by Erik Carter
Back in New Orleans, the sky was still bright, and the sun was hot. Dale stood on the sidewalk along Rampart Street outside the police station. He was with Allie. A taxi sat at the end of the block, idling.
Allie was wearing sunglasses, and she took them off to look at him, squinting a little as she adjusted to the sunlight. Dale took his off too.
“This was something else,” Allie said, shaking her head. “Life’s always exciting with you.”
She put out her hand, and Dale took it.
He mustered up a cheeseball voice, something like a sports announcer or a radio DJ. “Well, I am a man of mystery and intrigue.”
Allie rolled her eyes. She took her hand back and adjusted her purse.
“This is obviously a moot point,” Dale said. “But can I get your number?”
Allie shook her head. “No.”
Dale’s heart jumped. “What are you talking about?”
“Somethings are best left where they were, Dale.”
Panic. This wasn’t real. She was playing a cruel joke on him.
“But … last night.”
“Last night was what it was.” Her voice was flat. Impersonal. She wasn’t joking.
For once, Dale was completely speechless. A thousand thoughts rushed to him. The idea of a future with Allie. The image he’d made, based on the feeling they’d shared, the assurance that she’d given to him with her look and words and passion and holding his hand. She’d held his hand in the car. In just a couple days, he’d unburied a feeling that had been hidden for years, brought it back up and made it most important, made it as important as it should’ve been in the first place. And he’d developed a plan. A loose plan perhaps, but a plan. An idea for a future.
Dale tried to speak. All that came out were pitiful beginnings. “But … I … But …”
Allie looked down at the taxi on the corner, put her sunglasses on, and turned back to him. “I gotta go, Dale.”
Dale was the sort of man who took action, and taking action leads one to getting what one wants. His brain couldn’t reconcile what was happening. He’d taken action, but he couldn’t get what he wanted. Another person’s will was at odds with it.
“So, this was nothing?”
“Like I said, it was what it was.” She sighed. “I gotta go.”
“No,” Dale said. He was always a master of words, a skilled communicator, but the only word that kept flashing across his mind was No.
No.
She turned.
“Baby, no.”
“I’m not your baby, Dale.”
“Last night we said—”
“Everybody says ‘baby’ during that.”
Ouch. Ouch indeed.
She started walking away.
Dale followed.
“No.”
He grabbed her arm.
She stopped. Her eyes went down to his hand
“Don’t grab me, Dale.”
Dale’s mind flashed back to the wounds on the Luanne Mercer. Physical dominance. He didn’t want Allie to feel even a tiny fraction of that. He quickly pulled his hand away
She started toward the taxi again. He followed after her.
“Allie.”
She continued walking.
He stopped. She continued. He saw just her back and her red hair shining in the sun. Distance grew between them.
“Allison.”
She didn’t stop. A few feet farther away.
“Al!”
Allie whipped around, stomped back toward him. “What, Dale? What?”
He was panting, and he breathed in twice before he said it.
“I love you.”
There was a pause. She slowly put her hand to her sunglasses and removed them again. She looked up at him. “Oh, Dale.” She put her hand on his cheek. “Dale, Dale, Dale.” Her eyes moved left and right across his. “You don’t know how to love.”
She turned around again and walked away. As she did, she put her sunglasses back on. Dale stood where he was.
It was different than the first time, years ago, when he asked her if she ever wanted to see him again, and she said no. That had been at night. And cold. And when he stepped out of her apartment, it was raining. Back then, he hadn’t known what to make of his feelings for her. He hadn’t been the man he was now. This time, it was sunny and bright. His skin was wet with sweat not dappled with rain. And it wasn’t him walking away from her. He was watching as she walked away from him. To the taxi.
Her freckled arm reaching out for the door handle.
The last glimpse of her red hair.
Her long legs slipping in.
The car door shutting.
Dale’s future changed again. It had shifted, momentarily, to something new and fulfilling. And now it had shifted back in the direction it had been—yet onto a different path entirely. The path he’d been before starting the assignment in New Orleans had its fair share of scars, and one of those scars was Allie. This new path had a gaping wound. And something told Dale it would never completely scar over.
The taxi’s turn signal came on, and it pulled onto Rampart Street.
Dale had been thinking a lot about love during this assignment. Love as compared to hate. But the word love had many different meanings, one of those being romantic love. While he watched the taxi, a suspicion Dale had was confirmed. Romantic love was not real. It was a transmutation of physical intimacy. Lust. The idea of a romantic, cosmic connection with a person was merely an extension of sex.
Like a love scene in a movie. Why was a sex scene called a “love” scene? A love scene should be a grandfather passing on a meaningful heirloom to a young boy, a woman burying the dog that had been her faithful companion for twelve years—not two lustful drunks stumbling home from a bar to make an even trade of gonorrhea for chlamydia.
A love scene.
That’s all he’d had with Allie. Their love scene.
One scene.
Anger rose in him. Almost hatred.
Yes, the idea of romantic love was a crock of shit. And not fresh, steaming shit. Oh no. Putrid, old shit, crusted over on the top. Two lonely flies languidly buzzing around it. Ancient flies on the twenty-seventh day of their twenty-eight-day lifespan, realizing that even they could do no better.
An overflowing crock of horse shit.
The taxi was almost out of sight now. He saw it take a right. It went around a corner. And then it was gone.
Complete and utter horse shit.
For some reason Dale thought about Percy and Bonita.
Okay, maybe there were a few exceptions. Just a few.
He wondered how far the taxi had gotten. It had turned onto Conti Street, so maybe if he ran down to Basin he might be able to see it as it—
He stopped himself. This was pathetic. The great Dale Conley was being pathetic. He had always been one for quick and immediate adaptation, so he needed to come to a realization and fast: Allie was gone.
He felt his eyes grow tight, warm, moist.
He opened them wide. If nothing came out it didn’t count. He tilted his head back, tried to keep everything in. His sunglasses were still off. The sky was bright.
Dale could manage to keep himself focused during an assignment, but the amount of information in his brain could be an overwhelming whirlwind, and at times like this it bombarded him with factual information, things of reason to dull an emotion that was overtaking him.
The Greeks. Athenians. They had ideas on romantic love. Theories, presented in Plato’s Symposium. When they were giving speeches about the deity Eros, one of six people stated that—
There was a voice behind him. Percy. “Hey there.”
Footsteps. Percy was approaching.
Of course, Freud was a significant factor in the theories of romance in the twentieth century. His idea of the family drama. But there were others who had their own ideas. René Girard, for one, thought—
Percy stepped up beside him. “Allie gone? Dang, I’d hoped to have a
chance to say goodbye.”
Dale didn’t acknowledge him, just continued to tilt his head back and look at the sky.
Percy leaned closer. “Hey, are you … are you crying, man?” There was a teasing tone in his voice.
“No,” Dale said.
“Yes, you are.”
Dale put his sunglasses on. “It doesn’t count if nothing comes out.”
There was a pause as Percy thought things through. “Wait a minute, did you and Allie …? You old dog!” Percy smacked his back.
Dale still didn’t look at him. He turned farther way. He was embarrassed.
“Ohhhh …” Percy said, and his tone got much more serious. “Oh, I see what’s going on here. She’s gone, huh?”
Dale didn’t answer. He felt Percy’s hand on his shoulder.
“Oh, Dale. I’m so sorry.” Percy stepped in front of him, trying to get in his line of vision.
Cleopatra and Mark Antony. Edward and Wallis. Napoleon and Josephine. Napoleon divorced her when she couldn’t have children. He wanted an heir. Henry VIII made the same sort of decision three hundred years earlier, creating an entire church to serve—
“Dale …”
Ancient mythology. The Trojan War had started because of love. Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships. And Paris, who—
“Dale, come on.” Percy raised out his arms, fluttered his fingers as though inviting Dale in for a hug. “Come here.”
Dale didn’t budge.
Percy continued with his finger movements. “Come on. Dock it in at Hug Harbor, big guy.”
Dale conceded, stepped forward, and hugged his friend.
Chapter 55
Whenever one of SAC Walter Taft’s BEI agents went through a major personal dilemma, he offered to “buy them a dog.” Not a puppy. A hotdog. From the stand a couple blocks away from the BEI office in DC.
This was the second time Taft had done this for Dale, the first time being when Dale’s mother had landed in critical care at the hospital. It was an odd gift for Taft to give to Dale since the man was well aware of Dale’s healthy eating habits, but it was a nice gesture nonetheless. One hotdog wouldn’t kill Dale.
It was a warm day, but it felt cool and comfortable after spending so much time in the muggy Gulf South. Dale had been back in D.C. for two days. As he strolled down Constitution Avenue—with the traffic flowing steadily beside him; car horns and engines—Dale saw that Taft was not alone at the hotdog stand. Behind him was Arty Marty, who was clad entirely in dark blue.
At the sidewalk on the other side of the street was a painter. A woman. She sat on a folding chair behind an easel and was painting the streetscape in front of her. Around her were several paintings that she was selling, propped against the small wall bordering the lawn of the National Museum of Natural History behind her. She sat in the shade of the big trees growing in the museum’s lawn. Her hair was dark brown and straight, and her face was heart-shaped. She made eye contact with him. Held the gaze for moment. Then returned to her painting.
Dale stepped up to the hotdog stand. “Hey-a, sir.”
Taft grunted.
“Arty Marty, how are ya?”
Marty scowled at his nickname. “I’m fine, Dale. Thank you.”
Dale glanced over his associate’s clothes. “What period are we in now, Marty? Navy blue?”
“Indigo, Dale. Are you blind?”
“My mistake.”
Taft handed Dale a hotdog.
“Thank you, sir.”
Dale looked at the dog in his hand. He remembered some footage he’d seen on TV—the making of hotdogs. They were made from a slurry.
A slurry.
Taft grabbed a yellow plastic bottle and squeezed mustard onto his hotdog. “Percy Gordon’s wrapping up all the loose ends. Another week or so, he said. Then he’s off to Houston. Did you say your goodbyes? I know you two are pals.”
“We did.”
It had been another bit of sadness at the end of the assignment when Dale had bid Percy farewell. They gave each another brief hug. Not the same kind of hug as the one that came after Allie had plunged her little hand into Dale’s sternum and ripped out his still-beating heart, but it was good nonetheless. It said what it needed to.
“So you’ve got something for me in Milwaukee?” Dale said.
“Yes, I do,” Taft said and shook a manila folder he had in his hand. He took a big bite of hotdog, chewed it, then continued talking with his mouth full. “But I’m thinking of offering you a couple days off.”
“Are you feeling alright, sir?”
“Gordon told me what happened with Al, Conley. Why do you think I’m buying you the damn hotdog? Do you need some time to think things through, get your head on straight?”
Dale thought this over for a moment. He looked across the street. The painter. She was looking his way. She smiled. He smiled back then checked her left hand. No wedding ring, unlike the last girl who’d given him a smile at the café in New Orleans.
He turned back to Taft. “I’m fine, sir. What’s going on in Milwaukee?” He reached for the folder.
Taft glanced over at the painter and back to Dale. A grin came to Taft’s lips. Dale was floored. A Walter Taft smile was rarer than most of the fossils in the nearby museum.
“Glad to have you back, Conley.” He tightened his grip on the folder, wouldn’t let Dale take it. “You’re sure?”
Dale nodded and tugged the folder out of Taft’s hand. “Why would I need time off?” He opened the folder, flipped through the contents. A crime scene photo. A copy of a note in Victorian-era handwriting. A list of numbers. Dale’s heartbeat quickened. “After all, I love this job.”
Thank You
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Dale Conley Action Thrillers
If you enjoyed The Lowdown, check out the other exciting books in the series.
Stone Groove
An entire town kidnapped. A 400-year-old mystery. And one shot at saving dozens of lives.
Dream On
A brutal killer. A shocking theory. And a growing death count.
The Barnaby Wilcox Series
If you enjoyed spending time with Dale Conley, get to know Barnaby Wilcox. Filled with classic Carter action and humor, this series follows a cowboy private eye in an 1880s spaghetti Western setting as he tracks down the ruthless outlaws infesting the Wild West.
The Barnaby Wilcox Mystery Series:
If you like intriguing mysteries, breathtaking action, and loads of humor, then you’ll love this page-turning series, perfect for readers of private detective fiction and for fans of Western adventure movies.
Book 1: The Clements Kettle
Book 2: The Preston Emerald
Also by Erik Carter
The Dale Conley Action Thriller Series
Stone Groove
Dream On
The Lowdown
The Barnaby Wilcox Mystery Series
The Clements Kettle
The Preston Emerald
About the Author
Erik Carter writes thrillers and mysteries. A trained public historian and design professional, his adventures have led him across America, where he has done everything from hosting a television show to shooting documentaries in the desert to teaching college. These experiences gave the
background he needs for his greatest adventure—writing fiction.
www.ErikCarterBooks.com
Acknowledgments
For their involvement with The Lowdown, I would like to give a sincere thank you to:
My ARC readers, for providing reviews and catching typos. Thanks!
Dad, for answering numerous questions about police work and those groovy ’70s.
Mom, for some technical expertise.
April Snellings, for editorial assistance with the first few chapters—amazing, as always.
Mike Thomin, for tracking down some research sources.
My friends and family, for the support.
