Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors (39 page)

A gentle breeze flowed through her open balcony doors. To compensate for not having a view of the lake or the rest of the city, the inner condos had balconies that looked down onto the floral atrium below. It really wasn't much of a balcony, standing room only. The double doors opened outward, abutting the four-foot-high wrought iron fencing.

She took a sip of her wine, started to say something, paused, then, “Mr. Johnson, I asked you up here to apologize. I really had no right to ask you to lie to the police.”

“Maybe I should be the one to apologize.”

“No. You did nothing wrong. I shouldn't have put you in that predicament. I was really confused and a little frightened. I didn't know what to do. And I tried to take advantage of you. I'm sorry.”

“Well, okay. But everything must have worked out. The police let you go.”

“I got a good lawyer.” She chuckled slightly. “Former client, actually.”

I let the former client part go without comment, mainly because I didn't know what to say. “If the police felt you were guilty you'd still be behind bars, wouldn't you?”

“They may still think it, they just didn't have enough proof. I'm not out of it yet.”

“But, you didn't do it.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. If the police really look at this, they've got too many people to choose from to bother with me. You've dealt with Charlie, you know at times he wasn't the nicest person. He must have had a number of enemies.”

“One for sure,” I said.

She nodded her agreement.

“Did the police give you any idea they were looking elsewhere?”

She shrugged. “They said they were continuing their investigation. I told them everything I knew about Charlie. He was into gambling pretty heavy, you know. He was generous with the tips when he made a big score.”

“Had he been winning lately?”

“The police asked the same question.” She put her glass down and slid closer to me. “I don't think so. Why?”

I hadn't had the chance to check out Royce's investigating techniques. But, it seemed to me that if Vanders was a gambler and he was in debt, then the most likely murder suspects were the people he was in debt to. I ran that by her.

“Makes sense,” she said, scooting closer, her breasts jiggled slightly in the V of her blouse. “Police ask me if I knew who Charlie gambled with. Maybe they don't believe I had anything to do with it after all?”

“It's possible. What did you tell them?”

“Not much really. I only heard him talk to some Joey over the phone once or twice.”

“Any idea if this business he had to take care of yesterday was with this Joey dude?”

“None,” she said, getting closer, a hand on my shoulder now.

There were probably a hundred bookmakers in the city named Joey. The police should know the ones who would be willing to commit murder to satisfy a debt. If in fact it was Joey. It could just as easy be a Lefty, or Mugs, or Spike.

I stood; I'd been up here too long. “Well, maybe the police will get this thing wrapped up pretty soon.”

“I hope so,” she said, standing also. She touched my shoulder again. “You know, I usually don't have this much trouble apologizing to men.”

She was pressing herself against me, her body warm, soft. Her perfume enveloping us in a light cocoon. She kissed me, or I kissed her, I'm not sure. I tasted her lipstick, the tart sweetness of the wine she'd drunk. The room seemed to swirl. It would be easy to get lost in her passion. I pushed back slowly.

“What's the matter?”

“You don't have to do this,” I said, knowing my body was telling my mouth to shut up.

“Have to do, no. Want to do, yes. I'm not used to being turned down.”

I took a breath. This wasn't something I wanted to rush through. “This evening, when I get off from work.”

“Promise?”

I kissed the tip of her nose. “Promise.”

At the elevator my body was still telling me to turn around and run back to her. There was a time in my life that a quickie would've been just fine, another notch on the ol' pole. But lately I've been going for quality. A sign of maturity or senility, I wasn't sure which.

I didn't have to wait too long for an elevator; one arrived a second or two after I'd pushed the down button. The doors slid opened, and the man who stepped out was about my height but considerably more muscular, a fact easily detected from the bulges under his dark blue suit coat. We passed each other with darting glances. As the elevator doors closed, I wondered if he was a policeman continuing the investigation, or a client Catherine had scheduled for a morning romp. Then I called myself a jerk; I'd gotten on the up elevator and had to travel three more flights up before I could get it going back down.

Royce was passing by the entrance to the store as I approached. “Playing hooky!”

“No. The cops let Catherine Lake go. I was just up to her place.”

“Say what? My man, go on with your bad self.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Royce. She invited me up to apologize.”

“Whatever you say. Nice shade of lipstick.”

“It was just a thank you kiss,” I said, wiping my lips with my handkerchief.

“Works for me,” Royce shrugged.

I was thinking it would probably take a jackhammer to get the grin off his face when we heard the screams. Something bad was happening in the atrium area.

Royce broke into a run, putting in a disturbance call on his two-way. I tried to keep up, but his longer, younger legs increased the distance between us. Down the hall, through the revolving doors of the atrium, a small crowd was gathering on the lawn near the rose bushes. Royce waded in, ordering them to move back. The crowd slowly complied, I was right behind him by then and through the crowd's thinning ranks I first saw a bloodied hand protruding through the crushed roses, then a foot, then what was left of a face.

Maybe the world stopped then, I don't know. I got nauseated, felt as if I was in a huge spinning vacuum and the thump of my heart seemed to vibrate my whole body. The bloody tangle in the rose bushes didn't want to stay in focus. I guess I didn't want to believe what I was seeing. I turned and ran. I thought I heard Royce call to me as I hit the revolving door, but I didn't stop to find out.

I caught an elevator right away, but it seemed to take forever to get to Catherine's floor. It wasn't much better going down the hallway to her condo. I felt like it was all happening in slow motion, although I know it wasn't.

She answered the door on my first ring. Her hair was just a mite ruffled, and she was breathing heavy. “Off work so soon?”

I brushed by her not answering and went directly to the balcony. Twelve floors below the crowd in the atrium had gotten larger. Two other
building security people had joined Royce and were preventing the onlookers from getting too close to the body. The body. It was the man I'd passed at the elevator; the one I'd guessed was a policeman, or another of Catherine's clients.

“He tried to kill me,” she said, as I turned to face her.

I felt glass crunch under my shoe. A long-steam wine glass lay broken on the balcony floor in a small puddle of clear white wine. I looked at the cocktail table where the bottle of Zinfandel still sat, along with Catherine's lipstick-smeared glass, the mate to the broken one at my feet.

“He poured the wine himself,” she said. She must have been following my gaze, thinking one or two steps ahead of me.

“He was a pretty big dude. How'd you do it?” I looked around the room for any heavy base statue or ashtray that could've been used as a weapon. “What'd you do, hit him with something when his back was turned then helped him over the railing?”

“I said he was going to kill me. What else could I do?”

“The police are better equipped to answer that.”

She rushed up to me, taking my hands in hers. “No, no police. They don't have to know he was up here. There's a couple of dozen balconies he could've fallen from.”

She had my fingers up close to her mouth; I felt her warm breath flowing across the back of my hands. Her eyelashes batted ever so gently as she looked up to me.

“I must have ‘DUMMY' stenciled on my forehead.”

She flung my hands away, turning from me. “Okay, okay,” she said, walking into the middle of the room. She paused. “I'll tell you the truth.” She turned back, ran her fingers through her hair. “Tate, the guy down in the atrium. He hired me to set Charlie up. Only I didn't know he planned to kill him. Said he had a very important business matter to discuss and Charlie kept ducking him. All I was supposed to do was get him in a good mood, then let Tate into the apartment and leave. I didn't know Charlie had ordered more champagne. I thought you were Tate when I went to the door. When I found out Charlie was dead, I knew you could place me in his apartment so I went to you for help, but I couldn't tell you the whole truth then.”

“And inviting me up here earlier . . . ?”

She shrugged. “Insurance, kind of. I guess I wanted somebody on my side. I like you. You're good people. You were always nice to me when I came into the store.”

“What about this Joey?”

“A name I threw at the cops to get them off my back.”

“So Vanders wasn't into gambling?”

“He couldn've been. He was into something that got him killed. The only thing I know for sure, when Tate showed up here today, he was here to tie up loose ends.”

“So you killed him?”

“I had to defend myself. I didn't have a choice.”

At that point, I didn't either. I told her to clean up the broken glass, close her balcony doors, and try to stay calm. “With any luck the cops won't even look in your direction for this.”

“You do believe me, don't you?” she asked, coming up to me.

I took her in my arms. “Getting to know you better hasn't been dull.” I kissed her lightly. “Yeah, I believe you. Don't worry, we'll get through this. The police won't hear anything from me.”

It would be the second time in two days I'd broken my word to her. Only this time I wasn't saddled with any remorse. I still had Detective Hook's business card on my desk in my office. I tried to get in touch with him but learned he was on his way out here to investigate the body in the atrium.

I intercepted him when he came into the building and told him about Catherine and her confession.

We went up to her condo together along with two uniform cops, but apparently Catherine didn't hold much in my ability to keep her confession to myself. Her condo was empty.

Two months later I got word from Detective Hooks that Catherine had been found off a back road in Indiana. Gun shot. She'd been dead for several weeks. Reprisal, more loose ends being tied up, or something
altogether unrelated? Chances are we would never find out, Hooks said. It wasn't a satisfying solution but one he was forced to accept.

As for me, I counted myself as being pretty lucky. This whole mess could've gone any number of ways, and I would've been the worst for it. As it turned out, I didn't get any mention in the media about my involvement in the murder investigation. And after a little buzz around the building; things pretty much got back to normal.

Oh yeah, my daughter had a boy. I passed out cigars for a week.

“Hey, Walt,” Royce called as he hurried down the paper goods aisle. “Did you hear what happened up in twenty-three twelve? Old man Huvack was found in bed with a big ass knife sticking in his chest. Nobody knows where his wife is. You haven't seen her have you?”

I'd bumped into Mrs. Huvack this morning in the basement-parking garage. Her purse had hit the floor, spilling among other things an airline ticket to Canada.

I didn't know what time her flight was scheduled for, she could be in Canada by now, or sitting at the airport waiting to depart.

“No,” I said, and it felt like a pressure valve was being released. One murder was more than enough for me. “Come to think of it, I haven't seen her for about a week.”

Chainey awoke with a headache. She smacked her lips and wiped at the side of her mouth wet from drool. She sat forward and felt woozy. Then a bolt of nausea lanced through her and for a moment, it seemed she might vomit. That, the throbbing beneath her skull, and the rising heat bearing down compelled her to sit back and slump down. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to assemble chunks of random memory into sequential events.

A door slammed. A car door.

A man shouted her name. No, he didn't yell, he'd spoken in a tone as if he was a friend or at least knew her in some way.

Close, he stood close, smiling, conversational.

Turning, sunlight glinting off a polished hood, the man before her, asking her a question quietly.

Then a burning mist fogging her eyes. Bastard sprayed her with pepper spray? No, something else, something nastier.

Sky upside down, sun behind her eyes. Mooch, what about Mooch?

A cell phone jingled. Chainey sat up again, aware that she was on a bus bench, traffic going along. Pedestrians walked by, used to drunks or druggies sleeping off their highs in public. Anything goes in Vegas. Then
the cell phone went off again. The drowsy woman realized it was in her jeans' pocket and removed the instrument.

“How do you feel?” The man asked pleasantly.

“Like shit. I'd appreciate the opportunity to return the favor.”

His chuckle was mirthful, suggesting a person of expansive humor. “At another time, Ms. Chainey. But right this minute, you have a more important task to perform.”

A CAT bus chugged up, and Chainey waved it on. “And what would that be?” Her annoyance was quickly becoming anger, and it was dulling the hammer blows inside her temple.

“That envelope-sized accordion folder you were supposed to deliver to a certain party in L.A.”

“If you know about that, then you must also know it's in the safe.” Anxious, she chewed her lip. She had a bad feeling what was coming next.

“Yes, about that,” the man on the other end said. “Mooch is a stubborn cuss.”

There it was. “I want to speak to him.”

“Your boss is unavailable at the moment, Martha. So you see, it falls to you to obtain that envelope for me and deliver same not to the city of oranges and palms, but to me.”

His tone had remained upbeat, but the implication behind his words were clear. “Only Mooch has the combination,” she said.

There was a gulp as he drank. “Yes, well,” he said, clearing his throat, “as I mentioned, Mr. Maltizar is determined to be noncompliant on this matter, and really, there's little time or patience I can ill afford to waste.”

“Look, there's nothing I can do unless you release Mooch.”

“Oh, don't be so modest. I know a little something about you, and you're plenty resourceful.” He paused to take another sip. Fucker was probably having his morning latte, Chainey reflected.

“And you don't have much choice. None at all if you don't want what could happen on your pretty head.”

Chainey was up and walking around. “Let's say I can get the envelope, and I'm not promising that.”

“But let's say you can.” The voice lost part of its casual veneer.

“Where do I deliver the package and get Mooch back?”

“You're in no position to demand a goddamn thing, missy. What you better do is get that sweet ass of yours in gear and back to your office to get my money.”

“Why aren't you at the office? You had the drop on both of us.” She'd been in the parking lot below the second story set of offices that Ira “Mooch” Maltizar maintained as Truxton, Ltd., a licensed and bonded courier service. And though the company, named for a racehorse owned by the seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson, did generate decent revenues conveying such freight as law firm's briefs to the courthouse or the occasional platinum watch to the showgirl from the smitten sharpie, it was Truxton's “off the books” endeavors that had earned the company its real swag.

“Quite observant of you, Chainey,” the man replied. “That's why you're needed.”

“Who's watching it?”

There was that laugh again. “I can't for one hundred percent say who, but if you press me to lay odds, I'd wager one of the men on duty is a good-sized gentleman, six-five or six, head like a four-slot toaster, chest like the back end of a Peterbilt.”

No use complaining, it wasn't going to change anything. “You've got to give me time to work this out. It's Sunday, and—”

“Sorry my dear, but the clock is against us. You will have to be at the McDonald's on the food court floor of the Excalibur by one forty-seven this afternoon. Be at the table with the ‘MC' carved into it.”

Her watch read three minutes after eleven. “Hey, you're the one that needs this file, man. Seems to me setting an unrealistic timeline is counterproductive. Might lead to mistakes.”

He sighed. “I realize haste in a situation such as this is fraught with unpredictability, but so be it. My time is not my own, and neither is yours, Chainey. For the moment, you hustle when I blow the whistle for the good of Mooch. You can dispense with the cell phone you're using as there will be another one waiting for you at Mickey-D's. Just in case you have the ability to trace these things.” The line clicked off.

Chainey didn't waste time trying to figure out who the asshole was.
That would come later if she completed the job. It didn't matter to her what was in the file. For all she cared, it could be Long John Silver's lost treasure map.

The problem was that at least one large individual representing another interest baby-sitting her office. She assumed that he would at least have somebody with him. But what about the chump who was making her jump through hoops? Did he have help? Did he have a partner too?

Chainey was on Fort Apache Road near the twenty-four-hour Albertson's. She walked across the street to the store and hailed a cab. Two blocks from the unpretentious mall where Truxton was located off the Strip and not far from North Vegas, black Vegas, she got out and paid the cabbie. Her enemy was unknown to her, and she had no way of gauging if he would truly hurt or kill Mooch. If, she chillingly amended, he were still alive.

Walking closer, she tensed as she passed a van but there was nobody in it, at least not in the front seats. But she didn't think a couple of gunmen would be hunkered down in a family van, but you never knew. In the lot of the strip mall where the office was, six cars were parked. As this was Sunday, only Kleopatra's Nails and the video store were open for business. Technically, Truxton didn't have set hours, the need to move unreported monies demanded twenty-four seven service.

Chainey had come to the office because Mooch had called her. Over the phone, he'd mentioned that a matter had come up suddenly, and he needed her on the double. And it was a sad testament to the current fallowness of her love life, that she was available this morning.

Two of the cars on the lot she could ID. One was her late model T-Bird, the other Mooch's Cadillac Eldorado. The others, strangers to her, could belong to anyone. She watched from across the street, alongside a narrow passage beside the closed Cosmic Cube comic book shop.

A woman with two small children left the video store and departed in one of the cars on the lot. Chainey had focused on a shiny Jaguar S-Type tucked in the far corner. From this distance, she couldn't tell if anyone was in the vehicle, but then her hunch was confirmed. A hand came out of the passenger window, flicking ash from a cigarette.

Okay, that's the players. Time to get busy. The design of the mall was such that the steps and storefronts all faced the parking lot. There were
rear service entrances on the backside of the shops, but only on the ground floor. There was only one way to the second story.

One option was to draw the men in the Jaguar out of the car or distract them long enough for her to sneak into the office. It happened that Chainey was acquainted with several working girls, as they were always good sources of underworld information. She could rally a few of them, work out the price, and have them show up and descend on the occupants in the Jag. They could offer all manner of sexual favors. Of course, she concluded, that would probably result in one or more of the women getting punched in the face. And if the cops rolled up, they might haul everybody down to the station to straighten out the mess, and she could get in the office unbothered.

It was thirteen to twelve. She needed a better plan. Chainey walked the long way around the back to avoid being seen, hopped her six-foot frame over the rough hewn wall behind the mall with the aid of a plastic milk crate, and went along the narrow path. She hoped she counted the doors right and knocked. She put her face in line with the peephole.

“Martha?” Jenny Giap, the owner of the nail salon said when she opened the door.

“Too long to explain, but you mind if I come in?”

“No, come on.” As was customary, her fifty-plus body, her stocky legs still shapely and toned, was clad in a mini.

Chainey entered. There were only two customers inside the shop. One was at the nail table that Giap, in her rubber gloves and face mask around her neck, had been working on. The other woman, her foot in a cast, had her chipped vermillion toenails sticking out. She idly leafed through a
Vogue.
An oldies soul station was playing “Hollywood Swinging” by Kool and the Gang on the radio.

The watch on Chainey's wrist felt like a hundred pound weight dragging her down to the bottom of a depthless sea. She didn't want to look at it nor the cat clock on the wall, with its eyes that shifted back and forth ticking far too loudly.

“I need a favor, Jenny. No questions, but there's four hundred in it for you.”

“You've just said the magic words, girlfriend. What I gotta do?”

Less than fifteen minutes later, Jenny Giap was waving her arms wildly above her head, hollering incoherently and trudging onto the parking lot in her platform clunkies. A firetruck had also arrived silently. The crew drove it onto the lot at an angle, blocking the Jaguar.

“The car, the car is on fire,” Giap pointed nervously at the Jaguar. “This ruins business. I can't have them burning up my store.”

“Now hold on, ma'am,” the firefighter who'd alighted from the truck said. “Calm yourself, what are you talking about?”

“Smoke, smoke was pouring out of it.” Giap took two steps back from the Jag as if afraid it might combust at any moment.

“What, from the engine?” The firefighter looked dubiously at the car.

Jenny Giap said, “All I know is I've seen smoke, and that means fire, don't it?”

“What, is this dizzy broad talking about?” The man, the big one the kidnapper had described, had unlimbered himself from behind the wheel. He was in his forties, dressed in a dark suit and thin dark tie with a clip.

“We're trying to determine that sir,” the firefighter said.

“Well, move your fuckin' rig and work this out somewhere else, huh, pal?”

“Be cool, Hal,” his partner in the passenger seat advised.

The two other firefighters alighted from the truck.

“Why don't you cooperate, sir?” This firefighter was a sizeable blond man with a tackler's shoulders. He drifted toward the belligerent Hal.

“Okay, look,” the tall man began, “I'm sorry for any misunderstanding we might be having.” He pulled out his wallet. “This is for the fireman's fund, okay?” He flashed a hundred dollar bill.

“Maybe we should check his car,” the third one, a tawny haired woman said.

“You're not cops, so stop trying to sound tough,” Hal sneered.

“It's no problem to get them here,” the first one mentioned. “No problem at all.”

“Hey, how about you move your truck and let us out?” Hal's buddy, a brown skinned man with white hair in a Hawaiian shirt was now out of the car. “We're late and need to get going. Or maybe your captain would like a call from our lawyers?”

The one who'd talked to Giap took a cursory look around the Jag and did a modified push up to look below it too. “Okay. Sure,” he said.

“I tell you it smokes, whoosh,” Giap said, throwing her hands back in the air and muttering to herself as she returned to her shop.

The firetruck backed up, and the Jaguar tooled out of the lot.

“That was great, Jenny.” Chainey said, heading for the front.

“It's all good,” her friend cracked. They knocked fists.

At the door Chainey added. “Those motherlovers will be back in a few once they figure the fire department has bounced. Just to play safe, close up for the rest of the day, alright? I'll tighten you up on the dinero this week.”

“Shit, a couple of chumps like that don't scare me,” Giap retorted, dropping the stilted English act she'd put on for the suckers. “I got something for 'em if they want to jump bad.” She snickered.