Double Fake, Double Murder (A Carlos McCrary, Private Investigator, Mystery Thriller Series Book 2)

by Dallas Gorham

  Chuck rubbed his chin. “Still, it was ten more days before they made the ballistics match. Why the delay?”

  “Remember who the victim was, Chuck. Everyone thought it was a thug-on-thug shooting, probably with a stolen gun. The crime lab is always behind and they didn’t see a need to put a rush on it.”

  Chuck pushed the folder away. “And then they made the match, and the shit hit the fan.”

  Chapter 13

  Chuck pulled into the parking lot on the west side of the street in front of the warehouse at 8530 Northwest Second Avenue. Two cars remained in the lot. The area lay in deep shadow even though it was a few minutes before sunset. He locked his white minivan and carried the murder book to the middle of the street.

  Franco would have stopped his car about here.

  He studied the asphalt as he vectored back and forth. He pulled a Maglite to aid in searching the shadowed pavement. A bloodstain would be long gone. It was the rainy season after all. Still, you never know. He scoured the area but found nothing.

  Chuck studied the warehouse where he had parked. He pointed his index finger at the building and imagined Franco shooting in the dark. The company offices occupied the front of the building and the front wall was mostly windows. The areas between the windows and the entrance were two concrete blocks wide.

  He walked back to the warehouse to look for the three bullet holes where Franco’s shots had struck. The warehouse front had been repaired and repainted. He referred to the murder book’s file photo of the bullet holes twice before he found the telltale smooth spots where the bullets had hit. There they are. Hmm…nice, tight grouping for three shots. Funny that at least one bullet didn’t hit a window.

  That was the thought that had tickled the back of his mind when he first read the murder book in the precinct squad room: The tight grouping didn’t make sense. Setting the murder book on the ground, Chuck pulled out his notepad and wrote: If Franco was wounded, he couldn’t make such a tight grouping. If Franco shot first, how did he know where the shooter was standing? Did he see the shooter or hear him? Makes no sense.

  Chuck stepped onto the entrance porch and saw two recessed lights mounted flush in the porch ceiling. He looked out at the street and imagined what the shooter must have seen if he stood on the porch. I need to come back and check this at midnight, recreating the actual conditions.

  Taking a shooter’s stance, he triangulated the path the bullets would have taken by pointing at shoulder height above the spot where Franco’s body had been found. The bullet that missed would have hit that wall behind him.

  He studied the other buildings on both sides of Second Avenue. Why did the shooter pick this particular spot? Was it the best? Were any of the other buildings better?

  A murder book photo showed the location where the shooter’s bullet had lodged in the wall behind Franco. Crossing to the east side of the street, Chuck studied the gouge in the concrete-block wall. Standing in front of the gouged wall, he recalculated the line the shooter’s bullet had taken. Extending his arm, he pointed above the spot where Franco’s body had lain. The line did not point where he expected. That’s next door to the building the shooter fired from if the murder book is right. Maybe I have the wrong spot where Franco’s body was found. He pointed at the building where the three bullet holes were found. The line doesn’t cross where they found Franco’s body. He wrote his conclusions on the notepad.

  Chuck returned to the van. While he hadn’t had a breakthrough on the case, he had made progress by finding two anomalies: the grouping of Franco’s shots and the line the shooter’s bullets had taken. He pulled out of the lot and turned toward home.

  Chuck glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the porch lights flick on in the deepening shadows. He pulled over and wrote on his pad: Porch lights on either a timer or light-sensing device.

  Chapter 14

  Chuck already had a table when Dan Murphy stopped inside the door of the coffee shop and scanned the interior.

  Chuck stood and waved at him. They shook hands when he reached the table. “Thanks for coming.”

  “It’s the least I could do, Chuck. Jorge’s my partner, no matter what he’s accused of.”

  A server approached as they sat down. “What can I get you?”

  Murphy pointed at the display case. “One giant chocolate chip cookie and a large half-caf.”

  Chuck tapped his cup. “Just a refill.” He waited for the server to leave. “Will you help me with the investigation?”

  Murphy looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, like I said, he’s my partner, no matter what he’s done.”

  “You think he did it?”

  He shrugged. “Kelly and Bigs are good cops. I’m sure they looked at every possibility. Franco was a Grade A scumbag, and no one wants to pin this on Jorge. But the evidence points to him. That’s the logical conclusion to draw.”

  “But what does your gut tell you? Did he do it? Could he do it?”

  The server arrived. Murphy accepted his coffee and cookie and took a bite and a sip before he answered. “You think you know a guy...I mean, we’ve been partners for three years.”

  “Will you help me?”

  Murphy looked up. “Yeah, I’ll help.”

  “Great. First question: When you went to backup Jorge that night, what were you wearing?”

  “What was I wearing? No one remembers that shit.”

  “Humor me. What were you wearing?”

  Murphy frowned. His lower lip stiffened.

  Hmm. Something he doesn’t want to tell me.

  “Blue jeans and a tee-shirt. That’s what I wear after work and I don’t remember changing clothes.”

  “Thanks.” Chuck wrote on his notepad. “Who else would want Franco dead?”

  Murphy laughed mirthlessly. “Half the hoods in Port City.”

  “Give me three names to start.”

  He stared at the ceiling. “Toots Pollaio.”

  “Spell it.”

  He did. “Marcello Dominguez.” Murphy waited while Chuck wrote it down. “And Gus Guzman.”

  Chuck got as many details on the three men as Murphy could remember.

  Chapter 15

  Chuck had followed Toots Pollaio and a friend to a cheap hotel and waited outside until Pollaio emerged alone.

  Chuck watched through the tinted windows of his invisible minivan as Toots fumbled his car door open and fell into the driver seat. Chuck called his van “invisible” because there were eight gazillion white minivans in Port City. His was as distinctive as one bee in a beehive.

  Blue-black smoke poured from the exhaust of the rusted ’99 Maxima as Toots screeched into the traffic. A pickup truck swerved and slammed on its brakes. The truck driver gave Toots the finger from his open window. Toots drove on, oblivious.

  Chuck waited a few seconds and followed.

  Toots overshot the driveway and bumped over the curb into the lumpy parking lot of the Crooked Cue. His car bounced as it hit the parking bumper and he stopped at an angle across a faded stripe, taking up two spaces.

  Chuck drove fifty yards farther and parked at a convenience store across the street. He watched from his side mirror as Toots entered the bar. He locked the van and followed.

  Three neon-lit beer signs flashed in the picture windows that flanked the double glass doors. Green vinyl booths lined one wall and a half-dozen Formica tables filled the front. Four pool tables held the middle.

  Chuck grabbed a stool at the end of the bar and turned where he could watch the whole room.

  Toots stood in the back, talking to the bartender. The bartender pointed, and Toots turned to scan the sparse crowd. A thin, black man with an Afro stuffed under a knitted Rasta hat watched from a booth in the back corner. A black, red, green, and yellow dashiki draped his bony frame like a tent.

  Chuck noticed the bulges from Rasta Man’s merchandise, or maybe his gun, even from this distance.

  Toots walked over and sat across from Rasta Man.

  Th
e bartender noticed Chuck. “What’ll it be?”

  “Gimme a draft.”

  The bartender left.

  Chuck leaned against the wall and observed the business Rasta Man conducted across the room.

  When the bartender returned with the beer, Chuck laid his Port City Pilots baseball hat on the bar. He pretended to make a call on his cellphone, and walked toward the restrooms in the back. As he passed the booth, he snapped a picture of Rasta Man. When he left the restroom, Toots was gone.

  Chuck returned to his stool and nursed his beer while he pretended to send and receive occasional text messages.

  An hour later, Rasta Man had passed envelopes from underneath his dashiki to three different customers without leaving the booth.

  Chapter 16

  Kelly Contreras took the pictures from Chuck, brushing his hand with her fingertips. She flipped through them and handed them to Bigs. “I don’t recognize him. How about you, Bigs?”

  Bigs tapped the first picture with a finger. “I’ve seen this guy. Where did you take these, Chuck?”

  “That one was at the Crooked Cue. Toots bought drugs there from this guy. I followed him and took this one in front of a laundromat on Northwest 80th between 8th and 9th. The last one is at an apartment in the El Segundo Estates housing project. It was pretty late. Maybe he lives there. Here’s the address.”

  He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to Kelly.

  She glanced at the paper. “What’s the connection to the Castellano case?”

  Chuck shrugged. “Maybe none. Dan Murphy said that Toots Pollaio wanted to bring down Jorge. I followed Toots and he led me to this guy. I call him Rasta Man until you get me a name. Rasta Man may have taken over Franco’s territory. That makes him a suspect in my book.”

  Kelly turned the keyboard toward her. “Let me check something.” She entered the address Chuck had given her and scanned the screen. “Rasta Man’s name is Ashante Derringer. That’s his apartment.” She read off the screen. “Long list of arrests for possession with intent to distribute, DWI, assault, all against women. Derringer’s a pussy. He’ll hit a woman, but won’t attack anyone he thinks might fight back.”

  “Kelly, do you ever listen to yourself talk?”

  “Whaddya mean, Chuck?”

  “You called Derringer a ‘pussy.’ And you being a woman and all…”

  She laughed. “I’m among friends. Would you rather I used a euphemism for pussy, like ‘wuss’? Or maybe I should call him a wimp. How about that?” She tapped Chuck on the arm and grinned.

  “Regardless of whether he’s a pussy or a wimp, it sounds like Derringer wouldn’t start a gunfight with a hood as tough as Franco.”

  Kelly put a hand on his arm. “Yeah. On the other hand, Toots is pretty tough, even if he is gay. Like a boy named Sue. He had to be tough to survive. He has the balls to hit Franco.”

  Bigs shook his head. “But he’s not smart enough to pull off this frame.”

  Chapter 17

  Chuck scanned the printout Dan Murphy handed him. Marcello Dominguez’s rap sheet read like a Who’s Who of drug dealers. He’d spent two terms in Gentryville prison in the Florida Everglades. That was his apprenticeship in drug dealing. At age forty-seven, he was in the prime of life as a scumbag and ready to make the leap to the big time as head of Los Barones Españoles, “The Spanish Barons.”

  “His gang members call him El Duque, ‘The Duke.’”

  “Maybe he thinks it gives him a certain cachet.”

  Murphy laughed. “El Duque has made a connection with a drug cartel in Central America. The cartel corrupted a drug manufacturer down there and put it to work making Mollies for export to South Florida.”

  Chuck’s research said Mollies was slang for MDMA, chemical name Methylene­dioxy­meth­amphetamine—incredibly dangerous pills that sometimes killed the user instead of making them high.

  Murphy continued his story. “El Duque is setting up distributors for his new product line. I heard that Garrison Franco sold Mollies he got from a source in Colorado. Franco had been a competitor, so Dominguez had a motive to kill him.”

  Murphy and Chuck called an undercover cop who didn’t know where Dominguez lived, but told Chuck that El Duque hung out at a storefront on the outskirts of downtown Port City.

  #

  Chuck drove his minivan past the storefront. The two-story, concrete block building had peeling blue paint and busted windows on the second floor. Local gangs had tagged the front in years past, but the first floor windows were intact beneath the spray paint. A small parking lot adjoined the building. Layer after layer of overlapping graffiti covered the wall.

  The Spanish Barons used it as a clubhouse. The parking lot held three motorcycles, two old sedans, a pickup truck, a cargo van, and a shiny Lexus. The Lexus license plate matched the one Murphy had told Chuck belonged to Dominguez.

  Three young hoods sat in folding chairs on the front porch, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer.

  Chuck parked a hundred fifty yards down the street near a convenience store with a lot of in-and-out traffic. He watched the building and parking lot with binoculars. Murphy had given him Dominguez’s mug shot and the undercover cop had shown the two men some video, so Chuck knew what Dominguez looked like even if he didn’t drive off in the Lexus.

  Chuck watched for a few hours. The three-man crew on the front porch rotated regularly. One man went inside and another took his place every half hour.

  Two Spanish Barons came out of the clubhouse door and walked up the sidewalk on the other side of the street from where Chuck had parked. He put his binoculars on the seat and tapped the steering wheel in time to the music from his ear buds. If they noticed Chuck at all, he wanted to appear like he was killing time waiting for someone.

  The two hoods passed by and crossed the street behind the van. Chuck watched them in his mirrors as they entered the convenience store. Two minutes later they came out, each carrying a case of beer.

  Chuck watched them all the way back to the clubhouse.

  Later a man Dominguez’s height came out the front door without another man going in. Because of the sun’s angle, Chuck couldn’t see his face, but the body language of the three gangsters on the front porch told him what he wanted to know.

  They almost sprang to attention when he stopped on the porch. It was El Duque all right.

  The Lexus exited the parking lot and turned right. Chuck had figured that Dominguez would head west and he’d guessed right. He followed a block behind.

  El Duque turned north into a narrow side street. Chuck followed at what he hoped was a safe distance. He figured Dominguez had to be at least a couple of hundred yards ahead before he rounded the same corner.

  A half-block into the side street, Chuck glanced in his rearview mirror and saw two old sedans turn into the street behind him, blocking both lanes. Up ahead the street dead-ended at one of Port City’s numerous canals. El Duque had parked his Lexus and was standing beside it with three other men watching Chuck approach.

  Parked cars lined both sides of the street and made the traffic lanes too narrow for a three-point turn. Chuck sped another forty yards to a driveway on the right and careened into it, pulling all the way to the steel garage door. He slammed the van into reverse and squealed his way backwards across the street. He banged his rear bumper into a parked car, jerked the van into drive, floored it, and spun the steering wheel hard right. He bounced off another parked car and headed straight for the two sedans that blocked the street.

  Two men jumped out of each sedan and took cover behind the open car doors, guns aimed directly at Chuck. I hope to God those are pistols. If they’re automatics, I’m a dead man.

  A small gap between the facing doors of the two sedans, maybe a foot wide, was his only hope.

  Tally-ho!

  He floored the minivan and aimed down the center stripe of the street. Bullets smashed into the front of the van. Spider-web cracks spread across his windshield, obs
curing his vision, but he could smell the smoke and feel the steam gushing from under the hood. Sticking his head out the side window, he tried to stay equidistant between the cars parked on either side of the street. Thirty yards before impact, the gangsters cut and ran. He sheared off the passenger door on one car and the driver’s door on the other as he scraped between the sedans to freedom.

  Back to the drawing board, he mused, as he skidded into the oncoming traffic.

  Chapter 18

  Chuck bought another used minivan. This time he picked a silver one, also ubiquitous and unremarkable.

  He waited three days for the heat to die down, then set up a leap-frog tail on Dominguez. Snoop and Chuck used two vehicles and swapped off every mile or so. Chuck didn’t want to be spotted again. Next time he might not be so lucky.

  Dominguez left the clubhouse and drove in the direction of Little Havana. No surprise there. But when he arrived in Little Havana, he kept traveling west until he was almost to the Everglades. He pulled up to the pink-stucco entrance to an upscale, gated community and waited while the wrought-iron gate rolled open.

  Chuck hung back and watched as best he could to see where the Lexus went, but it pulled out of sight within a few seconds of passing the gate.

  He was about to leave when another resident pulled to the gate. Chuck tagged onto their bumper and followed their car through. He drove around for a while, but never found the Lexus.

  #

  “Tell me again why you followed this guy?” Kelly looked at the picture of the front gate with Dominguez’s Lexus passing through.

  “Dominguez was a big competitor of Garrison Franco in the market for Mollies and had a motive to kill him. This is where I lost him—this community in Little Havana. Got any idea how to find out which house he lives in?”

  Kelly was confused. “Who told you that he and Franco competed?”