

  “It wouldn’t be gentlemanly not to,” he says.

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  I climb out of the car and breathe in the night air. Somebody’s boiling cabbage or old socks nearby, and a neighbor has burned a frying pan of ground beef and onions. The air also carries the scent of fresh rain and soggy garbage left too long between pickups.

  It makes me think it’s been too long since I left the city and went for a walk in old-growth forest where the oxygen is so thick you can almost slice off a piece and slip it into your pocket for later.

  I make a mental note to do something about that soon.

  “This way, Ms. Flynn,” says Shaw.

  He’s slipped on a blue rain jacket with SFPD printed in yellow on the back. For some reason, the jacket makes me feel better.

  I follow him into the alley.

  Halfway down the brick-sided and puddle-strewn corridor, Frank is standing over a blue tarp that’s being lit by two battery-operated lights on aluminum tripods. His car blocks the far end of the alley and several long strands of crime scene tape are strewn on the ground.

  I point at the discarded yellow tape. “Trying to stop the cockroaches from gawking?”

  Frank’s lips twitch. “Just the media,” he says.

  “Most of us stand erect now,” I say. “Evolution.”

  “Hmmm. Who knew?”

  “Guess the tape didn’t stick,” says Shaw. “Sorry, sir. I’ll fix that.”

  “String it at each end,” says Frank. “Coroner’s on her way over. Make it look nice and official.”

  I smile as I glide over to stand beside him. “I’m surprised Ruth’s not already here,” I say. “Tittle tattle says you’ve been spending a lot of time together.”

  “Never listen to gossip.”

  “Normally, I wouldn’t, but this was pillow talk.” I grin wickedly as Frank’s eyebrows arch upward. “My pillow,” I say teasingly, before adding, “but I was talking to myself.”

  Frank’s lips practically do a rumba as he shakes his head. “We enjoy each other’s company,” he admits, “but we also need our own space. She’s still Audrey Hepburn, while I prefer John Wayne.”

  “Now there’s a surprise.”

  Frank snorts and nods toward the tarp. “Aren’t you going to unwrap your present?”

  “For me? You shouldn’t have.”

  “I want to see if you know him.”

  The smile leaves my face as I read the seriousness in Frank’s. This isn’t about tipping me off to a story.

  Bending down, I take a deep breath and reach for the corner of the tarp.

  “Prepare yourself,” says Frank. “It ain’t nowhere near pretty.”

  I’ve developed a fairly strong stomach from covering grizzly crime scenes over the last decade or so. Admittedly, the first few haunted my dreams—especially the burnings and the smell, each stage of decomposition so different—but over time even olfactory memory can fade.

  I lift the tarp and make a noise halfway between a squeal and a gasp.

  “Jeez, Frank, what the hell is that?”

  “Look at his wrists.”

  I lift the tarp higher and look down at the body’s wrists. His arms end in bloody stumps. I return to the deformed head and see that what I first thought was some kind of alien sea creature bursting out of his stretched mouth is actually both of his hands, bound together with twine and stuffed, wrist first, down his throat. Bloodless blue fingers crawl out of his mouth, while the force needed to lodge them there has broken and distended the man’s jaw.

  “He was holding this in his fingers.”

  I drop the tarp and turn to see Frank holding a plastic evidence bag containing one of my business cards. Disturbingly, a circular burn has removed most of the picture of my face.

  “He was really holding that?” I ask.

  “It was sticking out between his fingers. We were meant to see it.”

  “And the body was here?” I ask. “Just lying in the open? Not stuffed in a dumpster or anything?”

  Franks nods.

  “How did you discover it?” I ask.

  “Anonymous tip.”

  “Convenient.”

  “Do you know him?” Franks asks.

  Despite my repulsion, I lift the tarp again to exam the body in more detail.
Even in its altered state, it’s not an easy face to forget. And if I look past the crisscross of scars and melted lip, the stench of rot wafting from his black fingertips is a dead giveaway.

  “How do you know him?” Frank asks, reading my body language.

  “He tried to kill me.”

  “What?” Frank’s voice is tight, angry. “When?”

  “This afternoon,” I say. “After … ” I pause and wince.

  “After you went to meet Krasnyi Lebed?”

  “Yes,” I admit. “I know you told me not to, but—”

  “Start from the beginning,” Frank growls.

  “But just so we’re clear: you know I didn’t do this, right?”

  Frank’s eyes crinkle. “It doesn’t fit your usual MO.”

  “Maybe we could go for a drink,” I say as a shiver runs through me. “The Dog House or—”

  “I need to wait for Ruth. Tell me here.”

  I stand and wrap my arms across my chest in a self-comforting hug. The night is colder than I’m dressed for, and I suddenly feel so incredibly tired. I wish I smoked cigarettes just for something to do with my hands.

  “You don’t have a cigar do you?” I ask.

  Occasionally, Frank and I smoke a cigar while strolling homeward after a late evening of beers and bullshit at the Dog House. Frank introduced me to this brand from the Dominican Republic called Macanudo Maduro that is dark leafed, wet, and smooth with subtle caramel undertones.

  No wonder I have trouble getting a date.

  “Quit stallin’,” says Frank.

  I sigh and tell him the whole story, ending with the Good Samaritan who came to my rescue by cracking the Russian’s skull with a piece of lumber. I pull my collar to one side to show him the bruising.

  “These marks will match his fingers,” I say.

  “You should’ve called me.”

  “I know, but I was just relieved to get away. Who knew he’d end up dead in an alley?”

  “And the guy who stepped in to help you?”

  “Took off before I did. I have no idea who he was.”

  “Cutting off the hands is a message,” says Frank. “I’m just not sure who it’s directed at.”