Deep Kill (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “Micah,” he sighed when I identified myself. “Good to hear from you. Ruin my day.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” I told him. “I just need a little favor. There’s a case I need some info on.” I told him about Cal Autry and heard him sigh a second time.

  “It’s open season on child molesters, Micah. You know that.”

  “Sure. But a man’s got a right to a trial. And kids do lie.”

  “Everybody lies,” the detective said. “That’s the problem. Look, I’ll have to find out who’s handling this and get back to you. But for Christ’s sake, don’t try anything heavy. I can’t have you fucking with an ongoing investigation—especially one involving a kid. That’d be worth my job. Kids’ names are supposed to be privileged in this kind of case.”

  “But Cal Autry will get his name splashed all over the Picayune, and he’ll lose his business, even if he’s acquitted six months later.”

  “Man, I don’t make the fucking rules.”

  “I know. And I’ll be grateful for whatever you can come up with. And any past raps, of course.”

  “Of course.” There was a pause. “Look, is this guy a special friend of yours or what?”

  I thought of Cal. I probably saw him every three months, tops, but ever since he had trusted me with the story of Marie’s flight I’d felt like I’d enjoyed his trust, whether I wanted it or not.

  “Yeah, I guess he is,” I said.

  “Then you got a feeling for this one?”

  I thought about Calvin the Clown, and the kids doing yard work. “Too early to call,” I said.

  “Yeah. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I suppressed an urge to avoid the job at hand by flipping through my album of famous yachts and called John O’Rourke for an update on Cal.

  “How did it go?” I asked.

  “What am I supposed to say?” O’Rourke answered in his lazy drawl. “Man’s scared to death. Can’t say I blame him. He thinks a hell of a lot of you, though, Micah. He seems to think you can pull the fat out of the fire if anybody can.”

  I groaned. “That’s all I need to hear. Look, I told him the usual things, that you’d order a background on him and all. Is there anything else, anything that came through in your talk with him?”

  “You mean anything you missed because he’s your friend? Answer’s no. I’d like to tell you he’s innocent, but as the Bard said, ‘There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.’ Do you know who’s got the case?”

  “Mancuso’s checking on it.”

  “Okay. Lemme know when you find out. I don’t want him talking to anybody besides you and me right now. I told him if they want him, they can go get a warrant. There’s a pretty fair chance that’ll stop it cold. Unless the kid has a witness, it’s his word against Autry’s. And when we find out who the kid is, we may be able to find out whether he’s on the up-and-up. If he’s from a project, if he’s got a juvenile record—”

  “We can hope,” I said.

  “I’m just dreaming out loud. I’ll probably have to make a formal request. But call somebody in Oklahoma City and have them check out Autry’s family and childhood friends. Find out why he came to Louisiana, and when.”

  I started to tell him about the construction business, how Cal had come in with Brown and Root and had gotten caught when the unions lowered the boom, back in the days when labor had the state in its pocket, but I caught myself. It was what I’d heard from Cal; there were ways to prove or disprove it.

  “How much should I tell them?” I asked.

  “Fifteen hundred,” O’Rourke said. “He wrote me a check for that much. I called the bank. It’s good.”

  Of course it’s good, I thought. Cal Autry probably never bounced a check in his life. But then, I reminded myself, bouncing checks wasn’t what this was about.

  “Anything else?” The lawyer asked.

  I thought about the clown act, but again I didn’t say anything. After all, it wasn’t evidence of anything but a good heart.

  “No,” I said finally.

  He must have sensed my state of mind, because when he spoke again his voice was gentle. “Micah, you know, there are some people who lead their whole lives as upstanding, wholesome people, but there’s one little corner, a little closet, like, where they keep something dark hidden. Every once in a while it gets out, and they have to run and grab it back. Afterward, they manage to convince themselves it never got out at all.”

  “That’s still a poor excuse for molesting children,” I said.

  “I’m not the judge, I’m the lawyer. And I’m just trying to explain how it could happen. Autry may be like that, is all I’m saying. That could explain why he’s so sincere. Or he may just be telling the truth. We may never know.”

  “No,” I said, realizing he was right. “Well, I guess I’ll check out some of the names of people he thinks hold a grudge against him.”

  “Right. Let me know how it goes.” He changed to a more light-hearted vein. “Look, how’s Katherine?”

  “Fine. This is her second year, you know. She still feels strange, taking classes at a place where she used to work and knows all the professors.”

  “Could be worse,” O’Rourke opined. “Give her a kiss.”

  I replaced the receiver and spread out the page with the names of people Calvin Autry considered suspects. The first name was Morris Frazier. Beside it Cal had written, Crooked mechanic who also drinks on job, probably sells stolen parts, waters his gas. Told people I was overcharging. Dishonest bastard.

  I smiled in spite of myself. The address was scribbled in at the side. I looked at the rest of the list.

  Herman Villiere. A greedy son of a bitch if there ever was one. Never worked a day in his life. Got my building by inheriting it from his aunt, who he talked into leaving everything to him. Wants to raise my rent so he can put some friends of his in here, probably to sell dope.

  George Guidry. Brought me a BMW that needed a valve job and new piston rings. Wouldn’t let me do it because he said it just needed a tune-up, so I did one. Then he drove it till the engine burnt up. Wanted me to fix it free. I wouldn’t do it. Took me to court and got the crooked judge to take his side. Got a friend to lie and say I told him he could drive around with it like that.

  Beside this he had scribbled, Don’t know where this bastard is and don’t care, but used to live in Algiers.

  Sam DeNova. Gave me $ 150 deposit on a used Chevrolet, then came back and wanted to call off the deal after I lost somebody else who wanted to buy it. I kept the money. Said he’d get me. Told him to bring his momma. That was last year. Haven’t seen him but once. He cussed me.

  The final entry was NOPSI. Rates too damn high. I complained and called them blood suckers.

  That was one I didn’t copy into my notebook. Somehow I couldn’t see New Orleans Public Service, Incorporated, setting out to get him; they had a whole city to torture.

  I read over the names again. It occurred to me that they were all business related; there were no personal enemies, no neighbors, and no members of his wife’s family. I made a note to check these areas and put his list into a new folder. I started to type out a label with his name, but the thought of him lost among the other folders with their impersonal little red tabs got to me, and I just scribbled his initials at the top and slipped the folder into my drawer. Then I called the agency in Oklahoma City.

  For the next two hours I did paperwork, which meant collating my notes into a long, tape-recorded report for a homosexual pro football player who was jealous of his artist-lover. My assistant, Sandy, would type it up when she in came the next day. It was just after three when Mancuso called.

  “Listen, I got what you wanted. O’Rourke called and they had to cough up the name, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. Got a pencil?”

  “In my hand.”

  “The boy’s name is Arthur Augustine. He’s fifteen, and he lives down on Marais, a couple of blocks from Esplanade.” He read me the street
address. “No juvenile record. Boy lives with his mama and her mama; you know the deal. He’s supposed to be in high school, but he wasn’t that day.”

  “When are we talking about, Sal?”

  “Let’s see; it was Friday, September twenty-eighth. Kid and his mama came in yesterday, Monday, to make the complaint.”

  I rubbed my eyes, wishing I didn’t have to hear it. But there was no way out now. “What does it allege?”

  “Kid says at about four o’clock on Thursday, the twenty-seventh he rode by on his bike and saw Calvin Autry sitting in his chair, just inside the door to his garage. To quote, ‘He seen me and wave me over. I gone over and he asked did I want to make five dollars to work for five minutes. I said sure. He give me a broom and told me he was finished for the day and I was to sweep up. I sweep up and he ask does I know some tricks. I don’t know what he mean and he say can I watch a card disappear. Then he asks can I see how to make a ten-dollar bill out a five. He got a little machine like a cigarette-paper roller, and he put in a five-dollar bill he say he going to give me and out come a ten. Then he say I only got to do one thing for the ten.’ ”

  My stomach started getting queasy as I visualized the scene.

  “ ‘Then he take and put his hand down my pants and feel my thing. He look scared like somebody maybe coming and he pull out his hand and tell me to come back tomorrow, he give me twenty and show me a good time. I left and gone home. Next day I come back about five o’clock and he tell me to get away, he done change his mind.’ ”

  The image of the red-faced Calvin lingered for an instant longer. I forced it away because, I kept telling myself, none of it had happened.

  “That’s it,” Mancuso said. “I’ve got to admit it isn’t exactly ironclad.”

  “No, but it’s enough to ruin a man if it gets printed in the paper.” I thought for a second. “Sal, doesn’t it seem strange that the kid was willing to come back the next day and then only complained because Autry reneged?”

  The policeman snorted. “Strange? In this job? Micah, I admire you for standing up for a friend, but you know as well as I do people’ll lie, cheat, or kill over the wrong color shirt.” He sighed. “Look, so far it’s just an unsubstantiated complaint. Nobody’s going to push it too hard without some kind of corroboration. But we have to go through the official motions.”

  “And meanwhile a man’s in hell because he doesn’t know what will happen.”

  “What can I say? You can talk to the investigating officer if you want.”

  “Later maybe. Thanks a lot, Sal. I appreciate it.”

  I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing my report, and then I drove over to Katherine Dégas’ place, on Prytania. In the heart of the University District, it was an old Victorian two-story that she rented from a retired physician. I’d met Katherine a couple of years before, on another case. She’d been working as a secretary for the head of Tulane’s Middle American Research Insitute, trying to forget the husband killed in the war while she put a son through college. At the time, she’d had a fixation on the chairman of the institute, but somehow in the middle of the investigation we ended up together, and we’d been together since. She was beautiful, mature, and made me feel a way I’d never felt with a woman before. My physical disability didn’t matter to her, and so after years of sensitivity, I had come to realize it was ceasing to matter to me. She’s that kind of woman.

  I let myself in and got a beer from the refrigerator. She was still in class but home any minute. I took a seat on the sofa and tried to sort out my thoughts. Soon her key turned in the door and she came in, smiling.

  We kissed, and I nuzzled her auburn hair, for just an instant forgetting the sordidness of my day’s work. She put down her notebook and went to the kitchen for some wine. When she came back she stood in the doorway for an extra instant, assessing me, and then walked over and took a seat on the sofa beside me.

  “So what’s wrong?” she said.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “After all this time?” She traced my lips with her finger. “You look like the Sad Sack.”

  “Kind of the way I feel.” I told her about Calvin. She listened thoughtfully, frowning slightly. “I remember when his best friend died, a couple of years back. He went to the hospital every day, and then to the man’s house, and when it finally happened, he gave the family money for expenses until they could get on their feet again.”

  “You don’t want to think he did it,” she said. “But deep down you wonder.”

  I told her what O’Rourke had said about people who keep an evil locked away inside themselves. “And he’s right,” I told her. “It could be that way.”

  “That bothers you, because then you have to deal with a human being and not a label.”

  I nodded. “Exactly. Child molesters are supposed to fit labels, just like terrorists. It isn’t true, but it helps to pretend.”

  Katherine took a thoughtful sip of her Chablis. “Poor Micah. Your job is being suspicious of people.”

  “Shitty job,” I said. “I should’ve turned him down and sent him to somebody else. Somebody who wasn’t his friend.“

  “It’s too late for that now. Besides, he was coming to you for help; he expected you to help him. And look at it this way: maybe he didn’t do it.”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself. And then I keep thinking about the clown act. Baby, if the kid was making it all up, how did he know Cal knew magic tricks?”

  “Maybe Cal showed him some tricks. That doesn’t mean he molested him. Have you asked Cal?”

  “I’ve put off calling him all day. I didn’t know what to say.” I shook my head. “It’s a hell of world where you have to suspect people because they do nice things.”

  Much later, I held her tightly in the big bed upstairs where we’d first made love and tried to blot Cal Autry out of my thoughts. But my mind struggled against sleep, and even when slumber overtook me, my dreams were filled with images of clowns.

  Three

  Katherine had already left for the university when I roused myself. I didn’t really want to go back to my office, but there wasn’t any choice. Sandy Gibson, the tall, attractive black woman who was fast becoming indispensable to me, would be in at nine to see if I had any assignments for her. It had been a thin couple of weeks so far, ever since we’d wound up a custody case, and I’d been handling the business of the football player on my own. But today would be different. Today I had something for her to do.

  I parked in the courtyard at eight thirty and stood there beside the fountain for a minute, enjoying the fine spray as it feathered down against my face. I was just starting up the outside stairs when LaVelle stuck his head out the rear door of his shop.

  “Hey, Micah, seen my latest?” A thin, dark man in his thirties with a spade beard, Lavelle professed to be an expert on voodoo, but tourists were the only ones who fell for his act, and lately there hadn’t been too many of them.

  “Your latest?” I asked, glancing at the object he held in his hand.

  “Absolument,” he said, holding up a withered piece of root with a fleur-de-lis tag hanging from it. “This is my Saints gris-gris. I plan to market it to Saints fans all over the country. I mean, what do you think of when you think New Orleans? The Saints, right? And voodoo, right? It came to me yesterday, while I was sitting there all by my lonesome, why not combine ’em? Get a mailing list from Sports Illustrated, okay? Take everybody in Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi, and everybody else with a French name, which means going for all the ex-Louisianites everywhere else in the country. With me so far? You send out a blurb, telling them this is a way to make the Saints win, only it gets its power through numbers. Everybody sends ten bucks for a New Orleans Saints John the Conqueror Voodoo Root. For fifty thousand faithful, which is a conservative number, understand, that’s half a million bucks.” He waited. “Well?”

  “Well, what? Sounds like a postal inspector’s full-employment guarantee.”

/>   “Jesus, Micah, you’re a wet blanket. Don’t you see? It’s a joke. I market it as a joke. It gets to be an in thing, like, well, like Mardi Gras, for Christ’s sake. Every Saints fan has to have one, that sort of thing. A symbol of solidarity with the mystical team.”

  I started up the steps. “Well, what the hell?” I said. “I don’t guess voodoo can hurt. The Saints’ve tried everything else.”

  I had a bowl of cereal and debated taking out my percolator. The rich smell of New Orleans coffee was drifting in from the French Market, but for me the promise was always greater than the fulfillment; my taste for coffee had been ruined by too many night shifts in Nam, when the brew we’d had to drink was more like something you’d use to cure baldness. So I stuck with orange juice and waited.

  At ten after nine I heard her footsteps on the stairs.

  She was wearing a gray pants suit that quietly advised the arrival of fall. Her high heels told me she didn’t expect to be doing any leg work today, and her alligator handbag suggested that she was going to confine herself to the decent parts of town—if there still were any. She wore pearls that on any other woman would have been faux. On Sandy, though, I knew they were real, and that she was daring any of the various lowlifes who inhabited the Quarter to make a grab for them. It had happened once before, and a low-power junkie had found himself inhaling a short-barreled Smith & Wesson and begging her not to pull the trigger.

  “Micah man,” she said, closing the door after her. “Sorry I’m late, but traffic in this city is hell. Did I miss the big case?”

  “No, I’ve been waiting, actually, to put you on it.”

  “Are you serious?” She seated herself in the same chair Calvin Autry had used the day before. “Not another custody, I hope. I get so tired of these no-win deals. Give me a good old-fashioned embezzlement any day.”

  “How does child molesting grab you?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Dirty, very dirty. Are we prosecuting or defending?”

  “Prosecuting,” I said. “At least, for practical purposes. We need to find everything the prosecutor’s going to have. And we have to find it before an arrest is made, if possible. Because after that, it’s all over, even if the charges get dropped.”