Cannon's Mouth_A Rafferty P.I. Mystery

by W. Glenn Duncan

Noonebury sighed. He said formally, “We are very interested in Carl Dresden and Max Krandorff, the principals of the Mini-Maxi Food Barn firm.”

  “Why?”

  “I would prefer to hear your observations first. That way you won’t subconsciously stress or diminish anything because of what you think I want to hear.”

  It was a valid point. Maybe Noonebury was a better cop than he looked. I told him about the day Dresden approached me downtown, the index card and my phone call to Ed the following morning.

  Noonebury found a tight little smile somewhere and showed it to me. “You waited until the next day?”

  “Yeah, I’m getting less and less happy about that myself.”

  Noonebury looked at Ed. “Prints?”

  Ed shook his head. “Off sweaty paper? The lab guys laughed at me.”

  Noonebury said to me, “Were you or were you not specifically told to stay away from Krandorff and that location.”

  “Of course I was.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Get knotted. Do you want information, or do you want to play power games again?”

  Noonebury waved his hand angrily. Ernie from DEA looked disgusted. He probably wanted to do something really bad to me. Soap my car windows, maybe.

  I told Noonebury about finding Max’s body. I lied to him some. I told him I’d phoned Ed immediately, and I didn’t tell him how I thought the hit had gone down. They had the body; let them work it out for themselves.

  Noonebury wasn’t too interested in that part anyway, but he wanted to know everything about Dresden when he showed up with the money. I told him the truth about that.

  “How much money was in the case?” Noonebury said. “When you first got it.”

  “Twelve million dollars,” I said. “I kept most of it to pay the phone bill.”

  Noonebury looked pained. Ed rumbled, “Don’t get cute, Kevin. Check the goddamned case out of Property and count it yourself.”

  “I meant—”

  “We know what you meant,” Ed said.

  “What is he, Ed,” I said, “some kind of robot Internal Affairs built in their garage on the weekend?”

  Noonebury’s cheeks were even more pink now. He pointed a perfectly manicured finger at Ed. “You had orders, too, Durkee,” he said. “We’ll talk about that later.”

  Ed yawned at him. Ed must have found a deputy chief of his own.

  I had to repeat everything I’d just told Noonebury and Ernie because cops don’t believe even a phone number until you’ve said it three times.

  Then they had a question or thirty. An hour and a half after we’d walked into the room, they were finally finished. I was hoarse. The room was stuffy. The DEA guy was sweating some, and even Ed looked more rumpled than usual. Kevin Noonebury was still ready for the cover of GQ.

  “Now, Kevin,” Ed said. “Why is that store so important to you?”

  Ernie DEA frowned. Noonebury looked at me and frowned, too. “Let’s get together later, Ed.”

  I said, “Doesn’t matter. I hypnotize him, and he tells me everything.”

  Ed raised his hands, palms upward. “Happens all the time,” he said. Maybe he had two deputy chiefs on his side.

  Noonebury tightened his jaw momentarily, then nodded. “Very well. Our information is that the Mini-Maxi store is—or at least, was—being used as a crack warehouse.”

  Ed looked at me. I laughed.

  Noonebury pressed his lips together and looked at the air between us. “We have a reliable informant.”

  “How reliable?” I said. “Did you find any crack in the store?”

  Noonebury and Ernie thought about that a long time before Noonebury shook his head a quarter inch each way.

  Ed scootched his chair closer to the table. He said, “Okay, Kevin, let’s be realistic. You got diddled by a snitch. It’s happened to all of us; it’ll happen again. This is a murder case, not a drug case. So how about you let me have it back? That way you can concentrate your efforts on the drug aspect; run up the old arrest rate, eh? What do you say?” Ed smiled a great toothy, conciliatory smile; I was embarrassed for him.

  Noonebury swiveled his eyes toward Ed like they were gun barrels. “The murder is part and parcel of the drug case. Associates fall out; they have each other killed regularly.”

  Ed dropped the smile. “Kevin, you’re gonna fart around with this one, trying to make it what it isn’t, and screw any chance of a conviction. If you haven’t already. Did you really lock out the forensics team until after your people had turned over the whole goddamned store?”

  Noonebury’s eyes flickered with something—fright, embarrassment, anger—for a half second; then he had clamped down again. “It’s my case, Ed. And I’m keeping it.”

  Ed sighed and stood up. “Come on, Rafferty.”

  Noonebury tilted his head to look up at Ed. “Have I said I’m finished with him?”

  I said, “Underwear.”

  Noonebury frowned. “What did you say?”

  “Underwear. Buy your underwear a size larger,” I said. “That’ll perk up that surly disposition.”

  Ed and I left and trudged back to his office. Ricco had gone somewhere; Ed checked out another car and drove me home. We didn’t talk much on the way.

  Ed stopped in front of my house and turned off the ignition. “So, what do you think of our boy, Kevin?”

  “I recall a pungent saying about shit-house rats.”

  “Yeah. Uh, Rafferty, I’m gonna work on the Krandorff hit on the sly.”

  “Is it worth it, Ed? I mean, hell I can get away with things like that, but—”

  “I’ve got a contact or two upstairs. Kevin can’t—God, I hate this shit! Look, if you have any ideas, I’d appreciate them, okay?”

  “Sure, Ed.” I got out of the car.

  “It’s your fault, you know,” Ed said. “You’re a bad influence. Got me running around saving the world, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Watch your back.”

  “Yeah. I’ll call you.” He tried a U-turn in the narrow street and had to back and fill twice to get the car around. When he was facing the right way, he took off, staring straight ahead with a frown on his big hound-dog face.

  Chapter 15

  “This sucks,” Ricco said. “How’re you supposed to work a murder secondhand?” He took what had to be his sixth doughnut and dunked it into his coffee. “It’s like getting laid with somebody else’s dick.”

  I said to Ed Durkee, “Now there’s a catchy phrase for you. Doubtless inspired by the gracious surroundings.”

  Ricco, Ed Durkee, and I sat in a park at an antique picnic table, not far from a fancy gazebo. All the bits and pieces were period items, from the signs to the cast-iron streetlight columns. I loved it. I wished I had a pinch-back suit like the one Robert Preston wore in The Music Man. To salve my loss, I hummed my special arrangement of “Ya Got Trouble,” for baritone and shower stall. Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with …

  Not far from where we sat, old houses dripped with timber gingerbread and glowed with fresh paint. When what passed for progress had ravaged the east side of Dallas, people of rare good sense had saved these houses, had moved them here, and restored them.

  The tiny time-machine subdivision and adjoining park were peaceful, elegant, restrained.

  Which made it the last place you’d expect to find two sneaky cops and a pushy private thug drinking take-out coffee, eating doughnuts out of a bag, and trying to work out why Max Krandorff had died like that.

  Ed rumbled, “I don’t understand the kneecapping and hand chopping.” He slurped coffee. “Maybe we’re missing the obvious; maybe it was a righteous robbery. Maybe they tortured him for the safe combination.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “Max was already stacking shelves at the great supermarket in the sky when they did that. I saw him, remember?”

  Ed and Ricco grunted. Kevin Noonebury was still claiming drug connections; he had locked everyone else out. Ed and Ricco had
been directly ordered to stay out of the Mini-Maxi. They were not taking it well.

  Ricco said, “I go along with Rafferty, Ed, because of the wallet and the cash register. If it was a robbery, they’d have grabbed the loose cash for sure.”

  I nodded. “There wasn’t much cash, but—”

  “Right,” said Ricco, “so let’s go with that. He passed up a good chance to fake a nice tame robbery. Why?”

  “He’s stupid,” Ed said.

  “It wouldn’t matter if he was,” I said. “Disguising the hit as a robbery was part of the job specification, according to Dresden. He told me; he must have told the other guy.”

  “The hitter forgot,” Ed said. He had the sleepy, bored look he uses when he plays devil’s advocate.

  “Naw,” Ricco said, “a guy don’t make mistakes like that. He goes in the front door thinking: I’m gonna waste this dude and make it look like a robbery. He don’t forget two minutes later, then shoot at knees just to kill time until he remembers why he’s there.”

  “Colorful,” I said, “and logical.” I took the last doughnut out of the bag and split it with Ed. Ricco had out-eaten us two to one, but who counts? “How about this? The guy panicked?”

  “That one don’t fly, either. Takes just as much time and thought to shoot and chop as it does to grab the cash.” Ricco looked at the empty doughnut bag, then picked up his coffee. He started to drink, then stopped suddenly. “And besides, if he changed his mind at the last minute, where did the goddamned ax come from?”

  Ed said, “You got me. Before we get too far down the cover-up trail, let’s work on why Dresden wanted Krandorff taken out in the first place.”

  I said, “Money. Dresden said he needed the insurance payout from their keyman policy.”

  “When my baby goes to Rio,” Ricco sang off-key. Which was bad enough, but then he added, “doo-dah, doo-dah,” at the end.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “My impression was that Dresden intended the money to go into the company. He said they were about to go under.”

  Ed said, “Why were they going under?”

  Ricco said, “Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Max had his hand in the till.”

  “Probably,” I said. “And Dresden figured to replace what Max had stolen with the insurance money.”

  “Don’t forget, Dresden would have been royally pissed off, too,” Ricco said. “A little revenge goes a long way.”

  I said, “Dresden didn’t seem angry. He seemed more reluctant, even resigned. He acted like having Max hit was something he didn’t want to do, but he felt it was necessary. A chore.”

  “Taking out the garbage,” Ed said.

  “Washing dishes,” Ricco said.

  “And—I’d forgotten this—he asked me if there was a way to kill Max without hurting him.”

  Ricco looked thoughtful. “Tell you what, that’s interesting. I bet a quick one in the back of the head is the most painless way out. You ain’t around long enough for it to hurt.”

  Ed grunted. “Waiting for it wouldn’t be much fun, though.”

  We all thought about that awhile; then I said, “Maybe he told the other guy how to shoot Max. He didn’t tell me.”

  “There’s another thing,” Ed said. “I thought Krandorff wasn’t supposed to be hit until tonight. What happened there?”

  I looked at the dregs of cold coffee in the bottom of my cup. “I’m not too happy about that, either, Ed. If I’d gone straight to the store instead of sitting around convincing Hilda what a stouthearted crusader I am, Max would—”

  “Bullshit,” Ricco said. “If you’re going to start that, you gotta put Ed and me on the list, too.”

  After a few moments I said, “They talked on the phone Tuesday night. Maybe the hitter called Dresden to see why he hadn’t showed up that day; maybe Dresden called the hitter for some reason. However it happened, it must have been a weird conversation. Dresden thought he was talking to me, and I was using a code in case someone was listening.”

  Ricco said, “This Dresden guy. Can he really walk and talk and dress himself like a grown-up?”

  “There’s some doubt in my mind,” I said.

  “No shit.” Ricco shook his head. “This dropkick owns three stores, and I’m busting my guts as a wage slave? It ain’t fair.”

  I said to Ed, “During the call they must have changed the day from Thursday to Wednesday, but I don’t know why.”

  Ed chewed his lip, then said, “Maybe the hitter realized it was coming unraveled. He wanted to go ahead before it was too late.”

  “Guy’s got big balls to look at it that way,” Ricco said. “Most of the half-assed hitters around here would cancel out if they thought the target had a spare crutch to throw at them.”

  I said, “Maybe the work schedule at the store changed. Someone called in sick or needed a night off, so Max was going to be there last night but not tonight. It could be that simple.”

  Ed took the empty doughnut bag and smoothed it on the table-top. “It could be even simpler. Maybe the hit was a day early because this wasn’t the real hit.”

  Ricco and I shook our heads. “Aw, c’mon, Ed,” Ricco said. “We already did that number.”

  Ed said, “Hey, I agree with you. No robbery. But how about kids? Juiced-up, maybe, or flying high and mean on who knows what. A dare. One of them says, ‘Bet you won’t go in there and do the old man.’ ‘Will, too.’ Can’t you see a couple of stoned kids doing that?”

  I said, “Maybe …”

  Ricco said, “No way. Kids would take the wallet, whether that’s why they went in there or not. They love that bank plastic. Little fuckers have been raised on automatic teller machines; they can play ’em like pinball games.”

  “Okay,” Ed said. A good devil’s advocate never takes defeat too seriously, He said, “Let’s work on the basis that Dresden’s hit man did the job and tried to disguise it. You figure they changed the cover-up from robbery to psycho the same time they changed the day?”

  “Probably,” I said.

  Ricco shrugged. “Listen,” he said, “as a cover, this psycho-killing gimmick don’t work at all for me.”

  Ed said, “No. He didn’t know enough to use multiple wounds. One lousy cut means no psycho to me.”

  Ricco said, “Funny thing, though. I worked a one-cut psycho killing once. This loony-tunes thought his neighbor was a Martian stud or something, so he decided to castrate him. To save earth-women, see? Anyway, he used his hedge clippers and the guy bled to death. That was only one cut. But, yeah, Ed, you’re right. The psycho angle here is a scam.”

  A young couple with two small children strolled into the park. The kids ran, whooping, for the gazebo and began to play peek-a-boo through the fancy timberwork. Mom and Dad stood fifty from our picnic table and chatted. Mom had her back to us. And a very nice back it was, too.

  “So where are we?” I said.

  Ed shrugged a few more rumples into his suit. “Stuck, for the moment. We can’t think of anyone except Dresden’s hitter who might have clipped Krandorff. Not that it …” Ed’s armpit chirped. He switched his beeper off.

  Ricco said, “That’ll be Kevin Noonebury calling, Ed. Just in case you were somewhere having a good time.”

  They stood up. Ricco headed for their car at the curb; Ed put the empty cups into the bag and looked around for a trash can.

  “What about Dresden?” I said.

  “What about him? His secretary says he’s in Houston on business. At a Holiday Inn. The Holiday Inn says that, too. They haven’t exactly seen him since noon Thursday, but he must still be there because he hasn’t checked out. Hotel logic. A friend of mine on the force down there is going to look around.” Ed handed me the bag of garbage. “Here, for Christ’s sake. I bought it, and Ricco ate most of it. Least you can do is throw the scraps away.”

  Ten minutes later, two miles away, I realized I’d had the same white Ford Tempo in the mirror for too long. I made four consecutive right turns; the Tempo
stayed with me all the way around the block. Damn! That son of a bitch Noonebury!

  l knew the Tempo had not tailed me to the park, but it might have found us there. Or maybe Noonebury’s stooges had picked me up just now. I hoped so. Ed and Ricco deserved at least a few days before they had to pry nosy Scotsmen off their backs.

  I pulled over to the curb and stopped. The Tempo coasted past. The driver was alone in the car, and he turned away as he went past. I think he had a mustache.

  I waited until other cars had passed, then pulled out. Two blocks farther on, with the Tempo a block ahead of me I made a dozen random lefts and rights, then headed away at a right angle to my original direction. I didn’t see the Tempo after that.

  Chapter 16

  “Pâté?” I said.

  Hilda looked wary. “That depends. Is it the real stuff? Honest-to-God liver pâté? Or is it that gunk you make from sardines and cream cheese?”

  I said, “Hundreds of geese remain in mourning. Film at ten.”

  She beamed a zillion-watt smile at me. “I’d love some, thank you.”

  Sunday afternoon. My backyard. I had talked myself out of trimming the bushes for another week, persuasive devil that I am. Hilda and I were either taking our ease in the garden or loafing, depending on your background and pretensions.

  We’d almost finished the newspapers heaped on an outdoor table between our lawn chairs. There was a tub of ice, beer, and chardonnay nearby. The barbecue was ten minutes from ready for two giant T-bones. We had laughed a lot in the past few hours, and winked at each other, and decided there might be better ways to spend the day, but offhand, we couldn’t think of any.

  Hilda’s scurrilous slander of my famous sardine pâté made me remember I still had a little bit left over somewhere in the back of the refrigerator. When I went inside for the real stuff I got the sardine mixture, too, and put that bowl on the ground near the fence.

  Hilda smiled. “Are you still trying to catch that cat?”

  “I don’t want to catch it. It drops by sometimes, I offer it a snack, that’s all. Hostwise I am a very generous guy.”