Next Last Chance

by Jon A. Hunt

  The shoes belonged to Del. He was alive but not very. Propped against the dumpster’s filthy steel couldn’t have been comfortable, though he’d be in agony regardless. The rain wasn’t enough to rinse a dark stain from the curb behind him or from the ugly hole in his chest. His gun had fallen muzzle-first into a storm grate out of his reach. I holstered my own unfired weapon and got close. Blue lasered up through the waxy hair plastered against the pale face.

  “Nuh-uh,” he wheezed.

  “I’ll try and stop the bleeding,” I said. “Cops are on the way.”

  The same hand that not long ago had nearly busted my jaw barely had strength to swat me away. “What have I got to recuperate for? Let it end here.”

  He probably had a point. I told him he was a tough son of a bitch. Whether the noise he made was a cough or laughter, it sent blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. “Not like those…new punks. Pussies.”

  “Not like them at all,” I said. I glanced around the dumpster. Here came the Metro cruisers. Silhouettes against the headlights tipped like the rocks at Stonehenge, leaning over another black form, prone, unmoving. DeBreaux, I assumed. “You gave as good as you got.”

  Del weakly shook his head. I wasn’t about to reach for his sidearm in the storm drain, but I didn’t see any fired brass on the pavement. Del hadn’t gotten a shot off. He wanted me to know someone else had.

  “It’s just a…job.”

  He gasped again. No blood came to his lips this time. Delaware Darrowby was running out of the stuff.

  “Watch Nick,” he whispered. “He’ll make it…personal.”

  His eyes rolled back. He shuddered and became a corpse tipped against a dumpster with its ass in the gutter.

  “When you stand up, Bedlam, do so slowly with your hands in plain sight.” The man behind me had an exquisite speaking voice. For an ass.

  “Got here pretty quick, didn’t you, Pennington?”

  “We were here already.”

  On my feet, I pirouetted lazily with arms far from my sides. The gray-haired Special agent in Charge wore no hat, but his own hands were jammed into the pockets of an expensive trench coat that kept him comfortable from the neck down. Andy Honeywell was doing all the heavy lifting and she didn’t have a jacket. Her blouse stuck to shoulders and breasts like wet paint, still very Hollywood, just for the grown-up movies. The red hair was a sopping mess. Her face had gone nearly as pale as poor Del’s. Her service Glock pointed steadily at my chest.

  Third Avenue transformed again into a busy thoroughfare. All the pedestrians carried guns and badges. Pennington, Honeywell and I stood in the rain and fluttering lights and stared at each other. Del Darrowby stared, too, but he didn’t count because he was dead.

  Like he deserved.

  One of the Stonehenge shadows straightened and crossed the street. Hazard lights transformed each footstep splash into a bouquet of festive color. Sure, Rafferty noticed the effect. But fluorescent puddles concerned him less than bodies in the streets or wet socks.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Pennington.”

  Professional, arctic civility.

  “We’ve got this in hand,” said Pennington. “No active shooters. If we need anything—”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you need,” rumbled the Lieutenant. “Bureau’s welcome to help my people, but everyone can see dead men here and that means this isn’t just your show anymore. Call whoever you want. They’ll tell you the same thing.”

  Pennington wanted to disagree. I very much wanted to see him try. Rafferty was madder than he sounded and he sounded pissed. But the federal man said nothing.

  “Are you done questioning Bedlam?”

  Pennington’s black eyes found Rafferty’s deceptively placid expression, bored through to the furious truth beneath, swept aside. He pivoted on a heel and walked away into the rain. Honeywell seemed newly conscious of her exposed feminine form, though she held her stance.

  “Is this man an eminent threat?” the big Metro cop asked her.

  “I don’t think so,” said Honeywell and allowed the Glock’s business end to drift earthward. I smiled graciously. She didn’t react except for turning and following her superior.

  Rafferty loomed over me, monolithic. When he felt certain we had our conversation to ourselves, he asked if I’d done any of this. Soggy brows twitched toward the corpse against the bloodied dumpster. I held open my jacket. A bear paw reached and lifted the .45 from its holster, released the magazine to verify it was indeed full. He brought the barrel to his face and sniffed. First-rate forensic science. He gave my gun and clip back separately.

  “I’m not sure you make my job any easier by never using that.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” I confessed.

  “C’mere and look at this.”

  Our feet sloshed in unison and made twice as many pretty luminous splashes. Back on my original side of Third, more people moved. Camera flashes popped. Voices discussed things. A guy in a rain slicker put brass casings in individual evidence bags with forceps. For all the running water there was a sizable crimson pool on the uphill side of Clarence DeBreaux; his body had created a sort of dam upstream of the storm grate. Barely enough skull remained to hold those ridiculous sideburns. So much for that lead.

  Rafferty made sure I tracked his gaze, up from the remnants of DeBreaux’s head to four bullet creases in the side of the van he’d hoped to use as a shield. Bits of tissue in the creases proved that hope futile. They also showed he’d been shot from the same side of the street.

  “Where’s Nick?”

  “Not here. Smally lost him a couple blocks north of here on Church. Wrong direction.”

  I found myself staring at a group, talking over the hood of an unmarked car with its headlamps blazing. Even from there Pennington’s trench coat looked expensive.

  We were here already.

  “Did they mention this when you got here?” I asked.

  “We’re not exactly on speaking terms.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Was that your car I had towed off Broadway?”

  I nodded.

  “All right. How ‘bout you wait in that bar where you started till I’m done here? I’ll send Smally to keep an eye on you. You get into too much trouble on your own.”

  Twenty-six

  The karaoke machine had been switched off. No one in Brother Buttons felt musical after singing—twice—to separate Metro and federal investigators. Suspicious eyes followed me. The guy in charge of pouring didn’t look thrilled. He finished hog-tying the defunct wall phone with its broken cord and eased it into a trash can. Happy hour had started five minutes ago.

  “You gonna drink? Nobody else is.”

  I put money on the bar, to cure guilt more than thirst, and said a Jack and Coke would be fine. The front door chirped and rain spilled in. Authorities from both camps were letting some of the patrons go. A glass scooted my way on a Brother Buttons cocktail napkin, with the google-eyed monk cartoon that used to be visible on the outside awning printed thereon in blue ink. All the classy joints have their own table linens.

  “I don’t guess you know where the Butterfly Man went?” the bartender wondered.

  “‘Butterfly Man’?”

  He gestured with a dish rag toward the back where DeBreaux’s table had been righted and his empties put away. A forensics expert poked at the bottom of the table with tweezers. Maybe the chewing gum stuck there had value. I wouldn’t know; I’d never gone to school for that.

  “He won’t be coming back,” I said.

  “Damn. He had a really big tab.”

  “I bet. How about you add a noticeable amount of Jack to this glass, answer some questions, and I pick up his bill?”

  “I didn’t think you were a cop.”

  “My drink gave me away.”

  “Naw, they’ll drink out of uniform. But no cop goes and pays the other guy’s tab. Thanks!” He tipped a more generous helping of fiery
amber into my glass.

  The door worked again. Not as much weather got inside this time because Smally filled the opening. He found a chair and scowled at a soggy paperback that appeared in his steam shovel hand. Interviewing witnesses wasn’t his job and he’d wait till I was finished.

  “I assume you’ve already been grilled?” I asked the bartender.

  “More than I wanted, less than I expected. At least you bought a drink.”

  My glass saluted in a half toast. “How long had he been coming here?”

  “Long as me, so at least ‘02. Regular as clockwork, just a lot more regular the last five or six years. Always cleared his tab but he might take a few days to get around to it. I learned quick not to bug him about it. Did he—cops aren’t saying…?”

  “Yeah. He died.”

  “I thought I heard shots.”

  “You sound like you’re trying to decide whether or not to miss him.”

  The man’s demeanor remained serious. “He was always to himself. Mean as shit if anyone dared say ‘hello’. Didn’t talk much, just to yell when his drink ran low.”

  I studied bubbles waltzing in my glass. This wasn’t an arithmetic problem but I felt like things weren’t adding up to the sum I’d been given. Jetta’s account of DeBreaux, and his final hesitation outside that could only have been meant to protect bystanders, spoke to awfully noble underpinnings for a man supposedly mean as shit.

  “He have any friends?”

  The bartender grimaced. “No way. He had a roommate a few months back. Wasn’t happy about it. Greasy dude with a ponytail. I guess he had to move in with someone when he got kicked out of his own place. Never heard a friendly word between them.”

  “Ever catch the roommate’s name?”

  “Sorry. Cops asked, too. He never stuck around long. Drove a beat up old Mustang.”

  My mouth went dry in spite of the drink. “Mailman?”

  The bartender’s eyes narrowed. “Mighta been. Usually had a big shoulder bag with some kind of uniform in it. Waitresses and me joked about it being his man-purse. Now you mention it, the bag did look like a mail sack. Hey, you’re good! None of the cops asked me that.”

  I wondered why. Rafferty’s crew could be forgiven, handicapped as they were by Pennington’s restrictions. But in spite of one technician with a fascination for used chewing gum, the FBI’s examinations of the scene seemed half-assed. I’d have expected that whole side of town to be locked down. Whoever shot DeBreaux hadn’t been apprehended.

  No active shooter, Pennington had said. Like he didn’t want anyone looking too hard.

  If Pennington meant to keep Rico for his own trophy, I understood. I didn’t condone it, it just made sense. Trouble was, Rico hadn’t killed Clarence DeBreaux. There’s no artistry in repeatedly blasting away the same man’s head at close range; whatever else he might be, Rico was an artist. So who was this new killer Pennington wasn’t letting Metro chase?

  “Hey, why’d you call him the ‘Butterfly Man’?”

  “What else we gonna call him? Nobody said who he was till the cops came today. He never gave anyone here a name, not even a fake one. So we named him after the doodles.”

  DeBreaux had been writing on one of those fancy printed napkins when I came in.

  My reflection and I turned our attention to the wide mirror up over the bottles behind the bartender. If hawks were literate, Smally would’ve been one, engrossed in his paperback and watchful anyway. Regular people who had no idea what they’d missed came in steaming and huffing from the rain. Several obvious Bureau agents occupied strategic spots and purposely avoided acknowledging at my reflection. Andy Honeywell sat on the edge of the stage hoping to dry before leaving. She wouldn’t look at me, either.

  “Did you keep any of those doodles?” I asked.

  My host assumed a wary mien. “They took ‘em.”

  “How big did you say his tab was?”

  “Couple hundred.”

  “Hmm. I thought it might be more.”

  “Hang on.” He shuffled to the other end of the bar and returned with an old-fashioned ledger, the small spiral-bound kind you can still find in office supply stores even though most people work out their finances on a computer. He pried a ballpoint pen from the wire loops, laid it on the counter, opened the book so I could watch him thumb to the marked page.

  “$217.50.”

  I dug my license out and placed it on the blank page, hoping my name was at least familiar enough for him to take me seriously. Then I picked up the pen and added a number 1 in front of DeBreaux’s outstanding balance.

  “Oh,” the bartender said.

  My reflection connected gazes briefly with two new visitors, my very best friend Agent Keith, and a black-haired stranger who’d looked longingly toward the bar at the wrong moment. Nobody except him seemed interested in buying a drink tonight. Maybe it wouldn’t matter.

  The bartender exhaled and turned to the last page. A napkin had been pressed there for a long time. The yellowed paper had no google-eyed logo because it predated the bar’s mascot. When I retrieved my license I used a corner to flip the napkin over. On the opposite side was a careful sketch of a butterfly, remarkable for a guy more used to guns than pens.

  It was Sandra Donovan’s butterfly. Exactly.

  “The really good ones were when he was half stoned.”

  “Did he ever sketch anything else?”

  “Nope.” My host budged the napkin back in place and shut the ledger. “Just butterflies. Always that same one, from memory. Some kinda obsession, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I kept the first one ‘cause it was neat. After ten years, you stop being impressed.”

  “He drew that ten years ago?”

  “Yessir.”

  I returned my license to my wallet and put a credit card in his hand. “Run it for the whole amount,” I said.

  My cash stayed behind as an extra tip. I’d gained enough to feel generous. Since I was on such a roll, I crossed the room behind Smally and went over to Keith. There’s a point when a person approaches that you stand instinctively; I passed that point and didn’t stop till Keith and I stood nose to nose. Lots of moving out of the way happened in my peripheral vision.

  “I’m tired of people following me,” I said. “Especially you.”

  We were so close neither could focus on both of the other guy’s eyes simultaneously. We’d been this chummy once before, in the grand lobby of the Airport Marriott. Good times.

  “You need to back off!” Keith’s voice rippled with intensity.

  I didn’t move, just tried to measure the man’s temperament, gauge what he might be capable of. He wouldn’t likely lash out in a room crowded with his own kind. They’d be more judgmental than me. Without witnesses, though, just the two of us and our consciences…

  New motion in the corner of my eye was too big to ignore. Smally clamped my elbow between viselike fingers. His presence didn’t appear to make Keith any more at ease. Tendons strained in his neck. I let Smally steer me toward the exit. Even with all the growling, we had to shoulder gawkers aside. Pennington splashed in through the glass door as we went out. He scarcely reacted to my passage. The man looked haggard.

  Sky attacked the ground outside in liquid charges. A rushing sound filled the streets, thrumming, ominous, the sound of the Cumberland pressing beyond its banks into First Avenue. Smally navigated by senses other than sight to a waiting Metro cruiser with the engine idling.

  “Ever find where he slept?”

  “Huh?” replied the mountainous officer as water crashed. “DeBreaux’s place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No.”

  “Try looking for a Nolman Endicott.”

  “How you spell that?”

  “Christ, sound it out! But hurry or those jackasses will beat you to it.”

  When I reached for the cruiser’s passenger door, a beefy hand prevented it opening. Smally’s expression wasn’t visible in the gloom. �
�Why’d you get up in that guy’s face?”

  “I think he shot DeBreaux,” I said.

  Smally’s grin was bright enough to see in any weather. He let the door go. I got in out of the rain, knowing for all that gigantic smile of Smally’s, if Keith really had pulled the trigger there wasn’t a damn thing either of us could do about it now.

  “Lieutenant said to ask if you have your car keys,” the cop in the driver’s seat blurted. Officer Poole was the one who’d found me against a tombstone in Mount Olivet. That seemed forever ago to me. Not to him; I made the kid nervous.

  “I do. Why?”

  “He had your car towed to the parking lot on Fourth, in front of the symphony.”

  “Schmermerhorn?”

  “Yessir.”

  That was big of Jerry. I’d have a hefty citation on my windshield for leaving the Charger without validation on an event night. Still, it beat retrieving the thing from impound. I watched shapes and lights go by outside where the rain dumped. The officer burped the siren to get across Broadway. We didn’t talk. Nashville always takes on a different character during heavy weather and I studied the city as we moved through it. Everything felt more frantic than usual, with electric colors in the storefronts sharply, defiantly defined.

  I thought about Clarence DeBreaux’s butterfly doodles. Before Ellis Ball’s illicit photographs, before JD brought her as his wife to Nashville, DeBreaux had seen Sandra Donovan naked. Nothing else could account for his decade-long obsession. I’d spent one night with the woman in the dark, and with enough ballpoints and beer napkins I knew I could recreate that tattoo myself.

  I had a hunch about Clarence and Sandra’s connection.

  I sincerely hoped I was wrong.

  Twenty-seven

  Once outside the squad car, I had the night to myself. Nobody watched me peel the waterlogged parking ticket off the Charger’s windshield. The short drive to my condominium garage went unobserved. Del and Nick weren’t in the lobby because Del’s loitering days had ended on Third Avenue and Nick had disappeared down the first hole he could find. The feds had their hands full and Metro could only spare a one-way chauffer. For a change I got to be that lonesome private eye you read about in novels.