Bullet Beach

by Ronald Tierney

  Shanahan felt as if he was diving into a pool now. He sensed the danger.

  ‘Your son was sure happy to see you,’ Maureen said, eyes opening as a few streams of light came through windows where shades had not been completely drawn. Morning was coming.

  The word ‘son’ had an odd sound to Shanahan.

  ‘I didn’t have much to say.’

  ‘You never have much to say. They don’t mind.’

  The lunch had gone well. Son, son’s wife, son’s son were there. Wine was sipped. The five of them walked across the Great Highway to Ocean Beach. They weathered the wind, the blowing sand that bit at them, watched the kite flyers who ran around with boundless energy, who were undaunted by the treacherous drafts of air.

  His grandson, now a young man, was bright and warm. He encouraged them to come spend some time with them in wine country. Shanahan remembered how Maureen’s eyes brightened at the suggestion.

  ‘I’m glad we stayed over a day,’ Maureen said.

  ‘Me too,’ Shanahan said. The stay-over broke up the dreary, prison-like hours in the plane. The airlines, it seemed to Shanahan who remembered when flying was something elegant, were doing their best to make their trips unpleasant.

  Cross didn’t get out the next morning. He spent an additional night. Lieutenant Collins backed off his initial offer when it was clear that the man who lived in the house on Drexel and who owned the Lincoln Town Car wasn’t the man who supposedly came upon them with a shotgun. This, said Collins, destroyed the time line. This meant Cross and Slurpy had hours to set all this up – find the victims, shoot them, and attempt to hide them in a locked garage on East Washington.

  ‘One lie,’ Collins said, ‘that’s all it takes for me.’

  James Fenimore Kowalski finally got him out by threatening to sue for wrongful death on behalf of Slurpy Thurman, which he thought he might do anyway. Slurpy, Kowalksi contended, had a well-below average IQ, and, not knowing there was a body in the trunk, was merely retrieving the shotgun, which was probably true.

  The police were edgy. On one hand, they had to stand behind the shooting no matter what. Deny, deny, deny that firing was premature and that they were not really threatened. It was likely that most of the likely interest groups would support the police. On the other hand, the police weren’t eager to make it a public debate and Collins didn’t believe that Cross shot a couple of young people and threw them in a trunk.

  Kowalski made bail for Cross and stopped by Cross’s place to take care of Shanahan’s dog and cat as he had done the night before.

  ‘You know a five-year-old could pick that lock,’ Kowalksi said.

  ‘Have to be that old, you think?’ Cross asked. They went to Harry’s bar on Tenth and sat in a booth at the back.

  ‘Where’s Shanahan?’ Kowalski asked.

  ‘In Thailand. Either fried or drowned.’

  ‘Sounds like boiled to me.’ Kowalski wasn’t as big as he looked. He was probably just six-foot, and no more than 200 pounds. But he had a large head and it looked like it was cut from granite. He had jagged features, long black hair with silver streaks, swept back. He looked like he was moving when he wasn’t. He always wore a black suit, a white shirt, no tie, and motorcycle boots. It was the same whether he was riding his Harley or arguing in court.

  ‘So he went, after all?’

  ‘You knew?’ Cross said.

  ‘I know he wanted the name of a guide, but I didn’t know when – or what it was all about, for that matter.

  Though Shanahan probably wouldn’t have minded Kowalski knowing, the younger detective knew the older one kept things to himself.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Kowalski asked, sipping a glass of bourbon.

  ‘Find out who set me up.’

  ‘Is that what you think happened?’

  Cross nodded. ‘I don’t know if it was personal. I mean I don’t know if someone wanted to set me up. But that someone wanted to set someone up. It was good.’

  Kowalski sat back, looked up to catch Harry’s attention. He lifted his glass, indicating another. Cross still had half a beer.

  ‘Think about it. They steal a car. Kill people. Put them in a car and park in the same spot they stole it from.’

  ‘How often do people check the trunk of their car unless there’s an emergency?’

  ‘Until it smells,’ Cross said. ‘Even then time has passed.’

  Kowalksi nodded again, thanked Harry for the refill.

  ‘You coming along when you did was just a coincidence?’ Kowalksi continued.

  ‘Was it?’ Cross shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But if it was part of a plan, then they are even smarter. In addition to the clever plan to abandon the bodies, they set up a murder suspect. It forces the police in a direction other than the killer’s. If nothing else, it complicates the case.’

  ‘Is anybody that good?’

  One of the bodies had been identified, Cross told Kowalksi. A Marshall Talbot, 26. He lived in Woodruff Place. The body of a young woman was not identified or just not revealed. The only other thing Cross knew was that the man whose car was repossessed was Wilbert Morgan. He worked as a bank guard and was one of several laid off after various buy-outs, consolidations, and bankruptcies. Because he lost his job, he was about to lose his car. And he wasn’t the man who came upon Cross with the shotgun.

  ‘Let me know if I can help,’ Kowalksi said. ‘In fact, just let me help.’

  ‘I can’t afford you.’

  ‘Oh I’m in it for the satisfaction, mostly. I’d like to find the bastards who killed a couple of kids.’

  ‘You said “mostly.”’

  ‘Yeah, well I got to keep you out of trouble. You could become expensive and you don’t offer any fringe benefits.’

  Cross took a sip of beer, surveyed the dark, empty bar. He needed to get out of there, get someplace cheerful or at least distracting. The thought he was about to share came out of the blue and he was ashamed that it took him so long to figure it out.

  ‘James?’ Cross said.

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘They knew it was me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The guy was there. Waiting. Ready to set me up. He had to know I was coming.’

  ‘Maybe he just knew someone was coming.’

  ‘I’m the only one Edelman sends on repos.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘He doesn’t have that much work that he needs a posse. And we have a deal to keep it off the books. I don’t report it as tax income. He doesn’t have to go through all that reporting. I get some cash to pay someone like Thurman. I get a car off the lot. Works out well. So Edelman knew who was going to pick up the Town Car.’

  There were things to do, but it was too late to do them. Tomorrow Cross would pay a visit to Edelman and to the man who owned the Town Car.

  Shanahan thought there was something antiseptic about such trips – from the narrow impersonal space of the plane to the vast impersonal space of the airports. That set up the shock of the real, teeming world outside – the sudden overwhelming heat, the buzzing swarms of motor scooters, the toxic smell of exhaust. He could see the air. That couldn’t be good.

  ‘We’re here,’ Maureen said cheerfully after a moment registering the impact of reality.

  ‘We are,’ Shanahan said. He had arranged for a guide to meet them at the hotel and was told that he should take a taxi from the airport. ‘The tuk-tuks are fun if you are twelve,’ the man said. ‘The taxis are air conditioned.’

  A small orange Toyota with a Buddha dangling from the rearview mirror made itself available. Baggage was stuffed in the front and in the trunk and Maureen and Shanahan were stuffed in the back seat. Off they went, eventually entering an even greater density of humanity.

  In maybe half an hour, Maureen and Shanahan were checking into a pleasant, very inexpensive hotel. A slender, well but comfortably dressed, fortyish man, who had lingered about the desk, introduced himself.

  As Shanahan struggled wi
th the name, the man smiled. ‘Use Channarong.’

  ‘Deets,’ Maureen said, pointing to Shanahan. Then to herself, ‘Maureen.’

  ‘Maureen and Deets, nice to meet you. I am your guide if you like.’

  ‘Let me find someone to get the bags upstairs and then we’ll talk,’ Shanahan said.

  ‘You going to tell the little lady to go sit by the pool,’ Maureen said, ‘while you go do guy stuff?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought you might like to freshen up?’

  ‘Do I need to?’

  ‘Just a question. Trying to be thoughtful.’

  Maureen’s eyes half shut and she grinned just a little. She nodded.

  ‘I’ve just been played,’ she said to Channarong.

  He nodded, face giving away nothing.

  ‘We’re going to grab a drink . . .’ Shanahan looked at Channarong.

  ‘Trolley’s. Outside to the right. A couple of doors down.’

  ‘That the name of the bar or are you suggesting I go for a ride?’ Maureen asked.

  ‘Name of the bar.’

  A young man had put the baggage on a cart and he and Maureen headed for the elevator.

  Shanahan followed Channarong back out into the heavy hot air. The noise of the city kept them from speaking until they were inside a bar – one that looked as if it could be back in Indianapolis. Clean, lots of wood, a wide-screen TV over the bar. Shanahan ordered a beer and got something in a green bottle with an elephant logo. Channarong drank water. Shanahan was perspiring, even after that short walk. Channarong wasn’t.

  ‘Mr Kowalski speaks highly of you.’

  ‘He is a very interesting man,’ Channarong said. ‘Very good to people. Getting someone out of a jail here is not so easy unless you know how to talk to people. Your friend picked up on local customs very quickly.’

  ‘I take it you know the city.’

  ‘All my life.’

  ‘The rest of the country?’

  ‘Some places better than others.’

  ‘What is your relationship with the police?’ Shanahan asked.

  ‘I was an officer at one time.’

  ‘No longer.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’ Shanahan asked.

  ‘Political.’

  ‘They don’t like you?’

  ‘I have many friends as well as enemies. If I may ask, what are you doing here that you are worried about the police?’

  Shanahan shook his head. ‘Probably no worries. Missing person.’

  ‘Daughter, son?’

  ‘Brother.’

  Channarong nodded. ‘He did something bad to you?’

  ‘No. Just trying to find him.’

  ‘Pardon me, but does he owe you money?’

  ‘You have good questions. No.’

  ‘You have a picture?’

  ‘No. Haven’t seen him in sixty years. I have no idea what he looks like. Probably a little like me – maybe heavier, maybe not, maybe taller, maybe shorter.’

  The guide smiled a mischievous smile.

  ‘I know. We all look alike anyway.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have said that,’ Channarong said.

  ‘No, I suspect you wouldn’t have said it out loud.’ Shanahan took a sip of his beer. The lighter Thai beer was perfect for the hot weather. ‘One more thing, would you consider looking into something before tomorrow. Begin today, is what I’m saying. Can you?’

  Channarong nodded.

  Shanahan reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it, handed it to the guide. As he read it, Shanahan continued.

  ‘I need to know what my brother was accused of smuggling and any other details you can find out about the case. Who did he hit? Who arrested him? Has he been brought up on charges since then? Is there a home address in there anywhere?’

  Channarong nodded again, looked at his watch. ‘Yes, I can probably find that out. I need to get started right away.’ He took another sip of water and bowed slightly to Maureen who had arrived as he prepared to leave.

  ‘I hope I didn’t frighten him away,’ Maureen smiled.

  ‘He couldn’t withstand the power of your beauty.’

  ‘That must be it. I can barely stand it myself.’

  FOUR

  Howie Cross was a problem for the police. That was how James Fenimore Kowalski explained it to Cross as they headed for breakfast at Dufour’s in Irvington. There wasn’t enough to hold Cross, the attorney told him, but it was ‘plenty bad enough.’ Not only were there bodies in the trunk of a car he was driving, it appeared he and his dead accomplice were trying to hide the victims in a garage at the back of a used car lot in the middle of the night. What the police really needed was to have a wall of evidence or a witness to the shooting or at least a clear motive to hold him because if he were found not guilty then Slurpy’s sloppy death would be a dark cloud.

  ‘So,’ Kowalksi said, ‘you are under suspicion, deep suspicion, but are free to go.’

  ‘At the moment.’

  ‘Very much at the moment. Did you know you’re eating at an historic spot?’ Kowalski said, reading the menu. ‘Used to be a drugstore and it was robbed by John Dillinger in 1933 says here. Cross and Dillinger. This place is a real magnet for tough guys, it seems.’

  Cross tried to smile, but the only thing that was about to brighten his day was the pancakes, eggs and sausage coming his way. Kowalksi ordered Mama Dufour’s French Toast.

  ‘What are you planning to do?’ Kowalski asked.

  ‘Talk to the guy who owned the Town Car, find out who was in the trunk and, I hope, what they’d done to get there.’

  ‘Where to?’ Kowalski asked as they stepped out on to Washington Street.

  ‘I need to get to a car. Can you drop me at the car lot?’

  It was a straight shot east on Washington, the main east/west thoroughfare crossing dead center Indianapolis and a demarcation some saw as the real Mason-Dixon line. Though it didn’t take long, and as exhilarating as it was, Cross was glad to be off the Harley. His legs were a little shaky. It was a little like riding a horse except for the weird buzz between his legs. And it was just a little too intimate for Cross.

  Edelman was outside talking to a uniformed cop who stood by the area where the Town Car had been parked and where Slurpy met his end. There was yellow crime tape around an empty space. Someone was playing by the rules even if the rules made no sense, which was one of the reasons Cross was no longer a cop. Edelman glanced up, his face, below a strongly receding hairline, gave nothing away. If he was worried, or scared, or happy, or pissed, you’d have to deduce the mood from very subtle changes in his voice.

  When Edelman turned toward Cross, the cop meandered away and eventually into a row of cars.

  ‘What went down last night?’ Edelman asked, his eyes following Kowalksi’s loud Harley departure.

  ‘You tell me,’ Cross said.

  ‘Don’t know. You were there.’

  ‘I went where you sent me. So tell me, how did I end up driving a car with two dead people in the trunk?’

  Edelman lit a cigarette and began walking toward an area in back of the office, maybe, Cross thought, to distance them further from the cop.

  ‘Look, I call Wilbert Morgan about the payments. He says he can’t. Says as soon as he gets back from Memphis or Chattanooga or something in a couple of weeks, he’ll have something for me. I ask him when he’s leaving. He says ‘tomorrow,’ which was the next day. I want the car back before it gets lost in some fucking bayou somewhere. So I call you.’

  Edelman took a hit off his cigarette, stared at Cross and continued.

  ‘Now I stop knowing what happened and now you start knowing what I don’t know.’

  Edelman shook his head, flipped the burning ash with a finger and rubbed the end on the bottom of his shoe. He held the stub in his hand, no doubt to dispose of it in a proper receptacle.

  ‘I need a car,’ Cross said.

  ‘Use the one you were us
ing. The Audi.’

  ‘The police have it.’

  ‘Why?’ Edelman asked, curtly.

  ‘Maybe I shot two kids, put them in the Audi before transferring them to the Lincoln.’

  ‘So now,’ Edelman said, ‘I don’t have the Town Car. I don’t have the Audi. And you want another car. That’s three cars because of you. What’s going to be left on the lot, sport?’

  ‘You have to be kidding,’ Cross said.

  ‘Our deal was one car at a time,’ he said, as he turned to leave.

  Cross grabbed Edelman’s shoulder.

  ‘Don’t fuck with me,’ Cross said, almost surprised at the harshness in his voice.

  Edelman turned back. He looked a little taken, then wary.

  ‘You threatening me?’ Edelman asked.

  ‘Look, if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be facing murder charges.’

  Edelman’s smile was bitter, but he said nothing.

  ‘You think I’m not serious? I’m facing two murder charges. What’s one more?’

  Edelman relented. ‘Look around. No Hondas. Take something nobody wants.’ Edelman walked away, stopped and turned back squarely. ‘When this is all settled, you and me don’t have any business anymore.’

  Before leaving the east side in a battered old blue Trooper, Cross drove by Wilbert Morgan’s place on Drexel. Wilbert wasn’t home. Neither was anyone else. He slipped his business card in the door after writing ‘call me’ on the front above his name. Maybe the man found a way to go south without his car.

  Cross stopped by the market on 56th and Illinois to pick up some food as he headed home. He was cautious walking up the steps and on the path that eventually led to a ramshackle gate and the fenced inner yard of his strange home. It was a place built in 1929 as a chauffeur’s quarters. The large two-car garage was now a living room. The middle room was Cross’s office and someone, over the years added a bedroom. The walls of the original structure were thick clay tiles. The roof was tile as well. It stayed surprisingly cool in the summer.

  Casey, the dog, and Einstein the cat had made themselves comfortable and were surprisingly nonchalant about getting fed. Casey went out in the yard, sniffed around, did his business and came back in where it was cooler. Einstein nibbled at his food and found a sunny spot on the sofa in the middle room.