Echoes of Sherlock Holmes

by Laurie R. King

  “Until you were dead,” the stranger finished. “I assure you, your wife and young daughter are safe. No harm will come to them.”

  The driver gaped at the other man. Who was he? Did he know about the calm man on the other end of the telephone who’d threatened his family? Was he working for this man? Was he the criminal who had set all this in motion?

  “If he tells you your wife and kid are okay, they are, man,” said Dock Watson as he came up, tucking his piece away.

  “John,” said the motorcycle rider.

  “Holmes,” Watson nodded curtly.

  “Get your goddamn hands up,” a command rang out.

  Ringed about them were police officers, sidearms drawn and pointing at the three. Others were using their wooden nightsticks to push the live wires away from the spreading gas as sirens announced the approach of patrol cars and the fire department. Those who’d been gathered for the Martin X presentation milled about too.

  “Y’all be cool now,” one said. “Brother Watson and them white fellas got their hands up, and ain’t nobody about to make no sudden moves, ya hear?”

  “We got eyes on you,” said another. He’d brought his Christmas present, a Super 8 movie camera, to film Martin X and had the thing on.

  The officers, white and black, were keenly aware that on the heels of an assassination attempt, following the morning’s murder of Dr. Barrow, it would only take one wrong word or crack of the nightstick to set off a riot. The three men walked slowly to the curb under the gaze of hundreds of pairs of eyes. They were patted down. Watson told the officers he was armed, and his gun was taken. From the one he called Holmes a folding knife of unusual design was removed, as was a sort of baton of maple, a short round stick in a scabbard strapped to his calf. The trio were then handcuffed and each hauled off to the 32nd Precinct in separate cars.

  Dock Watson was interrogated by two detectives, one black, the other white.

  “You were in ’Nam,” said the black one, Murphy, consulting an open file folder that Watson figured included a photocopy of his New York State–issued private investigator license.

  “I was,” said the former staff sergeant.

  “Huh,” Murphy muttered, leafing through a few pages, noting Watson’s citations and the redacted classified portions of his record.

  “You are on retainer with the Freedom Now Coalition?” the white one, O’Malley, asked.

  “I am.” He felt no need to elaborate. It had been Watson’s experience that, like on the witness stand, answer only what you were asked when talking with a member of law enforcement.

  “And you at times handle security for Martin Collins, called Martin X by you . . . by some people.”

  “I do. And I’m licensed to carry the firearm you confiscated from me.”

  He was asked more than once what he’d seen leading up to the supposed appearance of Barrow’s ghost on the roof of the church. He told them what he’d witnessed, including that he didn’t believe in reincarnation and the good doctor didn’t own a dashiki. The second time he asked, “Your men find the dashiki that was probably left behind? Betchu when the lab finishes their tests, they’ll find theatrical makeup on it.”

  Both cops gave him a baleful look. He was here to answer their questions, not pose them—and certainly not advance his theories.

  After an hour or so elapsed, the white cop, who’d been leaning in a corner while the other one sat across from Watson, yawned and said, “Gonna get a little air, Kev, be right back.”

  He walked out. When he came back after a few minutes, he tapped his partner on the shoulder and they both left. Watson remained as he was, sitting at the metal table, his hands relaxed on it. The black one had been sipping coffee from a cup emblazoned with the distinctive blue and white amphora design. The table was a dull industrial green, as was the linoleum, which had been trafficked to streaks of black smudges in several sections. The walls were dirty beige and the acoustic ceiling tile buckled in places with water stains. The coffee cooled near him. The door opened again. Watson heard fingers tick-tacking away on an electric typewriter in the adjoining hallway. The door closed again as a man entered.

  “You’re looking fit, Dock.”

  “It’s been awhile, James.”

  James Moriarty, crisp in a three-piece suit and tie, strode to the table with his hand out. Watson half rose and shook it. They both sat, Moriarty clasping his long fingers before him. “I suppose it goes without saying that the mayor’s office has a keen interest in getting a handle on this situation.”

  Watson measured his response. “I imagine you have a theory or two.”

  Moriarty, whose hair was prematurely white, scratched at an ear lobe. “As you do.”

  Watson shrugged a shoulder. “I’d picked up some rumblings from the streets. I was leaning toward whoever had taken over from Nicky Barnes.” Leroy “Nicky” Barnes had been a drug lord given to ostentatious tastes. His being on the cover of the New York Times Magazine had prompted President Jimmy Carter to pressure the Drug Enforcement Administration to get Barnes. He was incensed that someone like Barnes should be seen as a twisted image of emulation. Barnes had been arrested and jailed last year.

  “The East Harlem Purple Gang is supposed to have stepped into the void and been supplying his lieutenants,” Watson continued.

  “But you dismissed this notion?”

  “As we both know, dope men don’t go out of their way to be clever in rubbing out an opponent. Why all the rigmarole with the locked room bit and what have you? Sure, Professor Barrow made speeches decrying the parasitic pusherman but he also denounced plenty of others preying on the black community.”

  “Including his allegations of the CIA being involved in flying heroin out of the Golden Triangle for profit and geo-political reasons,” Moriarty offered, stern-faced.

  “He wasn’t the only one stating that,” Watson observed.

  “Agreed.” Moriarty steepled his fingers. “Martin X has been making something of a campaign of unmasking the true players in this insidious enterprise, often noting poppies do not grow in the ghetto. Could be too Dr. Barrow uncovered a bombshell, proof of some local connection.”

  “You’re not trying to have me chase my tail, are you, James?”

  Moriarty smiled, spreading his hands apart. “Our friend says all avenues must be explored.”

  “Speaking of which, are you getting him sprung too?”

  Moriarty said, “He was gone by the time I got here. Possibly his brother had something to do with that. Still, you’re free to go too, Dock.”

  Watson wondered if Holmes had examined Barrow’s library. “The driver of the news van, his story check out?”

  Moriarty nodded. “Seems he got a call at the station this morning as he was getting ready to cover the Martin X speech. The voice on the other end told him they had his wife and daughter. A woman comes on the line, sobbing, calling his name, and is then cut off. He naturally assumed it was his wife.”

  “The voice was faked?”

  “Apparently. Wife and daughter were safe. But he was told not to try and call home or their throats would be slit.” He paused, taking in the other man. “At the time, what would you have done? He drives off in the van with the reporter, then makes a stop as he was told to do. The reporter is knocked out and the remote-controlled machine gun quickly installed in the rear by two masked men with portable power tools.”

  Watson absorbed this. “That’s some heavy planning and access to resources involved.”

  Moriarty concurred.

  Weighing the import of that, Watson said, “Can you get me a copy of the autopsy results on Professor Barrow? And if I get in a bind, can I drop your name?”

  Both men rose. “Of course—this is in the service of justice. The mayor wanted me to emphasize what you already know: the city’s on edge. Satisfactory answers need to be forthcoming tout de suite, my friend.”

  “I heard that,” Watson said.

  They shook hands again, then M
oriarty handed Watson a card with a handwritten phone number on it. From his coat’s inner pocket he also took out a device the size of a hip flask, though thicker. It was made of black plastic with a readout screen.

  “This is a pager. You call that number on the card and your phone number will appear on the screen,” he said. “Only two other people have my pager number, so I’ll know an unfamiliar one is from you.”

  Watson knew one of those people was the mayor. As they walked out, he asked about the second person. “How is Irene?”

  “She’s well, I’ll tell her you said hello.”

  “Cool.”

  The detective’s hunting and pecking on the electric typewriter filled the silence as the two departed.

  As the cooks prepared food for the evening crush, Dock Watson snapped on his penlight at the entrance to Professor Barrow’s library. Late afternoon light filtered in from the high windows but there were pockets of gloom as well. He held the tight beam steady on the broken chain guard. In particular he examined where the base had been screwed to the side of the door. His gloved fingers touched the gouged wood and he made a sound in his throat. The light went out. After leaving the library, he found a payphone and called Moriarty’s pager.

  Two nights later, Sherlock Holmes entered the back area of the second floor of Club 99 trailing Jerry “Little Fish” Genero. Holmes was dressed in a colorful Rayon knit shirt and disco-style bell bottom slacks high up on his trim waist. His shirt was open several buttons and a gold chain sparkled on his tanned chest. The nude form of a golden woman hung from the chain. Her nipples were sparkling zircons.

  “You let me do the talking, Terry,” Genero said.

  “Sure thing, Little Fish,” Holmes said as Terry Ritchie, affecting a Cockney accent by way of a transplant living in New Jersey for several years.

  The two came to a closed double door, a good-sized individual standing guard before it. He wore a Pierre Cardin suit sans tie, collar up, shoulder pads like the prow of a boat. His neck was thick and corded and led to a thicket of chest hair.

  “Gotta search you,” he said. “Protocol,” he added, as if he were building his vocabulary one new word a day.

  They submitted. As the guard’s large hands expertly probed Holmes’s wiry frame, the door opened and out stepped three women of varying ethnicities in shimmering garments that clung to their model-perfect bodies. Two of them, a blonde and a raven-haired one, carried their high heels in their hands and they laughed like wayward school girls returning from a ditch party. The third had flakes of coke residue under her nostrils. They eyed the two newcomers and departed along the red velvet lined hallway.

  Little Fish snickered. “That ’Rican chick with the great ass was sending you all kinds of signals.” He shook his head admiringly.

  “Yeah,” said “Terry,” feigning nonchalance. “But I got my mind on business.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Okay,” the bodyguard said and opened one of the doors behind him. The two stepped through into the private room, somber via indirect lighting. Inside were large plush chairs, each with a side table upon which were leftover cartons of Chinese take-out, champagne, and the telling remains of white powder dusting a razor blade on a hand mirror. A pair of lacy woman’s underwear lay on the floor beside the foot of one of the seated men. He had a pleasant face, like a junior college professor with a full schedule and a new sports car. Akin to the other two in the room, he regarded the visitors with a contained reserve.

  “We got plenty of chicken lo mein left,” said a standing man, working a fingernail between his side teeth. “Shit’s good.” He wore a baby blue suit over a darker blue shirt with a flared collar.

  “We got something better than that,” Little Fish said.

  “You the Limey,” declared the other seated man. He had a beard and scratched at his crotch.

  “That’s me, china plate.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s a slang thing from where he comes,” Little Fish interjected.

  The one in the baby blue suit came forward from where he’d been before a Patrick Nagel print on the wall. “Now that introductions have been made, like the man said.”

  “This better not be about some bullshit,” the beard said as he produced an ostentatious Sig Sauer and placed it lovingly on the end table near his hand. His fingers were like stuffed sausage links, and the little finger and the one next to it bore rings. “That goes for you too, Little Fish. You being the one that vouched for this dude.”

  “It’s primo,” Little Fish said, keeping the edge out of his voice.

  Holmes held up his hands like a conjurer showing his audience they were empty in preparation for the closing trick. He slowly lowered his right hand and passed it before the large buckle on his belt. In relief on it a couple was engaged in the act of 69 lovemaking. Now the false front of the buckle was in his hand and in the hollow of it was a compact amount of white powder wrapped in plastic. He handed the heroin to the man in baby blue. This one, the leader of the crew, examined it for a moment and handed it over to the pleasant-faced man.

  He in turn slit open the packet and put some power on the end of his blade. From beside his chair he picked up a small metal case. Setting it on an end table he opened the case to reveal a small testing kit. Holding a glass test-tube-like container aloft, he tapped the powder into it and added dollops of reagents from two eye-dropper bottles. He closed the tube, shook it, then held it up to look at its purple color. Whistling his satisfaction, he passed the tube to the standing man.

  “Well, hell, gentlemen, you weren’t pulling our legs.”

  Little Fish said, “No we wasn’t.”

  “Fifteen keys, eighty percent pure,” Holmes said, knowing the boss in blue had already calculated the millions they’d make once the product was “stepped on”—diluted for street sales.

  Particulars were worked out on price and delivery. Holmes and Little Fish left.

  “Tomorrow we’re in clover,” Little Fish said as they entered back into the bustling dance floor area. The DJ was spinning an Alicia Bridges tune, “I Love the Night Life.”

  Holmes grinned broadly. “Swimming in tons, son.”

  Little Fish was damn near giddy. “What you said.”

  As they headed for the exit they passed a section of the bar. Sitting there was the blonde who’d been upstairs. She sipped a martini while a man with a massive mound of dark hair was trying to talk her up. She put her icy blues on Holmes over the rim of her glass, and reached out to touch his arm. Leaning in close, she whispered, “Did you see my panties up there?”

  “Why I believe I did.” He took her hand and, pausing no more than the tick of a clock’s sweep hand, bent and kissed it. “Maybe I can help you with finding another pair.”

  Her bedroom eyes could pin a man’s stomach to his spine. “I believe you can.”

  Little Fish didn’t have to be hit with a two by four to take the hint. “I don’t know what you got, Terry, but I’m sure gonna buy me some. See you tomorrow when we said, right? Get our thing down before showtime.”

  “Right you are,” Holmes answered, his attention on the woman. Big hair mumbled a curse and ambled away.

  It wasn’t too long before Holmes and the woman entered her modest apartment in the east forties. They were backlit by light in the hallway as they kissed and grabbed at each other in the open doorway. The bearded man tip-toed from the shadows of the apartment’s front room, a set of nunchuks in his hand. Being a fan of Hong Kong kung fu movies, he’d taken a few lessons on how to handle the instrument. He raised the weapon over his head, spinning one of its blunt ends to strike Holmes.

  Squelch Waller left the Five Note bar in Harlem and, after a cab ride, got out on a quiet block in Queens. He looked up and down the dark street and then went up the steps to a nondescript row house. He tapped his knuckles on the screen door. The porch light came on. The door’s peephole swung inward and the front door opened thereafter. Waller entered and the door clo
sed. Dock Watson witnessed this from the LTD he had parked up the street on the opposite side.

  Sherlock Holmes shoved the woman away, twisting his body, taking a glancing blow from the nunchuk on his shoulder. He winced and, finishing his pivot, delivered an uppercut to his attacker’s jaw. The bearded man rocked back but employed his weapon again as he did so. Holmes went low, the stick missing his head. He whipped his leg around and upended the kung fu fan.

  The man went down hard on his back. “Get his ass,” he blared. The bearded man began to rise and Holmes rammed stiffened fingers under his heart, momentarily stunning him as he held onto the man.

  The blonde produced a small-caliber automatic from a garter holster on her inner thigh. For Sherlock Holmes, the world’s only consulting detective, had not only smelled the gun oil on her hand when he’d kissed it in the bar, he’d felt the weapon while pretending—or at least, semi-pretending—to be lost in lust. He tensed for the bullet to strike him, but she hesitated.

  Holmes shoved the bearded man into her. The gun went off impotently, plaster falling onto his hair as he snatched up the nunchuks and expertly used them to disarm her. Holmes retrieved the gun and leveled it on the two.

  “Now, let’s chat about the Council, shall we?” he said.

  Glaring at him, a false eyelash askew, she said, “Go to hell.”

  Holmes smiled wickedly.

  On the front page of the Amsterdam News, a black weekly, a story ran. The article alleged that Tony “Squelch” Waller was an FBI informant, and had been one for a number of years. It was further alleged he’d first been pressed into this role by a combination of factors, including an assault charge from a picket line incident in Brooklyn. The piece went on to say that he’d been confronted by a high-placed member of the Freedom Now Coalition and had confessed his sins. Waller was said to have disappeared to parts unknown.

  “You noted the marks where the base of the door’s chain guard had been,” Holmes said to Dock Watson.

  “I’m sure you saw those the first time you were in the library,” Watson responded. Reviewing the photos he’d taken in Barrow’s library, he’d finally noticed the gouges and returned for a second look. Once he surmised the chain lock had been pried off with a flat head screwdriver, and not broken away as Waller claimed, he began tailing the man.