“I’ve got an errand to run,” he said. “A half-hour driving back and forth to Paramus, but we’ll be back in an hour. But kid, I could use your help.”
“Sure.”
Charlie nodded, and lumbered to his feet. He left the room, and when he came back he was carrying a gym bag. He signaled with a tilt of his head for Patrick to follow him. On the way out he stopped in the kitchen to give Eunice a kiss on the cheek.
“I’ll be back soon, doll,” he told her.
“You two be careful out there,” she scolded him. “I don’t want you corrupting our boy here by taking him to a strip club, or anything like that!”
Charlie made a face at the suggestion and left the house with Patrick following behind. Once they got on the road, Charlie pulled into a strip mall parking lot a few miles from his home and parked his Cadillac Escalade before getting into an older model Buick Regal nearby. “Don’t ask,” he told Patrick. “I got to deliver this piece of crap. It’s a long story.”
“I thought that call was over a book deadline?”
“Yeah, it was. This is a different matter.”
During the ride to Paramus, Charlie made small talk about politics and recent TV shows and the Yankees prospects for the upcoming season, but seemed mostly distracted and didn’t appear to pay attention to any of Patrick’s responses. After a while, Patrick found himself drifting asleep, partly from his friend’s ramblings and mostly from the steak dinner and beer. He was jerked awake when they slowed down in front of a small run-down-looking ranch-style house, and with some curiosity noticed that Charlie had turned off the headlights before gliding the car into the driveway. As they left the car, Charlie put a finger to his lips, hushing Patrick. Charlie had taken his gym bag with him, and while they walked to a side door of the house, Charlie removed a couple of objects from the bag, one of which he pressed into Patrick’s hand. It was too dark for Patrick to see what it was, but it had a cold metal feel and it was heavy. It wasn’t until Charlie was rapping his knuckles against the door that Patrick realized he had been handed a gun and that Charlie held one also. He was still trying to make sense of this when the door opened a few inches and Charlie shot the man on the other side of the door in the chest. The man fell backwards into the house. The noise the gunshot made was only a puff. A silencer must’ve been used. Patrick was still trying to understand what was happening when Charlie pushed the door open. The man who had been shot looked dead as he lay on the floor. He was thin and wiry, in his thirties, and wore a wife-beater tank top and khakis with his chest torn open by the bullet. As Charlie moved past him he shot the man one more time in his right eye, then turned and nearly snarled at Patrick as he ordered him to follow him into the house. Patrick obeyed, at this point moving purely on autopilot. Even without Charlie ordering him to do so, he shut the door behind him.
There was a man’s voice from deeper inside the house. This man was yelling to someone named Tony, asking him what was happening. Charlie moved quickly and stealthily towards that voice, and Patrick followed him, his mind still refusing to accept the events that he had witnessed.
As they moved through the house, a man walked out of a bathroom. He was bigger than the man Charlie had earlier shot, taller and wider in the shoulders, and he must’ve been the one who had been shouting out to someone named Tony. His eyes grew wide as he saw Charlie. Before he could reach for the gun he had tucked away in his waistband, Charlie fired three rounds, each of them leaving expanding red dots on the man’s chest. He toppled backwards. Charlie moved to him so he could search through the dead man’s pockets. He was doing this when a noise sounded from behind Patrick.
“Goddamn it, kid,” Charlie growled in exasperation. “There’s someone behind you! Do your job as backup!”
Without even realizing he was doing it, Patrick started firing his gun as he turned. Like Charlie, his gun had a silencer attached to it, and the bullets made only a soft puff as they hit their target. It was a girl. She was unarmed, no older than twenty, and was half naked, wearing only a pair of panties. She must have stepped out of a bedroom to see what was happening. Patrick had shot her twice in the stomach, and she collapsed on the floor and moaned in agony. Charlie pulled a thick roll of bills from the dead man’s pocket and gave Patrick a disgusted look. Patrick stood paralyzed as the girl writhed on the floor nearby.
“What’s the matter with you, kid? You going to let that poor girl suffer?”
Charlie waited for Patrick to act. When he didn’t, Charlie walked over to the girl and shot her once in the temple. She stopped moving then. Patrick must’ve gone into shock, because everything became dreamlike after that. Charlie taking his gun from him, the two of them leaving the house, Charlie giving him the car keys and telling him to drive, saying that he was to drop Charlie off at the strip mall in Paterson where he had left his Escalade and then lose the car at an address in Newark. It wasn’t until Charlie had taken a flask from his jacket pocket and made Patrick drink from it that the world snapped back into focus. He started shivering then, his arms shaking as he gripped the wheel. Charlie had him take another swig of the bourbon that was in the flask.
“Kid, you must’ve figured out by now that I did more than just muscle in my younger days,” Charlie said, his voice flat, a weariness softening it. “The thing is, it don’t matter if you become a bestselling crime novelist, once you’re in you’re in, and you stay in until they nail the coffin lid shut on you.”
They sat in silence while Patrick drove. After several minutes of this Patrick muttered under his breath, calling Charlie a lousy stinking bastard.
“What was that?”
“You’re a lousy stinking bastard,” Patrick repeated, his voice louder, but sounding odd, as if it weren’t really coming from him. “You drag me to a mob hit?”
“Kid, you better watch your mouth. I like you and I’d rather not knock those pearly whites out of your mouth.” Charlie pushed a thick hand across his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “About dragging you to this hit, I’m sorry about that, kid, but it couldn’t be helped. Somehow I lost track of the date. You’ll see when you’re my age. That stuff happens. But the hit had to go down tonight and I needed backup and didn’t have time to arrange anything else. You did a crappy job shooting that broad in the stomach like that, but here, for your troubles.”
Charlie tried to hand Patrick the roll of bills he had taken off the second man he had shot inside the house. When Patrick wouldn’t take it, Charlie shoved the money into Patrick’s jacket pocket.
“There’s over two grand there,” Charlie said. “Don’t be a schmuck. Yeah, I know, you’re upset about that broad. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone else in the house except for those two mooks I took out. In a way it’s a shame she was there. That broad had a nice rack on her. But in another way, it was a damn lucky break. If she wasn’t there and things didn’t go down the way they did, I would’ve had to leave you in a landfill tonight with your brains leaking out of your skull, and I like you, kid, and I’m glad I don’t have to do that.”
They didn’t say another word to each other after that until Patrick pulled up next to Charlie’s Escalade at the strip-mall parking lot where they had earlier left it. Charlie put a hand on Patrick’s arm. He said, “Kid, be over at the house tomorrow at seven. I’ll have Eunice make a lasagna the way you like it with chopped up sausage. Afterwards I’ll introduce you to some guys. Whether you like it or not, you’re in now, but I’ll take care of you and make sure you get treated properly. And this is what your writing needed. I’m sure of it. You’ll see that I’m right.”
Charlie nodded to Patrick and left the car. After the car door closed, Patrick headed off towards Newark without looking back at the other man. For a long time all he could feel was sick to his stomach as he replayed in his mind what went down in that house. He kept seeing the faces and the gaping wounds of the people they had killed. Especially that girl’s. She was so young, and even when he squeezed his eyes closed he’d see her as she l
ay on the floor with her guts leaking out of her stomach. At some point before he reached Newark his thoughts had shifted away from those killings and to his novel. Almost as if a light switch had been flipped on, he saw clearly how he needed to rewrite the bank heist scene so that it would have the same type of realism that he loved so much in Charlie Valtrone’s novels. He started getting excited over the prospect of doing this. By the time he ditched the car at the address he was given, all he could think about was getting home and working on his novel. He also found himself salivating over the thought of Eunice’s lasagna with chopped sausage.
AUTHOR’S DEDICATION: I’d like to dedicate this story to the memory of David Thompson, of Busted Flush Press and the Houston mystery bookstore Murder by the Book. It is so rare to find someone as enthusiastic about anything as David was about crime fiction, and even rarer in this industry to find someone championing the lesser knowns and underdogs as tirelessly as David did. David will be sorely missed.
Copyright © 2011 by Dave Zeltserman
Previous Article Poetry
Poetry
Mystery Sonnet: Agatha Christie
by Shawn Matthew Hannigan
O dear deceptive Dame Agatha Christie, Mistress of the mis-direction; Master of the clue so misty— Unequaled in mystery detection; It is a mystery cliché But one must suspect the unsuspected; Like an early snow that will not lay Upon the ground melting unmolested; From And Then There Were None To...
Top of Poetry
Fiction Black Mask
Poetry
Mystery Sonnet: Agatha Christie
by Shawn Matthew Hannigan
O dear deceptive Dame Agatha Christie,
Mistress of the mis-direction;
Master of the clue so misty—
Unequaled in mystery detection;
It is a mystery cliché
But one must suspect the unsuspected;
Like an early snow that will not lay
Upon the ground melting unmolested;
From And Then There Were None
To Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Like an elaborate web that’s spun
By a suspenseful spider of the heavens—
Many times I’ve been entangled
On a sticky plot that she has dangled!
Copyright © 2011 by Shawn Matthew Hannigan
Black Mask
Black Mask
Half-Lives
by Tim L. Williams
After a stint working on screenplays, Tim Williams is back to writing fiction and has produced a fine new entry in a series that was nominated for the 2010 Shamus Award for Best Short Story. Charlie...
Top of Black Mask
Poetry DEPARTMENT OF FIRST STORIES
Black Mask
Half-Lives
by Tim L. Williams
After a stint working on screenplays, Tim Williams is back to writing fiction and has produced a fine new entry in a series that was nominated for the 2010 Shamus Award for Best Short Story. Charlie Raines is the protagonist; “Suicide Bonds” the story recognized by the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award judges. Here is Raines again, in a story that is more ambitious and disturbing than any of the previous cases. His creator lives in western Kentucky and teaches at a local college.
When I tracked Terrell Cheatham’s grandmother from her last known address to the subsidized apartment she’d moved into after her husband’s death, she didn’t do any of the things I expected. Instead of slamming the door in my face or denying that her grandson lived with her, she invited me in for a cup of coffee and then added a shot of bourbon to my mug, “just to keep the cold out of my bones.” This was a long way from the reception a private investigator usually gets when running down bail jumps in southwest Memphis, where the average annual income is a few dollars higher than it is in Calcutta and even the most law-abiding residents see a white face as an intrusion from an alien and hostile world. I was so shocked I wanted to believe her when she insisted that her grandson was a “fine young man” who wouldn’t cause me “an ounce of trouble.”
Frances Cheatham seemed like a decent woman. She was in her late fifties or early sixties, still trim and attractive but with deep worry lines around her mouth and eyes, and I could tell she loved her grandson. From what I’d read in his jacket, Terrell Cheatham didn’t seem like the kind of kid who belonged in jail. At twenty, he had a single blemish on his record. It had been two years since his arrest for breaking into the video-game store, and he’d kept clean since then. He’d completed a semester of college, earning a spot on the honor role before he dropped out to take a full-time job in the kitchen at a Tops Barbecue on Elvis Presley Boulevard. If he’d shown up for his court appearance a week and a half ago—in Memphis a trial two years after the offense is considered swift justice—Terrell would have faced no more than six months’ probation.
“Terrell’s momma left him when he was just a baby,” she said now, blowing at the steam rising off a fresh cup of coffee and then shrugging. “Our son Marcus Junior gave Terrell to us to raise, but he came to visit Terrell every weekend up until the time he was killed in a car wreck outside of Jackson, Mississippi.”
Her husband, Marcus Senior, had passed away less than a year ago. He was a good man, she said, one who’d worked for twenty-seven years as a night watchman at the West Parrish Industrial Park to put bread on the table and keep a roof over their heads.
“Bone cancer. He went fast, but don’t let anyone tell you fast and easy are the same thing.” Her smile was tired, maybe a little bitter. “I bet you hear your share of sad stories, don’t you, Mr. Raines. Probably get sick of them.”
I told her to call me Charlie and said how sorry I was about her loss. And she thanked me for that even though we both knew words were little comfort.
There didn’t seem to be anything else to say, so we sat in silence for a few minutes before Frances Cheatham forced a smile and said it looked like both of us needed a refill. While she was in the kitchen, I went to look out the front window. The last of the light was seeping from a January sky. When you say Memphis, people think blistering August heat, but there are days in January and February when the skies are mold-gray, a slanting, almost-frozen drizzle falls from dawn to midnight, and a wind whips across the Mississippi that makes you wonder if you haven’t been transported unaware from Beale Street to Boston. I was still standing at the window, dreading going back out into that cold when a tall, scrawny kid dressed in a parka, sock cap, and sneakers crossed the street and headed into the parking lot.
“You see Terrell coming?” Frances Cheatham asked, handing me my coffee.
Before I could answer, a black Tahoe fishtailed into the lot, nearly slammed a row of parked cars, and then skidded to a stop. Peering over my shoulder, Frances Cheatham said, “Good Lord, they almost run right over Terrell.”
Outside, the SUV’s passenger door was slung open, and a man, fiftyish, white, not much bigger than an oak tree, got out. Terrell tried to run. Tried was the operative word. He didn’t even get started before the guy in the overcoat raised a sawed-off shotgun and squeezed the trigger.
“Oh sweet Jesus!” Frances Cheatham screamed in my ear.
I pulled my .45 from beneath my jacket and ran for the door. I’d just opened it when the shotgun roared again. I knew it was too late for Terrell Cheatham, but I ran anyway, taking the stairs two at time and nearly slipping and falling halfway down. His grandmother ran behind me, calling on the name of the Lord with each step she took.
Just as we reached the lot, the Tahoe screeched away. I caught a glimpse of the driver—white, older than the shooter, thick, curly gray hair and glasses—but then the Tahoe was gone, heading northeast towards the interstate. Cursing, I stuffed my .45 back into my holster without having fired a shot.
Frances Cheatham hunkered beside her grandson, screaming his name again and again. Now that the shooting was over, a few faces had emerged from the apartments, staring at the scene, some of them whispe
ring their prayers.
“I’ve called an ambulance,” a pretty girl about Terrell’s age shouted.
An ambulance wasn’t going to help. The first blast from the shotgun had caught him just below the kidneys; the second, fired point-blank, had taken off most of the back of his head.
“A PlayStation 3,” Frances Cheatham said when I touched her shoulder. “That’s why he robbed that store. That’s all my baby wanted. And just look at what someone done gone and did.”
Four days later, the homicide detective who’d caught Terrell Cheatham’s case finally got tired of dodging my calls and ducking down the backstairs and agreed to meet me for a late lunch. Ray Pardue was a stoop-shouldered man with thinning, sand-colored hair and a nervous grin that never quite made it to a full-blown smile. Now he pushed aside a platter of Neely’s barbecue spaghetti and gave me a pained expression.
“I feel as bad as you do for the kid’s grandmother. But Jesus Christ, Raines, where have you been living the last ten years? Kids in south Memphis get murdered every day. The Chamber of Commerce don’t advertise it in their See the River City brochures, but we both know the way it is.”
He was right, of course, but Terrell Cheatham’s murder was the only one I’d witnessed. “So you’ve got no leads.” I said.
“You were a cop. You know how it goes. You’re a day into one case when two or three more fall in your lap, so what do you do?”
“You focus on the easiest to solve.”
“It’s not that one victim’s more important than another, but a bird in the hand . . .” He paused while the waitress set fresh beers on the table. “You take a gang-related murder like Cheatham’s. Eventually someone will get pinched and want to make a deal. Until then, I got two other homicides to worry about.”
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 03/01/11 Page 26
