Upside Down wm-2

by John Ramsey Miller

  A silver Lexus 300 pulled up, and the stout driver climbed into the passenger's seat. “You have our number and we will wait for your call,” the ill-dressed driver said, again in Russian.

  After Styer watched the Lexus drive away, he sat in the Rover until the Trammels and Nicky Green appeared. He doubted Green actually wore such ridiculous cowboy clothes when he was on a job, because he was utterly conspicuous-a flamboyant spectacle, a hairless decorated monkey.

  Hank carried his and his wife's suitcases. Nicky limped along using the cane to take weight off his damaged right leg. Styer took the fake Walkman out and put the earphones in place. He smiled as the voices of Hank Trammel and Nicky Green came up.

  After paying the parking toll, Styer remained within a quarter of a mile behind the Cadillac, comfortably within the unit's listening range.

  12

  Faith Ann felt safe in the cool hide. It was easy to understand why a sick animal would come in there to die.

  Soon after moving into the shotgun house on Danneel Street, Faith Ann had explored underneath it, and she had discovered a tin toy car and a few odds and ends abandoned in the dirt. In the cavity that had been formed when the concrete porch and front steps were poured, she'd found the mummified corpse of a small dog. She and Kimberly had dug a hole in the backyard and had given the animal a funeral, which included a hand-lettered wooden sign Faith Ann made that read

  HERE LIES A DOG, WHOSE NAME IS KNOWN ONLY TO GOD.

  The under-porch was in effect a steel-reinforced bunker, with a cement ceiling and walls. Unless someone with a flashlight came inside the space, they wouldn't find her. Faith Ann sat with her back pressed against a cool wall. What she had seen in her mother's office came into her mind. She pulled up her knees and rested her head on her arms. And she cried, as softly as she could manage.

  Faith Ann jerked upright when she heard a car pull up out front and two doors slam. Her watch said she had been hiding for two hours. Curious, she slipped out of the bunker and peered through the wood lattice, painted on one side the same dark gray as the house. Two men in suits strolled up to the gate, opened it, and came into the yard. The male patrolman came around from the side of the house where the small porch and the garage were.

  “No sign of anybody, Detectives,” she heard the patrolman say.

  “I didn't think she'd come here,” one of the men said. Faith Ann decided he was a detective.

  “Maybe she's at a friend's house. Take your partner and go on,” the other detective told the policeman. “We'll make the call if we need help. We have her keys and the warrant. We're going to search inside.”

  Faith Ann's heartbeat quickened. They had her mother's key ring. The idea of these people going through their things frightened her-but it made her mad too.

  The patrolwoman came around, and the uniforms left through the gate. The detectives opened the door but didn't go inside. After several minutes, a new car, big and black, arrived and parked across the street. Faith Ann watched as the driver's door opened and a woman with long dark hair climbed out. Faith Ann was studying her when another figure came into view. Terror seized her because this man was the same man who had killed her mother. As he approached the gate, he combed his dark oily hair back. One of the detectives opened the front door as the pair approached the steps.

  “She hasn't come back,” a detective said.

  “Where else is she going to go?” the other detective said. “Any adult she turns to is going to call the authorities.”

  “That's what we're going to find out,” the killer said in his familiar Spanish accent. “To discover everything we can about her.”

  Faith Ann crept to the back of the house, fighting panic. Her chest was heaving, her stomach lurching. Above her, four sets of shoes battered the hardwood as they too moved toward the rear of the house. When she was near the grids covering the floor furnaces, Faith Ann could make out the voices, but she couldn't hear what they were saying. The killer knew she had his negatives and he was looking for them… and for her. And he was a cop.

  She had to get away.

  Faith Ann slipped out from under the house. Crouching low, she scooted into the open garage. Her and her mother's bikes were connected to a galvanized eyelet by a plastic-coated steel cable. Her fingers trembled as she turned the four numbered cylinders so the right combination showed. Faith Ann removed the cable and looped it around her bike's crossbar before snapping the lock in the loops to secure it. After putting on her helmet, she closed the kickstand and rolled the ten-speed slowly out through the side door, which opened directly into the backyard next door. She went around that house and, after pausing to tuck her long hair inside the sweatshirt and raising the hood over the helmet, she jumped on board and pumped the pedals furiously.

  At the corner of Marengo Street, she turned left toward St. Charles Avenue. The cool wind blew into her face. Her skin stung a little because she'd cried so much. The backpack felt as light as a feather. School would be letting out soon, she decided. The sidewalks, buses, and streetcars would be filled with kids for the cops to check out.

  When she passed a patrol car stopped at the intersection with St. Charles, she cut her eyes. The cop inside hardly even glanced at her. She guessed nobody had thought that she might be riding a boy's ten-speed.

  13

  Marta hadn't chastised Arturo for his mistakes. He hadn't had any reason to imagine that there was a young girl in the lawyer's office, and he wasn't sure the girl had seen him there. It was clear to the police that she had certainly been there after the killings, because there was concrete blood evidence of that.

  Mr. Bennett hadn't said anything about there being negatives; just eight photographs, and there was no way to be sure that Amber hadn't hidden them somewhere before she went to the attorney's office. And Bennett told Arturo that according to the cops, there might possibly be a tape recording of the lawyer's conversation with Amber, since there were scores of recorded interviews in the lawyer's desk. The thing that caused Arturo's stomach to hurt was the thought that if the killings were recorded, his voice would be on it, because Amber had spoken his and Mr. Bennett's names. If there was a tape, and it wound up in anyone's hands outside the police department, they were in the worst possible kind of trouble. If that happened, none of Bennett's precious connections would be of any use at all.

  The two detectives might have been thoroughly corrupt, but they weren't particularly energetic or enthusiastic. Having no real personal stake in this, they searched rooms lackadaisically. As Arturo was searching for information with an urgency fueled by multilayers of fear, he kept running into their backsides. As far as he was concerned, the two detectives were just unnecessary and potentially dangerous witnesses. While the short one dumped out the dead lawyer's jewelry box, the big one rifled through the refrigerator searching for a snack.

  Marta called the detectives to the bathroom to show them that she had found the girl's clothes in the hamper. She pointed out the bloody knees in the jeans, the smears of blood on the discarded shirt.

  The short detective took the jeans and found four blast-darkened. 380 shell casings in the pocket. Those would match the handgun that Marta had planted beneath the clothes-the weapon which Arturo had used at the office. After noting that they had found it in the bottom of the hamper, the cops bagged it as evidence. They could collect the child's fingerprints and fix things so that a print would be discovered on the weapon.

  Since the clothes were there, they went through the house again, looking for the kid.

  Arturo and Marta searched for the negatives and the cassette tape. They found a file box filled with proof sheets and sleeves of negatives, which they took to pore over later. They found a dozen audiocassettes in a drawer. These Arturo put in the shopping bag along with the negatives. The cops collected all of the correspondence they found, including letters and bills, took the laptop computer and a lot of other odds and ends along with the girl's blood-soiled clothing, which they put in a paper evide
nce bag.

  As Marta and Arturo drove away down the street, Marta looked into a cluttered yard and saw a bulldog standing up on its hind legs, its forepaws on its smiling master's stomach. In her mind the dog became a rail-thin, filthy, dark-skinned waif who was kneeling to unzip the trousers of a porcine policeman while a young, hungry boy watched from the window of an abandoned car nearby. She shivered involuntarily.

  I had to do what I had to do, to survive.

  14

  Faith Ann spent three hours at the Audubon Zoo, wandering here and there, visiting her favorite animals, unable to take comfort from the familiarity. Occasionally she almost managed to forget what had happened that morning, but those terrifying memories kept returning, each time accompanied by gut-gripping fear and nausea.

  She counted the money she had taken from her mother's safe and discovered that she had a thousand dollars. She bought herself a green cap advertising the zoo, curled up the bill, and kept it tugged down low to her brows. At four-thirty, as the sky turned gray and the wind picked up the scent of moisture, Faith Ann left the zoo. She put on her yellow poncho, covering her backpack. She unlocked her bike, climbed up on it, and started pedaling off just as the first drops of rain fell.

  At six o'clock, after buying a Walkman at a Rite Aid, Faith Ann balanced herself on her bicycle at the pay telephone station, the last one of three mounted on the outside wall of the drugstore, and opened the yellow pages. The overhang protected her from the rain. Her heart sank. There were pages and pages of guesthouses. She didn't have any idea which one Uncle Hank and Aunt Millie were staying at, because her mother hadn't mentioned a name to her. How could she find them? A name floated into her mind. Rush Massey. A warmth filled her as she thought about her friend-sighted or not, perhaps the best friend she had. Maybe Rush or his father knew where Hank and Millie were staying. If anybody did, she decided, they would.

  Normally she and Rush communicated via computer using instant messenger or sent e-mails. Rush's computer was set up to vocalize his messages so he could respond on the keyboard. Faith Ann had visited with him on the telephone but all she could remember now was that his area code was 704. She took out her mother's cell phone and put her finger over the buttons, trying to recall which buttons she had pressed to get him. 704… 79… 704–795… And then her fingers remembered the entire number and she turned on the unit and pressed them for real. Leaning against the wall beside the pay phone, she listened as the cell phone rang.

  “Hello?” the soft voice answered.

  “Mrs. Massey, it's Faith Ann Porter. Is Rush there?”

  “Well, yes, just a minute, Faith Ann.”

  After a few seconds, Rush's voice came on the line. “Hey, Faith Ann!” he said excitedly. “Did Hank tell you I said hey?”

  She felt suddenly like she was on the verge of breaking into tears. She fought back the emotion. “No. Rush, I can't go into it right now, but I really need to find Uncle Hank right away. He's here in town, but I don't know where he is staying.”

  “He isn't staying at your house?”

  “No. And I don't know how to find out where they are. I hoped you might know, because there's about a million places.”

  “Daddy and Sean were with them today before they left. I can ask if they know.”

  “Please,” Faith Ann asked tightly. This felt like her last chance-a long shot.

  Faith Ann wished she could tell Rush what had happened, but it wouldn't do any good. And she couldn't risk that he might tell his father. She didn't want to get Rush's father involved. Rush had lost his mother, like she just had, and he'd lost his sight in the airplane accident that killed her. At the moment, the fewer people who knew about all of this, the better. Hank could tell Mr. Massey later, when it was over. She only had twenty-eight hours before Horace Pond's execution. Hank could do something by then.

  “Faith Ann, Sean doesn't know the name of it, but she said Millie said it's near Audubon Park. Does that help?”

  “Yes.” Faith Ann disguised her disappointment by infusing a positive lilt to her tone. “That will help a lot. Thanks and thank your mo… stepmom.”

  “Sure,” Rush said happily. “Anytime. Sean says you and the Trammels are going to come visit us in Washington this summer. We can do all kinds of stuff. Make sure they say they'll bring you, okay?”

  “I'll call you again really soon,” she promised, hating to break off the conversation. It was the first time since early that morning that she had spoken to someone who cared at all about her. But she didn't have time to talk.

  “Bye,” she told Rush.

  She ripped out the pages listing the guesthouses. She folded them and put them and the cell phone into the pouch in the front of her hooded sweatshirt.

  A hand gripped her shoulder, causing her to lose her balance and slide down the wall as the bike's tire turned at a severe angle to the wall she was against. Her cap slipped so its bill covered her eyes.

  “Well, well. What have we here?” a faintly familiar voice above her growled.

  “A little criminal, right in our laps,” a female voice added.

  Gripping the bike's crossbar, Faith Ann pushed her cap up and found herself staring directly up into the faces of the two patrol officers who had been guarding her home earlier. Both were wearing rain slickers, and their peaked caps had what looked like plastic shower caps on them. Their cruiser was parked behind them. She'd made a terrible mistake. She hadn't paid any attention to the cars coming and going around her. They had her.

  “Destruction of public property,” the male cop said triumphantly.

  “Vandalism,” the female said. “We could run you in for that, young man. Put you in jail. What if somebody needs those pages for an important call?”

  They don't know who I am!

  “I'm sorry,” Faith Ann said meekly. “I can put them back…”

  The cops both laughed out loud.

  “Glue them in?” the woman said, snickering.

  The male cop released Faith Ann's shoulder. He patted the top of her head. “Go forth, son, and sin no more,” he pronounced, cutting the Sign of the Cross into the damp air.

  “Thank you,” Faith Ann said. She righted her ten-speed and, almost falling down as she started unsteadily away, rode off as fast as she could pedal.

  15

  For two hours, Paulus Styer sat in his stolen Rover as motionless as a turtle on a log taking sun. He was parked so he could watch the Park View Guest House, a three-story yellow and white mansion located beside Audubon Park, diagonally across St. Charles Avenue from Tulane University. As he watched, he monitored the conversations around Hank. The rain that had begun at four had fallen without letting up.

  According to conversations he had overheard, Styer knew that Hank and Millie had stayed at the guesthouse on a prior visit to the city. Millie loved its tall ceilings, its ornate moldings, and the rooms decorated with antiques.

  Nicky Green had brought the two Trammels there directly from the airport, and for half an hour he and Hank had sat outside on the front porch talking about old times and mutual acquaintances, but for reasons of his own Styer found it all of interest. Styer used his pocket telescope to watch them. Nicky wore the brim of his cowboy hat down to where his eyebrows should have been. He kept chewing up the tips of toothpicks then spitting them into the yard and putting in fresh ones.

  Styer was listening to the conversation when Nicky said, “I couldn't help but notice that you're packing a handgun, Hank. You think that's smart?”

  “I feel naked without it. You know. New Orleans can be a dangerous place.”

  The mention of a gun had Styer paying closer attention. He hadn't imagined that Trammel would be armed, and he figured the old guy must have had the weapon in his stowed bags. Styer would have to take that into consideration. He knew that Hank was a highly decorated Green Beret veteran who spent two tours in Vietnam. Styer was prepared for whatever opportunity presented itself that evening. He wore a double-edged dagger in an ankle hols
ter, a. 40-caliber Glock under his left armpit, and he carried a shortened, quick-snap noise suppressor in his jacket pocket.

  Nicky continued, “Well, strictly speaking, toting a hog leg isn't legal. You're not badged up anymore, and I doubt you have a Louisiana concealed-carry permit. How'd you get it past security?”

  “I had it in pieces in two suitcases. Let me worry about that. You've got a P.I. license. Tell the cops I'm your gun caddy.”

  “You don't need it. You know what I can do with this cane, and I don't have to dig under my clothes for it. Hell, I could knock a mugger out before he could stick out his tongue. This here cane's got a lead core and the knob's solid brass. I'd sooner explain konking some jerk upside the noggin than blowing a hole through him.”

  “If I need to shoot my gun, I won't mind explaining that to a cop, prosecutor, judge, or jury.”

  “Better judged by twelve peers than carried by six friends,” Nicky pitched in. It took Styer a second to understand the reference to six friends. Pallbearers.

  Millie stepped out onto the porch. “Hank, you need to come rest a little while before dinner.”

  “I'll meet you at the bar across from the restaurant at seven-thirty sharp for a pre-dinner cocktail.” Nicky stood and he leaned over and spit into the flower bed. “I have a client coming by my hotel for a short meeting and I'll call a cab and meet you at the bar. We'll have a drink and go over to the restaurant, where I have us reserved up for eight sharp.”

  For most of the time before the Trammels left for their evening out, Hank's Stetson had been placed too near the room's television set for Styer to hear anything much but the programs and, when they were close to the cabinet, the sounds of them talking as they dressed. Styer had perfected his plan for the evening. He knew exactly how he would attain the prize beyond that-another checkmate.