Dead Birmingham

by Timothy C. Phillips

  “Whom,” I said.

  “What? Mack looked up from the paper he held in his hand.

  “You said that. It is correct to say whom, when referring to a person.”

  “Uh. Okay, whatever.”

  But I wasn’t uptight about grammar. Yim, the Korean girl, wasn’t a ‘that’ to me; she was a human being.

  Neither was this young black man, the same age as my sister’s son, also a young black man who currently attended the same university that Fredrick “Bone” Mullally had dropped out of. They were somebodies, whatever life they chose, and they deserved respect, like anyone else.

  Like the other young man that Broom had told me about. Frederick had died hard. Anyone could see that. His body had been lacerated, and his hands cut off. An ancient gesture, I thought. They still do that in some countries. Punishment for the thief. Was this gruesome act somehow tied to the age of the stolen items? What did Malvagio know about this, if anything? Was he afraid? Was he, too, dead?

  I looked at the young corpse and I wanted to shout in his young, dead ears: Don’t live this way. Don’t die this way. Give yourself a chance!

  But no, the kid had followed some lost light of the young, and so he had come to this.

  We live in the world any way we can, because we realize that life is all hell and the world tries to kill you every way that it can. If you are lucky, and there are not many who are, you will live to a ripe old age and have kids to leave behind you, and a home of your own to die in. You’ll never know hunger or what it feels like to have no place to go.

  As I said, if you are lucky. Most people aren’t. You weren’t. And I’m sorry.

  Broom was talking. “This killing is going to hit the newspapers Monday morning. If we can keep a lid on it until then. If one of those ambulance chasers comes around asking the right questions, we’re screwed. One thing we don’t need at this stage is a general panic, of reporters following us around while we try to find this son of a bitch.”

  “You think that it’s one man?” I asked softly, still looking at the corpse.

  “Absolutely, and the same man. He started out the same way each time, and followed the same procedure. You can follow his cuts. He has a method. The cuts get worse, and are in more painful places, as he goes along. This guy is some kind of professional, all right. Some kind that I’ve never seen the like of before, but a professional.”

  Mack nodded. “I’ve seen hits, seen mafia jobs, gang interrogations. But this is just, I don’t know. Evil. There’s a note of . . . just plain brutality to it,” he said, and spat in the trash can.

  “You’re right there, Mack.” Broom pointed to two long, diagonal incisions that ran down the chest of the young man’s corpse. “Those were made gradually, probably taking several minutes each. But the second cut tells us that the first one didn’t work. The perpetrator had to make several deep cuts, taking his time at it, and all the while you can bet he was trying to get some kind of information out of this kid. The kid was cut on the arms, the abdomen, the back, and then sometime later his throat was cut. Probably after the killer was fed up.”

  After a pause, I said, “No, I think he did it after he was satisfied.”

  “Talk, old partner. What’s on that overactive mind of yours?”

  “Just this. I agree with what you’ve said. These kids got their hands on something that somebody out there wants awfully bad. Maybe a lot of people want it, for that matter. But I think this killer may have already learned something that we’re still trying to figure out. Maybe these kids don’t know what they have. Maybe they don’t have it, any more. Maybe . . . ”

  “Maybe one of the kids stole it and didn’t tell the others,” Mack said suddenly.

  Broom and I stood silently looking at him for a second.

  “Yeah,” Broom whispered, at last. “You’re right there, Mack. That makes a hell of a lot of sense. Let’s suppose for a second that these kids work the same way all the time, using teamwork. We know how boosters work. From what Malvagio told Roland, that sounds like the M.O. here. But let’s just say that one kid spotted a plum item he could lay easy hands on. Maybe he got greedy, maybe hid this thing away as a little nest egg. Just maybe the other ones don’t have a clue.”

  “So when the killer comes with his knives and his questions, none of them have answers,” I said, rubbing my chin. There was stubble there. It had been a long day, and it was far from over.

  “Which means that he hasn’t caught the right kid yet. Because that kid won’t be this mutilated. He’ll talk, because he or she’s the only one of them who can talk,” Mack expounded.

  “We have to find those kids before he does.” Broom drew himself to his full mythic height and grabbed his keys.

  “Not all of them,” I said to both of them. “Just the one.”

  Chapter 18

  After Mule had disappeared, they had waited two or three days. Maybe he had gotten nabbed. They expected him to show up, with his toothy smile and a story of a night or two in jail. After a week they had sent two of the girls, Angel and Dextra, to go nonchalantly check. No, they were told, there was currently no one named Mueller in the Birmingham jail. Nor had there been.

  They became alarmed. There was much excited banter. Was Mule hiding out for some reason? They checked all the message drops, but he had left no word. Scott told them he must have gotten picked up by the cops; there is no other reason he would leave them. They were his family. Which raised the question: What if Scott was wrong? Had he gone back to his real family? Decided to leave the life they were living, go back and finish college? They would have to find out. They had to know for sure.

  * * *

  “They just busted in here and started shooting the place up,” said the big red-headed man. His name was Tim Finnegan.

  The paramedic who was looking at Finnegan’s leg looked up at the patrol officers who stood nearby. “The bullet’s still in there, so we’ll have to transport him. You’ll have to question him at the hospital.”

  “We just have a couple of questions.”

  “Oh, I can answer a couple of questions before you cart me off to UAB Hospital,” Finnegan scoffed. He seemed rather proud of the bullet wound. He reached behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of Johnny Walker Black, and a tumbler. “For the pain,” he explained to the paramedic, who gave him a dour frown. Finnegan shrugged and poured himself a belt and drank it anyway. He nodded to the policeman. “Ask away.”

  “Had there been an argument, anything like that?” The patrol officer asked, his notebook out, pen at the ready.

  “A couple of fellows came in to have an eye-opener, around eleven o’clock. They had a drink, then left. A second later, they run back in here with this crowd of big Wops on their heels, and they start fighting, breaking my furniture and shootin’ the place up.”

  Finnegan seemed more offended about his broken bar stools than the hole in his leg. He poured himself another belt. He caught the policeman’s glare and grinned. “It’s not like I’ll be driving.”

  “Did anyone say anything that indicated what the row was about?” another policeman asked, as he looked at the broken chair that lay by the door. He pulled out a notebook.

  “Hmm. Maybe . . . I think they were after Johnny Sheehan. One of them said that they wanted to talk, but I don’t think he was in the mood, because he went straight out the back door like the devil was after him.”

  “I see.” The cop was writing things down. “Johnny Sheehan. Would you happen to know where we could find Mr. Sheehan?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. He’s in here most afternoons for a couple of hours. But after this, he might lay low. I know that those guys were part of the Ganato gang, and I’d damn sure lay low if they were looking for me!”

  Chapter 19

  Midnight on a quiet suburban street in Mountainbrook, Birmingham. Down the quiet and shaded street strolls a young woman, her hair dark and long, her face downcast. Her walk is purposeful, and she seems to know the neighbor
hood, know where she is headed, though it would be obvious to anyone who might see her that she does not belong there. Her worn leather jacket, her piercings and tattoos, all mark her as counter to the culture of this neighborhood. She hugs the shadows and turns her face away from the few cars that pass. Finally she slows, and her gaze becomes more searching. She was here once before, but it has been a long time.

  Finally, she comes to a big house that is situated away from the residential street. A long dark driveway bisects a large manicured lawn. The Muellers, the plaque on the low wall proclaims in a Gothic script. She takes a deep breath and begins walking up that dark driveway. Although she doesn’t know why yet, a tear wells up in her eye. She wipes it away, straightens herself, and comes at last to the door. Her hand shakes only a little as she reaches to press the doorbell button. Her name is Dextra Rosa Cassevetti, and she is more than a little afraid.

  * * *

  Scott Anthony LaRue was a thief, and he had been one as long as he could remember. It had caused him strife, conflict, and had taught him duplicity and guile. He now stood on the threshold of a place that his life’s calling had driven him from—his parent’s home. With a grim set of the jaw, he walked up the short walk from the street to the door, and rang the bell. He heard footsteps from somewhere inside, and took a deep breath. He wanted it to go well . . .

  A younger version of himself appeared when the door finally opened, and for a second there was a blank stare, then recognition. It was Sean, his younger brother, grown another foot since Scott had seen him last. The teen retreated without greeting him, instead shouting, “Mom! It’s Scotty!”

  Sounds like he’s seen a ghost. Guess he has, more or less. Scott tried to remember the last time he’d been here. Two? Three years? He couldn’t recall.

  After a moment a waspish brunette woman appeared. She was wearing sweats and didn’t look like she had taken pains with her appearance in a while.

  Mom. She’d gotten so thin.

  “Come in, Son,” she said without any preamble. When he stepped in she hugged him, tight and for a very long time. After a moment he hugged her back.

  Something is wrong here. Scott wished then that he hadn’t come, as if somehow the terrible reality that time had moved on without him would be erased if he just walked out the door and back into his self-imposed exile from his family. But he was here now and there was no turning away, again.

  “It’s so good to see you, Scott. It’s been such a long time.” The woman who was Scott’s mother swept hair from her face and he saw now that she looked drawn, and much older than he remembered.

  “Come, sit,” she almost whispered, and he followed her into the kitchen where he saw that she had been sitting down to coffee. She poured Scott a ceramic mug full, and let him sit. Then she poured herself a fresh cup before she joined him.

  Scott saw that the mug was emblazoned with World’s Greatest Dad. He didn’t touch it.

  “How have you been, Scotty?” she asked him with a sad smile.

  “Mom . . . where’s Dad?” Scott asked. He noted that that his brother, Sean, had disappeared after their initial encounter at the front door.

  “Oh. I thought that’s why you’d come. Oh, Scotty. Your father’s . . . he died last month. Cancer. He had such a long fight of it. We had no way to contact you, Scotty. He talked about you there at the end. He forgave you. Your father loved you, Scott.”

  Scott stared at his coffee and at the gray in his mother’s hair, and understood a great many things with a clarity that his youth had previously denied him. He had crossed several rivers, he now understood, and he could not recross them, ever again.

  “No,” he said simply, “I didn’t know.”

  His mother grasped his hand, and said gently, “You couldn’t have known. But then, why . . . after all this time . . . have you come back?”

  He had wanted to come here to see his father, he realized only just now, to set things right between them, before he went off to take this last big risk. But his father was dead, had died without him by his side, and now he looked at his mother and knew he couldn’t lay any more grief upon her. She was happy to see her long lost son again, and that was what he wanted to leave her with.

  “You’ve been on my mind. You and Dad. I . . . I felt something was wrong. I’m sorry, Mom. Sorry I wasn’t here for Dad. And for you.”

  “Can you stay a while?”

  “Not today. I’ll be back around though. I just wanted to make sure that things were okay. I guess that I should have come sooner.” He looked around the kitchen. A place that used to be home feels so strange when one hasn’t been there for a long time, he mused. A little world one used to belong in, now alien and familiar at the same time.

  “How’s Sean?”

  “He’s angry with you.”

  “Yeah. I figured.”

  “He’s young. Not too much younger than you, when I saw you last. It was rough on him. He and his father were best friends.” She meant no malice in the remark, but it reminded them both of how distant Scott and his father had been, and there was an awkward silence.

  “I have to go now, Mom.”

  The woman sat for a second, and sipped her coffee. There was something new about her, Scott saw now, a patience and strength that hadn’t been there before. Before she would have cried and begged him to stay; now there was merely a nod and a quiet acceptance.

  “When will we see you again, Scotty?”

  “Soon, mom. There are some things that I have to take care of, and then I’ll be around a lot more. Things are just . . . ”

  Scott’s mother rose and put her arms around him, letting him know there was no need to say the rest. Too much had gone between.

  “Then come back when you can stay longer, Scotty.”

  Scott smiled and kissed his mother’s cheek. And then he turned and walked out of his dead father’s house, on his way to whatever fate awaited him.

  Chapter 20

  “Delta Seven.”

  “Delta Seven, go ahead,” the radio crackled, as our car passed beneath a thick cluster of power lines. Broom picked up the handset and answered.

  “In reference to your present assignment, be advised that we have a landline call pertaining to that 10-86.”

  Broom frowned at me.

  “Be advised we’re stopping and we’ll call the office.”

  They pulled over into a strip mall and Broom whipped out a cell phone. “Go ahead,” he said.

  He grunted at some response on the other end.

  “And that’s the parents?”

  Broom grunted a couple more times, finally giving a terse “Okay.” He clicked the phone off and looked over at me, then back at Mack. “That was Sgt. Taylor. She says she just took a call for me. It was the Muellers. They had a strange visitor. A young lady who had been seeing their son. She had come to them seeking information on what had happened to her boyfriend. She was naturally pretty rattled when she found out. It seems she filled in the blanks for them on the other boosters. Young people, four of them. They got names and descriptions for us.”

  “Our kids?” I asked.

  “Our kids. Seems that they were worried about their friend, Mueller, or “Mule” as they called him. It seems that the others didn’t know that he’d gotten himself killed. The parents broke the news to her and she went a little nuts.”

  “She still there?” Mack asked hopefully.

  “We couldn’t get that lucky. She bolted the minute that the Muellers mentioned calling the police. But at least Mr. Mueller has got some information for us. We need to go on over there and meet him.”

  I cast a quick glance at Broom, which was readily interpreted. “Oh, you can come along. I don’t think they’ll kick up a fuss. You’re as involved in this as either of us. The Muellers want to find the man who did this to their son.”

  * * *

  They had hidden. It was all that they could do. After what the Muellers had told Dextra, and Scott had disappeared, this was a catas
trophe. The world was thrown out of balance. Scott was the one who had taught them the Code. It had come directly from the pages of his manuscript. He had taught them his Code of Evasion, of how to live outside of society. It was he and his book that had determined how their lives had unfolded, up to now. Without him they had no compass, no sage. Now Scott was gone. He had left them in the night, and had taken his manuscript with him.

  He had left Angel a note:

  “Angel,

  I hope that you can forgive me for what I am about to do. I know now that something bad has happened to Mule. I can’t tell you why just now, because I don’t want you to possess the knowledge, as it would bring danger to you. The same goes for the others. Let me be clear, the blame for this is mine. It was me who brought his danger on us all. I did something against the Code, and I knew better. I will go make things right. Stay in the Cabana for a few days until I get back. Don’t go boost anything for a while. Tell the others to stay put. No one should go out, until I get back, No one. I will explain everything when I return.

  I love you. Scott.”

  Angel had kept the note a secret. Instead, she had told them that Scott had left in the night to go on some important mission, and not given her any details. She wanted to keep his admission of guilt a secret until his return. She wasn’t trying to merely be dishonest. On the one hand, Angel hoped that he was wrong about Mule; on the other, she didn’t want to face the catty Dextra with no explanation about what had happened to her boyfriend. Scott’s note hadn’t given her many details, after all.

  When Scott had gone, this had left Bone as the de facto leader; at least, Bone seemed to think so. He had developed some plans of his own, and they did not involve staying put. Now he was telling them all about the easy score that he had found up near the interstate.