Shotgun Lullaby (A Conway Sax Mystery) (14 page)

“Possible. And the second thing?”

“I think he's letting me know it's okay to take a run at Teddy. He pretty much said so in the cop shop. Imagine the things Fat Teddy's done that
don't
show up in any reports. I think Lima was letting me know
he
knows Teddy did Almost Home and Gus. And he was telling me to do whatever I need to do.”

“Listen to yourself,” Randall said. “You've just talked yourself into believing you're a state-sanctioned killer, or something frighteningly close to it. Is this you, Conway? Is this what you envisioned when you swore you'd never turn away a Barnburner in trouble?”

My face went hot. I said nothing.

We were quiet for what seemed like a long time.

“Here's what I was going to advise before I was interrupted,” Randall finally said. “Head over to the shop. Do a brake job. Tidy up the books. Engage in commerce. Remember commerce? Productive exchanges of goods and services for currency?”

“Fuck you.”

I could picture Randall closing his eyes, counting to five. “I'm sorry,” he finally said. “Condescending, I know. Bad habit. I realize you were close to Gus.”

“You're not exactly tearing life up your own damn self. Your old man's after me to lean on you about picking a college. And he's not the only one.”

Randall went quiet.

“Come with me,” I said.

“To Springfield? I can't.”

“Why? What's so important?”

“I … can't. Won't.”

“Tough love,” I said. “That it?”

He said nothing.

“You been talking with Charlene, or maybe Floriano? The three of you been jabbering about how Conway's screwing up again?”

“Don't be an asshole.”

“Give me a yes or a no. You and Charlene been talking about me?”

Randall started to speak.

But I clicked off. Felt red-cheeked shame, knowing I'd been a jerk. Tried to breathe it away as I pulled up at my quick stop before the Springfield run: Andrade's apartment complex.

His short girlfriend with pretty round eyes let me in. Andrade sat in a ratty wing chair watching a game show I'd never seen.

I said, “How's your elbow?”

“Still busted. What do you want?”

“Wondering if you want to come work for me. I'm busy as hell with other stuff right now.”

“He'd love to,” the woman said. “You want a soda?”

“I got one good arm,” Andrade said, raising his cast an inch. The cast had sparkles glued to it now, and a drawing that might be a dragon. “Not sure how much help I'd be.”

I didn't say what I wanted to say: that I'd thought that through. That Andrade was likely as not to rip me off. That everybody would say I was nuts to even think about hiring him—which was why I hadn't asked anybody's opinion.

Something tugged at the key chain clipped to my belt loop. I looked down, saw Andrade's kid. Ignored him. “Don't make this harder on me than it needs to be,” I said to Andrade. “You can handle the phone and the computer. Just do whatever you can until you're healthy.”

“He'd
love
to,” the woman said.

“There is only one state capital that contains three words,” the kid said, still tugging my key chain.

“I know your guy Floriano,” Andrade said. “He's a good tech.”

“He says the same about you.” A lie, but a good one.

“He does?” Pause. “I'm sorry about the Biletnikov dude. Even if he did owe me six-fifty.”

I gritted my teeth and let that slide. “I'm sorry I busted up your elbow. Why don't you head over now and get a feel for the shop? I'll call Floriano, tell him to expect you.”

The woman pressed a cold can of Coke into my hand as she let me out the door. “Thank you,” she said.

“Least I can do,” I said.

“Salt Lake City,” the kid said.

*   *   *

Ninety minutes later, I sat in my truck eating a pair of roach-coach hot dogs and eyeballing the Hi Hat. I'd looped the block before parking, hadn't seen any sign of Fat Teddy's Mercedes SUV. Also hadn't seen anything that looked like heavy security. There was a camera bolted above the Hi Hat's alley door, but that was par for the course at a city nightclub.

All this suited the plan I'd come up with during the drive: to grab a few minutes alone with Boxer.

Given some one-on-one time, I could feel him out, see which way he leaned. Charlie or Teddy? Was Boxer babysitting the boss's kid and hating every minute of it? Or was he working with the kid to overthrow a weak boss who had one foot out the door? Hell, was he the actual trigger man who took out Gus?

My next move would depend on the answers.

I finished the dogs, hopped from my truck, wiped hands on jeans as I angled toward the front door. Didn't go in, though—veered away instead, looking as sketchy as possible. Which wasn't exactly a stretch. I was betting the front door had a security cam, too, and I wanted to look wrong in a way that would catch Boxer's eye.

Rounded the corner, walked the twenty yards to the Hi Hat's delivery alley. Stood at the corner, looked both ways a few times—piling on the sketchiness for whoever might be watching—and headed down the alley. Passed a Dumpster, a stack of milk crates, a tangle of old rolled-up chain link …

… and smiled inside as a steel door opened and Boxer stepped out.

It's nice when a plan works.

Over his white shirt/black slacks uniform he wore—I'm not kidding—a sky-blue cardigan sweater. Unbuttoned. As I neared he made the move I'd seen before, putting casual hands on casual hips to show me the Desert Eagle that wasn't one bit casual.

“Help you, friend?” He said it
frind
in an accent that was almost familiar, but not quite.

“Hell yes you can help.” Without looking at the camera behind and above his right shoulder, I said, “That thing got audio?”

He paused half a beat. “Negative.”

“Good.” All the while I walked toward him, keeping my voice and my moves casual. We were just two guys talking.

The dude was good. As I neared he didn't back away, didn't flinch or overreact, didn't touch his gun for reassurance. He just stood, hands on hips, until I was close enough to slip a stick of gum in his shirt pocket. Then he said it again, with an edge this time: “
Help
you, friend?”

“You can help me figure something out.”

He waited. He had shark eyes. They gave me nothing.

“You can help me figure out why a pro like you, who looks to've spent time in some serious places, is babysitting Charlie Pundo's nothingburger baby-raping turd of a son.”

The right corner of his mouth gained enough altitude to show a hole where a tooth belonged. I was pretty sure that was a smile.
So he
is
Charlie's guy, and he
does
hate Fat Teddy's guts. Your instincts were right. Now press it
.

“Yeah, that Teddy's all man,” I said. “At least when it comes to twelve-year-old Guatemalan girls. Which made for quite a mess, the way I figure it. Whole family had to get disappeared. Were you in on that?”

Boxer squinted and tugged at his right earlobe. I took it as a sign I was getting to him.

Which was dumb.

“You think you're in a certain line of work,” I said, “until one night the boss tells you to crash some immigrant janitor's apartment. To snatch him and his wife and his kids. Not exactly what you—”

I didn't get to finish.

Because Boxer, who'd been cocking his fist when I thought he was tugging his ear, knocked me cold with the quickest, heaviest right hand I'd ever felt in my life.

Or ever hope to.

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I came to in a place that smelled like sweat and sawdust. High windows, dirty light. I fuzzed out, fuzzed in. My head hurt like hell. I felt a blurt of puke, kept it in.

Heard a voice, soft but urgent.
All due respect. Nowhere near this place. Not today.

That voice. I remembered. Boxer. He'd tugged his earlobe.

When I pushed to a sitting position, my left cheek screamed pain. I touched it. Big swelling, like I'd tucked a golf ball in there.

I'd been wrong about a lot of things but right about one: that dude had surely spent time in the ring.

I finished sitting up—it took a while—blinked, took things in. Warehouse, a big one, ten thousand square feet easy. Curving plywood ramps, most of them badly patched and graffitied. Over there: a Coke machine lying on its side. Far corner: the weight of an HVAC unit had pulled down a chunk of ceiling. The stench clarified itself: bums, rats, junkies, beer piss, slow-rotting plywood, human shit, rubbers, bird carcasses.

Soundtrack:
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk
. Unhurried. A patient sound, soft on soft.

I shook my head once more and turned and figured out a couple of things.

I was in an indoor skateboard park. In fact, I was sitting at the bottom of a giant ramp, a half-pipe I think they call them. Damn thing had a diameter of thirty-plus feet. This one was the pick of the litter—it still looked usable, which was more than you could say for most of the ramps there.

My eye was drawn upward, where the half-pipe's rim was painted to look like swimming-pool tile, and I saw the source of the patient noise: Charlie Pundo, sitting sixteen feet high, long legs dangling, running shoes
thunk-thunk
ing plywood. Even with those shoes, he wore a sharp suit and tie. He stared straight ahead at nothing. He sure didn't look at me.

He's sixteen feet away, and he doesn't have wings. Get up and run away
now.

“Ahem.”

I cranked my neck, heard it rattle, spotted Boxer behind me. He stood easy, one foot on the half-pipe, the Desert Eagle in his right hand.

So he punched like a steam engine and he could read my mind.

Great.

“Sax,” Pundo said.

I looked. He beckoned with a white tube that looked like a baton. “Come on up.”

I made a
how the hell?
shrug.

“I did it,” he said. “You can, too.”

“Sir?” Boxer said to Pundo, not liking the idea.

Pundo waved him off with the baton. “Don't worry about it. Go see how the guys are making out.”

The guys? As Boxer walked off—after hesitating, like he
really
didn't dig the idea—I noticed footsteps here and there. Wondered how many guys there were.

Pundo whistled through his teeth, made a pendulum motion with his free hand.

“What the hell,” I said out loud. And started to run back and forth.

It's probably easy for fourteen-year-old boys who weigh a hundred and ten, but it sure wasn't easy for me in Red Wing boots. I trotted up one side of the half-pipe as far as I could, spun a clumsy one-eighty, and trotted back the way I'd come, using momentum to gain a little altitude on the other side.

Once.

Twice.

Three times. Sweating now, the one-eighties tricky because my body was nearly parallel to the floor, the way a skateboarder would be.

I decided I had as much momentum as I was going to get. Put together a burst, ran up Pundo's side, flung my arms, grabbed the edge. I pulled, boot-scrabbled, heaved a leg, pulled some more.

And made it. I sat to Pundo's left, hot as hell, panting but trying to hide it.

He was back to his thousand-yard stare now. He said nothing. In his right hand, close to his chest, he held an old-school Colt Detective Special, blued. With his left hand he tapped the baton on the ramp. Now I saw it wasn't a baton, but rolled-up papers.

I patted the inside pocket of my jacket.

The police report on Teddy's rape was missing.

Pundo held it, rolled up, in his hand.

Which probably explained why we were here.

Pundo said nothing. Held his revolver as easily as most people hold a breadstick.

While he brooded, I used the time to scope the warehouse from this vantage point, figuring angles.

Off near the hole in the ceiling a guy came into view. He walked backward, splashing a trail from a red plastic jug.

“You're torching this dump,” I said as gas joined the other smells.

Pundo said nothing.

I craned my neck, still checking angles, escape routes, possibilities. This half-pipe had once been reachable by a ladder made of two-by-fours, but the ladder lay on filthy concrete now, torn up like everything else.

I spotted another guy, this one with an orange beard, also dumping gas. So call it Boxer plus two, and assume they were all armed.

Good news: they were preoccupied. Lugging around a gas can and a lighter does focus the mind.

Bad news: they were Boxer's men. He knew his shit. They would, too.

When I looked at Pundo again, he was looking at me. He'd unrolled the police report, had set it neatly in the space between us. The Colt, pointed at my belly, shook not one bit.

He said, “I bought this place for him.”

“For Teddy.”

“Eight years ago? No, nine. He was a big boy even then, and he wasn't exactly setting the world on fire, you'll pardon the pun, when it came to school. Or friends. Or anything else.” He turned his head to look straight out over the skate park—
his
skate park—and he half-smiled. “He expressed interest in skateboarding, rode around our driveway for a few weeks. I bought him this place so fast, and at such a price, my accountant quit.”

Then we were quiet some more. Below, men moved around while Boxer gave instructions.

Wait. Was that something else in my peripheral vision? Off to the left, where my view was blocked by the downed HVAC unit, it seemed the light changed for a second or two.

Could be anything. Could be a cat running past a window.

But it could be something else. And something else,
anything
else, had to be better than the box I was in.