Dead South (A Bryson Wilde Thriller / Read in Any Order) (9 page)

26

Day Seven

August 9, 1952

Friday Morning

At the window Wilde set a book of matches on fire and watched the lawyer, Jack Strike, through the flames as the man slid into the passenger side of a shinny black Lincoln and pulled off as soon as the door shut. When the vehicle turned at the corner Wilde got a good enough look at the driver to tell it was a female. A fashionable hat kept her face from view.

She was probably Strike’s personal secretary, that or a lawyer in the firm, or possibly a client.

It didn’t matter.

Two minutes later Jori-Rey showed up, her face obscured by oversized sunglasses and an equally offensive hat. In her hand was a bag of donuts. She set it on the desk, pulled one out—cake with chocolate frosting—and held it to Wilde’s mouth.

He took a bite.

She took the second and said, “You were pretty rough last night.”

“Sorry.”

“That wasn’t a complaint.” Her eyes fell to the briefcase. “What’s that?”

“That’ something I’m going to take to El Paso.”

“El Paso?”

He nodded.

“That Rojo’s territory,” she said.

“I know.”

Wilde filled her in on the assignment. “Here’s the interesting part. It’s going to a lawyer in El Paso by the name of Lester Trench. I know he’s connected to the boxer—the guy we dumped over the cliff last night. But the guy who hired me this morning, Jack Strike, doesn’t know that I know that. The only reason I know about the connection is because I found the El Paso lawyer’s business card in the boxer’s hotel room.”

“So what do you think is going on?”

He tapped two smokes out and lit them up.

“Hold on,” he said. “There’s another thing of interest. The woman I found in the bottom of the well, Alley London, worked at the same firm as the lawyer who hired me this morning, Jack Strike. The firm’s Banders & Rock. I found their phone number on a piece of paper in the ashtray of the boxer’s car. So the two lawyers are both connected to the boxer.”

“Do you think Strike killed her?”

Wilde blew smoke.

“It’s possible, hell, maybe even probable. He’s capable of it. Two seconds of looking into his eyes will tell you that.”

She wiped frosting from Wilde’s lip with her finger and then sucked it off.

“Don’t go to El Paso.”

“Why?”

“We both know why.”

That was true.

He’d end up dead.

He went to the window and looked down.

The lawyer wasn’t there.

No strange faces were lurking around.

Still, a sense of danger drifted up.

“I was going to end up there sooner or later anyway,” he said. “It may as well be sooner.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

Wilde frowned.

“Around me is the last place you should be.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” she said. “You only need to know one thing. If you go, you’ll either have me sitting in the seat next to you or following behind in my own car. If it ends up being the latter, you won’t be able to put your hand on my leg.”

Wilde blew smoke.

“This isn’t a game.”

She hardened her face.

“No, it isn’t. I’m going to Rojo. He’s either going to tell me where Maria is or I’m going to kill him. I don’t care if it takes the rest of my life.”

Wilde pulled a donut out and took a bite.

“Does he know about you?”

“You mean that Sudden Dance has a sister?”

“Right.”

“No,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. He was too obsessed with Sudden Dance. She was afraid to tell him there was a second one.”

“Why?”

“Because he’d bring her down and fall in love with her too,” she said. “That wouldn’t end well, not for anyone.”

Wilde chewed on it.

“You can ride down, at least part way. I may not bring you all the way in though. Know that from the start. I have to think it through.”

“Fair enough. When do we leave?”

He looked at his watch.

“Soon.”

Then he handed her three twenties.

“Do me a favor and head over to 16
^th
Street and buy a briefcase as close as you can to this one.” He inspected it. “This is a Brownstone. Get the same brand if you can. Be sure it’s real leather—tan like this one—and has locks.”

“That won’t work. When you deliver it the lawyer’s key won’t fit.”

“I’m betting he doesn’t have the key,” he said. “I doubt Strike would have actually mailed it. I’m banking on the fact that all the lawyer has is a description of what it looks like and a plan to pry it open after he gets it. While you’re out, get a few changes of clothes too. Something comfortable. Something you can run in. I’ll pick you up at the corner of 16
^th
and Delaware at exactly ten o’clock. When you leave here, go out the back way. Okay?”

“Okay.”

27

Day Seven

August 9, 1952

Friday Morning

As soon as Jori-Rey left, Wilde pried the briefcase open, not giving a fried monkey’s brain that he was breaching a client’s confidence because the client was a snaky little snake and Wilde’s life depended on knowing what type of snake he was dealing with.

Inside were several things.

Two fat white envelopes, wrapped with rubber bands, were stuffed with money. Wilde counted one, which came to five Gs. The other was of similar bulk, making ten total. He wrapped them back up exactly as he found them.

Also inside were three folders, each stuffed with papers written in Spanish, some typewritten and some longhand. Wilde could do a lot of things but reading Spanish wasn’t one of them. They might as well be Martian.

He flipped through, nonetheless.

Tucked in back of the last folder he found a sealed envelope marked Confidential.

He opened in.

Inside were a number of photographs. Several were of him, taken without his knowledge, including one looking out his office window. Others depicted Sudden Dance’s hotel room, where Wilde found the suitcase of money tucked under the bed; the well, where he found Alley London’s body; the Bokoray; and others, all relating to Sudden Dance’s murder.

There were also two typed pieces of paper, written in English.

Wilde lit a smoke.

Then he read the papers.

Just as he finished, Alabama walked in with a bag of donuts, which she tossed on the desk and then hopped up next to.

Her tanned legs dangled.

The top two buttons of her blouse were undone.

Cleavage peeked out at Wilde.

“You got rid of me last night so you could do nasty things to your little Indian friend,” she said. “That wasn’t nice.”

“I wanted you safe.”

“Safe would have been with you,” she said. “I hope she was worth all the effort.”

“That wasn’t my plan.”

“Sure, of course not. Just answer one question for me and do it honestly.”

He pulled a donut out and took a bite.

“What is it?”

“Does she make a lot of noise?”

He shook his head.

“Those aren’t the kind of things I talk about.”

“Yeah, well I do, if you care to know.”

“Do what? Talk about them?”

“No, make a lot of noise.”

“Alabama, I need you to focus. We have a problem, a big problem.”

“The guy from last night who got away?”

“No, something worse.”

He filled her in on the new assignment from the fancy-schmancy lawyer, Jack Strike, and tapped on the briefcase. “What he’s having me do is deliver a long report by Nicholas Dent, who’s been following me around even more than I knew. Dent makes a pretty compelling case that I murdered Sudden Dance, and London Alley too for that matter.”

“Well, you have to admit, the shoe fits.”

Wilde set a book of matches on fire.

“Most of Dent’s report is pretty straightforward and he reaches a lot of the same conclusions that I would if I was the one looking in from the outside,” he said. “There’s one thing that bothers me, though. His report says that the witness, that waitress from the Down Towner—”

“—Jackie Fountain—”

“Right, Jackie Fountain—Dent’s report says that she said she saw me stab the woman in the alley. That’s different than the notes we found when we broke into his office. There, she told him she saw
someone
who was wearing a suit and a hat and could have been me but she couldn’t say for sure that it was.”

“So he’s embellished it a bit.”

Wilde nodded.

“Not a bit, a lot. The question is, why?”

Alabama swung her legs.

Her skirt was high.

“Are you actually going to go all the way to El Paso and deliver this stupid briefcase?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m going with you.”

He shook his head.

“Too dangerous,” he said. “The more I think about this briefcase, the more I think the lawyer who hired me this morning, Jack Strike, I think he killed Alley London. I don’t know why yet but my gut tells me he’s the one. Then he hired Dent to embellish the facts to put the blame on me.”

Alabama made a face.

“That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If he was trying to put the blame on you he wouldn’t stuff it in a briefcase where no one would ever see it.”

Wilde shrugged.

“There are pieces missing, I’ll give you that. I’m going to call a man named Big Bob.”

“Big Bob?”

“He’s going to watch over you while I’m gone. I don’t want you more than ten feet from him at any time. Promise me.”

She ran a finger down his nose.

“Did you already suspect that?”

“Suspect what?”

“That I get noisy.”

He smiled.

“Actually, yes.”

“So you do think about it.”

“Big Bob,” he said. “Don’t leave his side and I mean it.”

He made a call.

Fifteen minutes later an undersized man in a loose suit and oversized Fedora opened the door and walked in, two inches shorter than Alabama, a hundred and ten pounds if he had rocks in his pockets.

A gun slung in a leather sheath near his ribs.

His eyes immediately fell to Alabama’s legs.

Then they came up.

“Bob, thanks for coming,” Wilde said.

Outside on Larimer a car screeched to a stop.

Three men got out.

One was Johnnie Fingers.

The other two were dressed the same.

Wilde grabbed the briefcase and Fedora in one fell swoop, gave Alabama a quick hard kiss on the lips as he ran for the door, and ducked out the back.

28

Day Seven

August 9, 1952

Friday Afternoon

Wilde didn’t get out of the city often enough. That little reality smacked him squarely between the eyes and punched into his brain as he maneuvered a topless Blondie farther and farther south into the untamed stretches of Colorado.

The scenery was a drug.

The sky ricocheted to infinity.

The sunshine massaged his face.

Jori-Rey sat next to him, her hair blowing, her sundress hiked up for the tan, her smile so incredibly easy, her every word a song, her every expression something to be memorized and stored away.

Wilde was hooked; no, not hooked, hooked hard and deep, way down in his soul where he hardly ever went.

He suspected it last night when he took her there on the couch as the storm rattled the windows and the lightning ripped the sky and every molecule in the universe fell into place.

Now, out here away from the clutter and the pressure and the buzz, it was even clearer.

She had the looks.

She had the body.

She had the depth.

She had the mystery.

“Wilde, are you okay?”

He snapped back.

“Yeah, sure, light me a cigarette, will you?”

She did, plus one for herself.

“I think I might be starting to figure out what’s going on,” he said.

Jori-Rey twisted her body in his direction.

“Go on.”

“We start with the basic premise that Rojo figures that I killed Sudden Dance,” he said. “Where he came up with that, I don’t know for sure but my gut tells me that my P. I. buddy, Nicholas Dent, has his fingerprints all over it.”

“How?”

Wilde took a deep drag.

“Maybe Dent did a background check on Sudden Dance and found out she was Rojo’s woman. Maybe he contacted Rojo and offered to give him information, for a price, of course.”

“So Dent ratted you out?”

“Right, but whether it was Dent or someone else, it really doesn’t matter,” Wilde said. “What matters is that Rojo came to the conclusion that I killed Sudden Dance. So, the first thing he does is send the boxer to Denver to kill me. When that didn’t work, he sent the two guys from last night. Now he’s tired of sending guys. Now he’s luring me down to where he is so that he can kill me with his own two hands and watch my eyes pop out of my head.”

“So all this is a ploy just to get you down to his lair—”

“Exactly. When we drop the briefcase off in El Paso with that lawyer Lester Trench, there will be men there waiting for me; maybe even Rojo himself.”

“Well then, you can’t drop the briefcase off.”

“We’ll see how to play it,” Wilde said. “I’m still trying to figure that part out.”

“We should just turn around.”

Wilde tapped ashes.

“This is the path to getting Maria back. You want her found, right?”

She put a hand on his knee.

“I do but not at this cost.”

“Well, we haven’t paid anything yet, unless you count gas money.”

Up ahead three coyotes loped through the brush near the side of the road. “That’s a hell of a way to make your living,” Wilde said. “With your teeth.”

“I like coyotes.”

“Why?”

“They’re good hunters.”

“Coyotes?”

“Yes. Watch them sometime. You’ll be amazed.” She paused and added, “When we get down to El Paso I think we should bypass the lawyer and go straight to Mexico. I’m going to pretend to be Sudden Dance. I’ll pretend something happened to my memory, that I got hit in the head or something. That’ll be why I can’t remember a lot of the stuff I should know.”

The words ripped through Wilde’s gut.

“No.”

“If I’m Sudden Dance and I’m alive, Rojo won’t have a reason to kill you.”

“No.”

“I’ll get in close. I’ll figure out where Maria is. I’ll get him to tell me. I’ll harass him until he does.”

Wilde’s chest tightened so much that his foot slammed on the brake. Blondie skidded to a to a halt and Wilde killed the engine.

He grabbed Jori-Rey’s arm and squeezed tight.

“We’re not going another foot until you promise to stay out of it and not do anything until and unless I tell you.”

“But—”

“No buts,” Wilde said.

Jori-Rey hardened her face. Then she broke free, got out of the car, slammed the door, flicked the butt on the road and walked off.

“You’re a hundred miles from nowhere,” Wilde shouted.

“I’ve walked farther.”

Wilde sucked the last drag out of his smoke and dropped it over the side. Jori-Rey continued into the distance, every step another act of defiance

Wilde didn’t follow.

He’d let her cool off.

She was a hundred yards away now.

He lit a cigarette.

The woman kept walking.

She didn’t slow, not a bit.

She didn’t turn around.

Stubborn little thing.

Two minutes passed, then two more.

She disappeared around a bend in the road.

Wilde shook his head three minutes later, defeated, and turned the key, having no option except to get her back in the car and try to talk some sense into her.

No sound came.

The starter didn’t crank.

It didn’t make a sound at all.

It mocked him with complete and absolute silence.

Wilde slammed his hand on the dash, then got out and opened the hood. He would have never stopped out here in the middle of nowhere if Jori-Rey hadn’t been so crazy.

It was her fault.

Suddenly a car came from behind and passed.

Wilde’s head was in the engine when it did.

He didn’t even know it was there until it was disappearing up the road.

It was a shinny black coupe.

It was heading for Jori-Rey.

Wilde’s gut churned.

The problem was electrical; he knew that. The starter wasn’t getting any juice. The connections looked good on the battery. Still, there might be hidden corrosion. He wrestled the tool kit out of the trunk, worked the connectors off and gave them a look. They had a green crust on the inside. He filed them clean, reattached them good and tight and tried the key again.

Nothing happened.

He got out and kicked the wheel.

Come on you piece of crap!