Bullet Beach Read online

  ‘Hey,’ he said solemnly. ‘You said there’s fifty in it.’

  ‘Yep.’ Cross said, putting his Audi loaner in gear and getting back on the street. ‘And all you got to do is follow me to the car lot and I’ll drop you back here.’

  ‘You doing the jackin’?’

  ‘Yep. Only, it’s called repossessing.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  This would be easy. Cross had already picked up a duplicate set of keys, keys kept by Irving Edelman, owner of the car lot from which the Lincoln was bought. Edelman was clever; he always kept a set of keys when he financed the loan. This allowed quick and easy entry, a quick getaway and best of all, no car alarm. It was to be an evening of surprises starting when Cross picked up the keys. He had caught Edelman pulling a bottle of vodka from behind a huge sailfish mounted on the wall over a tattered sofa. Cross had stepped too lightly into the darkened office. His sudden presence startled Edelman, who quickly shut his now not so secret compartment.

  Cross didn’t find the next surprise nearly as funny. The night was faintly lit by a half moon and there was a little light spill from a streetlamp on 21st Street. Cross could identify the silver Lincoln Town Car. He parked the Audi down the street, told Slurpy to get in the driver’s seat and wait until Cross pulled out. Slurpy would follow.

  One might think that it was cooler outside during evening hours. But it was like turning the light out in the oven. Perspiration gathered on Cross’s neck.

  He looked up and down the street lined with two-bedroom, post-World War Two bungalows. A few lights were on, but shades were drawn. No one was out walking and there was the steady hum of air conditioners to muffle any sounds on the street.

  Cross had no sooner slipped into the leather seats and put the key in the ignition than he sensed a presence. At first he thought it must be Slurpy and some silly question. But it wasn’t Slurpy. It was a slender figure, face hidden in the darkness, the light from the Lincoln’s interior glancing off the shotgun.

  ‘It’s the Cartier Edition,’ the man said. His voice was both light and full of gravel. It had almost a breathless quality. ‘The Lincoln, a special edition. Lived all my life to have a car like this. It’s not new, but it’s really sweet. Nothing has made me happier.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Cross said.

  ‘And you can’t have it. It’s mine,’ the man said.

  ‘You know, I’m just doing my job. Seems as if you’ve missed a few payments. I’m sure you can work this out, but in the meantime . . .’

  ‘In the meantime, get outta my car.’ The man had a shotgun.

  ‘I can do that.’ As nice as it was, Cross wasn’t going to put his life on the line for a Lincoln Town Car.

  A third voice entered the conversation, this one behind the man with the shotgun.

  ‘Fair warning, fool. I’m gonna snap your neck you don’t put down that piece.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve got the picture just right,’ the man said. ‘You make one move, your friend doesn’t have a head.’

  ‘Listen Slurpy, we can . . .’ Coming back the next day with the sheriff wasn’t a big deal. Dying was. Cross’s attempt at pacification was about to fail.

  ‘Hey,’ Slurpy said, interrupting, ‘my friend here? We ain’t that close.’

  Slurpy reached around and took the shotgun from the man’s hands. He turned the slender man around and gave him a shove. The man fell back on his butt in the street. The guy was in a suit. In the dim light, Cross couldn’t tell whether he was a light-skinned black or a dark-skinned white. He was between forty and sixty. Maybe.

  Shotgun in hand, Slurpy walked back to the Audi.

  Cross climbed in the driver’s seat of the Lincoln.

  ‘Look at it this way. You could have been arrested,’ Cross told the man.

  The guy got up and Cross drove off. He checked the rearview mirror to see the Audi headlights. Slurpy was moving in behind him.

  Things turned out all right. But Cross wasn’t happy with Slurpy’s intervention. It worked this time. But the danger was unnecessary especially when the stakes were so low.

  Cross hit the interstate off Emerson and exited on Washington where Edelman had his car lot. The car was a dream. Unfortunately it wasn’t a smart car for a private investigator. It stood out. Better for a lawyer. Or a pimp.

  Even on this short little multi-lane jaunt, hitting a cruising speed and riding for a distance without stoplights relaxed him, let him gather his thoughts. And what were his thoughts tonight, he asked himself. The thoughts he had were about himself. They were the same as they often were: about how his life was a continuous loop, a short loop because he was going nowhere. He was marking time. He wasn’t getting wealthier. He wasn’t falling in love. He wasn’t having fun, particularly. He was in the same place he was ten years ago and it was the same place he’d be ten years from now. Cross felt no sadness. It was a cold assessment of his life. And after reviewing the situation he did what he always did. He shrugged. Better than being dead. Better than being in prison.

  He pulled into the lot and then behind the buildings. The instructions were to leave it in the locked garage behind the office. The previous owner might return to reclaim his car, so keeping it off the lot and behind locked doors was advisable. He’d collect from Edelman tomorrow or take it out in trade – another loaner off the lot when the time was right. The deal prevented all those complicated tax calculations.

  The light from the Audi caught him and illuminated the garage door. Slurpy remained in the car. Cross opened the garage door and got back in the Lincoln. He was about to pull it in the garage when he saw the red and blue flashing lights coming in behind the Audi. Cross wasn’t worried until the sirens began and there were more lights. Cross got out of the car and – being familiar with how jumpy cops can be, especially at night – raised his hands immediately and waited for instructions, which he was inclined to follow to the letter. But his stomach sank as he realized Slurpy was in the Audi. Worse, Slurpy was in there with a shotgun.

  ‘Get down on your knees,’ said the voice behind the lights now aiming at him. Cross did. ‘Now lay down on your belly.’ Cross did. He was tempted as anyone would be to ask for some sort of explanation or to tell them who he was. But he knew better than most that this wasn’t the time for anything other than doing what you were told. He’d have time to show them his license and explain their presence on the car lot past midnight. He understood. They had to secure the scene. ‘Now put your hands behind your head and keep them there. Make no moves.’ Cross followed instructions.

  ‘You!’ came the voice. ‘You in the car.’

  Cross couldn’t see what was happening.

  ‘Get out of the car slowly, keep your hands where we can see them.’

  ‘I want a lawyer.’

  Cross recognized Slurpy’s voice.

  ‘Jesus,’ Cross said to himself. He had a bad feeling.

  ‘Get out of the car slowly, keep your hands where we can see them.’

  This was going down by the book.

  ‘Go fuck yourself,’ Slurpy said.

  ‘Do as you’re told, Slurpy,’ Cross yelled.

  ‘This is the last time we will tell you. Get out of the car slowly, keep your hands where we can see them.’

  Cross heard the car door open.

  ‘Now get down on your knees,’ the same voice said.

  ‘We didn’t do nothing,’ Slurpy said.

  ‘Get down on your knees.’

  ‘Do as you’re told,’ Cross repeated.

  ‘We didn’t do nothing, Cross.’

  He heard the dogs now. The barking was louder, angrier, it seemed. What followed was serious gunfire. Cross couldn’t count the shots. He was sure some were simultaneous.

  After several minutes – it seemed like hours to Cross – he was searched and pulled to his feet. He saw Slurpy’s body on the ground, face up. One of the cops was holding the shotgun. Cross figured it out. Slurpy had pulled the gun out, maybe in response to
the onslaught of the police dogs.

  Could the night get any worse? ‘That was so unnecessary,’ Cross said to the cop standing beside him.

  The cop didn’t respond.

  There must have been two dozen uniforms on the scene. They were searching the Audi and a couple of them had moved to the Lincoln Town Car. The trunk was popped from the inside.

  ‘Over here,’ a uniform said.

  Cross was close enough to see what the cop wanted the others to see. A body. Probably dead, Cross thought. It could get worse. It just did.

  He was led to the back of a police cruiser and put in the back seat. His hands were cuffed behind him so he couldn’t scratch the inevitable itch above his right eye and he couldn’t get comfortable. Not all the cops were busy now. Most of them were standing around, but no one was talking to him. No one asked him questions. He thought they ought to be full of questions.

  From the back window, Cross had a view of the action when it came. The medical examiner’s team arrived and passed by him, red, white and blue lines flashing on the white clothing. So many times, too many times crime scenes looked like carnivals or celebrations.

  Then, in time, Cross knew why no one asked him anything. A late model, shiny, black Ford Victoria pulled up. From a rear door a tall, black man stepped out with the demeanor and the look of a celebrity. Cross knew him. The man’s grandmother would have called him Maurice Collins. But others would refer to him as Lieutenant Collins, perhaps Ace if they were truly close to him. He was the hotshot on the homicide team.

  Collins talked with a couple of uniforms, was taken to the body in the trunk. He took a look around the Town Car and then the body. He talked to someone with the medical team. He did all this patiently, it seemed to Cross – taking his time, taking it all in.

  Finally, he turned to look in Cross’s direction. He walked slowly toward him and as he closed in Cross saw his impeccably white and starched shirt, open at the collar and his expensive dark suit. The man wasn’t smiling. But he wasn’t angry either. His face was blank, uncommitted.

  The lieutenant opened the door and motioned for Cross to get out. Cross did, awkwardly because of the cuffs. Collins grabbed an arm to steady him. Collins unlocked the cuffs and motioned again, this time for Cross to follow.

  They went to the back of the Town Car. It wasn’t just one corpse, but two, one of each gender. As the flashlight danced over the bodies, it was clear that they were wet from roughly the waist down, higher on her.

  ‘You know them?’

  Cross saw what appeared to be a young man and woman – maybe in their twenties.

  ‘No. You?’

  Collins smiled.

  ‘I will. What in the hell are you doing hanging out with Slurpy Thurman?’ It was said calmly.

  ‘I needed a hand,’ Cross said.

  ‘What kind of hand?’

  ‘I needed a driver. I pick up a repo. Slurpy follows in my car.’

  Collins nodded, guided Cross back to the unmarked Crown Victoria.

  ‘I didn’t think I’d see you so soon.’

  ‘That was the plan,’ Cross said. ‘How’d the police know to come here?’

  ‘Someone saw you guys in the lot in the middle of the night. Thought it was suspicious.’

  ‘Not true,’ Cross said. ‘You sent half the police force.’

  ‘All right, anonymous tip. Said we’d find bodies in the back of a silver luxury car. Killers were at the car lot.’

  That made sense to Cross. He nodded in the direction of Slurpy’s corpse.

  ‘That didn’t have to happen.’

  Collins gave him a sharp look.

  ‘Is that why you’re being nice to me?’ Cross continued.

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Seems like it.’

  ‘You complaining?’

  ‘Worried,’ Cross said. ‘I always worry when a cop is nice to me.’

  ‘About Slurpy, he was living on borrowed time. If he didn’t have a massive heart attack some gang banger would kill him in a bar fight. You have any idea how many times he was arrested?’

  Cross didn’t answer. He knew the police didn’t want any trouble with the police shooting. Collins nodded toward the back seat. Cross climbed in. Collins followed.

  ‘What happened tonight? Tell me everything.’

  Cross did, and when he was done, Collins leaned forward and told the uniformed driver something and they drove off. The driver also said something into his mic.

  ‘We’re going to have to keep you overnight,’ Collins said. ‘Otherwise it looks like I’m soft on you. You should go ahead and call a lawyer. You still run around with that biker? Kowalski?’

  ‘I know him. He’d be my pick.’

  ‘You’re a funny guy,’ Collins said.

  ‘Is that a compliment?’

  ‘No, funny as in odd. What are you doing with your life?’

  ‘I’m getting by.’

  Collins shrugged, shook his head. ‘You hang out with strange people, that’s all.’

  Cross knew what he was getting at. Cross had fallen in love or lust or obsession, whatever it was, with an exotic dancer who turned out to be a murderer. Cross was friends with what the police thought was a trouble-making old private eye. And in the thick of it was a trouble-making, Harley-riding defense attorney. ‘Why don’t you like normal people?’

  ‘You want to do dinner and catch a movie later?’

  Collins laughed. ‘I think you’d be going from bad to worse.’

  There were about ten minutes of silence, Collins sitting in the back of the car with seeming immense patience. The car pulled up in front of a house on Drexel. The same house. Two cop cars pulled up beside them. Four uniformed police officers in flak jackets with serious weapons approached the house, two in front, two toward the back. In moments, a short, chubby black man was on the front lawn. An equally chubby black woman was outside on the porch. The porch light and the shadows might have exaggerated the look of horror on her face.

  Collins and Cross remained in the car.

  ‘That him?’ Collins asked.

  ‘No,’ Cross said.

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘Couldn’t be more different.’

  Collins looked down, rubbed his hands together.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said and went out to talk with the stunned man in a sleeveless tee shirt and boxer shorts.

  THREE

  Shanahan was not superstitious. The only signs he accepted as true were the literal ones – dead end, sharp turn, no parking. So he was surprised at the softening of the walls of his rules of reality. The dreams about Fritz took him to new places, places perhaps opened when a bullet traumatized his brain, making new pathways. Just as Maureen had come along and brought new life, the bullet came along to remind him the world was still a mysterious and dangerous place. And it was clear he was being driven on this venture by something that was altogether unclear.

  Here he was now in the cool and cramped interior of a silver tube sliding through space to another world. Maureen was asleep beside him. A couple of rum and tonics and she was blissfully unaware of anything in the conscious world. He pulled the blanket up over her shoulder and around her neck. He sat back and closed his eyes. He would recount what led to this trip, this moment, until he fell asleep.

  It began when he rummaged through old photographs. He came upon several small black and white photographs of his childhood. There was one of a young Dietrich Shanahan. The boy was looking at something off camera. But it wasn’t entirely off. There was part of a leg showing in the lower right hand corner of the picture – a leg kicked up behind. Someone running, as if trying to escape. It was his brother Fritz.

  And it was true in some fashion. Fritz had suddenly disappeared when he was maybe eight years old. And the boy was not an acceptable topic of conversation. Before he disappeared, Shanahan had hazy memories of the boy being shut in a room, of a doctor coming and going, sad faces in shadowy light. And he remembered a somber evening when a
big, black Hudson pulled up in front of the house. That was an event in itself. And Fritz was taken out to the car. Shanahan remembered Fritz taking one last look back. That was the end of it. It was truly the end of it. Fritz had been purged from Shanahan’s mind until he saw the photograph. His parents had missed it, this little piece of Fritz, proving his existence.

  About a year ago, perhaps a little longer, the dreams came – Fritz running through hallways, hiding, going up stairways, teasing Shanahan. It was hide and seek with a sinister edge. If it was a game, it wasn’t fun.

  Shanahan opened his eyes. He looked around the coach. So quiet. It was pleasantly dark, except for a scattering of lights for those trying to read and a bluish light that came from TV sets mounted on the back of seats. There were those who could not sleep and didn’t want to think. He thought about turning on the set in front of him, but decided against it. Perhaps he should try to remember his brother, his personality. Maybe something like that would provide some insight into what he was like now. What he could remember.

  His brother dove into the slick surface of the night water. The skinny kid screamed with happiness until he penetrated the glass-like sheet of water. Shanahan waited on the dirt ridge that surrounded the pond. He waited to see if it was all right, whether or not some monster resided there, gobbling up boys who swam at night. Given his druthers, Shanahan would prefer to poke around the water with a stick before getting in.

  The air was sweltering hot as it can be on only a few midsummer evenings in Wisconsin.

  His brother, in the moonlight, was pale as the porcelain on the bathroom sink as he climbed from the water, up the dirt mound toward Shanahan.

  ‘C’mon, Dietrich. You gotta do more than look in this life,’ Fritz said, shaking off the water. ‘You got to live.’ He laughed. ‘There are no sharks in there. Anyway that’s why I’m here. To protect you. And you to protect me. OK?’

  Shanahan said nothing.

  ‘We gotta protect each other,’ Fritz said.