Southern Heat

by David Burnsworth

  I shrugged and searched through the desk drawers.

  She dug out her cell phone and punched speed dial. After a moment, she said, “Constance, are you all right?”

  After talking for a few minutes, Patricia ended the call. “She’s fine. Oblivious. Doesn’t know where McAllister is.”

  Mutt started on the bedroom and searched through the dresser drawers.

  An hour later we stood in the kitchen trying to decide what to do next. We had gone through McAllister’s entire house and found nothing but the photos. I went upstairs and grabbed them to go over one more time. When we’d found them, they were scattered on top of the desk. The neat pile Patricia made of them exposed the rest of the desktop. Across most of it lay a blueprint of a plot of land next to the Ashley River. Something about the shape of the river at that particular point was familiar. I pulled the map clear.

  “Hey, Patricia,” I called.

  I heard her hurry up the stairs, her sandals slapping against the hardwood treads. When she entered the room, I held out the map by its top two corners. “This look familiar?”

  She moved closer and picked up the bottom corners so the map became horizontal. “Sumter Point. He’s been lying to us from the start.”

  Chauncey warned me against doing anything stupid when I called to tell him of what we’d learned. I neglected to tell him how we found it. It was an illegal search, after all. I said I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Patricia’s Mercedes followed my Audi to the Pirate’s Cove, where the three of us discussed our next course of action. Patricia and I decided we needed to talk to Mrs. Calhoun. Mutt agreed to watch the Pirate’s Cove to make sure it wasn’t vandalized—or torched. “Weren’t nothing going on at my place, anyhow,” he said from a stool at the end of the bar. “It’s the end of the month. Everyone’s waiting on their checks to come in.”

  I tossed him the keys to the Audi. “You sure you know what McAllister looks like?”

  “Patricia showed me pictures. Don’t worry. I got it covered.”

  A full-figured college girl in a bikini ordered a drink from the bartender.

  Mutt’s eyes roamed over her like a metal detector at the airport. “I could get used to this.”

  That was the same thing Wilson said. The only weapon McAllister would need to take over my bar was a bimbo in a two-piece.

  Patricia texted Darcy and we cruised away in her Mercedes.

  Mrs. Calhoun opened the door of her ocean-front mansion on the Isle of Palms. One look at Patricia and me and the old woman said in a monotone, “Oh, it’s you.”

  Patricia said, “Mind if we come in and talk to you a minute, Josephine?”

  “Yes, I do,” the rich old bat said. “I will not be treated rudely in my own home by that smart-mouthed hooligan.”

  For some reason, she was pointing at me. She must have been holding a grudge from our first meeting in Patricia’s office when I accused her of being an environmentalist hypocrite.

  I raised the framed picture of her and McAllister. “We were wondering what your connection was to Ashley River Recovery.”

  Instead of answering, she asked, “Why do you have my nephew’s photo?”

  Patricia said, “That’s your nephew in the picture?”

  Mrs. Calhoun grabbed the picture. “Yes it is. This is his property. I recognize the frame and I’m taking it back.” She slammed the door in our faces.

  “I guess we know the connection,” I said.

  “Yes, and once we expose McAllister and mention her relationship to him, she won’t have any influence left in this town.”

  We walked to the car.

  “And I was looking forward to seeing the Cove turned into Dolphin Swimmer. Darcy’s not going to like missing this.”

  Patricia took out her iPhone. “She should have checked in by now.”

  I stopped. “Checked in? What are you talking about?”

  “We have an agreement,” Patricia said. “She checks in every hour. No longer than two hours.”

  “You run a tight ship.”

  “She’s young, pretty, and aggressive, and men are men. And, she’s still healing.”

  “When was the last time you heard from her?”

  “Three hours ago.”

  “What did she say?”

  “It was a text.” Patricia scrolled. “At Red Curtain.” She looked at me. “I wasn’t sure what that meant. Do you know?”

  I had an image of Chinese hoods with nine millimeters and cigarettes hanging out of their mouths shooting holes in Suzy, the teenage live target. The instant pressure of my mind racing made my chin droop. I put my hands on the sides of my head and squeezed.

  Patricia said, “What is it?”

  Patricia threw me the keyed remote to her Mercedes. We jumped in and slammed the doors. I had to move the seat back and adjust the wheel.

  “Hurry up Brack!” She searched her cell phone for something. “What is that place, anyway?”

  I pushed the Start button and the engine grumbled to life. “An underground brothel Darcy’s been scamming to get a story on.”

  “Scamming?”

  I gave her the ten-second version as I floored it.

  Patricia listened and made a call. “Get me Ron. Now.”

  I said, “Call Mutt while you’re at it. Let him know where we’re headed.”

  We rocketed onto I-526, the interstate that looped to North Charleston. The Benz scooted into triple digits with ease. Patricia talked faster and more directly with each mile-per-hour increase.

  The convertible top was down, but with the windows up and the windscreen behind us, there was little buffeting inside the cabin. The speedometer crested a hundred and ten. I blew by a cop heading in the other direction and hoped none of his buddies would be waiting for us ahead. We had to save Darcy.

  The Mercedes engine raced like a stock car V-8. We shot between clusters of cars as if they were parked on the road. I felt the floor resist my foot as I pressed the accelerator hard, squeezing a few more thousandths of an inch out of it. The fuel cutoff was supposed to be around a hundred and fifty-five miles per hour and we’d be there shortly.

  “No, I am not joking,” Patricia yelled at someone on the phone. “I need every available officer.” Another pause and it sounded as if she cut the person off when she said, “Look Ron, if you don’t think my calling you directly rates on your radar as an emergency you can find someone else to manage your campaign.” She ended the call. “If the good mayor doesn’t come through, he won’t be getting my support come next election.”

  The last call she made was to the Pirate’s Cove. I half-listened as she waited for Mutt to come on the line and explained where we were headed, hearing only her half of the conversation.

  “What do you mean you have an idea?” After a pause, she lowered the phone from her ear.

  I could feel her eyes looking at me. “What was that about?”

  “He said to hold up and wait. That he had an idea.”

  “We don’t have time.”

  “You’re right. Now move it!”

  My hands locked at ten and two o’clock on the wheel and my eyes focused on the road ahead. The suspension absorbed the expansion joints and rough seams in the pavement with the solidarity befitting a hundred-thousand-dollar German car.

  And then traffic came to an abrupt halt.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Forty-five minutes later, thanks to a wreck that had brought the interstate to a standstill, we entered the downward descent of the exit ramp. I let up on the gas and coasted. During our wait, we’d tried to call Mutt at the Cove but he’d left. At the strip mall where the brothel operated, Darcy’s car sat where she had watched me attack the geriatric Ohio man in his black Chrysler 300.

  Patricia said, “Oh, God.”

  I parked next to the Infiniti convertible. There were other cars around. But no police.

  “The mayor is going to pay for this,” Patricia said.

  “I don
’t want you going in,” I said.

  “What? Why?”

  I opened the car door and grabbed the top of the windshield to lift myself out. “If you hear shots . . . if it gets bad, I want you to get out of here and call Wilson.”

  “This is crazy, Brack. You can’t go in alone. It’s suicide.”

  “Suicide missions are my specialty.” I closed the door, pulled the thirty-eight, and walked toward the back-door entrance Darcy and I had used before. In the heat, I could feel my heart racing. My fingers tingled around the pistol. Just like war.

  I raised my hand to knock.

  A horn honked and a familiar voice boomed, “Brother Brack! Mind if we join you?”

  Lowering my hand from the door, I turned to face Brother Thomas, who drove a large white van with blue smoke coming out the tailpipe. With him were a group of about ten people, men and women.

  I said, “Y’all shouldn’t be here.”

  He parked the van and everyone got out.

  “Funny thing,” Brother Thomas said. “We was having a prayer meeting asking the good Lord what He wanted from us and Brother Mutt barged in, mm-hmm.”

  They must have used I-26 and missed the traffic jam.

  One of the men in the group, stocky, about my age, said, “From what we hear, you shouldn’t be here, either.”

  I couldn’t argue the point.

  My fear kicked into overdrive. “Darcy could be inside being held by my uncle’s killer and five kids with guns. I need to go in and get her and I don’t need this distraction.”

  Brother Thomas said, “Sister Wells been our responsibility since we escorted her out of the hospital, mm-hmm.” He stepped to the door and knocked. “We going in.” The group gathered around him.

  A lady with a pink dress and matching hat turned to me. “We all prayed up, chile. How ’bout you?”

  Crystal answered the door in her negligee. Brother Thomas and the horde of his congregation stormed the fort, pushing past me and Crystal. I barely heard her say, “You can’t come in here!”

  I pulled my pistol and followed the group inside, expecting the five guns in the back to start firing any second. What I found I did not expect. Four Chinese goons, hands bound and mouths gagged, were being led into the room by a second group of Brother Thomas’s parishioners. And Mutt. The only gun I saw was the one in my own hand.

  “Opie!” Mutt said. “How ya doin’?”

  “What the . . . ?” I didn’t finish. Something was wrong. The goon with the necklace who’d shot Darcy wasn’t tied up with the other four. “There’s one missing.”

  Mutt lit a cigarette. “Slippery little sucker peeled away in a Trans Am.”

  The Madame screamed at Brother Thomas in Chinese. The teenaged working girls, six of them in various forms of negligee, sat in the reception area with heads bowed. Female members of the church congregation found sheets and wrapped them around the girls.

  Three of the four johns in the place, older white guys, stood in their boxer shorts and jockeys, hands covering their privates in shame. The fourth, a black man, wore nothing but a white towel. Men from the church gave the johns sheets to cover themselves as well.

  The black john shook his head slowly. “Oh, Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” He put his face in his hands and cried.

  Patricia came up beside me, taking in the sight. “Well I’ll be ...”

  Brother Thomas said, “Brother Brack, it appears as if our friend isn’t here at present.”

  Mutt said, “He right. I checked the whole place out.”

  Patricia pointed a finger in the Madame’s face. “You have five seconds to tell me where Darcy is.”

  The Madame screeched more in her native tongue.

  “Look,” Patricia said, “I know you speak English. You have two choices.” She held up a finger. “One, either you tell me where Darcy is and I let you walk out of here before I call the police . . .” She held up a second finger, “. . . or two, I have you tied up with the rest and deported.”

  Two of the goons on the floor jerked and thrashed around, hatred in their eyes.

  Mutt said, “You guys behave. Or I’ll use ya as shark bait.”

  Brother Thomas addressed the group. “First one of y’all that tells us what we wanna know walks out the do’. The rest will be takin’ the slow boat back to China, mm-hmm.”

  A bald white guy clutching his sheet said, “But I’m an American.”

  I said, “Those girls aren’t old enough to drive and you want to talk semantics?”

  One of the teenagers, a tall beauty with slumped shoulders, stepped forward. The Madame berated the scared girl. Patricia took an extra gag from one of the men in the congregation who had subdued the goons and used it to shut her up.

  The girl, now shaking, said, “I think I know, but I have no passport and no money. I tell you and you let me go, I get sent back like the others.”

  Patricia led the girl away from the group. Brother Thomas and I followed.

  My ex-aunt said, “You tell us where Darcy is and I will do everything I can to get you asylum.” She put her arms around Brother Thomas and me. “These are powerful men. They will make sure nothing happens to you.”

  The girl raised her head and her eyes met mine. “You came here before with the woman, the one you ask about. To talk to Suzy.”

  I said, “Yes.”

  She looked at the floor. “Suzy is gone.”

  Patricia looked at me.

  I nodded. “She’s right.”

  The girl said, “Suzy’s trick, the one who beat her up. He took the woman.”

  Patricia spoke in a soothing voice. “Where?”

  “I-I don’t know. He say he going to feed her to the rats.”

  Rats. One place came to mind. McAllister had shown it to Darcy and me. Chromicorp.

  I turned and ran out the door, Patricia on my heels.

  North of the town limits, I slowed Patricia’s Mercedes and made a sharp left onto the dirt road. The mudhole McAllister’s truck had no problem going through appeared like a lake in the windshield. Patricia’s Mercedes would not fare as well if I tried the same stunt. With the thick underbrush and trees lining the road, there was no room to go around the water. I stopped short of the small pond.

  Patricia snapped. “What are you doing?”

  “The puddle’s too deep. We have to go on foot from here.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and got out.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She hopped from the passenger seat to the driver’s, started the car, and drove forward.

  The front end of her Mercedes hit the water and bounced a few feet. The rear tires dropped in. For a second it looked like Patricia might make it. But the car sank. She tried to rev it but the traction control system I hadn’t had time to turn off prevented the wheels from spinning. The engine clogged with water and shut off.

  A voice behind me said, “She should have listened to you.”

  I spun around, reaching for the thirty-eight stuck in the small of my back.

  McAllister shot me.

  It felt like I’d been steamrolled by an NFL linebacker. I hit the ground hard. Electric lava fried every nerve synapse in my body and I couldn’t move my right arm.

  Patricia yelled, “Brack!”

  McAllister walked over, reached down, and picked up the pistol I’d dropped, sticking it inside his waistband. In my pain, I noticed he wore rugged boots and long pants and a long-sleeved shirt—good protection from the mosquitoes and vegetation.

  He trained his Glock on me. “I should have known the Chinks in the whorehouse would talk.”

  My arm ached like someone had hacked it off with a dull pocket knife. I took off my belt and tightened it above the wound to stop the blood flow.

  Patricia screamed, “You won’t get away with this!”

  McAllister said, “I expected something more original than that from the queen of Charleston news. Now, get out of the car or the next one goes between his eyes.”

  “Where’s Darcy?” she
asked.

  McAllister fired another shot. The bullet hit the ground inches from my head. “I told you to get out of the car, not ask questions.”

  The only other weapon I had, if it could be called that, was the Swiss Army knife. McAllister had at least two guns, knowledge of the terrain, and the right clothes. I had shorts, sandals, and a nine millimeter hole in my bicep. Patricia wore pumps and a dress. She got out of the car and waded out of the puddle.

  McAllister waved his Glock. “Start walking.”

  Patricia helped me to my feet. I kept pressure above the wound as we skirted the puddle and followed the path to the condemned site, our captor walking behind us.

  Patricia said, “I can’t believe Constance actually bought your act.”

  “Constance believes what she wants to believe. It’s not like she gets out much.”

  The smell of my blood drew every mosquito within a five-mile radius and they feasted on Patricia and me. McAllister must have been under a layer of repellant.

  I slipped on the muddy road and regained my balance. “Constance probably doesn’t want to be seen with a douchebag like you, anyway.”

  “More like she couldn’t get off the couch,” McAllister said.

  “You set up Galston real good,” I said. “I’m sure his siblings won’t mind you got the family cash-cow killed.”

  “As far as they know it was you and that idiot detective who shot him. Saved me from having to do it myself.”

  Between swats at the insects, Patricia said, “The Galston family has good attorneys. They’ll figure out the truth.”

  We approached the rundown structure.

  McAllister said, “We use the same firm. It’s in our lawyers’ best interest to make sure it all looks legit.”

  A side door had been wedged open. Patricia stopped and turned around to face our captor.

  McAllister said, “I didn’t tell you to stop.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not going in there until you tell me where Darcy is.”

  Not the smartest play she could have made, I thought.

  He pointed his gun at her. I was an equidistant ten feet between them, to McAllister’s right. Patricia didn’t move.