Spiral

by David L Lindsey

  Haydon looked through the latticework to the sprinklers across the lawn. He wondered if Cinco smelled the wet plants, if he enjoyed it as much as Haydon. He wondered if he was cool, or burning up. That was the worst thing about not being able to talk to him. Haydon didn't really know how he was doing. He could tell himself that Cinco didn't seem to be miserable, Boren had said he wasn't suffering, but then how did Boren really know? Time had taken on another meaning for the old dog, or maybe another value. Haydon could not feel that it was all the same to him now. If he didn't see the end of it just ahead, at least he must perceive that it was different. What occupied an old dog's mind in the long days of his end? Did he remember; did he find pleasure in it; did he have regrets? Did time play tricks with his memory, or did he finally understand the truth of it?

  Chapter 7

  THE black stretch limousine with smoked windows pulled out of Charlie T's parking lot in Greenway Plaza, turned west on Richmond, and headed directly into the full glare of the midafternoon sun. It was followed by a midnight-blue Mercedes. Both cars moved easily with the flow of traffic headed toward Loop 610. In the Mercedes, two men in business suits somberly watched the traffic from behind dark glasses, frowning into the sharp, colorless light. They had eaten well during a long lunch at a table a few feet away from the man they had been hired to protect, the man who had been conducting business with three other men over cote de veau. The late heavy meal, the heat, and the monotony of the traffic congestion all combined to make them feel sluggish.

  As they passed Weslayan and crossed over the railroad tracks, the two cars pulled out of the left lane in preparation for turning right on Post Oak Road as soon as they emerged from under the expressway overpass just ahead. Approaching the traffic light at the access road, the limousine driver noticed a frustrated motorcyclist in the left lane trying to get his attention. The cyclist's face was hidden behind a mirrored visor, but he managed to signal to the driver that he wanted permission to cut in front of him before the light turned so he could cross over to the access road. He had waited too late to change lanes. The chauffeur shrugged and motioned for him to go ahead.

  The cyclist waved his appreciation and eased the motorcycle in front of the limousine. When he got squarely in front of it, his motor stalled, and he began working frantically with the fuel line against his left leg, glancing anxiously at the traffic light. The chauffeur cursed and raced his engine. Two cars behind the limousine, a second cyclist, also wearing a mirrored visor and straddling a powerful racing bike, shot out of Guiton Street and roared toward the intersection on the gravel shoulder at the edge of the pavement.

  The traffic light flashed to green. At that instant, the cyclist in front of the stretch limousine suddenly started his bike and in one smooth movement turned it perpendicular to the traffic as he jerked a machine pistol from his windbreaker and pointed it at the windshield. Simultaneously, the second cyclist slid to a stop beside the two guards in the Mercedes, who were just now realizing something was happening. Before they could react, he fired two brief bursts from his own machine pistol, blowing out the Mercedes's windows and splattering the two guards all over the inside of their car. The Mercedes lunged forward, bashing into the rear of the limousine as the first cyclist opened up on its windshield. In the convulsion of sudden death, the chauffeur jammed the accelerator to the floor, and the sleek sedan smashed into the surprised gunman, who continued firing as his cycle was plowed under the front end of the heavy car. In a shower of sparks, gunman, cycle, and limousine ground along the pavement, through the intersection, and crashed into the sloping cement embankment of the overpass. With its engine whining at full tilt, the stranded limousine's rear wheels spun out a thick cloud of black rubber smoke as it shimmied against the embankment where it had pinned the mutiliated gunman.

  The second cyclist roared up beside the crazily jumping limousine and, with cool professional efficiency, raked its darkened windows with short bursts from his machine pistol, blowing glass into the air and across the intersection. When the magazine was empty, he calmly replaced it and pulled closer to the front of the limousine. He seemed to hesitate, but only for a moment, before he fired several bursts into the half-concealed body of the other cyclist. The rest of the clip he emptied into the gutted windows of the passenger compartment.

  He paused to reload one last magazine, unhurried, prolonging the mad scene as if he controlled the flow of time and had no cause for fear. Then, swiftly, he cradled the gun across his lap, jammed his bike in gear, and with the engine revving wildly, swiveled through the scattered cars of the stunned motorists in the intersection. Crouching low over his handlebars, he careened into a left turn and disappeared onto the up ramp of the expressway.

  CHAPTER 8

  It was a few minutes after two o'clock when Haydon pulled into the parking garage at the department headquarters on Risener Street, only an hour before the end of his shift. The police department had recently completed a renovation program that for three years had kept the building in a state of perpetual disruption with an architectural autopsy not unlike the one Haydon had watched earlier that morning. The building's viscera of electrical wiring, air-conditioning ducting, and plumbing that had draped from the ceilings, cluttered the hallways, and turned the offices into obstacle courses had now been shoved back into the ceilings and walls and sutured with new plaster, paint, vinyl wall covering, and spongy acoustical tile.

  But the greatest change at headquarters had been in security. The administration had implemented a strict new security system that was long overdue. There was now a twenty-four-hour lobby check of all visitors. Security officers were stationed at the elevators and in the hallways, and anyone not in uniform had to wear an identification badge at all times. Access to some restricted areas required special electronically sensitive identification cards which made it possible for security officers to monitor traffic in the building.

  The homicide division was definitely a brighter place to work now, and less cluttered. The clunky metal desks that had been there since the 1950s were gone. The small offices that surrounded the squad room and used to hold four desks with just enough leg room to squeeze in sideways now held four or five carrels with open space in the center of the room. Each carrel faced the wall and had its own desktop, shelf, light, CRT, and telephone. It was easier to stake out your own territory and protect it, if you were inclined to do that sort of thing. But there were still no windows.

  "So this gal drove a sandwich wagon out around East Gulf Bank Road where those office parks are, those little mini-warehouses andshit. You ever look inside one of those sandwich wagons?"

  Mooney paused to take a swig from the mouth of the half-pint carton of milk. He was trying to save his ulcers from the barbecue and hot sauce, onions and beer.

  "They're not your luxury-mobiles. And in this one, Lolly's old man had let the air conditioner go out, so she drove around in that little van sweatin' like a Baytown whore."

  There were four men in the office, Martinez and Clavo from the Chicano squad, Weaver from robbery down the hall, and the old veteran Dick Small—a name that had not been easy to live with— who had already heard the story three or four times, but liked it so much he listened every time Mooney told it. Haydon had memorized it too, but it sounded as if Mooney had been polishing it.

  "Lolly, she always wore these jeans that looked like they were a threat to her circulatory system. Tight as a Jew banker." Mooney sat his milk carton on the edge of his cubicle desk. Keeping his face straight, he said, "And she always wore a white T-shirt. Nothin' underneath." He looked at everybody in the room, then cupped both pudgy hands just above his Buddha stomach, and began a slow grin. "Now, Lolly was blessed with a coupla jugs that had a life all their own. I mean, these puppies wagged their tails, and sat up. Nipples the size of Susan B. Anthony silver dollars. When she walked up to you and stopped, it took those babies a full minute to settle down, and I guarantee you, you couldn't look at anything else for the next sixty se
conds."

  Haydon nodded to the room in general, took off his Beretta, and put it in his carrel drawer. He got his blue coffee mug from the back of his desk, and while Mooney continued he walked outside to the coffee machine. He saw Dystal through the glass window in the lieutenant's office. He was talking to one of his detectives sitting across the desk from him, and he was saying something he wanted the detective to take to heart. Dystal's massive shoulders were hunched around his neck as he leaned on his log-sized forearms and slowly moved a thick index finger laterally back and forth, his eyes locked onto the detective as he made his point.

  Taking his time with his coffee, Haydon stirred it more than he needed to, hoping Mooney would make it short. Then he decided he didn't want to wait. He walked around the perimeter of the squad room until he found an empty office and went in.

  The first call was to the Harris County clerk's office. It didn't take long. The second one was long distance, to the office of the Texas secretary of state. He took a lot of notes, and asked for clarifications of spellings.

  Just as he put down the telephone after the second call, a burst of laughter came from the corner office across the squad room. Mooney's punch line. He waited a minute longer until everyone had drifted out of the office before he walked back.

  Mooney was stuffing his milk carton down into a trash can already overflowing with old computer printouts. His face was still flushed from laughing. He always laughed at his own jokes, no matter how many times he told them.

  "You missed some good barbecue, Stuart. Shoulda gone with

  us."

  "Next time," Haydon said, sitting down at his carrel. "I just called the county clerk's office. That old house over there is owned by a business. The Teco Corporation."

  "Whatever that is," Mooney said, uninterested.

  "Then I called the secretary of state's office and got the names and addresses of the officers of the corporation. They're all Mexican nationals."

  Mooney looked up. "No shit?"

  "The registering agent has a Mexican name, too. His office is over on the Southwest Freeway. We'd better go talk to him tomorrow."

  Mooney bobbed his head up and down, holding his wrist up to Haydon as he tapped his watch face. "The operative word there is manana. I was kinda hoping to sneak out of here a little early today. What do you say, Stuart? It's already two-forty."

  Haydon looked at his coffee. He didn't know why in the hell he had poured it. As both men stood, getting their guns out of the carrel drawers, they became aware of a commotion out in the squad room and heard Dystal's booming voice. Haydon looked out just in time to hear Dystal call his name. He stepped to the door and saw other detectives coming out of their offices into the squad room, looking toward Dystal.

  "Everybody listen up," Dystal was bellowing. He had walked out toward the middle of the room. "We just got a call on a shooting out at Richmond and the Loop. Coupla boys on motorsickles pulled up to a limo and opened up on it with automatic weapons. Shot up a Mercedes behind the limo, too. Four or five men down, includin' one of the sickle boys. Lapierre and Nunn are first out, but they're gonna need a lot of help on this one."

  He called out the names of five teams of detectives who were nearing the end of their shifts. He wanted them to stay and work through.

  Haydon turned around to his desk and called Nina.

  Chapter 9

  IT couldn't have happened at a worse time for traffic. It was approaching four o'clock and the afternoon sun was burning in at an angle just above the overpass and the traffic overhead was at a standstill. The motorists who happened to be stalled above the intersection had ringside seats to a first-class slaughter. The traffic on Richmond was being diverted north and south at Weslayan, causing forty-five-minute delays on its feeders to the Southwest Freeway as well as those at Westheimer and San Felipe. The inbound traffic on the west side of the Loop at the Richmond intersection was easily diverted onto the access roads, thereby creating a relatively isolated crime scene below the overpass where the limousine and Mercedes had finally come to rest.

  Haydon had to put gas in the car at the motor pool, and there were two blue-and-white units ahead of them. By the time they got to the intersection, the crime-scene ribbons were already in place, including a ten-foot-wide aisle of ribbons stretching along the north side of Richmond to the Guiton intersection. All the bodies were still in place. The crime-lab and morgue vans were standing with opened doors, and several teams of detectives were peering inside the two cars and talking to motorists who had been at the intersection when the shooting occurred.

  Haydon parked about fifty yards from the intersection, and he and Mooney got out and started across to the wrecked cars. Bob Dystal spotted them and came to meet them, his bearish frame leaning slightly forward as his size-twelve boots pounded the hot asphalt. He was cutting a wedge of Tinsley's chewing tobacco with his pocket knife, which he then folded closed with one thick hand as he placed the tobacco in his mouth. He squinted in the sunlight despite the drugstore sunglasses.

  "Hell of a thing," Dystal said as they approached, turning and walking with them. "Looks like some kinda 'sassination." He quickly recapped what they believed had occurred, based on the stories of the motorists who had witnessed the shooting. They stopped at the Mercedes.

  " 'Cordin' to his driver's license, guy behind the wheel here is . . Dystal flipped through a creased and sweat-stained pocket notebook. "Raul Saenz Sales. Guy on the other side is . . . Vicente Gonzales Gonzales."

  They looked through the shattered windows at the two men, who sat in their seats as if dozing, Saenz leaning his head against the splintered remains of his window, Gonzales with his head thrown back against the headrest, his mouth open as if snoring. There were holes in their faces and upper torsos, but the entry wounds were not that unpleasant. However, both men were plastered to their car seats by massive amounts of blood that had been blown out their backs and splattered across the backseat and windows.

  They walked over to the limousine. All six doors of the car were open. Some of the detectives backed away to give them room.

  "First guy here in the backseat is Jerry C. Lowell from Austin," Dystal said, referring to the notebook. "Guy over there is Ramon Sosa Real, Mexican driver's license, Mexico City address, and that fella there is George L. Crisman, here in Houston. Chauffeur is Esteban G. Moreno, Houston. There was lease papers for this thing in the glove box in Sosa's name."

  The limousine reeked of feces and blood. The men would not be identifiable without first being scrubbed at the morgue.

  "What did they use?" Haydon asked.

  "Aw, shit," Dystal growled angrily, spitting a squirt of amber juice. "There was forty-five casings all the hell over the place."

  "Mac-lOs."

  "I 'magine. People said they saw the boys shooting, saw 'em changing clips in the 'pistols,' but they didn't hear nothing. So I guess they had silencers too. Real slick."

  "You said one of the motorcyclists was killed?"

  "Yeah. Come on around here."

  They followed Dystal's beefy shoulders around to the front of the limousine. The car had climbed up on the slope of the embankment, curling the motorcycle up under its front wheels as it went. A man's bare thigh, split lengthways to the bone, which showed white through red flesh, stuck out from under the rear wheel of the motorcycle. His head, with the bullet-shattered helmet still firmly buckled, was lying under the cycle's engine. One of the header pipes coming off the engine had ripped loose and smashed through the mirrored visor, wedging itself into the space where his face should have been. Haydon could smell the burned flesh. The rest of the man was ground up under the motorcycle, out of sight. Bright green radiator coolant and blood ran down together and formed a marbled puddle under the glistening black panel of the limousine's front door.

  "I doubt if the boy'll have an ID," Dystal said. "I can't tell if his motorsickle's got a license plate."

  "Was there return fire?" Haydon asked, suddenly noticing the
bullet holes in the cyclist's helmet.

  Dystal shook his head slowly, looking at the mess at the front of the limousine. "One little detail there. Witnesses say that when this one got plowed under here, the second shooter rode up after blowing away those two boys in the Mercedes, and finished him off." He turned his dark lenses to Haydon. "How ya like that?"

  Another detective walked up and started asking the lieutenant about the procedures for removing the bodies. Dystal turned, talking to him, and walked away.

  Mooney stepped to the rear of the limousine and surveyed the layout of the intersection.

  "They picked a good spot, Stuart. Regular stop-and-go traffic flow gave them time to get in place around the targets. No place for the limo, or the Mercedes, to evade in the bumper-to-bumper traffic once the shooting started. Easy access to the expressway, and the cycles could hump right on past the stalled cars by squeezing between the lanes. A police car couldn't have pursued them even if it'd been sitting right here at the time it happened."

  Haydon nodded. "Doesn't look like an amateur hit, does it?"

  The falling afternoon sun was not yet low enough to take on color, and its fierce white light reflected like scattering sparks off the chrome of the parked and moving cars. Pale splashes of red and blue from the police units skittered up and down the shallow angles of the cement embankments and overpass girders. The car radios echoed to one another through the underpass and mixed with the loose rumble of traffic.

  The medical examiner's investigators were going over the bodies systematically, beginning with the two men in the Mercedes. They were followed by the police photographer, and then the crime-lab technicians.

  Peter Lapierre stood in the middle of the intersection with a clipboard and pencil giving instructions to several patrolmen with measuring tapes. He made meticulous notes as they called out distances and dimensions, length of skid marks, sizes of scratches, and angles. No one surpassed Lapierre in analyzing a crime scene, and each team of assisting detectives already would have been assigned a specific aspect of the scene on which to make a report. Lapierre and Nunn would cover it all, and coordinate the investigation.