Hail Storme

by W L Ripley

  “You’re gonna like my next idea, though.”

  “We’re gonna talk to Winston’s secretary? Ellen Fontaine?”

  “Might as well.”

  “Wyatt, you are all right. She’s extra deadly. However, if she asks us to gag her or spank her, or anything weird, I may have to go along with it—that is, in the interest of investigatory tactics.”

  “Sure are fickle. Thought you had a date with Jill.”

  “I do. Just trying to be democratic.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  I should have left it alone, packed it in and gone home, but I wanted Winston. There was too much blood on the ground for him to walk away to clink his glass at cocktail parties, secure in the knowledge that he had ridden the tsunami and left everyone else to crash against the rocks—Sheriff Kennedy, Deputy Simmons and his sister—and Tempestt. Mostly, for Tempestt.

  We drove to Winston’s office, parking the Bronco in Bedford’s slot. As we got out of the Bronco, Alan Winston pulled into the slot next to ours. He was driving a silver Mercedes. He avoided looking at us, but it was a studied avoidance. He knew it was us. He got out of the German car. He wore a dark gray power suit, gray tie with narrow crimson stripes, dazzling white shirt, the oxblood tasseled loafers. Very fetching. I felt unclean.

  “Hey, Al,” said Chick. “How’s tricks, man? Defending the scum of Paradise County must be highly lucrative. What do you think of his wheels, Wyatt?”

  “Pretentious.”

  “What do you want?” said Winston.

  “We just came by to see if you wanted to turn yourself in and throw yourself on the mercy of the court. Maybe you can get a good lawyer. Maybe even an honest one.”

  “Bet he don’t know any,” said Chick.

  Winston laughed. “You have active imaginations. Somewhat immature perhaps, but creative.” No smile now. “You’re too full of yourselves. Don’t equate your macho displays with real power.”

  “We’ve been talking to Horton,” I said. “He’s under the impression you’re his guy. No accounting for taste, I guess.”

  “Horton deceives himself. He’s a pathetic troll.”

  “I was talking about his taste, not yours,” I said. “He told us some interesting things.”

  Winston appeared smug. “Horton doesn’t know anything. I use him for information. He’s helpful that way. There’s nothing he could have told you that would interest me.”

  I believed him. Winston had the earmarks of a classic sociopath. He had Baxter for information of police dealings. He leveraged Simmons with the drug charge against his sister. He had tried to seduce Jill Maxwell, but when she rebuffed him he turned to Horton instead. He had someone everywhere. He always knew what was going down everywhere. Interesting that he wasn’t at Roberts’s house this morning. Had intuition saved him, or something else?

  “People are dead, counselor,” I said, then stepped inside his comfort zone, my chin level with his nose. He moved away. Something about him bugged me. I instinctively didn’t like him—didn’t like Roberts, either, but it was on a different level. I didn’t like Roberts because he was a cheap hood with a face-lift. I didn’t like Winston because he was a spoiled brat, a small-town bully with a pedigree. Didn’t like the way he used people—even Horton. “A lot of people. And you’re part of that, no way around it.”

  “If you’re referring to that Marine assault you two overgrown adolescents pulled this morning, I thank you for that. You rid the county of some undesirable imports. I’m very pleased.” He smiled and patted the back of his hair. “I almost feel compelled to reimburse you for your efforts, but I’m sure two do-gooders like you would refuse any reward. I don’t wish to spoil it for you.”

  “Adolescents?” said Chick.

  “Alan knows all about adolescents,” I said. “He prefers them two-to-one over grown women.”

  “Jealousy is an ugly thing, Storme,” said Winston.

  “They’ve got the sheriff in custody,” I said. “Maybe he gets nervous and starts talking.”

  “Baxter?” he said. “That’s humorous. I’ll defend him and he’ll get off. And don’t count on Roberts; he won’t talk. He has the hoodlum mentality when it comes to that sort of thing. Even if he were to squeal, with his background, I’ll get it tossed out first thing. Of course he wishes to implicate the sheriff, I’ll say. The sheriff who dogged him and whose unceasing efforts for law and order have made him enemies in crime circles. I’ll make a hero out of Baxter and a liar out of both of you.”

  I stepped closer again. It made him nervous. It was a cheap schoolyard trick, but how much longer could he keep stepping away? “You offend me, Winston,” I said. “I don’t like you. I’m going to burn you down. Watch me.”

  He stepped back, adjusted his tie. His face was tight, teeth clenched. “Don’t you fuck with me,” he said. “This is my town. Mine. I do what I want, and I go where I please. You don’t belong here. You think you’re players, but you’re just a pair of funny little moralists with no voltage. You’re nobody.”

  “Darn,” said Chick. “Now I’m going to get a complex. Sorry about Candless, your frat buddy with the microwave tan. But where you’re going there are plenty to choose from. Maybe a chainsaw killer, or a Colombian drug lord with bad teeth. Maybe even a child-molester just like you.”

  A vein twitched under the starched white collar. “Go away, heroes. This is my playpen. My rules. There’s not a shred of evidence connecting me with any of this. I’ll never spend one minute in jail.” He walked away, laughing. I looked at the hole in my fatigue sweater. I was tired and dirty and my head hurt.

  Chick whistled, lowly. “Man, you could ice-skate on that guy,” he said.

  “He’s probably right, you know,” I said.

  “Yeah. Probably.”

  “He’s going to get away with it.”

  “The way I got it figured, too.”

  “Oughta be something we can do.”

  Chick walked over to the Mercedes. It gleamed like a new bracelet. He kicked a saucer-sized dent in the door.

  “How about that?”

  “It’ll have to do,” I said. “For now.”

  Back in the Bronco I entered the flow of traffic, which was heavy for midafternoon. We headed west on the four-lane road. Three blocks up, on the eastbound side, was a red Nissan weaving erratically through traffic, dodging and passing cars as if its driver were late for dialysis. It careened into the westbound lane, passing two cars running abreast, nearly scraping one of them. When it met us I saw the driver’s face.

  It was Horton.

  I slowed the Bronco and looked for a place to turn around, but the traffic was too thick. I knew where he was headed.

  “Shit,” said Chick, looking back. “He just pulled into the executive park on two wheels. Almost hit a van.”

  I waited for an opening, my hands tapping on the steering wheel. “Come on,” I muttered to myself. I had a sick sensation in my gut. I didn’t like Horton, but I didn’t want anything to happen to him, especially since I was the one who set him off. And had lied to do so. Finally, an opening appeared, and I rammed the Bronco through it and into a gas station. The pump aisles were full, so I couldn’t drive through to turn around. I shoved the gearshift lever into reverse and backed up, tires hopping. I hit first and headed for the highway, just pulling in ahead of a ’vette. The driver made an obscene gesture at me.

  I wound the engine tight, shifted into second, then third. The needle touched sixty a block from Winston’s office. I leaned on the brakes and came to a full stop, once again having to wait for traffic to thin before turning in. There was no way to go fast through the twisting, landscaped parking lot. After weaving through the maze of evergreens, planters, and late bloomers, I skidded the truck to a halt beside the red Nissan, the nose of which was buried in the side of the silver Mercedes. So much for Chick’s dent. We jumped out of the Bronco, leaving the doors open. Winston’s secretary, Ellen Fontaine, came running out of
the office, waving her arms and crying. She ran up to me, and I grabbed her and held her.

  “It’s…it’s horrible. I…I’ve never seen anything so…so…” Her chest heaved with her sobbing, and I felt her body trembling.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Please,” she wailed. “Help him. Hurry.”

  I let her go, and Chick and I ran to the office. The door to Winston’s inner sanctum was open. Chick pulled the .380 Colt, which the police hadn’t found. There was a strange, animal sound coming from the office, like the low moan of a wounded rabbit.

  When we entered the office I witnessed a scene that rivaled anything I’d seen in Vietnam. Lying on the luxurious, deep-pile carpet, facedown in a widening pool of blood, was the late Alan Winston. He’d been shot in both shoulders and through the head. Chick rolled the body over, said, “Shit,” in a low voice, then rolled it back on its belly. I started to walk over for a look, but Chick held up a hand, stopping me.

  “You don’t want to see it,” he said. “Castrated.”

  Horton sat slumped in a chair, a gun in one hand and a bloody tile knife in the other. My head swam. He was shaking his head and muttering to himself. There was white powder caked around his nostrils, and his eyes were glassy and distant.

  “He’s flyin’,” Chick said, his gun pointed at Horton.

  Horton rolled his head up to look at Chick as if Chick were a curiosity, then he looked at the gun in his own hand.

  “Forget it, Horton,” Chick said. “No way you’re faster than me. No way.”

  Horton looked at the gun in his hand as if it had suddenly appeared and he didn’t know what it was. “I won’t shoot you,” said Horton. Then his voice rose a notch. “He shouldn’t have done it. He was mine. I cared for him and he treated me…he treated me…like…a thing. A freak!” His face was agonized. My mouth was sour, and there was an urgent tremble at the back of my shoulders. He looked at me. “He shouldn’t have used me like that.”

  “No, Horton,” I said. “He shouldn’t have.”

  He smiled wanly and said, “Thank you.”

  “Come on, Horton. Let’s go.”

  “No. I…I can’t.” He lifted the gun and put it in his mouth.

  I stepped toward him.

  “Horton! No!” My voice roared in my ears, and I felt as if I were moving through syrup. I was one step away when the gun exploded. Horton ’s head jerked violently and then lolled forward as if there were no bones in it.

  The room echoed with silence.

  I looked at what was left of Horton. My throat burned with the bitter taste of spent gunpowder and emotion. There was a fine blood-spray on my hands and sweater. I was suddenly more tired than I’d been in a long while. My shoulders sagged and I stood there very still. Horton was also very still. He had been an unhappy man.

  I wanted to be away from this room, away from this town, but I seemed riveted, lethargic. I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Not your fault, man,” Chick said.

  He used the office phone to call the police.

  I heard the sirens growing near as I was throwing up in the wastebasket.

  FORTY

  The police, and particularly Sergeant McKinley, were less than joyous to find Chick and myself at the scene of another homicide. Ellen Fontaine’s account got them off our backs, but not before we spent four hours drinking rancid coffee and reading out-of-date Newsweek magazines at the courthouse.

  “Why don’t you two move to Iraq?” said McKinley. “They’d hardly notice the dead bodies, and Saddam wouldn’t last a week with you around.”

  “I think he likes us,” said Chick, as we were leaving.

  Later that evening I bought Sam Browne a steak at the Raintree Inn. I paid for it with Prescott’s money. Chick ordered a bottle of champagne, which I didn’t drink, so he and Browne shared it.

  “Roberts died at 5:05 p.m.,” Browne said. “He told us nothing. Probably get something out of Candless. Cugat told us some things because he wanted Candless and Winston to pay. And Bedford, Winston’s partner, is another person we’ll talk to. Bedford has some cash-flow problems. Made a bad investment in a local nightclub and a couple of stores downtown, at Winston’s urging. Winston was genuinely trying to revive the downtown area. Bedford also had some gambling debts he couldn’t cover but needed to, quickly. That’s how he got involved.” He took a bite of his steak.

  “What we can piece together is this: Roberts was set to sell the formula to the Chicago bosses, and that’s where the two shooters come in. They were an advance guard for the buy. Jerry Scalia was the guy we found in the library. Best hitter in K.C. The other spaghetti-bender was Ray Gorbotti, the nephew of Augustus Caravelli, also known as Gus the Horse. Gus controls most of the drug traffic in Kansas City on both sides of the state line. Owns several high-volume discount record stores and a couple of nightspots, some hotels. Runs a string of high-class call girls. You guys rang the bell. That is, if Gus doesn’t take your killing his nephew personally. Probably sent the kid to check out the deal before he came to town.”

  “Why did Winston and Baxter decide to kill the sheriff when they did?” I asked. “And what did the marijuana field have to do with it?"

  “That’s a story in itself. Apparently, Roberts got out of the marijuana business a year ago, but Killian and Bedford kept it alive. That’s when Baxter decided to cut himself in for a share of the take. Roberts didn’t know Bedford and Killian were still producing, nor that Baxter had become their partner, but Winston did. Winston knew lots of things. Had ears everywhere. Kennedy found out about Winston’s tryst with the girl, which probably wouldn’t have amounted to much, but Winston’s reputation would have suffered. When Kennedy found out about the marijuana field, Baxter had a double reason to zip him. He couldn’t let Kennedy shut down his marijuana operation, and he thought it would get him in good with Winston. Roberts knew none of this until after the fact.”

  “So then Willie Boy had to cover for them to keep the heat off his dreamsicle sale.”

  “Looks like it. Roberts didn’t like it that the sheriff was killed, so he bumped Killian, then spooked Killian’s dope buddy Dexter, hoping we’d take the bait and chase the scapegoat. Either that, or Dexter was killed, too, and his body dumped to make us think he ran. Would have worked, too, if not for you guys. Roberts was never directly involved with Baxter. His involvement with Winston came because he needed a front man. Somebody no one would suspect. Winston had the name and position in the community. Gave Roberts instant respectability.”

  “Gave him a fall guy, too, if it went bad,” said Chick. “Somebody to leave holding the bag after the deal went down.”

  Browne nodded. “But Roberts hadn’t counted on his partners getting big ideas and undermining him. All of them, including Candless, had hidden agendas. Candless got in through his relationship with Winston. Candless got greedy and wormed his way into the inner circle. He could offer inside information about federal movements. I’m sure Roberts had something planned for Candless, but he couldn’t afford to do anything until the deal was over. Once it was over, nobody could’ve touched Roberts. The other principals thought they were going to market dreamsicle, but Roberts had other plans. Roberts had the two K.C. guys set up Prescott’s phony suicide, and with the chemist dead, Roberts could sell the formula and disappear, since he was the only one left with a copy of the formula.”

  I cleared my throat. “There’s another copy,” I said.

  His fork stopped halfway to his mouth. “What?”

  I reached into my jacket—slowly, because of the creeping soreness from the fight with Cugat—and pulled out the dream-sicle formula. I handed it to him. He looked at it for several seconds before tearing it into little pieces. He shook his head.

  “How’d you get it?”

  I shrugged.

  He sighed deeply, looked at Chick, then back at me. “When will you be leaving the state?” he asked.

  “Soon.”

  “Good. I’ve got
enough work to do as it is.”

  Chick and I stayed in Paradise for two more days. Long enough for him to take out Jill Maxwell. Twice. Good for him. Good for both of them.

  Tempestt was buried in Overland Park, Kansas. Chick and I attended the funeral before heading to Colorado. Morrison was there on crutches. I shook his hand. Tears in his eyes. Tears in my heart. Where you couldn’t see them.

  Couldn’t wipe them away, either.

  FORTY-ONE

  It was raining in the Rockies. Into the Little Silver River as I looked out the bay window of my Colorado cabin. I liked the rain. It was a nice break from the snow and reminded me of Missouri autumns when I was a boy. I liked that also.

  I had a fire going in the fireplace. Flames licked at the logs, which popped and sizzled, the sparks dancing upward. The fireplace was natural stone. I’d built it myself, selecting rocks at different times, in different places, then fitting them together.

  I looked down at the river. Van Morrison sang “Into the Mystic” on the stereo. A fluted glass containing champagne sat in front of me, another glass next to it. The hand of Denver’s loveliest anchor-person reached for it.

  “I forget how beautiful it is here,” she said, smiling. Her eyes were bright, blue as the summer sky. Her hair was the color of fresh cornsilk. She wore no makeup except a small kiss of lipstick. Her teeth were a rich milk-white, the mouth intelligent and able to register anger, disdain, or happiness with a subtle turn of its corners.

  I said nothing. I looked down at the river. Watched the rain kiss the window and roll down like teardrops. My shoulder hurt from the fight with Cugat.

  “It’s not your fault, Wyatt,” Sandy said. “That woman, Tempestt. The sheriff, either.”

  “What about Horton? And if I hadn’t been there, maybe Tempestt would still be alive. Maybe the sheriff, too.”

  “And Roberts and those other creeps would have sold a drug that would have cost more lives.”

  I looked at the champagne. Watched the bubbles form and drift to the top. There were many bubbles. When they floated to the top, they popped and disappeared.