The Shamus Sampler II

by Nick Quantrill

  Seconds later, the vehicle I knew belonged to Dale -- a dark green Jeep Cherokee -- rolled up and stopped just short of the bridge. He cut the engine off and turned on the interior light.

  My head snapped up at that. In the growing darkness of the swamp, the dome light flared like a spotlight on a runway, and I could clearly see Dale Burnett behind the wheel. Alone.

  An adrenaline jolt caused me to smile in spite of myself. Dale usually brought a gun hand along on these deals. At least that's Burton told me -- Dale never does business without an extra gun around.

  But not tonight. I definitely had an edge now. My mind raced. I kept my eyes focused on Dale as he climbed out of the Jeep. Over the bridge, a tall, skinny man with a shock of white-blonde hair slammed the door to the Buick, the report echoing through the woods like a ragged line of firecrackers.

  They met on the bridge, shook hands. Looked like a friendly meeting of a couple of good friends. They didn't seem to be in a hurry at all as they strolled over to Cotton's car.

  I stood, keeping my profile behind the tree, which put me behind Cotton. The taller Cotton blocked Dale's figure from my line of sight. I pulled the HK. I held my breath as I eased the slide back and chambered a round. Then I stepped toward the bridge, keeping to the right side of the road, walking on the spongy, moss-covered dirt to keep the noise down.

  I reached the gravel road about five yards from the bridge. Dale and Cotton leaned against the trunk of the car, their voices murmuring.

  I raised my pistol, and Dale must have caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. He jerked his head around, glared at me and the pistol, then grinned.

  “Well, I'll be goddamn. Jack Cable,” he said, peering around Cotton's shoulder. “What brings you way out here?”

  Cotton spun around, and my finger instinctively went to the trigger. He froze when he saw the HK. “What the fuck? Who is this, Dale? And what the hell is he doing here?”

  Dale's eyes narrowed, rat-like. His hands were in the pockets of his jeans. His smile was beginning to get on my nerves. “Ah, this is Jack Cable. We went to high school together. He's a private eye, now. As to what he's doing here, I don't have no idea. Why don't you fill us in, Jack?”

  Dale was stalling, I knew. I was in no mood to stall. “Pretty obvious, ain't it?” I said. “Weapons. On the trunk. Two fingers.”

  Dale's eyes widened, the grin still hanging in the gloom like a half moon. “OK, man, it's cool.”

  I shifted my aim to Cotton. “You, too.”

  Cotton glared at me, furious. But he pulled a Glock out of a holster on his hip, hidden under his T-shirt. His eyes locked on mine, he eased the pistol onto the trunk of the car.

  Dale smirked and pulled what looked like a Smith and Wesson auto from the small of his back. Held it up with two fingers as if to say, “See?” then laid it on the car with a thunk.

  “Two steps back, both of you,” I said. In unison, Dale and Cotton stepped away from the car as I walked between them to the trunk. They stood there, looking pretty stupid with their hands halfway up in the air, like schoolboys caught in the act. I holstered my own piece and picked up the Glock, glancing at Cotton.

  “Never cared much for these,” I said in Cotton's direction.

  “Yeah, well, it ain't your gun.”

  I nodded. “Is now.” I pointed the Glock at Dale, who was no longer smiling. His eyes met mine, flat and mean and something else that might have been fear. I lifted his gun off the trunk with my left hand. Smith, like I thought. Auto .380, safety on. I thumbed it off and pointed it at Cotton.

  “You can keep the meth,” I said to Cotton. “I just want the money.”

  “So that's what this is about?” Dale said. “It's always about the money, ain't it?”

  I cut my eyes toward him. “Yeah, it seems that way. Was for you. Didn't quite work out like you planned, though, did it? Sure, you got away with killing your wife, but you ended up here. In a goddamn swamp buying crank off of this asshole.”

  Cotton straightened up. “Hey, fuck you,” he said. “I'll fucking kill you.”

  I swiveled my head toward him and shot him, twice, in the chest. Dale's .380 was more powerful than I thought. The shots blew Cotton backward about two feet, and he fell awkwardly on his side. I heard the breath whoosh out of him as he crashed to the gravel, blood already spreading in a wide stain.

  I turned back to Dale. He wasn't smiling now. “The money,” I said.

  “It's in the truck.” His voice gave him away. He was scared, badly.

  I twitched the Glock. “Get it.”

  He didn't move. His eyes flashed at me. Even in the dark I could see it. “Get it yourself.”

  Everybody has a main weakness. For some people, it's booze, or women or drugs. Dale's was bravado. It blinded him, made him think he was invincible.

  “Fair enough,” I said and squeezed the trigger. The bullet hit just below his left eye and blew out the back of head. I watched him fall straight backwards, his face registering a confused disbelief, as if he only just realized that he was, in fact, not bulletproof after all.

  He hit the ground, dead.

  I stood between the two of them for a second, just to collect myself, then put the guns back in their dead owners' hands. I could smell the cordite in the air over the musk of the swamp. The night noises had gone silent with the report of the pistols. The only thing I could hear was the ringing in my ears and my own breathing.

  I walked across the bridge to Dale's truck, looked in. A gym bag sat on the front seat. I peeled off my gloves, reached in through the open window and unzipped the bag, saw the pile of cash. The green bills looked gray in the dark. I grabbed the bag and slung it over my shoulder.

  I crossed the bridge again, walked past the two bodies toward the Mercedes.

  There's another exception to the rule: it's a lot easier to shoot a man when you know you can get away with it.

  *****

  Phillip Thompson is a native of East Mississippi, where most of his fiction is set. He is the author of one nonfiction book Into the Storm: A U.S. Marine in the Persian Gulf War and three novels, Enemy Within, A Simple Murder and Deep Blood. His blog, Pulpwood Fiction, is at http://kudzucorner.wordpress.com.

  IFHC

  by

  Mark Troy

  I’ve been following Mark Troy’s work ever since reading his Val Lyon stories online. He’s got a new PI character, Ava Rome, and it’s an honor to have her appear right here in the Shamus Sampler.

  I fucking hate Christmas. The holiday has been a magnet for all the grief in my life. The people I've loved who've left have mostly done so at Christmas. But just because it sucks for me, Christmas shouldn't have to suck for others. I feel bad for people who have to work on a day when they should be with family. So, at Christmas, I offer to take someone's place. I'm a private detective by profession, but I'll wait tables or tend bar. Maybe, just maybe, I'll improve my Christmas karma.

  “Ava Rome,” Irene Ao said, reading off the flyer I'd distributed to Waikiki bars and restaurants. “You okay working Christmas?”

  Irene Ao managed the Long Board Beach Shack, a narrow shotgun bar on Beachwalk Ave. at the Ft. DeRussy end of Waikiki. A handful of patrons nursed beers early in the afternoon a week before Christmas.

  I gave her a rueful smile in answer to her Christmas question. “I don't have family in the Islands.”

  Irene made a thoughtful nod. “My brother, his wife and five kids come from Oregon,” she said. “First time in three years. No way I can work Christmas. So cute the kids, but noisy you wouldn't believe. Maybe better I stay working.” She laughed and said, “You have experience tending bar, yeah?”

  Yes, I had experience. It said so on the flyer in her hands. I rattled off the names of bars I'd subbed at in Waikiki.

  “Show me,” Irene said. “Make a Mai Tai.”

  I joined her behind the bar and looked over the selection of rum. The bar had the common brands and a few off labels, but nothing I would c
onsider top shelf.

  “This is all you have?” I asked.

  “Is there a problem with it?”

  “I might mix these with Coke, but I wouldn't put them in a Mai Tai.”

  Irene opened the cash register and took a key from under the bill tray. She opened a cabinet beneath the register. Inside were a dozen or so bottles of high-end liquors with prices to match. They occupied one shelf of the cabinet. A second shelf was bare, probably waiting for a government bailout to be stocked.

  I poured a shot of fifteen-year old Jamaican dark rum and a shot of a rare Martinique light rum over crushed ice. I added a half-ounce of orange Curacao and a half-ounce of orgeat syrup. I sliced a lime and squeezed both halves into the mix. I shook it up and gave it to her in an old fashion glass with a sprig of mint.

  Irene tasted it. “Excellent,” she said. “You'll do.” She took another swallow and dumped the remaining contents into the sink. “The cabinet, yeah? That's the owner's private stock. We don't get many calls for Mai Tais. The customers that come in here? All rums are the same to them. Stick an umbrella and a pineapple slice in the glass and they're happy, okay?”

  Irene locked the cabinet.

  “Who's the owner?” I asked.

  “You ever hear of Gunslinger Noronha?”

  Of course I had. You couldn't call yourself a local if you didn't know about Artie, “Gunslinger,” Noronha. He was a quarterback phenom at Radford High in the late 1980s, went on to University of Hawaii where he commanded a shotgun offense. His ability to release the ball quickly and accurately under pressure earned him the nickname, “Gunslinger.” Sadly, Hawaii quarterbacks get no love in the NFL. Gunslinger's football ended with graduation, but he remained a local hero.

  Out of football, Noronha bought a lunch wagon, which he drove to construction sites. His football fame and generous scoops of macaroni salad made his truck popular and soon he was adding additional wagons and driving out the competition.

  Rumors had it that it was more than his eats that got him monopolies with the largest construction companies. Some said the nickname, Gunslinger, referred not only to gridiron exploits, but also to his method for dealing with rivals. Where there's smoke, there's fire. I figured there was some truth to the rumors even though Noronha had never been arrested. Smart criminal or smart businessman? I'd be hard pressed to tell you the difference.

  “So this is Gunslinger's bar?” I asked.

  “He's a partner, but he nevah meddles. You come back Christmas.”

  *****

  The crowd in the Long Board Beach Shack had thinned by ten o'clock and change Christmas evening. Two Japanese men, shitfaced on beer and Brandy, argued loudly over a replay of a Sumo Basho on one of the flat screen TVs. Their wives sipped white wine and quietly talked among themselves. A wedding party consisting of the bride and groom, their parents and five others had pushed some tables together. They were drinking champagne, still in their wedding attire. Their accents told me they were from the Mid-west; their sunburns told me they weren't locals.

  Choi, a sullen cook who said barely three words to me, kept the pupu table supplied with wontons, coconut shrimp and skewers of teriyaki beef. Another waitress had left an hour before, so I was doing both tending and waiting and thinking that without the work I'd be alone on Christmas.

  As soon as he walked in the door, I knew the guy was local by his deep, even tan and by his casual way of moving. It takes more than seven days/six nights for mainland folks to jettison the hurried manner of their hectic life back home. It takes a lot longer to wear your flip-flops down to comfortable. He had on a clean and pressed Aloha shirt—white floral pattern on a muted, blue ground. He looked trim and fit and laid back enough to wear comfortable flip-flops.

  He climbed onto a stool and rested his forearms on the bar top, displaying an expensive diver's watch. Weather lines at the corner of his eyes gave his face character and a pair of dimples around his mouth gave it charm. A comma of dark hair punctuated his broad forehead. No ring or tan line on his finger. A present like that should come wrapped with a bow.

  I put a coaster in front of him. “What would you like?”

  “I'd like to know,” he said, “if you're here, where's the sad Christmas tree without its angel?”

  Shit. All wrapping and no present. “Does that line work on anybody with a pulse?” I said.

  “You're working my pulse like a jackhammer.”

  “Cut the bullshit. You're only making it worse.”

  “I don't get a Christmas break? Where's the holiday spirit?”

  He looked so chagrined, I almost laughed. “There's not enough Christmas spirit in the world to excuse a line like that.”

  “Okay, how about a rewind? You pretend I just came in and forget I'm an asshole loser.”

  “I don't think you're an asshole.”

  “Ah, but you do think I'm a loser.”

  “I'm not good at pretending and I have a bar to run.”

  The father of the bride signaled for my attention at the other end.

  “Take care of that guy. When you come back, maybe you'll feel differently.”

  “And if I don't?”

  “What have I got to lose? I'm a loser now, I'll probably be a loser when you come back, but if there's a chance of a different outcome, it's worth taking.”

  After pouring daddy a Scotch on the rocks and opening more champagne, I turned back to handsome loser and slid a fresh coaster in front of him.

  “Let's rewind. What would you like?”

  “I’d like to know your name. I’m Gabe.”

  “Ava,” I said. “What would you like to drink, Gabe?”

  “A Mai Tai,” he said. “I’m sure you can make a good one.”

  “I can.” I took a quick look at the disappointing bar rum and made my decision. I retrieved the key from the register drawer and bent to open the cabinet.

  “What you doing?” Choi said.

  I looked up to find him in the doorway from the kitchen with a tray of appetizers.

  “Don’t open,” he said. “Mr. Noronha gonna be pissed.”

  “If he doesn't like it, he can deduct it from my pay.”

  Choi grunted angrily and continued into the room with his serving tray.

  A surprise greeted me when I opened the door. The expensive liquor was still there, but the shelf that had been empty yesterday, now held an aluminum case. On top of the case was a Glock 19.

  “Oh,” I said.

  Gabe said, “Something wrong?”

  “No.” I took the bottles of light and dark rum, closed and locked the cabinet, and returned the key to the register.

  Choi shot me an angry look as he returned to the kitchen.

  Gabe watched me prepare the Mai Tai. “Gunslinger Noronha owns this place?”

  “Yes,” I said. “This is his private stash.”

  “Uh oh. Will you be in trouble?”

  “It’s just rum.” The presence of the Glock troubled me. Noronha wouldn’t be the first bar owner to keep a gun on the premises for protection of the bartender or patrons, but this gun was behind a locked door. Its purpose seemed to be protection of the aluminum case.

  I put the drink on the coaster. “Merry Christmas. Best Mai Tai in the islands.”

  “That deserves a picture.” Gabe said. He snapped a photo with his phone.

  “Now to tweet it,” he said.

  “I wouldn't have taken you for a social media kind of guy,” I said.

  “It's how I stay in touch with my daughter.”

  “Your daughter? Where is she?”

  “With her mother in California. And her stepfather.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  Gabe took a pull on the Mai Tai. “It's why I fucking hate Christmas.”

  “Welcome to the club.”

  “Though maybe that's changing, thanks to you.” He raised his glass. “To the rewind. This is a looking like a good Christmas after all.”

  I was about to agree with him when two me
n in Santa suits—long red coats, red pants, red hats, white hair and full beards—entered the bar. One approached the bridal party, proclaiming, “Merry Christmas! Ho! Ho! Ho!”

  The other Santa approached the Japanese couples, who had ceased their arguing at the sight of the Santas. A nine-millimeter handgun suddenly appeared at the end of his arm. “You speak English? Get on the floor, motherfuckers.”

  The first Santa brought a shotgun from under his coat. “Do it! Everybody!” he said. He swung the shotgun in an all-encompassing arc and stopped with the barrel pointed at me. “Except you, girlie. Keep your hands in sight. No alarms.”

  I backed away from the bar and raised my hands. Gabe slid off the barstool and got between me and the gun. “Don’t hurt her,” he said.

  “Gabe, don’t be a hero,” I said.

  “Listen to her,” Shotgun Santa said. He hit Gabe with the shotgun butt just below his throat and Gabe collapsed.

  “No!” I screamed.

  “Shut up!” Santa yelled. Gabe’s phone still lay on the counter. He smashed it with the shotgun butt. “No cell phones. Nobody calls 911.”

  Everybody else had hit the floor. Nine-millimeter Santa took two black plastic bags from his pocket. He pulled the bride to her feet and shoved the bags at her. “Cell phones in one bag, wallets in the other,” he said.

  The girl's body shook. “I can't,” she sobbed. “Please don't hurt me.”

  I couldn't see or hear Gabe. I wanted to know if he was okay, but, first, we all had to survive.

  “Do what he tells you,” I said. “I don't think they want to hurt us.”

  “Listen to the smart girl,” Shotgun Santa said. “Everybody cooperates and we're up the chimney and gone.”

  The girl took the bag and began collecting wallets and phones under the eye of Nine-millimeter Santa. Where was Choi? With any luck he'd gotten out the backdoor. I hoped he hadn't called the police yet. Our best chance was to give these guys what they wanted and get them on their way. Worst case, the cops would get here first and we'd be hostages.