Three Shot Burst Read online

  I watched her turn back to the stove. She looked like she was enjoying herself. That’s when I began to wonder what was wrong with a kid who could kill a man in cold blood and then make a nice egg dish. Me, I never killed a guy, and I was a little unnerved at the sight of all that blood and glass at the Shallow Grave. She seemed unrepentantly oblivious. Still, she liked Stardust, so she wasn’t all wrong.

  ‘You seem very comfortable in the kitchen,’ I said, watching her easy way with a frying pan.

  ‘I used to cook for my – I know my way around the kitchen, that’s all,’ she said, not looking at me.

  I leaned back on the sofa. ‘Now is about the time that I – sorry, but I have to ask about your parents. I should notify them.’

  ‘They’re dead.’

  That was all she had to say on the subject. But my opinion was that keeping it short usually turned out to be the best way to lie.

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ I told her without a hint of sympathy. ‘How’d it happen?’

  ‘Look.’ She stopped what she was doing and finally looked at me. ‘The last thing in this world I want to talk about is my rotten parents, OK?’

  ‘OK.’ I smiled. ‘But where are they really?’

  ‘Oklahoma,’ she snapped.

  And that was the end of our banter. She clammed up. No matter what I said after that, she wouldn’t respond.

  She finished the omelets – they were superior in every way – and we dined in relative silence. It was about eight o’clock by then.

  ‘Am I supposed to insist that you go to bed?’ I asked her, clearing the dishes.

  ‘To tell the truth,’ she admitted, ‘I’m pretty sleepy. I had a rough day. Even before I got to Mary’s place.’

  ‘Now that you mention it,’ I told her from the kitchen, ‘I wouldn’t mind an early evening myself. You get the bathroom first. I’ll fix the dishes.’

  In no time at all, the kid was snoring on the sofa underneath a quilt. I figured I’d get farther in the question department after she’d had a good night’s sleep.

  I was just settling down on top of my bed, clothes on, when I heard the front door of my apartment explode. I jumped up. Three men the size of the Mighty Joe Young had materialized in my living room. My door had been knocked off its hinges by one of the apes.

  I flew into the room only to find Lena holding the goons at bay with a very clean 1951 Beretta M. A semi-automatic, it was a pistol that had been created exclusively for the Italian military. It wasn’t the same Beretta as James Bond used – it was bigger.

  ‘I’m not even going to ask where you got that gun,’ I said to Lena.

  ‘Steady, boys,’ she said to the big gents in my home. ‘I shot David Waters a couple of hours ago, and I’m just as willing to shoot you.’

  ‘Nobody’s going to shoot anybody,’ I said, taking a few steps forward.

  Then, through what was left of my front door, there came the one person I would never have guessed I would see: a man named Mister Redhawk. His parents had actually named him ‘Mister’ so that there would be no mistake about how he should be addressed.

  ‘Mister Redhawk,’ I said. ‘Long time no see.’

  Redhawk was more or less the definition of a well-dressed man about town, decked out in a serious sharkskin suit with a tie that cost more than my car and a long braid down his back. He was a Seminole big shot, and no one messed with him on either side of town. I liked him mostly because liking him kept me from being afraid of him, which everyone else in the state was.

  ‘Mr Moscowitz,’ he said softly.

  Then he glared at one of the goons.

  ‘I said to knock on the door,’ Redhawk growled, ‘not knock down the door.’

  ‘Oh.’ The goon looked around at the mess and then over at me. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’ll be fixed within the hour,’ Redhawk assured me. ‘Now.’

  ‘You want to talk to Lena,’ I surmised.

  He nodded.

  ‘You understand I can’t let you take her away,’ I went on. ‘She has to stay here with me.’

  Redhawk smiled. ‘Not many people tell me what to do.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agreed, ‘I don’t really like telling anybody what to do. The thing is—’

  ‘The thing is,’ Redhawk concluded, ‘I could speak with the child right here. Would that be all right?’

  ‘We really should ask the child,’ Lena said. ‘I don’t mind shooting one of your gorillas, but I’d rather not because it might make the other one shoot at me and Dr Moscowitz.’

  Redhawk’s eyes lit up further. ‘Foggy? Have you acquired an advanced degree since we last saw each other?’

  ‘It’s an honorific,’ Lena answered. ‘I’ve awarded him a doctorate in child psychology.’

  ‘Fine,’ Redhawk sighed. ‘Let’s get right to the point. Why did you kill David Waters?’

  ‘He was no good,’ Lena answered simply.

  ‘I concur with your assessment,’ Redhawk said quietly, ‘but if you were to kill everyone in this town who’s “no good,” after a while there would be no one left at all.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Foggy seems OK.’

  You had to admit that the kid was one tough little biscuit.

  ‘And yet,’ he told her, ‘you still have your gun pointed in my direction.’

  ‘Maybe if your door-breaking friends waited outside,’ she answered, ‘you and I could actually have a little chat that would be mutually beneficial.’

  It was the phrase ‘mutually beneficial’ that disturbed me.

  Redhawk, as I had always heard was the case, made his decision instantly.

  ‘Joseph, would you and your brother please wait in the car?’ he said, his eyes still on Lena.

  And without a single word, the goons evaporated.

  ‘There,’ Lena said, lowering her gun. ‘Was that so hard?’

  ‘What did David say to you that made you shoot him three times?’ Redhawk asked, his patience obviously wearing thin.

  ‘To be fair,’ I interjected, ‘the gun shot three times, not the girl. She only pulled the trigger once. Shot him with a Heckler and Koch VP70. Spits out a three shot burst.’

  ‘Not the point,’ Redhawk rightly objected. ‘I want to know what David said that offended you enough to take his life.’

  ‘Let me tell you a little something about your boy,’ Lena said, leaning forward.

  She still had the gun in her hand, the safety off.

  ‘I know all about—’ Redhawk began.

  ‘He likes little girls,’ Lena interrupted. ‘He sits in the park and watches them. He has them sit on his lap. He gives them candy. Do you understand me?’

  ‘He propositioned you,’ Redhawk assumed.

  ‘In the most disgusting and, by the way, illegal manner possible in the state of Florida,’ she affirmed.

  ‘Heinous,’ Redhawk said without the slightest hint of emotion. ‘But why kill him? Why not, for instance, shoot him in the leg with your considerable pistol?’

  ‘I’m a little girl!’ Lena blared out. ‘Christ! Some greasy drunk leans over me in a threatening manner and makes a suggestion I can’t possibly repeat out loud and you want me to be cool-headed and take a reasonable course of action? I pulled my gun and it went off. I didn’t have any control over the moment or the pistol.’

  ‘You seem fairly sophisticated for a person your age,’ Redhawk observed. ‘Your diction is quite adult.’

  ‘Look,’ she objected, ‘lots of people say that kind of thing when they want to blame a kid for something that was actually an adult’s fault. I don’t care how sophisticated I sound, I’m fourteen years old. David Waters was an adult making illegal suggestions to a person who is, legally, a child. How were you at handling a crisis when you were my age?’

  ‘You can’t go by me,’ Redhawk said in a dead voice. ‘I’ve always been cool-headed.’

  ‘Have you ever been a little girl afraid of what an older man was going to do to your body
?’ Lena demanded, clearly beginning to lose her grip.

  ‘And how is it that you still have the gun that killed David?’ Redhawk went on, ignoring Lena’s question. ‘The police didn’t take it away from you?’

  ‘They did,’ she snapped. ‘This was in my boot. That – what’s his name?’ She looked at me.

  ‘Detective Baxter?’ I guessed.

  ‘Yeah, that guy,’ she went on. ‘He took my Heckler and Koch, put it in his suit coat pocket, and patted me on the head. Never checked my boot.’

  ‘Look,’ Redhawk said, a little louder than he had been speaking before, ‘David Waters was a drunk and a – let’s say womanizer. I’ve even heard of his penchant for the younger set, and it doesn’t surprise me, given the rest of his degenerate life recently. My problem is that his father is a prominent member of our tribal council. The elder Waters is oil rich and – it’s no secret – also mean as a snake. He doesn’t care what his son did. He only wants a certain kind of old-fashioned justice.’

  ‘He wants Lena dead,’ I assumed.

  Redhawk nodded.

  ‘You’re here – did you come here to kill her?’ I asked, taking a step toward the kid.

  ‘No. I came here to get answers. I got them, I suppose. I don’t like them, but I believe they’re true. So now I’m warning you: Waters will do his best to see that the girl is killed.’

  ‘You’re telling her, but you won’t say that to the police,’ I said, knowing the answer already.

  ‘Correct. But I’m not just telling her. I’m telling you too, Dr Moscowitz.’

  ‘You think I can protect her.’

  ‘No.’ He glanced toward the door. ‘No one can protect her. I told you so that you would talk her into leaving town, getting adopted, changing her name, and anything else that you can think of that might save her life.’

  ‘What makes you think I’d do that?’ I asked.

  He turned to leave. ‘You’re the one with the degree in child psychology.’

  ‘It’s honorary,’ I said to his back.

  THREE

  Lena and I were at the police station bright and early the next morning, on about three hours’ sleep apiece. Baxter listened to Lena’s tale of harassment and reaction and to my story of the visit from Mister Redhawk.

  ‘Jeez, what a mess,’ Baxter said to himself.

  ‘There’s no way for you to win this,’ I commiserated. ‘No one in Fry’s Bay liked David Waters. When they hear why the kid plugged him, they’ll all be on her side. You know that.’

  ‘But Ironstone Waters will wreck up the town,’ Baxter lamented, ‘politically and physically, if I don’t arrest the kid and prosecute her.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I hedged. ‘I think the father doesn’t care what you do. I think he’s already set on killing the kid.’

  ‘Is there any chance you can arrange all that stuff the Redhawk suggested?’ Baxter asked me. ‘Get the kid out of town? Find her parents, or get her adopted, or something?’

  ‘In six months, maybe,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh, I’d be dead long before that,’ Lena said calmly.

  ‘So what do we do?’ Baxter asked me.

  ‘You’re the police detective.’ I stared him down.

  ‘Look,’ he began, ‘I’m one of three guys in the entire county that does murder investigations. I took the gig here in Fry’s Bay because I banked on there not actually being any murders here. I have no idea what to do in a situation like this.’

  There was a moment of silence in Baxter’s office. I took advantage of it to look around the crummy room. A dirty linoleum floor was scratched and skidded beyond repair. The wall behind him hadn’t been cleaned or painted since the Eisenhower era. Baxter had no pictures on the wall, or on his desk, which was absolutely overcome with paperwork. It was clear, upon such reflection, that he would never have any idea what to do in a situation like this.

  ‘Let me go talk to David’s father,’ Lena said out of nowhere.

  Baxter and I stared.

  ‘Or I could just leave you in the ocean about three miles out,’ I said. ‘It’s jellyfish season.’

  ‘I have something to tell him,’ she insisted.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ I insisted.

  ‘Is it something that you haven’t told us?’ Baxter asked.

  ‘Foggy,’ she said, ‘you can talk to Redhawk. He could arrange it.’

  ‘He won’t do it,’ I told her.

  ‘He certainly won’t do it if you don’t ask him to,’ she answered back.

  I glared at Baxter. ‘You’re not going to do anything? Not even about my broken door?’

  ‘I thought you said that Redhawk would fix it.’

  ‘Yeah, he did already,’ I confessed, ‘but that was after he broke it. Isn’t there some kind of “broken door” law around here?’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Foggy,’ Lena insisted, ‘get me to David’s father. Seriously. He needs to hear what I have to say.’

  ‘How about telling me and the ridiculously hapless Detective Baxter, here, what you have to say that could possibly make any difference.’

  I waited.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said after a moment. ‘David’s father has to be the first one to hear it.’

  Another half-hour’s worth of cajoling did nothing to loosen her resolve. Baxter eventually chased us out of his office, and there we were, still too early in the morning and out on the street.

  I’d always thought that Fry’s Bay was pretty that time of day. You could see the sun making diamonds on the water, and there wasn’t a cloud in the nearly white sky. There was a chill in the air, but I liked it.

  I asked the kid if she wanted breakfast, but she sang the same old song she’d been grinding out.

  ‘Let’s go talk to Redhawk,’ she whined, ‘and get me to the elder Waters! Damn.’

  ‘Well,’ I surrendered, ‘there is a place where one of his bodyguards, Philip, hangs out. He’s usually there this time of the morning. It’s just around the next block.’

  Three minutes later we were walking into Pete’s. It was like a lot of bars anywhere, I guess. The smell of stale beer, cooked onions, and too many cigarettes was overpowering. The floor was a little sticky, but it was old wood: dark and somehow dignified. The bar was on your right as you walked in, dining tables on your left. About halfway back, the bar and dining area ended and the rest of the place was littered with pool tables. Those tables were not in any particular order. The ceiling was twenty feet from the floor, but it was so dark that it was impossible to see. The bar had brightly colored, backless, spinning stools.

  And, as luck would have it, one of those stools was occupied by Mister Redhawk’s moose-like companion, Philip. He was decked out in his usual triple-extra-large Hawaiian shirt, waist-length hair loose down his back. His forearms were bigger around than my thighs.

  ‘Hello, Foggy,’ he said without turning around.

  ‘Philip,’ I acknowledged. ‘Didn’t see you last night.’

  ‘You mean when Mister Redhawk paid you a visit.’ He nodded. ‘I begged off, account of we’re friends, you and me. He understood.’

  Philip turned around. He had a sweet face, not at all the kind of menacing gob a lot of muscle guys had.

  ‘This must be the kid in question,’ he continued. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi,’ Lena said right back, offering up a smile that could knock a jockey off his horse.

  ‘She wants to talk to Mister Redhawk right away,’ I said, trying to seem calm about the proposal. ‘She has new information.’

  ‘She ought not to be here, Foggy,’ Philip said. ‘She ought to be gone by now.’

  ‘I want to give myself up to Ironstone Waters,’ she announced.

  That shut me and Philip up for a second.

  ‘Bad choice of words,’ I admonished her.

  ‘But telling him that will get his attention,’ she said.

  ‘I think you’ve already got his attention,’ I told her. ‘You’v
e got that real good.’

  ‘Please take me to him,’ she said, managing to sound even younger than she was. ‘Please!’

  Like she was asking for cotton candy.

  Philip sighed. ‘Marty!’

  Marty Craw, the owner of Pete’s, was known as Fat Tuesday, owing to the fact that he was from New Orleans and his name sounded like Mardi Gras if you said it fast enough. That’s the sort of thing that people in Fry’s Bay found clever.

  Marty appeared, wordlessly.

  ‘Phone,’ Philip intoned.

  The phone was produced. Philip made a call. The phone disappeared, along with Marty, who knew a touchy situation when he saw one.

  ‘He’s coming here,’ Philip said, but he sounded worried about it.

  ‘Why is he coming here?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Philip said carefully. ‘Why indeed.’

  ‘How long before he gets here?’ I wanted to know.

  Philip only shrugged.

  ‘Grab a stool, Lena,’ I told her. ‘You want something?’

  ‘Scotch, neat,’ she answered.

  ‘How about a root beer,’ I countered. ‘Have you ever actually had Scotch?’

  ‘Not really,’ she confessed. ‘It just seemed like a cool thing to say.’

  ‘It was kind of cool,’ Philip acknowledged. ‘A little Sinatra.’

  I went around behind the bar, rummaged a root beer, reloaded Philip’s glass with mescal, which I knew was in his glass, and fetched myself a cup of muddy coffee. The three of us waited, silently, for what seemed like an hour. But eventually Mister Redhawk sauntered in, accompanied by the gorillas from the previous night’s escapade.

  ‘This is very disappointing,’ he said as he came through the door. ‘I thought we were going to get this little girl out of town, Foggy.’

  Lena was off the stool and headed toward Redhawk before I could stop her.

  ‘I have a very important message from David Waters to his father,’ she said in a rush, ‘and I have to give it to him today. It was David’s last request.’

  That halted Redhawk.

  I couldn’t tell if the kid was bluffing or not. It sounded real.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this last night?’ he asked.