Next Last Chance

by Jon A. Hunt

  “Oh Sweet Jesus, how bad is it?”

  “Just scrapes and bruises. Nothing that won’t heal. Or did you mean the car?”

  Not even the dirty black sports car outside could change gears quicker than Mr. Ray. His countenance immediately transformed to a study in surprised innocence.

  “Why, Mr. Bedlam! The people who drive the cars are always most important!”

  Danny grinned hugely, considering the abuse he’d given the Viper’s transmission.

  “We’ll both live with a little TLC,” I said. “The car’s got a few dings. Let’s take a look.”

  The sales manager flipped through expressions like they were coloring book pages as we circumnavigated the less-than-pristine vehicle on the wrong side of the showroom glass. But once we’d discussed estimated repairs and some additional options, he warmed up.

  “Sadly, Mr. Bedlam, this model still isn’t officially for sale—”

  “That’s fine. Hang onto it here till it is, then I’ll pick it up. Who wants the check?”

  When we drove away from the dealership in my Charger, I could see Delbert’s grin in the mirrors. For a few blocks. Over in the passenger seat, Danny had begun serious deliberation on where he wanted to spend his impromptu vacation. The sedan’s interior smelled new again—much of the plastic had been replaced—and though it felt awkward and slow by comparison, it also felt a lot less obvious to unfriendly eyes.

  We crossed in front of a Metro police cruiser on the way to Danny’s apartment. No reaction from the officer inside. That meant the jogger’s description of me hadn’t been specific, and those visiting federals who scoured Cool-Core’s parking facility for me still weren’t talking with the local guys. The day kept looking better.

  There were no furtive looks when Danny bounded up his apartment complex’s exterior stairs, just curious ones toward me while I waited with the engine idling. That gave me reason to believe no one unfamiliar had been snooping. Danny would be a few minutes, packing clothes and feeding fish. I occupied myself trying to track down leads on my phone. The Smith & Wesson rested under my right thigh where I could get to it quick.

  The number JD and Buster Tillman had supplied for Clarence DeBreaux was out of service. No surprise there. But the address still had life in it; Merrybird Meadows Apartment Homes. I knew the area, a tough low-rent district over on the west side. Odds didn’t favor either merry birds or meadows being associated with the place. A man who might have sung for Lincoln’s funeral answered, name of Howard. He remembered DeBreaux.

  “Hell, next time I heard that name I figgered it’d be somebody tryin’ to ID him in a ditch. My boys heaved his stuff out, oh, in ‘05. Who’s askin’?”

  “Old friend. I owe him money.”

  Howard laughed. Laughing made him cough. He was considerate about turning away from the receiver but didn’t think to put a hand over the mouthpiece. I was treated to forty seconds of asthmatic hacking, after which he rejoined without apology.

  “Good luck! Y’all find him, I reckon he’s good for his bills. Never had money troubles.”

  “Why kick him out then?”

  “He was a goddamned drunk, that’s why. The loud, rude kind, all the time, day an’ night. We ain’t the Ritz but poor people gotta sleep, too.”

  I thanked Howard and extricated myself from the call. Danny skittered past his upstairs window with a suitcase. I ran a search for Ellis Ball, with no appreciable results. Buster’s description led me to suspect Ball was an under-the-radar sort, anyway. Here came Danny, nearly tumbling down the steps with his luggage.

  Excited as he was to escape town cart blanche, Danny had begun to sense the gravity of why he must go. He heaved his suitcase into the trunk and buckled himself into the passenger seat without mentioning the .45 under my leg. I knew he saw it.

  “My phone was ringing when I went in,” he said.

  “Did you answer it?”

  “Heck no! I’m supposed to be incognito, right?”

  “Exactly. Landline?”

  He grinned sheepishly. “I know too much about mobile phones to want my own.”

  It hurt to smile. In the car that had appeared behind us, the lantern-jawed blond driver grinned at me via the mirrors. Delaware Darrowby and his lethal sidekick hadn’t lost interest yet.

  “Who’s that?” Danny wanted to know.

  “Nobody to worry about.” Darrowby and Jones had their reasons for making sure I stayed alive. Danny should be safe by association. Unless Rico stepped into the crosshairs.

  We made John C. Tune without incident. The other car continued past our turn, though it wasn’t likely to go far. The lot was nearly full. The sun was out, it was the weekend and those who could afford their own private airplanes had decided to fly someplace. When Danny went around for his suitcase, I stowed the .45 under my seat. Maybe this time nobody wouldn’t throw a rock through the window to steal it.

  A parade of mismatched aluminum had formed at the runway approach. I hadn’t thought to check the weather. Sporadic gusts charged the cyclone fence and buffeted Danny and me on our way to the terminal. The scent of jet exhaust woke recent memories and made my jaw ache.

  Danny hesitated in the small lobby. He had no idea how to react to the broad-shouldered, stern-faced man who watched us with disturbingly placid eyes. The microprocessor engineer and the towering Metro plainclothes cop had the same color hair.

  “What ran over you and where’ve you been?”

  “Gee, I missed you, too,” I said. “Just got back from Paradise.”

  That dumped the wind from his sails. He tipped his blocky head toward the Cool-Core jet’s sleek bulk outside. “Leaving again already?”

  I patted Danny’s shoulders and urged him on toward the receptionist counter. The kid was none too comfortable passing Rafferty.

  “Just dropping someone off. Why are you here?”

  Rafferty had the most expressive expressionless face on earth.

  “We can talk in the pilot’s lounge, if you like.”

  “Uh huh,” Rafferty growled.

  “Where’s he going?”

  “I don’t know. I told him not to tell me. C’mon, I’ll buy the complimentary coffee and cookies.”

  The Lieutenant followed me to the pilot’s lounge. If you ignored the dusty rose walls, the leather recliners were comfortable and the retro ‘30’s aviation posters were a cute touch. The room’s lone occupant inadvertently made eye contact with Rafferty, took the hint and went to read his newspaper in the main lobby. Rafferty pawed the television remote and raised the volume on an old Bob Hope movie to discourage eavesdroppers. We helped ourselves to lukewarm coffee from a thermal carafe, I passed him the cookie platter and we sank into the chairs. I got to speak first.

  “You haven’t said what brings you here.”

  “You had one car in the shop, the other in your company’s basement with G-men around it, you had a welcoming party here Friday night, and in spite of the mess we found just down the road and a hysterical description of you and that damned hat, the FBI has shown zero interest in our baby airport. Got me curious.”

  “They’d already been here.” I rubbed my jaw gingerly with the back of a wrist.

  “If those were feds.”

  “How hard can it be to figure that out?”

  Rafferty set his coffee down and cracked his knuckles. The sound was like snapping hickory trunks. Bob Hope couldn’t talk over that.

  “Harder than it ought to be,” he said. “No IDs, no registered weapons, both vehicles taken off TBI premises without proper paperwork, so they might have been stolen. Pennington stopped by the lab when the bodies came in. Not a damned word. We ‘printed all five, but…”

  “I thought the FBI handled fingerprint searches.”

  Rafferty grinned ferociously.

  “I haven’t killed anyone yet.”

  “I know. Pennington knows, too. You remember how guns work, right?”

  “I do. I’m just more of a conversationalist. Aren�
��t you still grounded?”

  The Lieutenant shook his head. “The Bureau can’t overstep local authorities without costs. If Pennington pulls me completely off this one he’ll have to do it in front of news cameras. Him and his crack team won’t risk publicity this close to maybe finally nabbing Rico.”

  “Rico was there.”

  “We found the bullets. All kinds of people showed up, from the looks of things.”

  I didn’t say who. I trusted Rafferty. I didn’t know which of his associates I couldn’t trust.

  “What happened to Smally?” I asked. “I don’t warrant a sitter anymore?”

  “Smally’s out trying to find your other sitter. Jeffers wasn’t there at shift change. He’s not reported in since Friday morning.”

  I’d told Smally I was going to be out all day. He would’ve relayed this to the next man on sentry duty. The unfriendly kids with the crewcuts had heard I was traveling from someone.

  “There’s only one way guys like Rico can outrun you and the feds. You know that.”

  “They’re both good cops.” Sincerely put, but if he’d had no doubts Rafferty would have roared, not muttered. “How was Paradise?”

  “Better than here but they’ve got troubles, too. I need to find DeBreaux.”

  “Buddy, you know what I know.”

  “Except I don’t even know what he looks like.” I’d forgotten to ask Buster for a photo.

  “I’ll get a picture to you. That shouldn’t stir things up too much. Same number?”

  “Yeah. And can you see what you can find on a man named Ellis Ball? Used to make porn videos, till DeBreaux beat him up.”

  Rafferty shook his head but still took a notebook and pen from his jacket pocket to jot down the name. The butt of his service automatic glinted under his left arm. “Want me to stop and water the houseplants while I’m at it?”

  “Thanks, but no. If this gets me to Rico, I might reconsider.”

  “Do that and I’ll owe you big. Odds are he’ll kill you first.”

  I shrugged.

  Rafferty wouldn’t suspect Rico wanted me alive, unless he’d guessed from two corpses with numbered holes in their heads on the Cumberland Greenway. He didn’t know about the empty brass in my kitchen. He pressed himself up from the chair. Something in his breast pocket distracted him. He found his phone and pressed the glowing device to a meaty ear.

  “Yeah. Shit. All right, get the area secured. I don’t care if traffic is screwed up. No, nobody calls him, and if he shows he stays outside like everyone else till I get there, got it?”

  Rafferty’s eyes weren’t placid when he put the phone away.

  “Smally found Jeffers,” he rumbled. “Somebody else found Jeffers first.”

  Sixteen

  Like many cities, Nashville had staggered through hard times. You’d never guess it in some places. Orange-flagged detours clogged the streets. Cranes swung over monoliths of steel, concrete and glass. The frantic upward expansion awed visitors and worried natives, and no place sprouted faster than the Gulch, a low-lying district shoehorned between Broadway and the interstates. Driving through was hopeless during the week, marginally better on weekends; recent events and the police reaction to them brought the area to a complete standstill today.

  I double parked my car behind Rafferty’s and followed him into the unfinished hulk of a thirty-two story luxury apartment tower. The luxurious parts had yet to be installed. Gray pylons leapt from a mess of gravel and plywood ramps. Sheets of clear plastic served as front doors. A sign warned that PPE was required for all persons. Rafferty leaned questioningly.

  “Personal Protective Equipment,” I told him.

  He grunted, but accepted the loaner hardhat and reflective yellow vest from a stressed-looking man in his Sunday go-to-meeting clothes who’d been called in to appease insurers. No exceptions would be made for anybody’s skulls. Another man was explaining that structural steel and electrical cables scattered throughout the building made cell phones useless.

  “…two-way radios are better. But it’s loud once you get past six. You’ll have to yell.”

  Rafferty flashed his badge and held out an impatient palm till a walkie-talkie was put there. A service elevator came to earth behind the foreman with a clanking rattle.

  “Channel seven,” we were told.

  Rafferty thumped the helmet on. It made him even taller. “Which floor?”

  “You can see from four. Windows are all in on that floor. He, ah, went out on thirteen.” Details like those seemed to cause the guy physical pain.

  We got into the elevator car and rode up with another worker chaperone. The cab bumped to a stop and the door slid aside. We stepped onto concrete floors, beneath a raw concrete ceiling ten feet higher than the Lieutenant’s hardhat, held up by concrete pillars. Steel stud walls had been started and metal-sheathed wiring dangled like inorganic cobwebs. Large spools of the stuff were stacked beside the only other enclosed substructure, the main elevator core. Yellow warning tape stretched across yawning rectangles that didn’t yet contain elevator cars. Afternoon sun sprayed in from the western exterior, which like my own condo consisted only of very thick tempered glass. Wind moaned in the empty elevator shafts.

  The daylight seemed dirtier on the southern side. That’s where a quartet of officials stood, taking notes and photographs. I recognized a couple. When Rafferty and I approached, one held up a transparent bag and I recognized its contents, too.

  “Smith & Wesson, 1911-style semi-auto. .45 ACP.”

  “Where’d you find it?” Rafferty asked.

  The forensics man squinted. I felt self-conscious looking like I’d come from a fight and wearing an exact copy of the weapon under my arm. “Up on nine,” he said. “Every round was fired. Casings on three, five, six and nine. The concrete’s shot up and one of the big windows, but nothing else seems to have been hit.”

  “You shoot an S&W, don’t you, Bedlam?”

  Rafferty knew this. I humored him for their benefit. “I’m missing one at home.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, then to the man with the baggie. “Where?”

  “He should be coming back around any second.”

  All eyes turned to the southern glass. Nine feet up from the floor, an ugly arcing stain marred the building’s clear exterior. I started to look past it at elevated freeway and city beyond, then my attention was snared by something that hurtled toward us a like a large, hapless bird.

  It was no bird.

  It was an upside-down man.

  The thing banged into the glass, driven by wind, bounced away briefly, smacked the glass again and rolled, spinning and flopping grotesquely. The noise made my spine tighten. Rafferty paled a couple shades. Then the wind swept the corpse from sight like it had never existed, except that the stain on the glass was a little darker.

  “That’s electric cable around one ankle,” someone explained. “He fell or was pushed off the thirteenth floor. No windows there.”

  “Jesus Christ!” rasped the Lieutenant. “Why hasn’t anyone hauled him in?”

  “Two-hundred feet of heavy gauge wire, sir. It’d take ten of us to pull that kind of weight even on a still day. Somebody’d probably get yanked out and killed trying. The contractor’s called in a crane operator. As soon as he gets here—”

  “Jesus—” Rafferty stopped himself. It wasn’t his style to blaspheme the Almighty. “Did the fall kill him?”

  “No, sir. We found blood traces on buildings across the street, about the eighth floor.”

  “Eighth?”

  “Yes, sir. Somebody shot him on his way down.”

  Cops like Smally are a rare breed. After two days with his nose to the ground he hadn’t forgotten to look up now and then. Jeffers had soared like a tetherball seventy feet above the streets for most of that time. Nobody had placed concerned phone calls when gunfire and muzzle flashes chased their way up a dozen stories. Maybe people thought crews were working overtime, hammering and welding after dark, o
n the weekend. Most people aren’t particularly observant. But Smally spotted the airborne body. Probably in between chapters.

  He hunkered down on his heels cowboy style, twenty feet from where the elevator deposited us on the thirteenth floor. His short brown hair ruffled in the wind which crashed unhindered between bare columns. His square jaw glowed in sunshine. A frayed paperback peered from his back jeans pocket.

  One other person shared the floor with him, a woman in a Metro jacket. Her hair was up, or had been before the wind got hold of it. Frustration showed in her face, not because of her mangled ‘do but because Smally had refused her and the rest of her kind access to anything between him and the southern half of the floor till his superior had given permission. I couldn’t blame the others for not sticking around. The unprotected thirteenth story was miserable.

  “He ran out of ammo!” the colossal plainclothesman yelled without changing position. He gestured at a metal item on the rough floor. Jeffers’ service automatic. It wore a bright new scar near the muzzle. The slide was locked back in the open position.

  Rafferty’s jacket snapped furiously around him. Our escort hung back at the elevator in the quieter air. If Jeffers’ opponent had stood there he’d have had a clear view any of the dead officer’s escape routes. All I could see when I squinted past Smally’s shoulders were concrete columns, blue sky, and a mostly empty wire spool jammed tight to one of the columns nearest the exterior. The cable stretching outside wasn’t visible from where I stood, but the spool quivered and we already knew what was on the cable’s far end.

  “Hell of a way to run!” I shouted at Rafferty’s ear.

  He grimaced and stepped around his crouched officer. We couldn’t make out the workman chaperone’s protests and didn’t care. I followed Rafferty to the precipice.

  Grand Canyon was a lot bigger but its rim doesn’t sway. Both of us instinctively grabbed a column where the floor ended. Tattered orange plastic mesh whip-cracked beside us, all that remained of a warning, not a barrier, torn by the rapid passage of a man with no better direction to fly. The wind shrieked a dare to us to try that same last step. The electrical cable writhed ominously along the rough concrete edge. Black insulation had torn where it bent downward. If the crane wasn’t brought into play soon, Officer Jeffers’ earthly remains were going to be much harder to collect. I risked a glance straight down.