The Red Storm (19 page)

I waited a bit longer once the car had left before I tossed the ax in the cab and steered the truck back onto the road.

At the nearest call box, I phoned Brawley. Still doing late paperwork at the station, he said, “You know the police motto, ‘If it ain't written down, it didn't happen.'”

“Well, if you want some more stuff to write up, meet me at my place as soon as you can break free. I might have found where Mallon is.”

The rest of the drive into town after I had hung up, I thought over a possible fight plan. I sorted all of Mallon's faults and temperament. His greatest weakness was his one-track mind-set fueled by emotion rather than any sort of rational thinking. This was an amateur trait, and made him easy to be systematically picked apart. All it would require would be to dangle Mallon's current object of obsession in front of him, leaving him wide open.

I found Roy still messing with the engine when I dropped the truck off at the garage and took my lift to the apartment.

Brawley sat propped in a reclining chair in the courtyard when I arrived. He followed me up to the room, took a cigarette that I offered him out of a lacquered pine box, and glanced over an area map I folded out in front of him.

“That's where he's nested at, huh? No doubt that place is stock full of his plug-uglies armed for bear.”

“I would think so. But Mallon is a fish out of water here. He thinks he's still in the big city. If we could divert his muscle into town, he'd be vulnerable.”

“What are you thinking here?” Brawley questioned.

“A basic diversion. He ain't thinking straight with his hard-on for the girl. He'd send all the gorillas he has to go get her if he had the opportunity.”

“You want to use the broad as bait?”

“I don't think we have to,” I said. “You think you can get a go-ahead from the station?”

“I don't know. Getting something with a judge's handwriting on it might be hard. The chief definitely will go for it. He's been puffin' ever since Mallon's hoods bumped off Flori. It ain't even about jurisdiction. I know the sheriff that works the St. James Parish, and he knows he didn't stay elected because of his looks.”

“You get it squared away on your end, and tomorrow I'll see what kind of trouble I can stir up,” I said.

After Brawley left, I spent the remainder of the evening cleaning the Colt. It had collected a significant amount of dirt in the barrel after I had dropped it upon being shot. Prior to me meeting Brawley, my knowledge of guns was at best sketchy. Brawley would take me on his days off out into the country and had me shoot at an assortment of targets until my marksmanship got to be mildly competent. He also showed me how to field strip the Colt for cleaning.

“Goddamn, you best start learnin' how to take care of your gun,” he told me. “In this humidity you need to be cleanin' it all the time or you're going to find that when you need it, the only thing you'll be lucky enough to get coming out of its barrel is a pile full of rust.”

I removed the slide lock, spring, barrel bushing, and barrel, and cleaned the powder and dirt out using a combination of a wire brush, toothbrush, and cotton swabs. I gave the parts a good but not excessive oiling, reassembled it and wiped it down with a coarse cloth.

Satisfied with my work, I put the gun away, and lit a cigarette out on the gallery. My barometer showed the air pressure dropping, but the night remained clear, with only a mild wind that came from the northeast.

If things went well, by the end of tomorrow Zella would not need any more protection. That was my only interest in the matter. It was not my job to catch or punish bad guys. That was for the boys in blue. Yet there would be some personal satisfaction that went with seeing Mallon taken care of. His childish threats, insults, and ear-banging were nothing but annoyances. But having a cigar burned into my hand, and “ALL NIGGERS DIE” being carved into the wall of my home were more than that. And I'd be damned if Mallon got the best of me.

 

CHAPTER 16

The next morning, after I went out for breakfast, I found one of Mallon's plants standing on St. Ann's, dressed as a panhandler. He stood at six foot two, one hundred and ninety pounds, and was costumed in stained khakis and a shabby overcoat.

I moved toward him and said, “Since when did bums start wearing eighteen-karat gold watches and fancy shoes?”

Through gritted teeth he hissed, “I've had my fill of you!”

The man tore into his coat and pulled out a heavy revolver. I was close enough to grab his wrist with an unyielding lock and used the rest of my leverage to send my right fist down onto his collarbone like a fortified ax.

The bone snapped and the man shrieked as his right side went limp, causing the revolver to hit the concrete with a metallic clatter.

The turbulent movement sent crippling pain lashing out from my wound. I clutched my side as I backed away from him. Endeavoring to keep the pain out of my voice, I said, “Go call your boss. I'm done risking my life over a woman, and I'm willing to get rid of her. He can pick the time and place, and he knows how to reach me. I'll be up in my flat waiting.”

It required a calculated effort to get up to my room without giving in to the pain that boiled out of my side. With each step the agony cultivated new forms of distress, until I made it inside, downed half a bottle of aspirin, and plummeted onto the couch.

Mallon called twenty minutes later. “Your black ass and that dame better be out at the wharf at ten tonight.” He paused before he ended with, “I want that book, too,” and hung up.

*   *   *

At eight o'clock, I sat in the passenger seat of Brawley's '37 Chrysler Royal. In the back sat Ducan, a rookie in the vice unit, and McKenzie, a deputy sheriff for the St. James Parish. Brawley had not been amused with the sheriff only giving him one deputy. “I ain't kickin',” Brawley had said, “he's got loads of deputies that don't do nothin' but help old ladies across the street, and all he can free up is one?”

We parked off a side road to the main route that led to the plantation. Brawley had torn through the Royal's 700R4 tranny and made good time getting to our destination. Night came upon us as we arrived, and he picked the darkest spot to obscure the black-tinted machine.

We sat in silence at first. Restless, Brawley twisted the knobs on his Roamio radio, getting nothing but static and hair tonic commercials.

“Can't I listen to the radio without these stupid advertisements,” he grumbled.

He switched the device off and leaned back into his seat. More silence. McKenzie used a pocket flash to read a science fiction magazine that had a half-naked Amazonian octopus woman with six arms and a robotic man necking with each other on the cover.

“Some reporter came into the station today,” Brawley said. “Wanted to do some tragic piece on Ranalli.”

“No kidding,” I said.

“Says it was his editor's idea. Seems to think the public likes them kinda stories. So I gave him a few tales the readers would enjoy. Like how he used to beat up all them whores that were workin' for him. Told him about Brigette Leslie, who's a permanent resident up at the state asylum after she jumped on the crazy train from the seven-day grind he was working her.”

“What'd he think of that?”

“He didn't like it so much,” Brawley said. “He's like ‘I can't sell that! Give me some dope I can work with here, buddy! Don't you got any shoot-out stories about him or a heat-packing moll?' I said he should stick to writing about the jazz. That's the new diversion from all the city's problems.”

Nine o'clock rolled around and soon a convoy of headlights charged down the street ahead of us in a bellow of wound-up engines. A caravan of killers.

“And the ponies are off,” Brawley said.

We let forty minutes pass before Brawley opened the door. “Me and the boys are going to sneak through the back. This being police business, Fletcher, I just want you to plant yourself out front. If anyone but us tries to go out the front or any of the side doors, you do what you got to do.”

We crept down the side street and through the exterior property to the side of the plantation. Static filled the air, and made the hairs on my arms go erect. Far away, livid clouds sparked cyclically, but not bright enough or close enough to give away our position.

We split up as we came upon the house. I broke off left toward the front, while they went up through the back entrance. No lights were coming from the plantation, nor could we see any lookouts or men canvassing the area.

In black togs, I blended into shadows and secured a spot behind a substantial oak tree near the front.

The oak not only provided me cover but gave me a clear vista of the front of the manor. I glimpsed inside the Favrile stained glass windows, with painted sugar stalks and palmetto leaves, and saw nothing. The house was destitute. The urge for a cigarette came to me, but smoking would draw too much attention, so I pushed the compulsion out of my head.

Zella's kiss had skipped in and out of my cranium since it had happened, and it chose this particularly inappropriate time to make itself known once more. I shook my head to clear it out and got interrupted by a hammering sound within the house. The windows flickered with the light of guns going off. The firing was unremitting, with only brief pauses for reloads. I held my own gun in the ready position and waited. The shelling from the interior kept its pace until an eruption from inside shook the building from the groundwork up.

Silence followed the explosion. The gunfire stopped. I kept in idleness until I spotted movement behind the house. Not even needing to see the figure to know it had to be Mallon just by his awkward movements, I moved away from the oak and up to the front of the house and around the corner. Mallon was fleeing through the cane fields that lay ahead. I fired a shot in his direction, but he ignored it and kept going. I started in after him.

I was intimate enough with my surroundings to maneuver through the darkness. Mallon, however, seemed to be not so well off. He stumbled and zigzagged aimlessly. I narrowed the distance between us and sent him darting in the direction of the sugar mill. I fired at him once more as he entered the refinery. The shot missed him by inches.

I slowed up. I did not want to go in after him. If he wasn't armed, the mill would have many readily available things on hand that could be used as armaments.

I sized up the situation. His attack would be to find a place to stow himself while I went in looking for him like a dummy. He'd just need to wait for the right moment, and take me by surprise with whatever implement of death he was able to get his hands on.

I approached the front of the mill, which was made of riveted steel girders and corrugated metal covered over by wood framing and brick. To the side of the building was a hefty wooden door made for machinery to pass through.

I waited nearby as the sound of an engine starting came from inside. I stepped to the side in time to see the wooden entrance door crumble and the menacing front end of a Ford AA dump truck tear itself out like a caged animal.

Mallon had busted out one of the front mounted headlights going through the door, and he was having trouble maneuvering without it. He caught sight of me and jerked the front end of the apparatus in my direction and accelerated toward me. I blasted three shots from the Colt and jumped aside into the dirt. I landed on my shoulder wrong and it screamed out in painful protest.

Two of the bullets I fired hit their mark. Mallon fell back from the wheel but kept his foot on the throttle. The truck bent to the left and with a mind of its own veered in the direction of an emptied irrigation ditch as if it saw the ditch as the most suitable place for it to fall in and die.

The machine swept in on the ditch at a high speed and went off the edging embankment like it was going to take flight. Its weight and gravity made sure it adhered to the laws of physics by plucking the truck's front end down into a nosedive. The truck hit bottom and collapsed to its side with the harsh clanging rattle of smashed metal.

I staggered to the wreckage and saw Mallon dragging his ruined body along the bottom of the ravine, now littered with rotted burlap sacks of raw sugar that had spilled from the traumatized machine. Near the edge of the ditch, he flipped himself over onto his back. His blood-soaked hands were pressed tightly against his torn stomach.

Mallon didn't move when I approached him. The left side of his ruined face split open, and a cascade of blood seeped down it.

“You were right,” he said with labor. “This ain't my climate. I'm used to making getaways in fast cars, not a goddamn dump truck.”

“You did all right for yourself,” I said.

He coughed, and blood brewed up out of his mouth. “I should have took your advice and stuck to the numbers. Haven't been thinking straight since I found out Storm was here. That night has haunted me for years and it all came rushing back. I figure you know what happened after getting your hands on my book.”

“I got my ideas, but I'd rather hear it from you,” I said.

“I bet you would.” He laughed, and more blood came out. “Not much time left for me. I guess I'm finished.”

I waited for him to gather what little strength he had left. “For as long as I could remember, I never was ‘normal,' as my folks would put it. When I got abducted by Storm, it was just him and me for nearly a week before you showed up. He treated me nice. Well, as nice as someone of his caliber could be. And I felt feelings I never felt before. That's why when you set me free that day, I didn't want to go. I knew he'd kill me, but I couldn't leave. After that I tried to stay the best I could for my folks' sake. I got the idea maybe if I wrote the supposed sinful things down, it'd get it out of my system. Then that bitch scrubwoman found the book, and after I stole it back, I knew I had to hide it. So I buried it. I always meant to go get it, but after my parents were killed, I got sidetracked.”