Dead South (A Bryson Wilde Thriller / Read in Any Order) (4 page)

10

Day Four

August 6, 1952

Tuesday Night

Even though he was a sleaze-bag, or maybe because of it, Nicholas Dent got a lot of secret work from the local uppity-ups and correspondingly had an office that was a lot better than Wilde’s. It was a standalone structure of considerable size on Sherman, a stone’s throw from the guts of the financial district where the best-paying clients in Denver spent their working hours and hid their secret affairs and indiscretions. Once an ornate mansion, now the place housed only sleaze.

After dark Tuesday night, Wilde drove past that palace of sleaze with Alabama in the passenger seat.

The windows were black.

No lights came from inside.

“The pace is dead,” Alabama said.

Wilde agreed.

They parked on 16th, hoofed it back through the alley and found all the lower windows locked. Alabama pointed to an upper one and said, “That one’s half open.”

“It’s too high.”

Alabama spotted a rusty 55-gallon drum in the weeds and said, “Help me roll that over here.”

“Why?”

“We’re going to get on it and then I’m going to climb up you until I’m standing on your shoulders and then I’m going to grab the ledge of the window and pull myself in.”

“That’s not doable.”

“Sure it is,” she said. “I don’t want you looking up my skirt though.”

Two minutes later Alabama was up and in.

She lifted up her skirt, stuck her behind out the window and wiggled it. Then she looked down at Wilde looking up and said, “Hey, you’re not supposed to be doing that.”

Then she disappeared.

Thirty seconds later the back door opened and Wilde was in.

Dent’s primary office was on the lower level at the back. Wilde pulled the window coverings shut and powered up a flashlight.

He expected a mess.

That’s not what he got.

Everything was clean and organized.

A number of files were on the desk, each neatly labeled in thick black writing. None said
Sudden Dance
or
Saturday Murder
or
Bryson Wilde
or
Johnnie Fingers
or anything else of interest.

“Check the file cabinets,” he said.

Alabama obliged.

One of the files on the desk was labeled
Jackie Fountain.
Inside were several pages of lined yellow paper with pencil notes.

“Bingo.”

“You got something?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Let’s see.”

Page after page Wilde read, handing each one to Alabama when he was done. The story that emerged was so detailed that it seemed as if Wilde was right there.

*****

A woman named Jackie Fountain phoned Dent’s home number Sunday morning wanting to meet with him as soon as possible, before Monday if possible. They met at the office an hour later.

“I’m a waitress at the Down Towner so I don’t have much money,” she said. “If this is going to cost a lot, I’ll pay you but it will have to be spread out a little here and there.”

“This meeting is free,” Dent said. “Don’t worry about money for the moment and just tell me what’s going on.”

She composed her thoughts.

“Okay,” she said, “Saturday night me and a couple of girlfriends went to a club called the Bokoray. The band was from out of town but the guy who was drumming was a local guy named Bryson Wilde. I don’t know him personally but I see him at the clubs now and then. We’ve never talked or anything like that but like I said I’ve see him around.”

Dent tapped two cigarettes out of a pack and extended one to Jackie who waved it off.

“No, thanks.”

Dent lit his and blew a ring.

“I know Wilde.”

“I figured that,” she said. “Anyway, during the breaks he was getting all cozy with a woman in a white dress. She was extremely pretty, almost like a model or something.”

“Sounds like his type.”

“She was getting drunker and drunker as the night went on.”

“Sounds even more like his type.”

“She was standing by the wall. Lots of guys went over to her but she brushed them off. She only had eyes for Wilde.”

“Lucky him.”

“Right,” she said. “Anyway, the night ended. I used the little girl’s room before I left and then headed for the car where my friends were waiting for me. I was walking down the sidewalk and just happened to look down the alley. I saw a woman and a man in some kind of altercation—it was the woman from the club, the one in the white dress. The man had the woman by the hair and was yelling at her and she was yelling back. Then all of a sudden the man had knife in his hand, a really big one, and he stabbed her in the gut two or three times, real violently, almost as if he was trying to push the blade all the way through her body. She crumpled like a doll and fell down into the dirt. He stabbed her again, this time in the chest, two times. Then he pulled her body up, threw it in the passenger seat and took off. At that point he was coming right at me. I was like a deer in headlights, totally frozen. At the last second I somehow got my wits and jumped out of the way. The car squealed around the corner to the right and disappeared down the street.” She held her hand out. “Look, my hand is shaking.”

Dent held it steady.

“Was the man Wilde?”

“That’s my assumption but I have to be honest, I can’t say for certain,” she said. “It was too dark when he was back in the alley. Then when he came at me, all I could see was the headlights. They were blinding. They were like two suns shooting at me.”

“So Wilde got a good look at you and knows you’re a witness,” Dent said. “That’s what this comes down to.”

She nodded.

“Right, except like I said, I can’t swear it was Wilde. To tell you the truth, he never struck me as that kind of guy.”

Dent grunted.

“A guy who’s not that kind of guy can turn into that kind of guy if he’s drunk and the woman he thinks he’s going to end up with in bed suddenly changes her mind. That’s how devils get made and trust me, they get made every day.” He tapped ashes into the tray. “So what exactly do you want from me?”

Her eyes darted.

“My natural instinct was to file a police report,” she said. “The more I thought about it though, the more I didn’t want my name involved. I was worried that it would make its way to the killer. That might not be a problem if Wilde was the killer, but it might be a big problem if someone else was. Also, I never got a look at the guy, so I don’t know if I have all that much useful information to tell when you get right down to it.” She hesitated and then added, “What I want you to do is find out what’s going on. Find out who the woman is. Find out who the killer is. Figure out how much trouble I’m in for seeing what I did. The answers are important because if I’m in real trouble then I’m going to get out of Denver. I don’t want to do that if I don’t have to because I really don’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t have any family or anything.”

Dent blew smoke.

“My advice is to make a police report,” he said. “I’ll go with you. Before we go, I’ll make a call and get an absolute guarantee that your name won’t be put in the file or ever mentioned to anyone.”

The woman’s hands shook.

“I’ll think about it.”

“You do that,” Dent said. “In the meantime I’ll sniff around a little, on the house.”

“Are you serious?”

“Sure, why not?”

11

Day Five

August 7, 1952

Wednesday Morning

Wednesday morning Wilde had one thought and one thought only, namely to find out if the witness, Jackie Fountain, was alive or whether she was the body at the bottom of the well. To that effect, he headed to the Down Towner where the woman supposedly waitressed.

With Sudden Dance’s briefcase in hand, he made two passes by the windows but got no results.

He couldn’t see inside that good.

Just inside the door was a cigarette machine. He made sure he had correct change, entered, set the briefcase down and slipped coins in the slot, ostensibly paying no attention to anything else, just one more guy out of smokes and now getting them so he didn’t turn into a big green lizard or some such thing. The pack fell to the chute. He scooped it up, tapped a stick out and lit it with a match as his eyes took a quick sweep around the room.

Across the way a strawberry-haired waitress was pouring coffee at a booth.

Her back was to him.

When she headed for the counter her profile came into view. She was in her mid-twenties with a curvy body and an easy smile. Her lips were ruby-red. A cigarette dangled from them. Wilde recognized her from around town. She’d been at the club Saturday night with a couple of friends.

He opened the door to leave.

As he took one last look, something happened that he didn’t expect.

The woman was staring directly at him.

Her smile was gone.

Her eyes were serious.

Wilde’s grip tightened on the briefcase.

He took one last look.

Then he was gone.

At the office Alabama pulled no punches. “You do a lot of things that aren’t exactly brilliant,” she said, “but I’m going to put that one right up there at the top.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s going to think you’re stalking her.”

Wilde blew smoke.

“I barely looked at her.”

“That’s not the point,” she said. “The point is that she saw you kill someone Saturday night. She was in your headlights when you pulled out. Now here you are on Tuesday morning showing up where she works, pretending not to look at her when you really were. Just a weird coincidence? I think not—”

Wilde looked out the window.

“Some day I want to wake up and be one of those saps out there,” he said. “I just want to wander around aimlessly and not care about anything except getting wine in my gut.”

Alabama rolled her eyes.

“Look,” she said, “you know you didn’t kill anyone and you think that’s some kind of magical trump card that you can just pull out and wave up in the air whenever you want and then everything will be just fine. You better think again because I have news for you, truth is a second-class citizen.”

Wilde wrinkled his brow.

“Like being an Indian,” he said.

Alabama came over, put his arms around him and laid her head on his chest.

“You need to worry about Fingers,” she said. “Especially if Jackie Fountain tells him you were at her work this morning. Fingers shot a guy last year. Did you know that?”

The words rolled up a memory but it was faint.

“Remind me again.”

“He shot a guy while he was arresting him,” Alabama said. “He shot him cold dead, four times. He thought the guy was a killer. Later it turned out that the guy had an alibi. That didn’t help him much though after he was dead.”

Wilde tapped his fingers.

“I’m not worried about Fingers. I am, however, worried about Jackie Fountain. My guess is that she’s pretty safe during the day. It’s the night she has to worry about. Do me a favor and find out where she lives. We’ll be staking her out tonight.”

Alabama punched his arm.

“Do you even listen to anything I say?”

He put a surprised look on his face.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Have you been talking?”

Two hours later Johnnie Fingers opened the door and walked into the room with an attitude. He nodded at Alabama, focused hard on Wilde and said, “There’s a rumor going around that you were out taking a stroll this morning.”

Wilde tapped two cigarettes out of a pack and extended one to Fingers.

He knew what this was about.

It wouldn’t be pretty.

Fingers hesitated and then accepted.

Wilde set a book of matches on fire, lit them up and said, “I thought strolling was legal.”

“It is,” Fingers said. “It can be dangerous though. Sometimes people got out for a stroll and get blindsided by an ice truck. Squish, squash. Taking a stroll in the wrong place can be dangerous, even deadly.”

Wilde blew smoke.

“Is that why you’re here? To warn me about ice trucks?”

Fingers shook his head.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a photo and tossed it on the desk. It depicted a young woman in her mid-twenties, lying dead at the bottom of a well.

“Is that your Indian friend?”

“No. You can tell she’s not Indian.”

“True. Do you know her?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Wilde said. “I’ve never seen her before.”

Fingers cast an eye on Alabama.

“What’s your name, pretty lady?”

“Alabama.”

“Do you work for this guy?”

She nodded.

“Did you know he was in the war?”

“Yes.”

“He was gunner in a B-17G Flying Fortress, which was a bomber that had four Wright supercharged Radial engines with a real distinctive growl. You could hear them two countries away. He sat back there in that little glass bubble at the bottom of the plane with his hands on the trigger of a 50-caliber machine gun.”

Wilde grunted.

“You’ve been doing homework.”

“No, it’s common knowledge. Me myself, I could never do anything like that. Flying scares the crap out of me even when people aren’t shooting at you. I wouldn’t be worried so much about a shot coming through the glass and taking me out. What I’d be worried about is a shot taking out the glass and then the sky sucking me out. Can you imagine falling from up there, still alive, with the ground coming up at you faster and faster?”

Wilde tapped ashes.

“You’re strapped in,” he said. “That would never happen.”

“Well, that’s good.” To Alabama he said, “What’d you do during the war?”

“What’s it matter?”

“I was just curious. You did something. I can tell. What was it? Did you sew uniforms or something?”

“No.”

Fingers put disagreement on his face. “Come on, you did something.”

“I was ten,” she said. “I spent my time worrying about my father.”

“He was in the war?”

She nodded.

“He got killed in the Philippines.”

Fingers frowned.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Alabama’s eyes moistened. The sight sent bark and bite into Wilde’s brain and he trained it on Fingers.

“I think your visit here is done,” he said.

“Sure,” Fingers said. “The woman in the photo, by the way, we don’t know who she is yet, but we found her out in the country, not too far from where your car was,” Fingers said. “Pretty strange, huh?”

Wilde took a deep drag.

“What are you getting at?”

“Nothing,” Fingers said. “I just thought maybe you could help me. Do you have any idea why she’d be out there dead, not too far from where your car was?”

Wilde looked out the window and then at Fingers.

“When my car got a flat, whoever it was that took Sudden Dance had to get out of there somehow. Maybe this woman saw the car broken down and stopped to help. Maybe she ended up dead for her kindness.”

Fingers nodded.

“That’s the same theory I came up with. I’m really impressed that it rolled right off your tongue. For me, I had to mull it over for hours before it came out.”

Wilde walked to the door and opened it.

“Have a nice day,” he said.

Fingers cast an eye on the briefcase and said, “Nice briefcase.”

Then he was gone.

As soon as the man left Alabama said, “He was getting me to talk on purpose. He was trying to figure out if I was the person who called and ended up talking to him about the woman in the well. I’m sure he recognized my voice. Now he’s going to have you connected to that body.”

Wilde nodded.

“I know.”

“What I don’t get is why was he talking about you being in a bomber? Was that just to lead over to me and have a reason to ask what I did?”

Wilde blew smoke.

“I think he was giving me a warning,” Wilde said. “It’s his way of saying he’s holding off for the time being on taking me down, because we were both in the war.”

“You think?”

He nodded.

“It’s his way of saying he gave me a break.”

“But now it’s gone?”

“Right, now it’s gone.”

A good song came on the radio,
Lawdy Miss Clawdy
by Lloyd Price. Alabama turned it up and said, “The dead woman in the photo that Fingers showed us, I’ve seen her around somewhere.”

Wilde raised an eyebrow.

“Where?”

“I’m trying to think—”

Wilde waited.

Seconds passed, then more.

Alabama’s face brightened.

“Got it,” she said.

“Good, where?”

She threw a look his way. “First say, Alabama you’re so pretty.” Wilde scrunched his face and then complied. “Nice of you to notice,” Alabama said. “I’ve seen her down by the Daniels & Fisher Tower. She was all dressed up real fancy; not like a whore, more like someone important.”

“Someone important, huh?”

“Yeah. She looked expensive.”

Wilde set a book of matches on fire.

“Alabama, you’re so pretty,” he said.

She smiled.

“Nice of you to notice.”

“Trust me, I notice every second. Come on, we have work to do.”