The Last Man to Die (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “I can tell,” Kelso said and I couldn’t tell whether it was irony or not.

  We came to a door with the number 201 on it and Gordon knocked.

  “Mr. Hoffman, you’ve got a surprise. Visitors.” He turned the knob slowly and looked in, as if to reassure himself that our host was dressed, then swung the door the rest of the way and stood aside for us.

  “These gentlemen have come all this way to see you. Looks like they brought you something, too.”

  I entered the room behind Kelso and stopped.

  Gene Hoffman was seated on the edge of his bed, eyes fixed on a small television screen on the bedside table. He was dressed in a bathrobe, and his feet were bare.

  “Mr. Hoffman,” Gordon said again, gently moving forward to turn down the volume of the television. “These are your friends.”

  Hoffman’s lips moved slowly. “Friends,” he said.

  His face turned slowly toward where we stood and I saw the brown eyes trying to make a connection.

  “Friends go to hell,” he finally said.

  “Now, Mr. H.,” Gordon soothed. “That’s not nice. And these gentlemen coming all this way and bringing you something.”

  Kelso handed Hoffman the candy, and the thin old hands reached out to take it. Gordon deftly whisked the box away and tore the cellophane off. He opened the top and pointed.

  “Hey, looka there. Is that the cherry kind you like so much?”

  Hoffman’s hand dipped into the box like a talon and came up with one of the chocolates. I wondered if he had the teeth to chew it with, but this didn’t seem to be a problem. The sweet disappeared into his mouth and his jaws moved.

  “Friends,” he said again. Then he looked up at Gordon. “Where’s Sally?”

  “Sally’ll be along, don’t you worry.” He turned to us: “That’s his daughter.” Then back to the man on the bed: “But right now you’ve got these gentlemen. Should I leave them here and come back later?”

  The old head moved up and down and the hand dipped into the box again. The door closed and we waited a few seconds.

  “So how are they treating you?” Kelso asked.

  The head nodded.

  “Good place, here. Lots of food. Good food. But toast was burned this morning.”

  “Well, we’ll talk to ’em about that,” Kelso said. “Look, the gang at the office is thinking about you.”

  “Office?”

  “Sure. Downtown, where you work.”

  “I don’t work there anymore,” Hoffman said suddenly. “I haven’t worked there for years. I had some trouble. After that, I retired.”

  Kelso and I exchanged glances.

  “Well, they still remember you downtown,” Kelso persisted.

  “Like hell. They’re all dead. Even Chep Morrison’s dead.” Hoffman cackled. “Killed in a plane crash. How’s that? Mr. Clean, and I outlived him.”

  “What sort of trouble did you have downtown?” I asked. “Do you remember?”

  “Remember?” He fixed me with watery blue eyes. “What do you think, I’m crazy? Of course I remember. They said I took bribes. Hell, I didn’t take any bribes. I just did what they told me to do. That’s the only way you keep your job down there. You do what they say. They got complaints, let ’em go for the guys at the top. But no, they always got to go for the little guys. The hell with ’em.”

  “There was a man back then, a lawyer,” I said softly. “Maybe you knew him. His name was Max Chantry. He was running for D.A.”

  For a long time there was no reaction other than the steady throbbing of a pulse in the old man’s temple.

  “Chantry,” he said at last. “Don’t know any Chantry.”

  “Sure, you must have,” Kelso insisted, his voice soothing. “A lawyer, wounded veteran, part of the reform …”

  “Chantry!” Hoffman said suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped. “Making speeches, accusing, everybody stirred up at City Hall, making threats. Tried to buy him. That’s what LaMatta said, find the bastard’s price and shut him up.” The old head went back and forth, furious. “Didn’t have a price. Wouldn’t cooperate. Holding meetings, press conferences. Didn’t play by the rules.” He raised himself from the edge of the bed, a thin line of saliva drooling down from the edge of his mouth.

  “The bastard! With his list. Everybody’s name on a fucking list! Holding it up for the cameras like Mr. High-and-Mighty!”

  “Who was on the list?” I asked.

  “All of ’em. LaMatta, Fortier, Dennehy, Landry, all of ’em. Running scared. Meetings. Get rid of the bastard.”

  “Who provided the list?” I asked.

  “Don’t know. Maybe Nick Angelloz. Lots of people thought so. No more Nick.” He laughed.

  “Somebody killed Nick Angelloz?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Don’t know anything. They asked me all this already. Where’s my candy?”

  He sat back down on the bed, the light gone from his eyes, and I saw that we wouldn’t get anything else from him.

  I waited until we were back in the car before I asked Kelso about the names.

  “All small-timers in the city administration back then,” he said. “Holdovers from before the Morrison administration. I think they’re all dead, but I don’t know. I’ll check on it.”

  We took the freeway back, and right after we crossed into Orleans Parish he had me exit. A few more turns and I found us at the gates of Metairie cemetery. We passed General Johnston on his horse and wound back among the crypts until Kelso motioned for me to park. The noise of the freeway hung in the summer air like the sound of beating wings, and I felt oddly cold as I followed Kelso through the white markers.

  “Here,” he said, stopping. “This is her grave.”

  I looked down and saw the single name: Helen.

  “I paid for it,” Kelso said simply. “Seemed like a hell of a thing for her to go to a potter’s field.”

  Helen … Chantry … I got the message. There are some you just don’t win.

  CHAPTER 10

  It was nearly five when I dropped Kelso at his car and went up to my office. Carol Busby was already there, waiting for me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, rising from my chair. “I shouldn’t have come in without your being here, but the man downstairs said he had a key.”

  “LaVelle,” I said.

  “Right. The guy with the devil’s beard who runs the Voodoo shop. He said you were always taking in stray kittens, so it didn’t matter.”

  I made a mental note to talk to him and leaned back against the wall.

  “I’ve been worried about you,” I told her. “You know, there was a murder yesterday.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Madeline Gourrier,” I said and watched her mouth come open. “Somebody cut her throat.”

  “Jesus Christ.” For a second she was a little girl again, lost in a strange place. “But why would anybody do that?”

  “I dunno. Except that I think your intuition was right. I don’t think Madeline Gourrier was the slightest bit interested in having you trace her family.”

  “But why would anybody kill her?”

  “She was a call girl. That’s a dangerous profession to be in. So her death may be entirely coincidental. But it may not be: Once I got into the act whoever is behind this may have realized it wasn’t going to do any good to try to get you out of the way. And they may have figured she knew too much.”

  Carol crossed her arms on her chest and shivered.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Where’s your partner?” I asked.

  “Sam? That’s partly why I’m here. We had a fight.”

  “Over whether to take the job?”

  “That and the whole situation,” she explained. “See, our business is a tough one: Archaeology is okay when you have a university position, but when you’re out in the real world scrounging contracts from the Army Corps of Engineers and the Park Service it’s something else. Lots of tension. No such thing as
tenure.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “In fact,” she said, face brightening, “it’s sort of like being a private detective.”

  It seemed like a fair analogy and I nodded.

  “You and Sam haven’t been getting a lot of work,” I said.

  “That’s right. I mean, we just missed the Corps services contract last time, and the Ship Island job was all that kept me from waiting tables.”

  “Or Sam from selling shoes?”

  “Oh, no. Sam couldn’t do that. He’s working on his dissertation. He has to spend all his time on that.”

  I wondered how long Sam had been milking the dissertation, but I said nothing.

  “Sam thought you were asking too many questions about the Gourrier job,” I suggested.

  “More or less. He said I ought to be out there hustling some jobs and not trying to find reasons not to take them.”

  I walked over to the window and stared down at the street with the cars plodding past.

  “These things happen,” I said. “Where is Sam now?”

  “I don’t know. He went off in a huff. He does that a lot when he doesn’t get his way.”

  Against expectations, the rain had held off today, but some of the people on the street were carrying umbrellas as insurance.

  “Well, have a beer and then go back and make up with him,” I suggested, moving to the refrigerator in the back room. “And tell him to stay with you, because until this thing gets unraveled, there are some not-very-nice people out there.”

  “I know.” She picked up the small framed photo of Katherine that I kept on my desk. “Is this your wife?”

  “I’m not married,” I told her. “That’s someone I know.”

  “She’s pretty. She looks familiar.” Suddenly her face lit. “Wait a minute, I know her. That’s Katherine Degas. She’s a Mayanist. I met her at an archaeological convention. Hey, she’s great.”

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  “Maybe we really do have something in common, then,” Carol said. “Archaeology makes it hard to keep up a relationship. I mean, half the time you’re in the field away from the other person, which makes it tough, and the other half of the time you’re in the field with them, which makes it bad in another way. Especially if they’re like Sam.”

  “Domineering, I’d guess.”

  “Is he! He always knows everything. And wants everything his way. And he sees things the way he wants. That’s bad in science. I mean, like this time we had to take archaeomag samples and we had two hearths but neither one was big enough for a full set of samples, but he insisted they were in the same level, just so we could get the ten samples we needed. He has such a bad temper when you try to argue with him, it just isn’t worth it.”

  “Then why stay with him?” I asked.

  Her face puckered. “Well, it’s probably not what you think. I mean, we … Well, at one time …” She shifted position. “It’s mainly that he’s incredibly hard working and he cares about what he does. He just gets so wrapped up in his work he can’t get his mind away from it. But we started the business together three years ago and I guess it’s just one of those things you don’t break up easily.”

  “Like a marriage,” I said. “Well, everybody has their limit. I don’t know what yours is. But if I had to guess I’d say you were getting close.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I know. And it hurts.”

  I took a sip of my own beer and walked over to the window again. The sidewalk traffic was thinner, but the man I had seen earlier was still there, plastered to the doorway of a building across the street. I couldn’t see his face but I knew who it was: Sam.

  I set down my beer and started for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Downstairs for a minute. You’ll be okay up here.”

  I closed the door behind me and started down the stairs. I’d come out on Decatur, just around the corner from Barracks Street where Sam was waiting. I hoped to surprise him. He might not like the surprise, of course, but I thought I knew his type: long on bluster and intimidation and short on courage. He might hit his girlfriend but he wouldn’t want to face a grown man, not even one with a useless left arm.

  Not that I expected a physical confrontation. I just wanted to tell him to back off. I didn’t want to see Carol getting clobbered on the street when she left my apartment. If he clobbered her later, that would be something else. She didn’t have to go back to him, and I’d advise her not to.

  I came out of my door and made my way to the corner.

  He was standing with his back against a door, hands in his pockets, staring at my upstairs window. I wondered for a moment if he’d seen me looking down, but if he had he hadn’t figured out that I was coming for him. No, he was the kind who’d rather stand in the shadow and let his temper reach boiling point while he imagined all that was going on upstairs.

  I took a deep breath and started across the street toward him. I was halfway into the intersection when he saw me. His brow knitted in surprise and he stepped out of the doorway, onto the sidewalk, his fists doubled.

  “Hold on,” I said, keeping my voice level. But his eyes were already sizing me up and I wondered if I’d misread him. A car crept into the intersection and slowed behind me as I stepped up onto the walk. Sam started to say something but his eyes shifted a fraction and I realized he was looking at something over my right shoulder. His mouth came open slightly and I started to turn.

  The shot exploded before I could get my head around and I felt something whip past my shirt. For a split instant my eyes locked with those of the face behind the steering wheel of the car. I had the impression of a pistol being jerked back through the window and out of sight, but it was the eyes that really caught my attention: They were pale blue and fish cold, in a face the color of bread dough. The car roared away down the street and I made a mental note of the license.

  “Shit,” somebody behind me said and I turned back to Sam. He was sliding down the door, eyes closed and arms limp.

  This time it was my turn:

  “Shit,” I echoed.

  CHAPTER 11

  “It was your fault,” he said weakly. “They were shooting at you.”

  “I know,” I said. The room smelled of alcohol, and the footsteps of nurses whispered past in the corridor outside. Sam lay back against the pillow, his face bloodless, a bandage on his head.

  “You should’ve stayed at the office,” Carol said. “It wouldn’t have happened then.”

  “Sure,” he sneered. “I should have just let you go with this cop.”

  “I’m not a cop,” I said wearily, hoping he wouldn’t argue.

  “Well, you’d better know I’m gonna sue,” he promised.

  “Sam, for God’s sake,” Carol protested. “It was an accident. I mean, it could have happened to anybody. Besides, all you have is a minor concussion, from hitting the door behind you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I could’ve been killed. They were shooting at him,” Sam said.

  “He’s right,” I said. “I was the target.”

  “And it’s your fault, too,” Sam declared, watery eyes rolling toward his partner. “If you’d’ve left this Max business alone.”

  “Sam,” Carol pleaded.

  But his eyes were frying me with their glare. “I hope you’ve got a hell of a lawyer.”

  I took a deep breath, turned and walked out into the hallway, almost falling into the arms of a wiry little man with simian features.

  “Jesus,” Sal Mancuso said, “run me down next time.”

  “Sorry, Sal.”

  “Sure. Look, mind telling me what the hell’s going on?”

  I told him the same thing I’d told the patrol officers and he wrote it down in his pocket notebook.

  “You think he was shooting at you, then, because of this Gourrier business?”

  “Seems likely,” I said. “He was probably standing behind Madeline Gourrier listening to us talk. After
I left he probably pumped her about what I looked like. The credit-check ploy is used by a lot of P.I.’s, so he probably asked who fit my description and came up with me.”

  “The bullet we dug out of the door was a twenty-two,” Mancuso said.

  “Mob hit weapon,” I said. “Except they usually try to get up close, go for the head. This baboon was shooting out of a car window.”

  “Then it was a miss,” Mancuso said. “A miss that almost hit the wrong person.”

  “That’s how I read it,” I said. “And the gun was probably a stolen Saturday night special. My bet is it’s already in the lake.”

  “This license number you gave the uniform guys,” Mancuso began.

  “Stolen plates, right?”

  He sighed. “You’re ahead of me on that one. But I think I can tell you the name of the man who did it.”

  “Ted Frake,” I said.

  Mancuso blinked. “How the hell?”

  “Your friend Kelso called a bunch of police departments with the description and talked to some of his friends. Frake’s name fell out.

  Mancuso nodded. “Yeah. He has a bust from here a few years back. Not too many guys with that face. It didn’t take long.” He folded his arms. “But if Frake’s the man, write it in your notebook and let it go. We can’t have a retiree messing in this thing, even if he was high up in the force once.”

  “Sounds to me like you could use some help,” I said.

  The detective sucked in his breath. “Well, I guess there’s nothing left to do now but book you.”

  “Book me?”

  “Don’t look innocent, Micah. We went to the Gascoyne agency and we also talked to the Martello girl. You beat us to both. That could be called obstruction of justice. Interfering with an ongoing investigation. Or just plain meddling.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, but he only gave me an evil look.

  “The hell you are. How many times have I heard you say it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission? Keep your damn apologies, but listen to what I’m telling you.” He backed me against one of the cold walls of the hospital corridor. The passing nurses gave us a wide berth. “We’ve known each other for a long time and I’ve always played straight with you, but if you get in my way on this one, I’ll forget who you are and throw the goddamn book at you. Capisce? The same goes for old man Kelso.”