Dead South (A Bryson Wilde Thriller / Read in Any Order) (6 page)

14

Day Five

August 7, 1952

Wednesday Afternoon

Wilde set the shoebox on the floor in the middle of the doorway and then took a position behind the shed. Minutes later a man appeared; it was the man from Larimer Street, the one with the flat nose and the expensive gold watch.

In his right hand was a black gun.

He approached cautiously, keeping low, keeping quiet.

Thirty steps away from the structure he stopped.

His eyes fell on the money.

Then he called out, “Wilde!” Wilde’s chest pounded at the realization that the man knew his name. “Wilde, all I want is the money. Don’t be stupid. I don’t want to kill you. There’s no reason you have to die. We can do this the civilized way. Do you understand?”

Wilde said nothing.

“The money’s not yours,” the man said.

Wilde tightened his grip on the gun.

The man stood straight up and lowered his hand.

“My gun’s pointed at the ground,” he shouted. “Show yourself. I’m not going to shoot.”

Wilde stepped out with the gun pointed down.

He was fast.

He was accurate.

He could get the barrel up and a bullet flying before his brain twisted far enough to even know what his body was doing.

“There you are,” the man said.

Wilde jerked his arm up, turned to the right and pulled the trigger. The wood next to the money exploded. He fired again and this time the bullet landed where he wanted, on the shoebox, catching the corner and sending it spinning. Bills flew out and twisted wildly in the air before dropping to the ground.

“There’s the money. Take it.”

The man frowned.

Then he dropped his gun to the ground.

“See?” he said. “No threat here.”

Wilde pointed his gun at the man’s chest.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

He’d killed men before but most had been from the barrel of a warbird. A nasty image flashed, an image of the man knifing Sudden Dance in the alley, knifing her hard, stabbing her over and over in the gut and then, when she dropped, driving the blade into her heart.

The man took a step towards the money, then another.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll split it with you. Fifty-fifty. That’s fair, don’t you think? Just put the gun down and cool your heels. We’ll work through this. Remember, the money’s not yours. You took it.””

Wilde didn’t listen.

He needed to pull the trigger.

He needed to do it for Sudden Dance.

He needed to do it for Alley London.

The trigger wouldn’t pull though.

Then the man pointed at the ground next to Wilde and said, “Rattlesnake.”

Wilde turned his head but not much, just enough to verify that it was a trick. What he saw he couldn’t believe. Not more than eight feet away a thick brown snake was coming directly at him. The body was brown with wicked spots and the head was a large thick diamond with nasty black eyes. Wilde’s eyes went to the tail. The rattle was there, blackish and hard; it wasn’t a bull snake.

He shot; once, then again, and again and again, hitting it each time but not squarely until the last pull of the trigger, but hitting it good then, real good, right at the end of the head, hitting it so hard that the head flew off and gooey red guts squirted out of the hole in the body.

He turned back to the boxer to find something he didn’t expect.

The man was walking towards him.

“That was six shots,” the man said.

His face was hard.

In his hand was a knife.

“That part about not hurting you,” the man said, “I’m afraid that was a lie.”

Then he charged.

Wilde pulled the trigger.

No response came.

It fell on empty air.

15

Day Five

August 7, 1952

Wednesday Afternoon

It took Wilde a long time to kill the boxer and when it was over his body shut down, collapsing him to the ground on top of the rattlesnake’s body, with not enough strength to even roll off. The snake’s head was by his head, mere inches away, a foot at most, staring at him out of dead black holes.

He closed his eyes.

The darkness was whiskey.

He was busted; how bad and how far and how deep, he didn’t know, but did know it wouldn’t be pretty.

It took a long time before he got to his feet.

He would have laid there longer but the sun was chewing him up.

The boxer’s eyes were open and eerily shriveled.

The juice was gone.

He looked like a circus freak.

Wilde nudged his face with a foot.

It didn’t respond.

He found a wallet in the man’s back pocket. It was stuffed with cash, a lot of cash, maybe over a grand. Wilde didn’t count it or take it out. He shifted through it for a driver’s license or identification papers and found nothing, only the cash. He put the wallet back in the man’s pocket, dragged him to the well and dumped him in like the little shit he was. “That’s your first step towards hell. Have fun the rest of the way.” The bloody knife went in too, thrown in on top of him, plus the gun.

There, that was all of it.

He grabbed the shoebox, gathered the money and got the hell out of there.

Back at Blondie the photo of Alley London had been removed from the windshield wiper and tossed on the ground. Wilde picked it up and stuck it in his wallet.

The boxer’s car was parked directly behind Blondie.

Wilde expected it would be Alley’s white vehicle. It wasn’t; it was an old, blue piece of crap with a temporary tag taped in the rear window. The boxer must have ditched Alley’s car somewhere, not needing the risk.

An unopened carton of Camels sat on the seat.

Wilde threw them in Blondie.

The asshole owed him at least that.

The keys were in the ignition.

A plastic dealer’s tag was on the ring—Honest Joe’s Used Cars. It was a place on upper Colfax. You could buy a car in the front and stolen cigarettes in the back.

Mashed butts were in the ashtray.

Underneath ‘them was a crumpled piece of paper.

Wilde brushed it off and unfolded it.

On it was a handwritten phone number.

He shoved it in his wallet.

Then he got in Blondie, lit a smoke, did a one-eighty and let the miles click off one after another back towards Denver.

He should feel good. The little coward who murdered Sudden Dance was now taking a long, hard dirt nap, killed in the same exact way that he dished it out. Alley London, the poor thing, had her revenge too. Plus the witness, Jackie Fountain, now had nothing to worry about. Still, no smile came to Wilde’s face. He was satisfied and wouldn’t change an ounce of anything but there was no smile on his face, either on the surface or underneath it.

He sucked the last drag out of a butt and flicked it out the window.

The smoke was magic in his lungs.

Back in Denver he swung by his house for a shower and clothes that weren’t ripped to shreds. His body ached in a hundred places but his face was basically intact except for a couple of cuts and a punch of purple under his right eye.

Alabama showed up exactly where and when she was supposed to, namely the D&F Tower at four.

Shopping bags dangled from both hands.

She handed half to Wilde, studied his face and said, “Tell me the other guy looks worse.”

He nodded.

“It’s over.”

“Who was it? That boxer guy?”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No, he killed himself when he killed Sudden Dance. But I helped him die.”

“Are you going to tell Fingers?”

“No, screw Fingers.”

“So does this mean you still have the money?”

“Yes.”

“What are we going to do with it?”

“We?”

She ran a finger down his sleeve. “You’re going to like what I bought.”

“Why, what is it?”

“You’ll see. It’s skimpy.”

At the office something happened that Wilde didn’t expect.

The lock was broken.

The door was ajar.

Inside, the place was trashed to hell and back.

16

Day Five

August 7, 1952

Wednesday Afternoon

Wilde tossed the shoebox of money on the desk, surveyed the mess and said, “Nicholas Dent.”

Alabama considered it.

“You think so?”

Wilde set a book of matches on fire and lit a smoke.

“He was looking for the money,” he said. “There are only two people in this stupid cow town who know about it. One is Dent and the other is Fingers, and I’m not even sure about Fingers to tell you the truth. And Fingers, as crazy as he is, isn’t crazy enough to do this, especially in broad daylight.”

“True but Dent isn’t either.”

Wilde blew smoke.

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t the boxer. He was with me the whole time.”

“Maybe they weren’t after the money.”

Wilde shook his head.

“That’s all I have worth taking.”

“That’s not true. You have me.”

He tapped ashes out the window and said, “’Bama, you need to take your foot off the gas for five seconds.”

“Why? Are you afraid of the speed?”

“No, I’m afraid of the crash.”

“Come on, Bryson,” she said. “You’ve seen me naked. You know what you’re missing. You know you can’t hold out forever.”

He slumped in a chair. Every muscle in his body ached.

Alabama came behind him and rubbed his shoulders.

“Feel better?”

The answer was, “Yes.”

He said, “No.”

“Lean forward.”

He hesitated; then he complied.

Her touch was whiskey.

Her perfume was sex.

The closeness of her body was life itself.

“Maybe it wasn’t Dent,” he said. “Maybe there’s a fourth person in the mix. Maybe the boxer had an accomplice.”

“Yeah, but that waitress from the Down Towner—”

“—Jackie Fountain—”

“—Right, her, she only saw one man.”

Wilde relaxed his body.

“That feels good,” he said. Thirty seconds later he stiffened, got up and grabbed the Fedora. “Come on, we need to take a ride.”

“To where?”

“To where we’re going.”

“And where is it that we’re going?”

“To the place we’re headed to.”

She punched his arm.

“You know what your problem is Wilde? You never stop being you.”

They wound through the rush-hour congestion and headed south where the butterflies and magpies and bees and rattlesnakes were. The plan wasn’t complicated; it was to get the dead boxer’s car somewhere other than where it was. Right now, as it sat, it was a 3,000-pound exclamation point to the effect that someone left it and never came back—so, look around and maybe you’ll find him.

Wilde didn’t want the body found, at least not while Fingers was still a trigger itching to be pulled.

In hindsight it was stupid to dump the body in the well; it was justice, yes, but it was dumber-than-dung justice.

The miles clicked off.

When they got to the scene, the boxer’s car was exactly as it was before at the side of the road.

The keys were still in the ignition.

“We got lucky,” he said.

He must have had an expression on his face because Alabama said, “You’re thinking,”

He kicked the dirt.

“I’m wondering if I should get the boxer out of the well and move him to someplace I don’t have a connection with.”

Alabama wasn’t enthused.

“Let him be,” she said. “No one will find him for twenty years and when they do they won’t know who he is, or care.” Wilde chewed on it. “Plus, do we really want to be pulling a body to the road and then driving around with it? Not to mention, where are we going to dump it once we do have it?”

Wilde exhaled.

“All right, we’ll let the dog lie. You take his car and follow me.”

“Where we going? Further south?”

A hawk circled above on strong silent wings, looking for a tasty little fur-ball or an equally yummy snake.

“We’ll bring it back to the city and park it down at the end of Market,” he said.

“Are you serious?”

He nodded.

“That way it won’t be associated with this road or the country. We’ll leave the keys in the ignition. Someone will steal it within two hours.”

That was the plan and that’s what they did.

There were no complications.

There were no witnesses, at least none that they saw.

Twilight was pulling a blanket over the city.

Darkness was coming.

“Now what?” Alabama said.

Wilde assessed his body. It was screaming for relief.

“Now we sleep,” he said.

“Together?”

17

Day Six

August 8, 1952

Thursday Morning

For everyone who was crazy enough to walk into the joint, Honest Joe had a smile as big as his gut, and didn’t skimp on either when Wilde pushed through the doors and headed across the lobby Thursday morning. “I’ll be damned,” the man said. “The Wildman himself, in the flesh.”

Wilde surveyed the interior as he lit a smoke.

Three vehicles were inside, spit-shined to perfection. Lots more were out front between the building and the Colfax asphalt, all with prices written in soap on the windshields. In front of it all was large wooden sign:

Honest Joe’s Used Cars

Buy Here, Pay Here

“You got some nice rides here, Joe.”

“Always,” Joe said. “You looking to make a deal? I’ll treat you good, Wildman; you know that. We’ll get you out of that little foreign coffin you drive around in and into something with some meat on it.”

“What I’m interested in is an old blue piece of crap, one that you already sold. It’s been swinging by my house and my office. It’s got a temporary tag in the back. The driver looks like a boxer. He wears a suit and has a fancy gold watch.”

“He’s following you around?”

“Like my own shadow.”

Joe darted his eyes and lowered his voice.

“The damnedest thing happened this morning,” he said. “I was buying a newspaper and a ten came out of my wallet and blew away. You haven’t seen it by any chance, have you?”

Wilde pulled a ten out of his wallet and dangled it in his fingers.

“It didn’t look like this, did it?”

Joe studied it and said, “Yeah, I think that’s it.”

Wilde handed it to him.

“We were talking about blue crap,” he said.

“Right, right,” Joe said. “I don’t know much about the guy. He came in two days ago and bought Big Blue for cash. You want to see the paperwork?”

“You bet.”

There wasn’t much, basically a bill of sale and temporary registration for one Richard Hunter; no address, no phone number.

“Richard Hunter?” Wilde said.

“He went by Dick.”

“So, Dick Hunter.”

“Right.”

“Doesn’t that name sound just a bit strange to you?”

Joe chewed on it and then smiled. “Are you the dick he’s hunting or do you think it’s the other kind?”

“I don’t think it’s the other kind. Where was he from?”

Joe scrunched his face.

“He didn’t say and I didn’t ask. All he said was that he just got into town and needed wheels.”

“He just got into town?”

“Right.”

“And this was two days ago, on Tuesday?”

Joe checked the paperwork and tapped a finger. “There it is right there, August 6
^th
. Today’s the 8
^th
.”

Wilde swallowed.

If that was true then the man wasn’t in town last Saturday night when Sudden Dance was murdered. That meant that Wilde killed the wrong man at the well. The idea sent bark and snarl into his gray matter.

He shook it off to worry about it later and lit a cigarette.

“Did he say where he was staying?”

“No but he asked me where a decent hotel was.”

“What’d you tell him?”

Joe frowned.

“Did I mention that when that ten blew away a five went with it?”

At the office Wilde found something he liked very, very much, namely Alabama sitting behind the desk with her legs propped up, surrounded by sea of neatness. Everything was back in its place.

He tossed the Fedora.

It hit the edge of the window and dropped to the floor.

“Did you find anything missing?”

“Good morning to you, too.”

“Thanks for straightening up. It feels normal in here again.”

“You’re welcome. Only one thing was missing that I noticed, the gun from the bottom drawer.”

Wilde lit a cigarette.

The gun, his spare, was marginal even on its best day. Whoever took it didn’t come here for it. He spotted it and said, Why not?

“Good riddance,” he said.

“You carved your name in the handle,” Alabama said.

Wilde blew smoke.

That was true.

“I’m getting a picture of someone shot and your gun tossed on his body,” she added.

“Let them try.”

He pulled the paper out of his wallet—the paper he found in the blue piece of crap, the one with the phone number written on it—and handed it to Alabama. “I found this in the boxer’s ashtray. Do me a favor and call it and see who answers. When they do just pretend you dialed wrong.”

He paced next to the windows as Alabama dialed.

The phone rang.

Who am I talking to?

Angel? Angel who?

Angel, I was looking for Peter. Is he in?

Really? Is this the beauty salon?

Oh, it’s a law firm. I’m sorry—

She hung up.

“It’s a law firm?” Wilde said.

“Apparently so.”

“What the hell would the boxer be doing with the number of a law firm?” He blew smoke. “Go through the phone book and match the number. I want to know what firm it is.”

She did.

Her face wrinkled.

“You’re not going to believe it,” she said. “It’s that firm where Alley London worked, the one in the Daniels & Fisher Tower—Banders & Rock.”

Alley London was the dead body from the well.

Wilde paced.

“This doesn’t make any sense. It’s getting more confusing instead of better.”

“Yeah, so just let it go.”

Wilde flicked the butt out the window and grabbed the Fedora.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going to pay a visit to the boxer’s hotel.”

“What for?”

“To find out who the hell he is.”