'Til Death (Part Eight of Fifteen)

‘Til Death

A Trick Molloy Mystery

©2009 Michael A. Stackpole

Part Eight

Lou took the news better than I expected. We met at a little café mid-morning. They’d just put the tables out on the sidewalk. We sat there, two men of the world, drinking coffee, watching traffic go by.

I gave it to him straight. The whole deal, from meeting to beating. I left Loki out of it.

He shrank a little, but shrugged. “I kind of figured it would come down to this. Hey, no, Trick, I know you did your part. It just wasn’t going to happen easy.”

I didn’t meet his gaze. “If there was any other way.”

“Hey, Trick, look at me.”

I did.

He gave me a weak smile. “It’s like the Good Book says. You reap what you sow. You know, I made some choices in my life. I can look back. I took the easy choices. Never applied myself. Know why I caught that bullet for you?”

“That wasn’t a choice, Lou.”

He laughed. “No, but you know what? I’d seen that skell before. He was walking down the street with two bags of groceries. I could have popped him. I knew who he was, but I was eating lunch. If I’d been a bit more active, you know…”

Lou glanced down. “And I know I haven’t been fair with you with that whole thing. I’ve been trading off it for too long. This was the last time, Trick. I’m not coming back to this well again. You’re off the hook.”

I shook my head. “We have a difference of opinion there.”

“Yeah, but you won’t have to answer if I don’t call.” He poured more cream into his coffee and stirred. “Turpeluk wants his coke, he’ll get it. Stealing it isn’t hard.”

“You can’t do that, Lou. You have the Rats already watching you.”

“Don’t you worry about them.” He leaned toward me. “I saw how they did you, the Rats. I started wondering ‘who watches the watchmen.’ Easy for me to do in my position. So I have them handled. I have a ton of dirt. When I retire, I think I’m going to make you a gift of it. I got everyone, including your buddy Prout.”

I sipped my coffee. Bitter. “You have to think about this, Lou. Turpeluk isn’t going to stop here. Once he has you on the hook, he’ll play you forever. He probably won’t give up Irina.”

“I know that, too.” He twisted his chair away from the table and hunched toward the street. “As long as he has power over me, he might be willing to give her up. If I can get her, we can make a break for it. I’m just afraid she’s already dead.”

I scrubbed a hand over my jaw. “There might be something we can do. Split second timing and all.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’ll call him, tell him you have the coke.” I pointed to a Hallmark store across the street. “You go over there, buy some stationary. You tell Turpeluk you need Irina to write you a note, in her own hand, using a phrase you give him. Once you have that as proof she’s alive, then you arrange the drop.”

Lou frowned. “No guarantee he won’t kill her anyway.”

“Except that you just gave him a low risk way to keep using her. Every job, he’ll give you a note like that.” I smiled. “But once I get my hands on the first one, I have a guy who can use it to locate her. I put together a crew and we spring Irina. You get Turpeluk busted with the coke, he goes away, you vanish.”

Lou looked at me, a smile heralding a sense of relief. “You know, that will work.”

“I think so.”

A young man in a jeans jacket passing by on the curb stopped. “You guys got the time?”

Lou shot his left wrist forward faster than I did. “Yeah. Quarter to eleven.”

Lou stopped speaking before he ever said “eleven.” As we glanced at our watches, the pedestrian drew an automatic pistol. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Four shots. Belly, breastbone, throat and forehead. The last bullet blew through Lou’s braincase. Sprayed the table behind us. Spattered the café’s window. Shell casings arced smoking. The first tinkled to the ground.

The shooter swung the pistol toward me. I was luckier than Lou. I wore my watch on the inside of my left wrist. To check the time I had my hand moving toward the guy. I reached up and grabbed the pistol, jamming the slide back. I hooked a finger through the trigger-guard and held on dearly.

That’s the thing about automatics. Slide’s back, the gun won’t fire. The shooter knew it. He hauled back hard, trying to wrench it from my grasp. I let him pull me to my feet.

I swung his arm wide and smashed my forehead into his face. His nose shattered. Hot blood gushed. His left hand covered his face, and my right hand went low, clawed.

I grabbed his nuts. I wanted him to hurt, sure, but more importantly, there are all those nerve endings there. With a whisper, I pumped him full of magickal energy. It was as if I’d applied a taser to his dangly-bits.

All of his leg muscles tightened, springing him into the air like a Jack in the Box. He came down. His legs collapsed. I followed him down, driving a knee into his gut. He groaned. I hit him twice with a fist, matching his jaw to his nose. A couple teeth ended up in the gutter.

I yanked the gun from his hand, then stood. “Someone call 911.”

I turned to look at Lou.

I wanted to check for a pulse.

No need. Even Grandma at her best, sucking down an oil-tanker of tea, couldn’t have helped him. Bits of bone and brain slowly slide down the café’s window.

And the worst part was, his mouth still had that hopeful grin.

I knew one of the uniforms answering the call. He tucked me into a booth in the café’s deserted interior and got me a whiskey. He bagged the gun and draped a table cloth over Lou.

That didn’t help much. He ghosted there in the bar’s mirror, slumped down, his hands hanging free from the shroud. A wedding band glinted on his left hand.

I hadn’t noticed it before.

I called Talia. We’d been planning on getting lunch, but I wasn’t going to make it. I didn’t want to tell her why, but it kind of just ran out of me. She listened, then suggested an early dinner. I wasn’t thinking that I wanted to be alone, so I accepted.

I was pretty sure Grandma would like her.

Then Winston Prout showed up. He dressed in white from head to toe, including a fedora. Our mutual hatred went back years, having started before he got me tossed off the force. That he went from the Rat Squad to my place in Homicide just made me hate him that much more.

“So, Molloy, what’s the deal? Why’d you do him?”

“Do him? Do Lou?”

“Murder weapon has your prints all over it.”

I tossed off my whiskey. “You have a dozen witnesses that saw what went down, Prout. You have the shooter in cuffs in a squad car. If I’d wanted Lou dead, I’d have let him bleed out years ago.”

“What were you and Sandbag talking about?”

I decided to skip the part of our dialogue where I’d refuse to answer and he’d threaten me if I didn’t. That game wasn’t going to satisfy me. And it would delay me. I just went straight to lying.

“Lou called me. Said he had evidence of corruption in Internal Affairs. He wanted to know what I thought he should do. He even wanted me to do some legwork for him. He thought if I helped out, I could get back on the force.”

Prout’s face purpled. His blood pressure was up to the national debt over the trade deficit. Thoughts ricocheted around in his skull. He didn’t know which was worse: corruption in his beloved IAD, or the idea that I might return to the force.

I stood and went nose to nose with him. “As for how Lou Sandberg died, it went down like this.” I raised my voice for the sake of a reporter coming in through the café’s back door. “We were having coffee. Shooter came up, was gunning for me. Lou took the bullets for me. He died a hero, Prout. Be sure you put that in your report. A hero. Don’t suppress the truth, the way you usually do.”

The word suppress flipped the reporter’s switch. She made quick notes, then closed to question Prout. I left him screaming at her and crossed to the bar. I poured myself another shot of whiskey.

I raised it to Lou’s reflection. “I owed you a life, Lou. Your widow just inherited that debt.”

I drained the glass. It was time I did something. I wasn’t sure what it would be, but I did know one thing.

Some Russian gangsters were going to die.

If you are enjoying this story and were wondering how we got here, please visit the Stormwolf Store. The short story “The Witch in Scarlet” is the Trick Molloy tale that immediately precedes this one.