Three Shot Burst

by Phillip DePoy

‘I have.’ That was all. No need burdening the child with past exploits when there was so much to be done in the present. ‘Let’s go.’

  In no time we were standing in the elevator as the door opened onto a foyer that would lead to the rest of the suite.

  And when that door opened, who should be standing there but my old friend Philip. His normal Hawaiian shirt and jeans had been replaced by a tux – he was dressed to the nines.

  ‘Hey,’ Lena said when she saw him, ‘it’s Hawaiian shirt guy, all dressed up!’

  ‘Hey,’ Philip fired right back ‘it’s pint-sized hit girl.’

  ‘We should really get better nicknames,’ Lena said, stepping out of the elevator.

  ‘Agreed,’ Philip told her. ‘Hello, Foggy.’

  ‘Philip,’ I said, putting my hand on his giant bicep, ‘I didn’t get a chance to thank you for everything you did for me when I got shot at Ironstone’s. Every time I think you can’t get any better, you do.’

  He smiled. ‘You’d do the same for me.’

  ‘In a heartbeat,’ I vowed.

  ‘Philip!’ Redhawk called from an inner room. ‘Bring them in. We’re in a hurry.’

  Philip indicated the way in with his hand. ‘After you. He’s kind of impatient.’

  The suite was a lot different than the last time I’d seen it. It was ultra-simple, clean like an operating room, spare, cool, and with pale walls like a sunrise. The fireplace in the center of the living room area was see-through, and it operated from both sides. The living room had one huge Stickley sofa flanked by two similar armchairs, a craftsman table with a Currier and Ives book opened to some Winter pages – all sitting on a twenty by twenty antique carpet. With the fire going in the show-stopping fireplace, the room looked more like a millionaire’s hunting lodge from the 1920s than a swank penthouse condo in No-Place, Florida.

  ‘I like the new look,’ I began.

  ‘Sit down, both of you,’ Redhawk interrupted, no-nonsense. ‘On the sofa.’

  We sat. His voice was very commanding.

  He took one of the armchairs and stared a hole into Lena.

  After a minute he said, very softly, ‘You do look like your sister.’

  I couldn’t say how that hit Lena, but the sound of his voice was so warm and, at the same time, in pain that I had no idea what to say.

  Lena saved the day. ‘You know my sister?’

  Redhawk closed his eyes for a second. ‘I rarely admit this, but David Waters was my nephew.’

  So that was another hand grenade. This time I took the lead.

  ‘You’re Ironstone’s brother?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and his voice grated at the mere suggestion of such an association. ‘He married my sister. Not Maggie, obviously; my younger sister, May. He hasn’t always been the man you know today. Once he was a wild young man with more ambition than most, which was a very attractive trait in a crowd of young men lost to alcohol and ennui. He was going someplace.’

  ‘It’s just that where he was going turned out to be wrong,’ Lena said before she could stop herself.

  Redhawk nodded once.

  ‘So you knew about David’s … what’s the word? Association with Lena’s sister?’ I asked.

  ‘Ellen was a lovely child,’ he said sadly. ‘I don’t know where you were ten years ago, Mr Moscowitz, but in certain parts of Florida there were beautiful, winsome young people whom the press ridiculously called flower children. Ellen reminded me of them: open, loving, tied to nature. You may have heard what David did to her. What you probably don’t know is that it didn’t change her basic nature. Having sex with a relative stranger, taking drugs for days at a time – these were normal pastimes for her, and I mean that in the most positive sense. Her notion of moral behavior was entirely liberated. She was not ruined by her encounter with my nephew. For her, it was only another experience that she collected, like collecting sunlight in brown layers on her skin.’

  ‘Whether or not that’s a fantasy on your part is a matter for another time,’ I butted in. ‘My concern is that you keep using the past tense when you talk about her.’

  ‘Only because I haven’t seen her in six months,’ he said quickly. ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’ I asked point blank.

  ‘Yes.’ He crossed his legs and stared into the fire. ‘That’s why you’re here.’

  ‘You say that like you summoned us,’ I railed. ‘We came to get answers from you.’

  He smiled, not looking at me.

  ‘Mr Moscowitz,’ he intoned indulgently, ‘I have a great respect for your powers of deduction and investigation. After you spoke to my sister at the hospital, I knew you’d come to see me.’

  I shook my head, hoping to convey my skepticism. ‘All right, we came to see you. Where is Ellen Greenberg?’

  He sighed, still unwilling to look at us.

  ‘When I saw what David was doing, I went to Ellen and spoke with her. She needed help. I gave it to her.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Lena interrupted. ‘What kind of help.’

  ‘I got her into the hospital with Maggie,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Got her straight, helped her with the birth of her daughter. And I was going to send her back home, until she told me what her home was like. At that point, something happened.’

  I leaned forward. ‘Let me guess. David’s insane pretensions in the drug world drew the attention of the Drug Enforcement Agency. Enter Madame X, some agent that looked enough like Ellen to pass for her in town. And the DEA put Ellen into some kind of Witness Protection Program.’

  Lena blinked. ‘What’s that?’

  I turned to her. ‘About, like, five years ago, Nixon passed the Organized Crime Control Act, and a part of it is that certain people can be relocated and hidden by the federal government if they help catch the bad guys.’

  Lena turned to Redhawk. ‘You got my sister to rat on David?’

  ‘This is all conjecture on the part of Mr Moscowitz,’ Redhawk objected.

  ‘And you can’t tell me that I’m right because it would be breaking some kind of rule.’

  At last he turned to face us.

  ‘Ellen is safe.’ That’s all he said.

  Lena stood up. ‘Not good enough! I need to know where she is, how to find her! I have to see my sister!’

  ‘I understand,’ he said patiently, ‘but there is, in fact, a more pressing matter.’

  ‘The woman who took Ellen’s place is missing,’ I said plainly. ‘And the whole deal with the DEA is falling apart.’

  He sighed and focused on Lena. ‘Unfortunately, the case was being built on David’s activities. However unwittingly, you damaged that work very significantly when you killed him. You didn’t mean to, but you’ve put your sister at risk.’

  ‘Hold it,’ I broke in. ‘The woman who was impersonating Ellen has been missing for months. That’s now Lena’s fault? Six months ago she was a dwarf in Kissimmee.’

  Redhawk turned my way and stared. ‘I have absolutely no idea what that means.’

  ‘If there was a whole operation around David,’ Lena snapped, ‘and the government was making some big case, why the hell didn’t someone step in when I killed him?’

  ‘Nobody knew who you were at first,’ Redhawk said. ‘And by the time anyone figured it out, you were gone.’

  ‘Ironstone’s guys didn’t seem to have much trouble finding her,’ I said.

  And then, for the first time in my association with Mister Redhawk, he raised his voice in anger.

  ‘Not the point!’ He glared. ‘We have to find the agent!’

  It took me a second, but then I understood.

  ‘Sit down, kid,’ I told Lena. ‘This woman, the DEA agent? She’s the only one who knows where your sister is.’

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ she said and collapsed back onto the sofa. ‘Great.’

  ‘If she told anyone where Ellen is,’ Redhawk went on, his composure restored, ‘then Ellen’s in a lot of trouble. It’s not just David’s people now. The Black
Tuna group is involved, and they don’t seem to mind killing anyone.’

  Lena swallowed. ‘What are we going to do, Foggy?’

  I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘Nothing to it. We find the agent, she tells us where your sister is; then we all put the Columbians out of business so you can go back to Disneyland with your sister and your little niece. Shouldn’t take more than a couple of days.’

  Lena glanced over at Philip. ‘You’ve known him longer than I have. Is he nuts or is he just a cockeyed optometrist?’

  Philip grinned. ‘Optometrist. That’s funny.’

  ‘It’s a scream,’ she dead-panned. ‘Can he really do it? Can he find my sister?’

  ‘What?’ I interjected. ‘You don’t trust me anymore?’

  ‘I just think there might be something wrong with you,’ she answered.

  ‘Oh.’ I nodded. ‘Well, there probably is something wrong with me. Let’s go.’

  ‘Hang on,’ she demurred. ‘I have several questions for Mister Redhawk.’

  Redhawk gave her his most serene look. ‘Ask.’

  ‘How do you know all about this DEA agent and my sister?’ she blurted. ‘Are you working with the government?’

  And then something else happened that I’d never seen before. Mister Redhawk laughed. Out loud. It was actually a very musical sound.

  ‘The government of the United States is an entity I will never trust.’ That was his answer.

  ‘With good reason,’ I added.

  ‘I know about this entire affair because I try to know everything that affects my tribe.’ He looked away, back into the fire again.

  ‘But,’ I suggested, ‘you were more than an observer in the matter.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ he asked, still watching the flames play.

  ‘How did the DEA know about Ellen?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘But you set the agent up at the hospital,’ I went on. ‘You got her the job there because you wanted to make sure Maggie kept an eye on her.’

  He lifted his eyebrows.

  ‘And we haven’t even touched on the idea that this DEA agent looked enough like Ellen to convince David that she was Ellen, but when I showed Ellen’s picture all over town, no one recognized it.’

  That got his attention.

  ‘You have a picture of Ellen?’ he asked, turning my way.

  ‘Right here.’ I reached into my suit coat and produced it.

  Philip came and got it, took it to Redhawk. He studied it.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said at last.

  ‘In what way?’ I pressed.

  All of a sudden Redhawk looked me right in the eye.

  ‘This doesn’t look anything like the Ellen Greenberg I knew,’ he assured me.

  Lena leaned forward, eyes wide. ‘That’s my sister. That picture.’

  Redhawk shook his head.

  ‘I see a resemblance,’ he began.

  ‘In what way does this picture look different from the real live girl?’ I asked.

  ‘Ellen – the girl I knew – had red hair and green eyes. She was twenty pounds heavier than the person in the picture, and at least ten years older. Also the nose was different. Ellen’s nose – the Ellen I knew – her nose was crooked. You’d have to look really hard at the photo to see any similarity at all.’

  ‘A dye job, some contact lenses, a couple of hard years and Yudda’s food,’ I said slowly. ‘And maybe her nose got broken?’

  ‘All possible.’ Redhawk handed the picture back to Philip.

  Philip took a moment to look at it.

  ‘It’s also the look on her face,’ he mused.

  ‘How’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘This girl in the picture looks a little lost. The Ellen that was around here knew what was what.’

  Lena shook her head. ‘I don’t understand any of this.’

  I agreed. ‘It’s a tangled web.’

  ‘Foggy,’ Redhawk began.

  I stood up. ‘We’re going now, and thanks for your time. Come on, Lena.’

  ‘But …’ she protested.

  ‘I’ve got some ideas.’ That’s as far as I was willing to go in front of Redhawk, but I really did have a pretty fair plan.

  Philip handed me the photo. Then he leaned over a little to speak with Lena.

  ‘It’s been my experience,’ he told the kid, ‘that when Foggy says he’s got ideas, that means it’s all going to work out.’

  His words sounded so sincere that even I was convinced I knew what I was doing. Almost.

  NINETEEN

  We were in my car and driving through the center of town before either of us said anything. Lena broke the silence.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she wanted to know. ‘You’re driving too fast.’

  ‘Well,’ I suggested, ‘when you know what you want to do, you also want to get started on it as soon as possible.’

  ‘And what do I want to do?’

  ‘You want to find your sister and the niece you never met.’ I eased the accelerator forward and the T-Bird lunged. ‘So that’s just what we’re going to do.’

  ‘OK,’ she protested, ‘but where are we going?’

  ‘To Ironstone’s place.’

  ‘What?’ I thought she was going to jump out of the car.

  ‘I don’t want to plan this out too much,’ I began, ‘because if I do it’ll trip me up. I like to improvise. And also I want you to react just the way you’d react if you didn’t know what was going on.’

  ‘That’s going to be easy since I don’t know what’s going on.’

  ‘Then we’re set,’ I said.

  We didn’t talk again until Ironstone’s house came into view.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what we’re doing?’ she asked under her breath.

  ‘Just be exactly who you are,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know this John Horse guy,’ she told me in what seemed at first a non-sequitur, ‘but that sounds like something he’d say.’

  I thought about it. ‘Maybe it does. The old guy might be rubbing off on me. Which is lucky for you and me. He’s the real item.’

  ‘A genuine rabbi,’ she added.

  ‘Don’t get all Jewish with me, pal,’ I warned her.

  I slowed the car and eased up to the front of the estate. We were greeted by a fresh face; someone I’d never seen before. That meant to me that Holata and Taft were gone. Good for them. Bad for me.

  The new guy was dressed in a tan suit. He had his hair in a crew cut, unusual for a Seminole in my experience. He was very happy to show us his gun, a Heckler & Koch HK11, a relatively new machine gun that some of the Special Forces used in Vietnam.

  I opened my door slowly and kept my hands in sight.

  ‘Nice gun,’ I said. ‘We really need to see Ironstone. It’s about his son.’

  The guy didn’t budge. It was like he didn’t understand English, which maybe he didn’t.

  Lena got out of the car then but stayed on her side, with the car in between her and Mr Crew Cut.

  ‘I’m the one who killed David Waters,’ she said calmly.

  That was all. We let that sink in.

  Then, of all things, the guy smiled.

  ‘I heard about that,’ he said softly. ‘You got him with a Heckler and Koch VP70.’

  She nodded. ‘We like the same brand name.’

  He glanced down at his gun. ‘They’re good.’

  ‘The thing is,’ I interrupted, ‘I can tell Ironstone what’s happening with a certain government investigation, and all about how he really needs to help us find Ellen Greenberg, the real Ellen Greenberg – which he wants to do anyway. What we have here is a win/win kind of situation.’

  ‘What government investigation?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘See, that’s just what I want to talk to Ironstone about.’ I glanced at the house. ‘And you have to believe me: he really does want to hear about it.’

  ‘Don’t you have trouble with the sight on that thing?’ Le
na asked the guy out of nowhere.

  ‘I do,’ he told her. ‘I thought it was me. I need glasses. But then I read that it’s maybe a design flaw.’

  ‘It is,’ she assured him. ‘You’re really better off just pulling and spraying a general havoc than sighting for single shots.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he smiled. ‘That makes a hell of a havoc.’

  ‘Let’s not test it out right at the moment,’ I suggested. ‘And time is actually of the essence. So can we go talk with Ironstone or not?’

  He nodded and lowered his gun. ‘Sure.’

  With that he turned his back on us and headed toward the front door.

  I glanced at Lena and shook my head, she batted her eyes, and we both followed Crew Cut.

  ‘Mr Waters,’ Crew Cut called out. ‘It’s that guy Moscowitz and the kid who shot David.’

  ‘What?’ his voice echoed from the ridiculously giant living room.

  ‘It’s true,’ I sang out. ‘And you’re going to want to speak with us. It’s about the federal investigation into your business.’

  There was a moment of silence before he responded.

  ‘Which one?’

  I kept on walking, and there he was in his robe and slippers, sipping tea and staring up at me as I came into the room.

  ‘Do you mean which business or which investigation?’ I asked grimly.

  ‘What do you want? I’m really just about at the end of my patience—’

  ‘This new Drug Enforcement Agency they got?’ I interrupted him. ‘Do you know about them? Because they know about you. And they’re about to tear your playhouse down. The cocaine wars are no joke. The DEA had a bead on David, and now that he’s gone, they’re all over you.’

  He was momentarily silenced, so I pulled out my photo of Ellen.

  ‘Who is this?’ I snapped.

  He stared, squinted, shook his head.

  ‘No idea,’ he said, returning to his tea.

  ‘This, Ironstone, is Ellen Greenberg.’

  He swallowed and looked my way again.

  ‘No,’ he assured me. ‘Ellen Greenberg had red hair—’

  ‘This,’ I interrupted, ‘is the real Ellen Greenberg. Lena’s sister. The person you killed was a DEA agent. That’s why the government is looking to burn it all down: you killed a Fed.’

  I stared right into his eyes like I hadn’t made most of that up.