Next Last Chance

by Jon A. Hunt

  Solitude extended to my place on the nineteenth floor. She’d have been a bigger idiot than me to show up again. JD was on his way home. After an environmentally irresponsible shower, I dried with my favorite towel, sank into the living room sofa and contemplated rain patterns on the windows till sleep found me. I didn’t dream. Not even about butterflies.

  My eyes opened at 4:45. I didn’t want them to. We’d drunk the last of the coffee yesterday. Staying on the sofa was pointless, so I revisited the shower and stayed there till stimulants were no longer necessary. All my regular shirts were in the hamper; I put on jeans and buckled the Smith & Wesson’s shoulder rig over a t-shirt. Breakfast consisted of the rest of the box of donuts. A message light pulsed on my phone next to the donuts.

  Rafferty had texted an address. On Second Avenue North, in East Germantown. He or Smally had located DeBreaux and Nolman Endicott’s shared residence, apparently. It would’ve been a longish stagger for a drunk, not impossible. The message’s receipt time explained why I’d woken. I made a mental note never to whine to Jerry about staying up nights.

  Rain drummed against the windows. Dry feet would be a short-lived luxury. My jacket, draped over the back of the sofa, looked only moderately damp now. A white triangle peered from one of the pockets. Somehow I’d brought home a cocktail napkin from Brother Buttons.

  Fabric and paper resisted parting. When I extracted the napkin, the cartoon monk’s face was torn. The handwriting stayed intact. I hadn’t been quite as ignored as I believed.

  14. Nolman

  15. Nolman

  16. Favor.

  Roaring through downtown streets at interstate speeds ought to have gotten me noticed. It didn’t, when I wanted it to. I blasted under blinking traffic lights without slowing.

  Rafferty wasn’t answering his phone. I called from every intersection. By the curve around the Capitol I gave up and yelled “9-1-1” at the hands-free microphone.

  “I’m sorry, can you repeat?” said the operator.

  “Rafferty! Lieutenant Rafferty, now! He needs to hold off for backup wherever he is!”

  “You’re very hard to hear. Is that your car in the background?”

  I clipped a sharp left by jumping the curb. My alignment would be shot. I banged the end-call button and accelerated after the back end slammed down again. Maybe the operator would triangulate my call. Or did they need a Danny Ayers on staff for that?

  Next came a short sprint on Gay Street, another left and straight like a bat out of hell up Second. I tried Rafferty’s number again. Four rings preceded the computer voice of his automated mail system. I stopped calling and concentrated on driving like a maniac. The neighborhood’s character slid toward industrial with dark warehouses and a few dreary rental houses. Nobody bought residential property here unless they meant for somebody else to live in it. The last time I’d been in the area a troupe of supposed renegade federal agents nearly beat me to death. Out-of-plumb stop signs took over for the flashing traffic lights. I ran those, too.

  Oh, look: an incoming call from 9-1-1. Frantic red and blue lights appeared, too, distorted in my mirrors by the rain. I put the Charger into a slide in spite of stuttering antilock brakes and came to a diagonal stop behind Smally’s ramshackle pickup truck.

  The antique was one of five vehicles present. An unmarked Metro Impala idled with lights doused in front of the truck and two more plain sedans were parked across the street. One of these might have been Honeywell’s, thought all the feds’ cars looked similar. In the weedy drive sat Nolman’s vintage blue Mustang.

  Smally half sprawled across the Mustang with his semiautomatic sighted on me. The red and blue lights were too high—an ambulance, not a police car—but if I did anything too suddenly EMTs could just as easily corroborate Smally’s self-defense claim. I powered the passenger window down and made sure both hands were visible atop the steering wheel.

  “Smally, it’s me. Bedlam.”

  The Ford’s hood popped as he shoved back to his feet. The ambulance sloshed alongside me and stopped, diesel engine clattering, siren mute as it had been since I’d first seen the thing. None of the doors opened. Paramedics aren’t allergic to rain but they are better trained to deal with other people’s bullet wounds. Smally pivoted his weapon in a safe direction and motioned me into the house. The EMTs didn’t emerge till he gave another come-hither.

  Weeds clutched at my knees except where they’d been flattened by the Mustang’s mismatched tires. The main difference between driveway and lawn was that the weeds were taller where nobody drove. Two other houses loomed nearby, grim husks as lifeless as I’d once supposed Hillbriar’s old guest house to be. None of these had patched-up, over-painted vestiges of former grandeur. They’d never fallen, surprised, on hard times—they’d been built specifically for hard times—each was a shit-hole from day one.

  The porch had three concrete steps and no eaves. Smally blinked in the rain beside it while the paramedics collected their gear from the ambulance.

  “Rafferty?”

  “Inside,” said Smally.

  “Endicott?”

  “Him, too.”

  The house’s interior surprised me. General filth and disarray, I’d anticipated; not the brightness. Apparently, Nolman—or DeBreaux—feared peeping Toms as much as the dark, and had invested a small fortune in opaque blinds for every window. Every ceiling light and house lamp blazed sufficiently to cause me to squint.

  Nolman wasn’t hard to find.

  A simple wing-wall separated the entry from a cramped living room. On the linoleum before the wall sprawled a thin dead man with a ponytail, his neck twisted so one gray cheek pressed into the shallow red pool he’d made. Two divots scarred the wall above him, the first at eye level, the second a foot lower. Each wore a grisly wet halo. I squatted on my heels for a closer look at what I didn’t want to see.

  The corpse stared nowhere with one startled eye. Where the second eye should be was only a hole, dribbling fluid yet open to the back of the skull for light from the living room to shine through. Nolman couldn’t have looked half as fearsome while alive.

  “Same eye, both shots, on his way down.” Rafferty said so from the kitchen.

  14. Nolman

  15. Nolman

  “Move please.”

  Two sturdy EMTs entered the house behind me with a gurney between them. I sidestepped to avoid disturbing a crime scene. Paramedics and gurney tracked right through the blood, less concerned with evidence than with a life still salvageable in the kitchen. I followed.

  Jerry was unharmed. He sat on the grimy floor pressing a dishrag against an unconscious woman’s chest to keep her from bleeding to death. He seemed quite motherly and concern was plain on his face, which startled me. I guessed he was more used to everyone already being dead when he arrived. The paramedics bent and hid all but reddish hair and form-fitted slacks.

  For all the good it’d done her, Andy Honeywell had beaten me to the punch.

  Not till the ambulance’s engine dimmed to a vague chortle did the driver add a siren to flashing lights. They’d departed without mentioning whether Honeywell might pull through. The block was lined now with Metro cruisers as far as rain allowed me to see. Like the ambulance, they’d come without fanfare. Smally spoke through a window with cops in the nearest car. He hadn’t holstered his gun. A quartet of plainclothes detectives hovered in the driveway till Rafferty gave them permission to enter. We adjourned to the living room. The place had been mildly upended, suggesting items sought had been quickly found. Rival butterfly collectors would know where to look.

  “I’m not expecting much here.” The Lieutenant worked on his fingernails with a dish towel from the kitchen. “Maybe we’ll have better luck combing the streets.”

  “Pennington never has,” I remarked.

  “Screw Pennington. How’d you know about this?” He gestured with a thumb at the mess in the entry, currently being chronicled and photographed fifty different ways by the detectives. />
  “The bartender at Brother Buttons.”

  “He didn’t have a name. You did.”

  I coaxed my napkin message from my pocket and gave it to Rafferty. His eyes showed more fire than usual. His club fingertips held the napkin over a table lamp. I’d obviously handled it, so forceps and an evidence bag were pointless.

  “Who’s ‘Favor’? Not her.”

  “I don’t know. Rico didn’t shoot Honeywell.”

  Hedgehog brows attacked each other in preparation for a question I didn’t give him a chance to ask. “She wasn’t on that list and she isn’t dead.”

  Yet.

  “She was conscious when I found her. We talked. Mostly I did, trying to keep her awake. Know any Keiths?”

  The second unmarked car…

  “One,” I growled. “He was in Printer’s Alley last night. One of Pennington’s boys. Guess I could’ve made introductions.”

  “Maybe you still can. I want you around for the search. Material witness or something like that. But you might as well quit trying to convince me your business ain’t my business.”

  For the second time in twelve hours I rode shotgun in a police car. With the same anxious officer, no less. Rafferty wanted me on hand and out of his hair, and Smally was too busy to babysit or even crack open a paperback. Officer Poole got me.

  Every street and alley in a half-mile radius of Nolman’s place had at least one Metro cruiser prowling it slowly, searchlight probing through the downpour. More men worked the area on foot. God forbid someone held up a liquor store across town. Rain drummed maddeningly on the patrol car’s roof. Mist oozed from puddles and slithered up from the river, so dense it hardly mattered there was a sun somewhere above us. I didn’t much care about the weather, the cop beside me, radio chatter, anything external: my focus turned inward.

  How had Honeywell, Keith, and Rico all tracked Nolman down ahead of me?

  What else could Nolman have, besides naked film of JD’s wife most likely stolen from a drunken roommate, that was worth dying for? Or were the pictures in fact that valuable? How many $85,000 installments bought two bullets through your eye?

  Why had Rico made such a point of keeping me in the loop?

  And who was 16. Favor?

  The cruiser’s right front corner dove with a splash and a bang.

  “Sorry. Pothole.”

  I waved off Poole’s apology. Potholes were what I needed. This one had jolted a puzzle piece in place. “Can you get Lieutenant Rafferty on the radio?”

  The kid grabbed the mike and broke into the radio chatter to ask for the boss.

  16. Favor.

  Favor wasn’t anybody’s name.

  “What do you need, Poole?” Rafferty’s bear voice came over the speaker. I hadn’t expected him to conform to standard radio jargon. Poole handed me the handset.

  “We’re going at this wrong,” I said.

  “No shit.”

  Poole grimaced in spite of himself.

  “If we’re looking for someone who wants to stay lost,” I said, “why give me a list?”

  Over a police radio Rafferty’s inscrutable grunt sounded like a badger in a hole.

  “What if he wants to be found?”

  “Keith or Rico?” He was being facetious.

  “Rico.”

  “Then he’s not doing a very good job of it.”

  Past thrashing windshield wipers, the alley was ending. Another car’s reflective markings flared in front of us. The place was crawling with cops. I pressed the talk button again.

  “I think he wants me to meet him. Alone.”

  Nothing from the radio. We got no sound at all till Poole turned out of the alley and started down the next predetermined street. Then: “Think your time’s up?”

  “I’m not on that list, either.”

  “Ty—”

  “Look, he could’ve shot me any time he wanted. There must be a reason he hasn’t. If you wanted an out-of-the-way spot to meet around here, where would you go?”

  Silence again, except for the rain, wipers, engine.

  “Jerry?”

  “Shit. Give the mike back to Poole.”

  I did. Rafferty’s voice carried no emotion now.

  “Poole, you’re on Van Buren?”

  “Yessir, headed west.”

  “Turn around and take Bedlam to Taylor and Adams. That abandoned meat plant on the river. We’re always running transients out of it. Radio in when you’re there.”

  He didn’t wait for me to reclaim the handset. “Ty, that’s where he killed Muriel Donovan’s butler. A man can hide a hundred different ways in that place and you’d never see him at high noon on a clear day. Watch your ass.”

  Twenty-eight

  The old Neuhoff meat packing plant was intrinsic to death by design and Rico had killed worse than beef cattle there once already. Poole applied the brakes alongside dimly visible chain link fencing. The headlights glared back at us, reflected off a virtual wall of precipitation.

  “You wanna go in there? Private property?”

  “How quick can you get a warrant?” I asked.

  The kid shook his head.

  “Feel free to come back and arrest me if I make it back out.”

  “Yessir,” he said.

  I stepped out into drenching cold, and watched him drive off. Per our arrangement he let the siren hiccup one time. No roof lights. Hopefully the signal would be interpreted as: Hey, just little ol’ me, like you wanted, don’t shoot.

  Morning had worn on. It wasn’t exactly dark. Occasional snarls overhead suggested more might be in store than just a godawful lot of rain. I’d have welcomed lightning. Seeing farther than ten feet couldn’t hurt, even if only for dazzling one-second bursts. I was just able to read signs on the fence when my hand met rough woven galvanized wire.

  Keep Out.

  Private Property.

  No Trespassing.

  The signs had been fastened to the fence separately, demonstrating increased frustration of whoever owned the property with whoever ignored the signs. The newest thou-shalt-not prohibited photography. How many trespassers brought cameras? A gate cut into the barrier. The gate hung ajar. Rusty chain and the innards of a mangled padlock dangled from it. The lock had been opened with a 9mm universal key not long before my arrival.

  Looked like an invitation to me.

  Beyond the gate waited concrete slabs separated by snatching brambles. The Smith & Wesson led me beneath rusted beams, onto a ramp with shallow crumbling steps. Decades ago it had channeled cattle up into the slaughterhouse. The place must have been especially unpleasant in mid-August. Now, rainwater gushed furiously around my feet on its way to rejoin the swollen river. There was no stench of manure, no bawling steers, no trucks coming or going.

  Death still hung around.

  Keith was stretched face-down at the top of the ramp. The cows had gotten farther. I knelt to check for a pulse and discovered the reason he had none. He’d been shot through the throat. I picked up his fallen sidearm and released the magazine. Assuming him the type who kept a round in the chamber, he’d fired his weapon twice.

  Once at a padlock?

  Once at Andy Honeywell?

  I surveyed my surroundings through the water cascading from my hat brim. At the bottom of the ramp, the overfilled river swirled in grimy beige. To my left and right I couldn’t see anything. Up ahead rose angular darkness and splintered planks, Neuhoff’s main building, dead and empty since it shut down in the Seventies, except for an orange glow that warmed cinderblocks where enough ceiling remained to hold out the rain. The glow beckoned and warned me away at the same time. I’d always been lousy at spotting warnings.

  The light turned out to be a small fire. Against a permanently closed steel door piled debris burned fitfully, wadded litter, rags, oil cans, dirty smoky stuff. A gray plastic canister the size of an aspirin bottle collapsed on itself and flared. Back when I’d needed 35mm film to do my job, I remembered buying the film in little gray
plastic canisters. I had no doubt what had been in this one and who’d been killed to get it. The skin at the back of my neck tightened.

  “Hello, Mr. Bedlam,” said Rico from the shadows beside me.

  Seconds passed, interminable seconds when I could sort the different beats of individual raindrops and my own pulse, with enough emptiness between each for a cup of coffee. Then he spoke again and everything accelerated to a furious patter.

  “Please, come inside. Out of the rain. We will talk.”

  “You want me to drop this here?”

  “No, keep it. It is an excellent gun. Makes no difference to me.”

  I gradually lowered the .45’s muzzle and stepped toward the fire. Air moved freely through the space, a sort of bricked-in anteroom before the last door separating bovine life from T-bone steaks and shoe leather. The high windows hadn’t contained glass for years and the smoke found a way out. It still stunk of burning trash.

  “You like what they’ve done with the place since your last visit?” This may have been too smart, but I wanted to keep him talking. I desperately wanted it.

  Rico moved into the failing firelight. He was of average height and build, his features faintly Hispanic like his accent, his eyes dark and fierce. He was much as I expected and I’d seen him previously. Yesterday, via the mirror behind the bar in Brother Buttons. His jacket was made of soft black fabric that made no sound when he moved. A matte black semiautomatic, with a cylindrical silencer and peculiar-looking electronic sights, pointed downward as mine did, though his supremely relaxed demeanor warned me he could bring that gun up and put two bullets between my eyes before I completed a challenging thought. That warning, I noticed.

  “You know about the last time,” he said simply.

  “I had inside information.”