Ray Tate and Djuna Brown Mysteries 3-Book Bundle

by Lee Lamothe

  “You’re a bit of a junkyard dog, Ray,” Djuna Brown had said after she got her stripes and visited him, convalescing in his apartment, a tube in his hip and a wad of gauzing on his ear. “You look like that little guy in the cartoon after the blunderbuss went off.”

  He saw she was dodging something, that her smile and teasing eyes were a mask. “So,” he’d said, feeling bleak and hopeless, knowing. “Paris?”

  Beatnik life in Paris is what they’d promised each other.

  She looked very sad. “No can do, buckaroo.”

  They’d just finished the X-men case. He hadn’t done much, just went from place to place with her and somehow they’d stumbled on the chemistry set used by a degenerate businessman and a psycho killer. She whacked the degenerate and the tactical guys took down the psycho. Ray Tate hadn’t even been there, because a jealous lesbian ex-cop who had a jones for Djuna Brown had come by his apartment and opened up on him. He left her dead in the doorway and afterwards he lay on his floor, waiting to die, glad, looking at the fresh pockmarks in the plaster ceiling, that he hadn’t wasted money painting the place.

  Djuna Brown had come to his apartment to tell him she was going back to her precious Indian country, to her shacks and shanties and Saturday night bust-outs. Originally she’d been assigned up there as a punishment because she was thought to be gay; now it was her reward for being a hero. Bodies hanging from rafters in despair; families wiped out by accident and suicide, by murder and the simple surrender of life. But there was also the fish wrapped in damp moss, the bloody hunks of deer or bear during the season, presented to her with prideful love and meticulous cooking tips. Teaching girls about their periods and pregnancy and boys about respect and responsibility. She told him all this so he’d understand her duty.

  “This thing we have, Ray, it’s portable, you know? You could come up there.” They’d been laying on his futon looking up at the splotches in the ceiling where Ray Tate’s daughter and her friends had re-plastered the bullet holes.

  But just as Djuna Brown couldn’t abandon her sad tribe, he couldn’t abandon his cops, young chargers burst into a world with no supervisors, no one to teach them how to police, when to police. He imagined them dead on the road because no one told them not to lean on the cars they pulled over, not to disrespect a man in front of his family, to take a subtle step back, deal out some breathing room, to freeze a situation to give everyone a chance to get perspective, to get back to being human.

  So she went to Indian country and he stayed in his streets. He didn’t call unless he was drunk; she didn’t call unless she had the deep blues. There was a lot of silence over the wires. He called less and less and so did she. It hurt too much. Then he just stopped, afraid that she’d find the combination of words and promises and dreams that would make him walk away from the city.

  Once, after a bad day followed by a lonely night, he decided he’d had enough, he couldn’t carry the water, didn’t even want to. With a stub of charcoal, he parsed his early pension and his savings and the monthly payout to his ex-wife. He packed his car with clothes and paints and drove to an Amoco where he tanked up, meticulously cleaned the windshield, and bought a bag of snacks for the long drive north. He didn’t call to tell her he was coming. He knew himself too well and knew he might fold at the last moment, before the last off-ramp to Indian country.

  Just before he hit the Interstate north, his daydreams of a life with a cocoa midget cop in the boonies evaporated in the slipstream of four screaming cruisers charging past him. He got in line, flashing his high beams, leaning his horn. On the Eight he climbed from his car, hung his badge around his neck, and waded through cruiser gridlock.

  On the sidewalk a young charger with a bullet hole in his jaw lay grunting, comforted by his crying partner, a sturdily built young woman who looked barely out of her teens. Between them they seemed to have about fifteen minutes on the job. Ray Tate took control of the stage and set a perimeter. He ignored the three chargers who had the shooter down behind a dark blue van, stomping him.

  The shooter screamed, “Why’d he let me do it, huh?” He gasped as he absorbed some boots. “What kinda fuckin’ cop is that, huh?”

  “He ain’t wrong, Ray,” a charger told him, catching his breath between bouts of the boots. “Kid was on the job about a week. He came up with a smile and hi-how-are-ya. So of course the guy shot him. He’d’a shot the escort too, except his piece jammed.” He rubbed his hand on his slick face. “You want in, get a few licks for the team?”

  “Another minute, Bobby, then I take him out of here. I’ll need a car for prisoner transport.”

  “Ambo on the way, don’t sweat it, Ray.”

  “Another minute, Bobby, I mean it, man, then you chain him up and read him the poem. You don’t want to lose this in court.”

  Ray Tate carried the weight of dead bodies and the charger had to nod.

  He drove home and unpacked his car. On his futon he twisted, not with the gunshot face of the charger in his mind, but the face of the downed cop’s partner who’d repeated over and over: “What could I do?”

  She had the gaunt brown face of Djuna Brown, the stressed old Djuna who’d come to the city as a basket case and left as a hero cop.

  He thought about her all the time and he dwelled in the imagined grimy architecture of romantic Paris, sketching or painting her in the late nights, and in really bad times of temptation he unplugged the telephone and locked it in the trunk of his car.

  But he never tried to leave again. A doorstep baby of the state who’d lived in the revolving doors of foster homes, the blue tribe was the only family, dysfunctional and protective, brutal and tender, that he’d ever had.

  The bell tower above the courthouse sounded eleven-thirty. There was no sign of the fingerman from homicide. The gangbangers and sad lawyers and striding cops had abandoned the wide stone steps to the pigeons. Ray Tate gathered his raid jacket, rolled it inside out under his arm and went inside to the security kiosk. Subtly, he palmed his badge at the masked guards and went around the metal detectors. A masked court officer pointed wordlessly at the disinfectant soap dispenser mounted on a pillar. There were six pay phones studded to the wall in the gallery and each was in use, by people who showed no sign of hanging up any time soon. He headed for the stairs.

  The noisy, crowded basement corridor was a moist lung. The bug, he thought, would like it here, in the humidity and sweat. Outside first-appearance court, he leaned beside the defaced docket thumb-tacked to the wall, waiting for court security to unlock the room. Most of the people churning in the hallway were relatives of suspects gathered up in a series of overnight crack raids. Most of them were black, and even with their masks on he recognized a few dealers from the Hauser Projects by the Ws shaved into their hair. There were only a couple of lawyers on hand, so the overnight arrestees would let the duty counsel sort their cases out and listlessly pitch for low bail. A man stared at Ray Tate briefly, then away, and then back, trying to penetrate the greying beard and combed-back long greasy hair. Ray Tate popped a kink from his spine, yawned, loudly sucked snot back into his throat, scratched his crotch, and slouched along the hall reading dockets, keeping an eye out for any well-dressed cop who looked like a hammer from Homicide.

  When he checked up in the gallery again, the phones were still occupied. Ray Tate went outside and stood in the sunshine. A young blonde woman wearing a white mask climbed out of a taxi at the curb and crossed past the cenotaph, giving the hacking bum a wide berth. She peered at Ray Tate. “Sergeant Tate?” She kept her hands behind her back in case he wanted to shake. She stood eight feet away. She had pretty eyes and plucked, arcing eyebrows. Her voice was a little muffled. “Ray Tate?”

  “I’m Tate.” He started to drift but then disciplined himself, picturing her under the mask with a harelip, yellow teeth, and the firm shadow of moustache.

  “I was told to tell you your target won’t be coming out. He was taken from the lockup to hospital early this morning,
DOA.”

  “The bug do him in?”

  “Kinda. Someone wanted his mask and he wouldn’t give it up. They stabbed him.”

  “Okay.” He stood, shuffling his boots. “Ah, your guys still got that crime stage up, up in Hauser North?”

  There was no ticket on the Taurus where it blocked a hydrant. There was no one to paper up the town; half the ninjas were out with the bug, the other half refused to get out and open their yellow tag books.

  He backed out of the spot and went on the air, clearing the courthouse. “Desk, I’m rolling on a maybe, a couple of, ah, miscreants, in the vicinity of the Lite-Bite lunch.”

  The Desk played it straight, “Ten-four, sergeant solo. You require, ah, backup with that?”

  “Negatories, Desk.”

  Her sweet voice almost put him into a reverie. The Hauser North stage was broken and gone, but he thought of heading up to the local sector and prowling in the paperwork, getting the name of the policewoman who’d voiced out for him. He could, he thought, find her on the road and apologize for not busting her stage, steering the apology into maybe a night out. He felt hangdog: when you fell into brief love with a pair of plucked eyebrows or a voice you were really hurting.

  He was pulling into the lot behind the Lite-Bite when the dispatcher came back. “Ah, Sergeant Tate, come up on the air.”

  He responded.

  “Yes, Sergeant, when you’ve finished … investigating the two … hardboiled suspected miscreants, you’re to roll on headquarters, four-ten-s, ten-four?”

  “Ten-four.”

  Room Ten at south end of the fourth floor at the Jank Center for Public Safety was the briefing room for the Chief’s Squad for special projects. It could be anything: cold cases, maybe, a sensitive political operation or corruption. He hoped to get assigned to a target in a good part of town, where he could at least snaffle himself a good lunch on a patio while he surveilled whoever was in the chief’s sights. If it was a police corruption case, he’d start coughing and reeling around and go for medical-off. He’d been targeted himself a couple of times over the years and been ashamed for the cops who would set up on other cops at the whim of Pious Man Chan, the lumpy, bald Chinese chief, the beast, badge number 666. He wondered what kind of mentorship they’d had.

  He went into the Lite-Bite and ordered a Canadian bacon-and-egg sandwich on a bun and a coffee. The staff wore masks and some wit had tied one to the huge snout of a plastic pig mounted on the wall. He carried the greasy waxed-paper package out to his car and sat in the passenger seat, the door open, his legs out on the sidewalk. An elderly masked woman crouched near an overflowing trashcan, trying to tie a mask to her resisting schnauzer. He thought about his morning target, killed for not giving up his mask. Two Chinamen were on life-support after taking severe stompings because of the shape of their eyes. Cops were on lungs, doomed because they breathed public air.

  He pitched his wrappings into a garbage can, got behind the wheel, and crept the curbs to the Jank. He’d forgotten his mask, hanging around his neck. Pulling it on as he drove, he heard the dispatcher send a solo unit to a critical collapse, a man in a dumpster. She made it sound like a sexy and inviting adventure. He decided that enough was enough. After his shift, he’d sit down and have a talk with himself, get past the dreams of Djuna Brown and Montparnasse, maybe use the membership pass his daughter had given him, head down to the new art gallery and find himself a low-maintenance, Chardonnay-drinking divorcee who’d been to Paris.

  The slat blinds on the windows of the Four Ten-S briefing room were closed to daylight. Fluorescent lights eliminated any real shadows, making a grey world of boring indifference. Half of the three dozen hard plastic chairs were populated by single-dimension, yawning slumped creatures. Someone was snoring. Conditioned air chilled the room. The ceiling was absorbent cork and the floor was gleaming green sheet-run faux tile. It was very quiet and grim, as if to not disturb the array of three women whose photographs were set up on a row of easels. Each easel held a smiling portrait of a victim in life, and beside it was a colour morgue shot of the same woman, although you couldn’t be sure, because their faces had been taken apart and left un-reassembled. The colours evoked avocado and eggplant and ivory, Ray Tate thought, deflecting with artistic distraction.

  His ex-wife’s father had been an ident guy. He’d told Ray Tate he saw everything in a single dimension and pretended he was photographing a photograph. When he was first on the job, he said, on bad jobs he shot the pictures upside down to give the victims less human shape and perspective, but he got over that. His ex-wife’s father was a self-created tough guy who’d never pulled his gun but flashed it a lot under his jacket. He had a lot of imaginary cartoon adventures. Ray Tate marvelled that he’d once admired him. The old man’s mantra was a shrug and a comment that it was all pensionable time, so who gave a shit?

  Brian Comartin, the fat jogger who wrote poetry, was slumped in a middle row, rubbing his thumbs into his eyes. He saw Ray Tate slip in and pump soap from a dispenser, and waved him over. “Fuck, Picasso. Thirty feet from where we talked this morning, there was a girl under the ground. Thirty fucking feet. Now I’m wearing it because I was the senior guy on the detail. I’m fucking Traffic Flow. I’m not senior to nothing.”

  “That what this is about?” Ray Tate sat in the same row, a vacant seat between them. He heard people shuffling into the room behind him. A podium at the front waited.

  “Yeah. Chief’s special task force. They’re saying someone might be taking off women, might be the same guy, might be different guys.” Comartin shook his head. “Three fucking dead women and this is the first anyone hears about it. Now, for some reason it’s priority one to shut this down. Someone said they think it’s the Volunteers. Those women up there are all black.”

  “How’d the girl die, the one we stepped over.”

  “Well, she isn’t dead. Yet. In some kind of a coma. Some people off a boat found her. They thought she was a goner, she was all beat to shit. Then she got semi-conscious, then lapsed out.” He put his elbows on his knees and his face in his palms.

  “You okay, man?”

  Comartin looked down at his running shoes. “Fuck, how’d I miss her?” He looked at Ray Tate and exercised raw cop sympathy. “Poor little bitch.”

  Ray Tate felt for him. “She able to give up anything? Before she lapsed?”

  Comartin shook his head. “Naw, she said her dog or something saved her, then she yawned off to Nod.”

  A convoy of suits filed into the room and arrayed themselves at the podium.

  Chapter 6

  The city had taken a block of rooms at the Whistler Hotel in Stonetown. The lobby was frigid and none of the doormen or bellhops wore masks. The two women manning the check-in desk were clad in blue uniforms that resembled flight attendants’ outfits. They were chic and cheery and wore scarves knotted at the collars of their white blouses. Neither had masks. The check-in desk was three feet deep and the air conditioning had been set to send a strong sheet of arctic air laterally across the marble top. There was little activity in the lobby. Staff inspected each other’s tunics and brass buttons beside the antique wooden revolving doors.

  “Good afternoon,” Djuna Brown said softly to the nearest woman, showing her badge. “I’m Djuna Brown, with the State. They have a block?”

  “Welcome to the Whistler,” the woman said. Her name tag said “Front Desk. Gail.” She didn’t lean away, but she didn’t get too close, either. She was pleasant but seemed to be examining Djuna Brown with curiosity. “The city has several rooms and suites on reservation for the State.” She tapped into her computer. “Room, or suite? The suites, with mini-bars, full hotel facilities, are for, hmm, let me see … oh, Inspector or above.”

  “Oh, that’s me.” Djuna Brown made a confident smile. “I was told a suite. I’m an inspector.”

  “Certainly, Inspector. We have a suite on the twelfth floor with a view of Stonetown. Will that be all right?”

&nb
sp; “Perfect. How many of my people are here?”

  The woman made a humming sound and scrolled on the computer screen. “Just you, so far.” She continued tapping. “Will you need help with your bags?”

  Djuna Brown shook her head. She dug into her purse. “Do you need an imprint?”

  “No, Inspector. You’re a guest of the city. No credit card required. You’re all set.”

  “Yes.” Djuna Brown smiled brightly. “I am.”

  The suite had a sitting room of deep red paint that looked like it had been lacquered on repeatedly and then buffed flat. The ceilings and wainscotting were thick cream. The lights were in sconces and there was a chandelier in the centre of the ceiling. On the floor was a woven carpet of intricate Middle Eastern or Asian design, and Djuna Brown thought she saw some Native symbols in the gold border. The pale window curtains were pulled back and tied with thick red ribbons; they sagged and glowed with heavy sunlight.

  Bordello chic, Paris, 1920, she thought. “Not,” she said aloud, “that that’s a bad thing.”

  In the bedroom were framed reproductions of French paintings. The one above the bed was Whistler’s Mother. The bed was wide with a vast engraved headboard and a telephone console on each side. French doors faced out onto a tiny Rapunzel balcony overlooking Stonetown. Far away, toward Canada, the green river wended north. A basket of fruit that looked like it was waiting for Matisse to drop by was on the dresser with a card welcoming her, in script, to the Whistler.

  Djuna Brown felt excitement as though she was having a rendezvous in a country she’d never been to before. This could be Paris. She dumped her bag on the bed and went into the bathroom. There were gold fixtures, a frosted glass shower stall, a triangular-shaped tub with jets, another telephone, a space-age hair dryer, and a woven basket of several bars of fragrant soap and bottles of high-end shampoos and lotions. Two bleached-white bathrobes with WH entwined over the pocket hung from the back of the door.