Deep Kill (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  I started to run, but the man on the ground grabbed my leg. I stomped his hand and he must have screamed, because his mouth opened, but no sound came out. I yanked my leg away, teetered off balance for a second, and then, with the sound of roaring all around me, I felt a pistol jammed into the back of my neck.

  I froze. The man on the ground got slowly to his feet, and I didn’t like the look in his eyes. His mouth moved and I knew he was yelling at the man behind me, the man with the gun, who had to be Condon, but no words came out of his mouth, and I finally realized the gunshot had deafened me.

  But I didn’t need to be a lip-reader to know what the man in front of me wanted to do. The question was why he didn’t do it.

  And the answer came soon enough: it was because his friend, the one with the screwdriver between the knuckles, got first shot.

  Hands pulled me around, and before I could focus, a knee came into my groin, sending waves of nausea shocking through me. I hit the pavement like a sack of cement. Then the one with the shotgun got in his licks, kicking me a few times in the ribs.

  And above it all, staring down with the detached interest of a meat-packer, was the Reverend Condon.

  Headlights raked over us, and for a second I thought deliverance was at hand, but then the lights passed, and I waited for the beating to start anew. But instead the two bullyboys stepped away, out of sight. There was only Condon, standing over me with the revolver that I’d stupidly brought. I told myself that he was saving the fun part for last.

  “I could kill you right now,” he said, and I realized I had my hearing back. That was when I knew I was going to live.

  “Why don’t you?” I managed to ask though the receding waves of pain.

  “Because, like I told you,” he said, “we’re not killers.”

  He turned and emptied the chamber of the pistol over the railing, so that the cartridges fell into the water, and with a gesture of contempt dropped the revolver onto my prone body.

  “Aren’t thieves, either. But don’t come back. Next time”—he gave a little nod at the railing—”it’s for real.”

  Before I could answer, he was gone. I heard doors slamming. The motor roared, and there was a rush of air as the van pulled away. Suddenly I was alone, fifteen feet above the swamp, in the middle of nowhere at two in the morning, with only the stars for company.

  I tried to struggle up onto my knees, and fell back over. My groin ached, but I knew the ache would abate in a few minutes. I was more worried about my ribs. Breathing was painful, and I was afraid some of them had been cracked. But I wasn’t spitting blood, so it didn’t seem that my lungs had been punctured.

  The problem was how I was going to get back. Only a cop would stop for a ragged figure waving his arms on the state’s murder stretch at Christ o’clock in the morning.

  The little town of Pass Manchac had to be near; there might be somebody there willing to call the sheriff. I tried again to rise, and this time I made it to my knees. I knelt there like a supplicant, trying to breathe slowly. The knife thrusts in my side seemed to be slackening off. Maybe my ribs were just bruised. Maybe I’d be able to walk after all.

  I heard a sound ahead of me.

  At first I thought it was the wind, and then I realized with a start that the wind didn’t make that sound, the quick tapping of shoe leather on concrete, as somebody hurried toward me.

  But there were no other cars, no headlights, nothing human …

  The hairs went up on the back of my neck.

  My assailants were gone, all the way to the north shore by now. So who was stalking me from the darkness ahead?

  I scanned the dark pavement for some kind of weapon, but there was nothing. The steps were only a few feet away now. I could either stay here, like a prisoner waiting for the shot to the back of my head, or I could get up.

  With all the strength I could muster, I pushed myself to my feet and faced it.

  Twelve

  A flashlight blazed on, blinding me, and I threw up a hand instinctively.

  “Micah, are you okay?”

  It was Sandy’s voice, and I felt the tension go out of me.

  “Sandy, for God’s sake …” I lowered my arm and started to sag, but she caught me and kept me from going down.

  “It’s okay, Micah man. I got you.”

  “Thank God.” I stumbled over to the rail and stared down at the black surface of the water, shuddering at the thought of how close I had come to disappearing beneath it. I began shaking as my system tried to handle the adrenaline it no longer needed.

  “It’s okay,” Sandy soothed. “You just stay here and I’ll bring the car.”

  I blinked, trying to comprehend what had happened. “But how did you get here?”

  “All in good time,” she said, and started forward to help me.

  “No, I can make it.” I shoved myself away from the rail and started forward. She knew me well enough to make only token sounds of disapproval.

  “It’s only about a hundred yards ahead,” she said. “I saw you with them when I passed by, but there wasn’t anything I could do.” She patted her handbag. “This little .25 isn’t nothing against the kind of cannons they have. They didn’t pay any mind, so I just kept going a ways and then pulled in, turned out the lights, and raised the hood like I’d been here for ages. I was scared, Micah, real scared. I didn’t know how I was going to get to you in time.”

  “But how did you know they had me?”

  The beam of her flashlight danced along the roadway, picking up the reflectors, and I followed its circle with my eyes, telling myself it wasn’t much further.

  “I went by your office and saw you leaving. You seemed in a hell of a big hurry, and I had that feeling you were about to do something not too smart, so I followed. I saw you park under the freeway. That’s when I knew you were going to Condon’s place.”

  The light hit something metal, a bumper, a taillight.

  “I pulled in a few cars down the street and waited.” She giggled. “Micah, you lucky there wasn’t anybody out right then. They would’ve wondered what this white boy was doing dressed up like Jack the Ripper three weeks before Halloween.”

  I grunted and made my way around the car. Pulling the door open, I collapsed into the seat. All of a sudden my pain faded to secondary significance, and all I wanted to do was sleep.

  Sandy got in, reaching across me to pull the door shut. An instant later the motor started, the headlights turned the night into a bright tunnel, and we were rolling.

  “Then,” she said softly, “I waited while you went around the building tiptoeing like some kind of comic-book cat burglar.”

  “Don’t rub it in,” I muttered, but we both knew I didn’t care and she could say whatever she wanted, because ten minutes ago I’d been alone in the middle of a swamp and now I was in the care of a beautiful women who was speeding me to safety.

  “Of course, when I saw you come out again, I knew something was wrong,” she said. “Mainly ’cause they were dragging you. You don’t usually travel that way, at least not before ten o’clock in the morning.”

  “Okay, okay, get in your licks.”

  “I will. So I followed. ’Course, I couldn’t get real close. But they had a broken taillight, so I could keep ’em in sight until the I—Fifty-five turnoff. Then, with a road so lonely like it is, I had to slow down to about fifty-five and let ’em take a big lead. I was scared, but what else could I do? I was about decided to try to speed up and crash ’em—if I could catch up at all—when I saw ’em pulled over.

  I had to pass by and hope for the best, knowing that folks don’t use this road at this hour except for just one thing.”

  I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. “It had occurred to me.

  “Here,” she said, and felt her nudge my hand with something. It was a flask. I unscrewed the top and took a long pull, feeling the whiskey burn down into my guts. It was probably the wrong thing to do, medically, I reflected, but it felt good.
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  “So what possessed you?” she finally demanded. “Have you gone crazy?”

  I took another swig and then sighed. “I was pissed,” I said. “I know, I know—it’s a lousy reason.” I told her about being shot at. “That and getting raked over on TV left me with something less than brotherly love for the reverend.”

  “I can dig that.” Silence closed in on us, and I let my weariness carry me along.

  After a while she spoke again. “I was wrong about him, Micah. I want you to know that. I mean, the things he said at first, I could relate to those things. I feel for the Augustine boy. But Condon was using him. That’s bad enough, but if he’s gonna turn out to be a murderer, too …”

  I let my eyes open halfway. The reflectors in the center made a string of yellow dashes, hypnotic in their regularity. “I don’t think he’s a killer,” I said.

  “No?” I sensed her dark eyes on me.

  “No. He could have killed me tonight if he’d wanted. And lots of men would have. But he didn’t. And that means he was probably telling the truth about not sending somebody to take a shot at me.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “You think it could have been Calvin Autry?”

  A small piece of forever streamed past and I opened my eyes again.

  “Calvin wouldn’t have taken a shot at me,” I said. “Whoever did that was trying either to get rid of me or to warn me off. Same result either way. I’m Calvin’s only hope. He wouldn’t have anything to gain. And, besides, he’s gone to ground.”

  “Then who?”

  I told her about the car I’d followed. “Whoever hires private detectives even more desperate than we are,” I tried to joke. “Tell me, what did you find out about George Guidry?”

  “My man George,” she said in a voice like silk, “handles some interesting corporations. I talked to a friend in the secretary of state’s office; she remembers his name and she looked up the corporations. They’re duly registered, but they don’t seem to do anything, unless you want to count things like ‘formed for the purpose of providing management expertise,’ or ‘for the purpose of providing a resource base of consultants in urban planning.’ ”

  “That’s not unusual,” I said. “There’re lots of dummy companies on the books.”

  “True enough. But another friend, in the criminal sheriffs office, remembered him taking a case for one of these companies last year. Outfit called Baywater Enterprises. Their plane got seized at the airport after some coke was found inside. Ended up in federal court. George Guidry appeared for the company and claimed the pilot had taken the plane to Colombia and back without authorization, and so it shouldn’t be forfeited.”

  “And?”

  “It worked. Mainly because the pilot, a fellow named Armen-dárez, admitted it and pled guilty on all charges. Plane returned. Case closed.”

  Oncoming headlights flashed across the darkness for a second and then died away.

  “So they paid him to take the fall,” I said. “That means they’re big time. Five years of a man’s life can’t go cheap.”

  “And neither can Guidry.”

  I tried to force myself to think, but it was difficult.

  “So maybe Guidry sicked the hired gun on me,” I said, and my words seemed to come out like a record being played too slowly. “That means he was scared I was about to hurt his connection with these drug fronts that call themselves businesses, or else that he had something to do with the Augustine killing.”

  “Neither one makes sense,” Sandy said. “In the first place, you haven’t even met the man, and I haven’t gotten in his way either. He’d have to have a crystal ball to know you were checking him out.”

  “Mmm,” I agreed, fighting the dreams that wanted to take me away.

  “Second, why would he have killed the boy? He didn’t have anything to do with Autry except a stupid car repair job. He won in court, so what’s the reason for making a career out of trying to frame the man?”

  “Who’s that leave,” I mumbled.

  “What? Oh, you say, ‘Who does that leave?’ You tell me, Micah man.”

  But I couldn’t, because I was already asleep.

  When my eyes opened again it was dark, but it was the darkness of light shut out rather than the darkness of night, and somewhere nearby I heard the sound of traffic. I reached out for my clock and my hand touched empty space. I waved it in the darkness for a second or two, like a swimmer trying to grab a life ring, and then I drew it back.

  I wasn’t in my apartment.

  “Katherine?” No one answered, and as soon as I’d said it I realized it wasn’t her room: the smell was wrong, all vinyl and rug detergent, with none of the soft fragrance of perfume or bath powder that I associated with her.

  I pulled myself to a sitting position and a groan forced its way through my lips. I had been killed last night, my dreams made that clear, and I remembered pleading for my life while the three figures in black pajamas debated in Vietnamese what to do with me. I tried to tell them the war was over, had been for more than fifteen years, but they didn’t understand. One of them kept pointing to my left arm, and that was when I realized it worked, that there was nothing wrong with it at all, and that meant the year was really 1969, and I’d only imagined the two decades since.

  When they shot me I was still trying to figure it out. I felt the bullets go through me, but I was still standing there, and they were walking away, and I knew somehow I was dead and that nobody would ever believe me if I claimed to still be alive.

  So it took me a few seconds, propped up against the headboard of the bed, to sort out the truth, and while I was still putting it together the door opened and Sandy came in.

  She had some coffee in little plastic cups and a bag that exuded the smell of charbroiled beef. She gave me an indulgent smile.

  “I’m glad to see you decided not to sleep the whole day away,” she said, flipping the light switch. “It’s twelve thirty. Sleep a half hour more and I’m gonna have to pay another day’s rent on this place.”

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “In Mandeville. Can’t you smell the pine trees? Call me spoiled, but at three in the morning I just plain didn’t feel like taking all twenty-one miles of the Pontchartrain Causeway. And I figured you might be a little bit safer over here, where nobody could find you.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t worry. I called Katherine. I told her you and I were out late on a case and everything was okay.”

  I relaxed and nodded. “Thanks, Sandy. And I guess you put me to bed.”

  “Nobody else. Motel manager gave me a funny look when I said my husband was asleep in the car, but so what? Wait till he sees we’re a salt-and-pepper couple.”

  “Tough,” I said, and swung my legs over the side of the bed. She’d wrestled off my clothes, leaving me in my briefs, and as I looked down I saw a welter of ugly blue marks.

  “I’ve got to get back,” I said. “I need to find that—”

  “The man who took a shot at you. Right. But just now you better concentrate on not falling on your face. How do you feel?”

  “Sore.” I touched my ribs with my fingertips. “But I don’t think anything’s broken.”

  “You need a doctor to check you out.”

  “Right. As soon as I get some time.”

  She shook her head, and reached down to the chair for a paper bag. “Here are some clothes I got for you. Ones you had on aren’t fit for the Salvation Army. I’ll bill the firm.”

  Twenty minutes later we were on the causeway, heading south across the lake. I felt better—almost human, in fact—but I knew it would be a couple of days before I had any energy. In any other profession, I could have breathed a sigh of relief because the weekend was coming up. But here it didn’t count.

  “Villiere,” I said finally. “That’s who it has to be.” I told her about Herman Villiere, and how I’d followed him and gotten my tire slashed for the effort.

  Sandy pursed her lips. �
�Could be,” she allowed. “He already knows you’re following him, and he may have seen you on the evening news.”

  “Except that it doesn’t leave much time to line up a hit man,” I said.

  “Hey, if he’s into coke in a big way, or hangs out with the pony boys, he may already know somebody. These days it just takes a phone call or two. In my neighborhood there were people who’d kill for a bottle of Night Train Express.”

  “I reckon.”

  She brought me in through the gate on Barracks Street and helped me up the stairs. The only person that saw us was LaVelle, but he had seen many things since I’d been upstairs, and my being helped up a step at a time by my assistant wasn’t going to surprise him.

  I flopped into my chair and checked the answering machine. The only calls were from John O’Rourke, asking that I get in touch with him, and another, oddly, from Scott. I wondered idly what he wanted and decided he would have to wait. I picked up the phone and hit Mancuso’s number on the automatic dialer.

  When I identified myself he said, “He’s not here.”

  “Neither am I. I’m just passing a message. Micah Dunn says he needs another license run.”

  “Sure. And I need a man called Autry who bugged out on us. What’s this about?”

  I told him a man had been following me, which was the truth, up to a point, and described the car I’d seen. “Now if you’ll just check the plate maybe I can find out why somebody is so interested in what I do.”

  “Hell, I don’t have to run the plate. I know this bird already.”

  My heart did a double beat. “You know him?”

  “Yeah.” Mancuso chuckled. “He’s one of your brothers. A small-timer named Eddie Gulch, holds a PI ticket and does cut-rate jobs for jealous husbands. He’s got in the way a couple of times. When you described that heap of his and the sticker on it, bells rang. We almost sent a complaint to the DA, because somebody thought he was a cop and he didn’t correct the impression.”

  “Where does he hang out?”