When the Night Bird Sings Read online

  “We’ll help you take care of it. Where’s your car?” I said.

  “In my parking spot in the parking garage. Same as my age, 28.”

  “We’ll leave it there. Give me the keys,” I said. “I’ll check for a bullet in the parking lot.”

  “Can’t that wait? I’m afraid. I want to get out of here.”

  She did look very frightened. “Okay, I’ll come back later.”

  “Darcie, why don’t you get us a rental and I’ll have a talk with Novel and let you know

  where we’re going to stay. May be someone on our trail already.”

  “Could be, call me,” Darcie said and walked out.

  “Where are we going?” Candy asked.

  “I have to make a call to a friend of mine and find us a safe place at one of his real estate listings.”

  “That’s kind of odd,” she said.

  “It works,” I said. “Done it before.”

  “What’s your daddy do?” she asked.

  “Retired Marine Colonel. Unfortunately, he’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” After a short pause she changed the subject. “Are you as good as they say you are, Mecana?”

  “Depends on what you mean,” I said.

  “Whatever I want it to be,” she said and smiled.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “You better be.”

  Chapter 5

  I called my fat friend Novel who said he had a place on Lake Tawakoni that would be available for a month. The occupants were on vacation in France. He gave me the code for the front gate. We both knew we weren’t supposed to do it but we did. He said there was a key in the fork of a tree on the front lawn and he would pick up a sneaky five-thousand-dollar check for a month tomorrow. I told him to give me an address and I would mail it to him. We were on a case where visitors weren’t welcome. He said he would do that if I would feed the fish, so I agreed.

  I drove to the lake with Candy. The place was for high-rollers judging by the size of it. Candy should feel right at home. I drove on by, looking for a tail but didn’t see one; made the block and waited for fifteen minutes before going into the lake property.

  “What’re you doing?” Candy asked.

  “Checking for a tail, we’ll use the car Darcie is picking up when we go out again,” I said. Took one last look – still no traffic – drove up to the gate, punched the code and we drove through the drive and down to a large bungalow on the waterfront.

  I grabbed her bags, found the key in the tree, and we made our way to the back of the house. Out on the lake, sailboats were whizzing along in a strong breeze while ski boats were pulling happy skiers. A bunch of white ducks saw us on the lawn and hurried to us. When they realized we didn’t have anything to give them they waddled away.

  When I turned the key a dark, tinted glass door disappeared into the wall and we walked in the room. Inside there was a large round bed, a Jacuzzi tub, multi-colored lights built into the walls and an electric star light ceiling with a white bear skin rug lying on the thick carpet by the bed.

  “If it’s alright with you,” I said, “I don’t want you in a bedroom that leads outside. Let’s find another one.”

  “Okay with me. I have to take a bath, if you hear me scream come running,” she said.

  “You’ll think it’s Superman,” I said.

  We walked down a hall and came to a bedroom bigger than my den and I put her suitcases on the bed. “Don’t let anyone know where you are and don’t order food.”

  “I’m not going to like this,” she said.

  “I’m not either, but if someone is out to kill you…”

  “There is,” she said. “I’m going to take a bath.”

  I nodded and walked back out to the massive living room, sat on a twenty-foot-long white couch and looked at a wall-to-wall stone fireplace.

  A large aquarium was built into another wall. Bigger fish than I’ve ever caught were swimming around in it. I got up and walked over to the aquarium and picked up the fish food and shook a large amount into the tank. A feeding frenzy began. I went back to the couch and called Darcie.

  “I think I can find it,” she said. “Where’s Candy?”

  “Taking a bath.”

  “No coed bathing Mecana,” she said.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “I’m going to buy some TV dinners, we may have to eat in for a while. I rented a blue van,” she said.

  “Good.” I hung up and called Verves.

  “Mecana?” he said. “Are you in trouble?”

  “Candy Kane is with me,” I said.

  “That’s a surprise,” he said. “Figured you’d pissed her off.”

  “May have but she’s hired us. I promised her you wouldn’t arrest her when I called you. Did I lie?”

  “No, I don’t have any evidence to arrest her. I checked out the stock broker Fillmore, he was in London when Mr. Kane was murdered. He said Candy was an evil woman. We woke Mrs. Kane up this morning to tell her. New York gave the investigation back to us.

  I would like to talk to Mrs. Kane, for the record. We didn’t find anything that would have put her in New York when her husband was murdered.”

  “She would have had to make a round-trip flight in one night. Possible, but not probable,” I said.

  “Time of death was early this morning according to New York. Think I agree with you for now, but I still have to talk to her.”

  “I’m keeping her under wraps for now while I find out who the players are. Have someone meet me at Bleaker’s Bowling Alley on 34th at three this afternoon.”

  “I’ll send Benny Modele,” he said.

  “Is that the guy who always dresses to the hilt and looks like he lost his best friend?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “Have him come alone. No one else. Do I have your word?”

  “You got it,” he said.

  “Tell him he may not see me when he comes in but I’ll see him.”

  “What little we know so far looks like it was a professional hit. The only fingerprints in the room were Kane’s,” Verves said.

  “That’s what I was thinking. Three o’clock at the bowling alley,” I said again and hung up.

  “How long do we have to stay here,” Candy asked as she walked in the room.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe until we find the killer.”

  “I made plans to move to France after I bury Ashton,” she said.

  “Did you make those plans before or after he was murdered?”

  “After,” she said. “Keep me alive until I leave and I'll pay you.”

  “If that’s what you want,” I said.

  “I heard you talking to someone,” she said.

  “The cops. We have to meet a detective this afternoon. They want to ask you some questions. You don’t have to go to the police station. I arranged for it to be on our terms.”

  “No, I won’t go.”

  “They just want to talk to you. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “No,” she flatly said.

  “I give you my word. That’s it. They’re not going to arrest you. Why are you so worried?”

  “I don’t trust them. I don’t want the cops to put me through hell for nothing.”

  “I’m not sure I trust them, either, but I do trust my former boss. He’s always been true to his word.”

  “He better be or I won’t trust you anymore,” she said and disappeared back in the bathroom.

  I sat down and waited.

  Chapter 6

  Darcie showed up at the house about an hour later with a stack of frozen TV dinners.

  Darcie and I ate chicken but Candy almost threw up looking at hers. Funny how money can change your appetite. She refused to eat so we headed for the bowling alley.

  We pulled up to a restaurant across the street from the bowling alley about five minutes early.

  “I’m not eating here, either,” Candy said.

  “W
e not going here, it’s the bowling alley across the street. I’ll go check it out. Darcie, drive around the block. Anyone shows up who shouldn’t, haul ass.”

  I got out on the passenger side between the car and the restaurant and hurried inside the restaurant. Darcie drove away with Candy while I cased the bowling alley from the restaurant. It usually wasn’t hard to spot an unmarked police car. They drove solid white or black big-engine Ford or Dodges most of the time.

  A black Challenger drove up in front of the bowling alley and Detective Bennie Modele got out of the car and went inside alone. I watched for about ten minutes for another car to show up but it didn’t. I called Darcie and told her to pull into the alleyway beside the bowling alley.

  The owner Henry usually left the back door unlocked during working hours so his employees could come and go from the back when they took smoking breaks. I hung out here when I was a kid and even did some pin work before they were automated.

  Henry Bleaker had owned Bleaker’s Bowling Alley since he came back from the Korean War with a chest full of medals, a Korean wife and a gimpy leg. He never had any kids, said he didn’t think he would be a good father, but he was always good to me.

  He was past eighty now, and slumped over when he walked. His hair was white and thin and his face showed the marks of time, but he showed up for work every day, rain or shine.

  About a year ago I had stopped in to see how he was doing. The place looked a step away from the wrecking ball and was mostly a watering hole for the wrong kind of people these days. Addicts shooting up in the bathrooms, whores working the bar and the street outside. I knew he didn’t have any other place to go so I put in a word for him with the street cops to cut him some slack.

  I crossed the street and walked in the front door. Modele was standing at the end of the bar with a beer. An old man was trying to bowl but could barely lift the bowling ball. Two painted-up young women with very little on were sitting at the bar, drinking what looked like water. I saw one of them nudge the other and they looked my way. I gave them a look back, shook my head no and the message was delivered.

  Henry was sitting behind the bar working his obsolete cash register as usual.

  He saw me and smiled as I walked up to the bar. “Tommy,” he said. “Where in the hell have you been? I haven’t seen you for ages.”

  “Playing cop, Henry, how’re you doing?”

  “Still here, want a beer?”

  “Maybe later, got a little business to conduct with that fellow at the end of the bar,” I said.

  “Man has to take care of his business. Good to see you, Tommy.”

  “You too,” I said. He was the only one in the world that called me Tommy.

  Modele looked up, sat his beer down and walked over to me.

  “You Mecana?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Modele?”

  “Yes, knew you by your reputation. Don’t mention the beer to anyone, okay?” he said. “I normally don’t drink unless I want to look like someone else.”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant and didn’t want to find out.

  Bennie Modele was in his forties, a confirmed bachelor, over six-feet-tall, with short black hair and brown eyes. He spent a lot of money on clothes and looked more like a banker than a cop. The lines on his forehead showed most of the time and the corners of his mouth drooped slightly at the edges like he was always expecting his worse day ever.

  “She here?” he asked, his dead-pan expression never changing.

  “She’s here,” I said.

  “Let’s get this over with,” he said. “I’ve got other appointments.”

  “Follow me,” I said and headed for the back of the bowling alley.

  As we stepped out the backdoor, a black Mercedes turned into the alley and rammed the back of our rental, slamming it into a dumpster. A big man dressed in black jumped out of the passenger seat carrying an AK-47. He took aim at Candy through the back glass.

  Darcie saw him in the rearview mirror, pushed Candy to the floor, opened the driver’s door and rolled out under the car with her Beretta in hand.

  I grabbed the shooter from behind and we fell to the ground, wrestling for the gun. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the driver make his exit from the car, wearing the same type of clothing as the other man, and firing an Uzi at Modele. Several bullets from the Uzi hit Modele in the arm and leg and he fell to the ground, blood spilling out of his tailor-made gray suit. Everything was happening at micro-second speed.

  Darcie rolled out from under the car and emptied her Beretta into the driver. He fell down beside Modele, their blood running together as it traveled across the dirty concrete alley.

  I was hanging on the AK-47, trying to pull it from the shooter’s grasp while Darcie was scrambling to reload. He jerked free and stood up. I drew my Glock and put three bullets in his head as fast as I could pull the trigger. He fell forward, bounced off the car, dropped his gun and collapsed to the concrete in a puddle of blood.

  Darcie had the Beretta reloaded with no one to shoot.

  I bent down and checked the pulse of the men. The shooters were both dead. Modele was unconscious but alive. He was having that worse day ever.

  Henry and three other people were peeking out the open backdoor. When they realized the shooting had stopped they ventured out to take a closer look.

  “I called 911, Tommy,” Henry said.

  “Thanks, Henry.”

  Darcie holstered her Beretta, walked over to Modele and kneeled down beside him. The arm was just grazed but blood was pouring out of his leg. She unbuckled Modele’s belt and pulled it free of his pants, ejected the clip from his pistol, extracted the round in the chamber and wrapped the belt around his leg, ran it through the trigger guard and twisted it into a tourniquet and tied it to his leg with his red silk necktie.

  We could hear the sounds of the sirens getting closer.

  I walked over to the bullet-riddled car and looked at Candy. She was crouched down in the front floorboard in a fetal position, her hands covering her head.

  “Are you hit,” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “Did you kill them?”

  “Yes. I need you to take a look, see if you know them.”

  “No, get me outta here,” she said.

  “Get out of the car,” I said.

  She slowly slid back up on the seat and looked at me. I opened what remained of the door. She got out of the car, slipped off her high heels, held them in her hand and walked over to the dead men.

  “I don’t know them,” she said, cringing at their bodies.

  “Would your husband have known them?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Henry, you still got that restored ‘58 pickup?”

  “I do,” he said.

  “Can I borrow it?” I asked.

  “Sure, Tommy,” he said. “I don’t need it anyway, my licenses has expired.” He fished the keys out of his pocket and handed them to me.

  “You know how to drive a stick shift, Darcie?” I said.

  “Better than you. What do you want to do?”

  “Take Candy back to the lake. I’ll take a taxi when I think it’s safe to go, if I don’t wind up in jail.”

  “I think we just stepped in a world of shit, Mecana,” Darcie said.

  “Yeah, we’re going to earn that money,” I said.

  “The cops aren’t going to like us leaving.”

  “We have to find out what the truth is but we can’t do that if Candy’s in the slammer.”

  “Okay,” she said, holding out her hand for the keys. “I see the truck.”

  “Candy, go with Darcie, she’s going to get you out of here.”

  “Thank goodness,” she said and followed Darcie to the truck, still holding her shoes in her hand. I followed behind them.

  The engine started and Darcie looked at me. “I’m glad it wasn’t your truck that got shot up. I would hate to see a grown man cry.”

  “Me too,” I said. “You
buy insurance on the car?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “We’re going to need it,” I said.

  Darcie smiled and drove away.

  I checked Modele. The tourniquet was holding. He was unconscious but alive. The two hitmen didn’t have a wallet or any papers on them. Before I could check the Mercedes, a police cruiser came to a squeaking halt in the alley. Two uniformed cops got out, weapons drawn. I knew one of them.

  “Sergeant Nelson,” I said. “I thought you retired?”

  He shook his head no. “I didn’t expect to see you here, Mecana. You go back to work?”

  “No, working as a private eye now.”

  “Is Modele alive?” he asked.

  “For now,” I said.

  “What happened here?”

  “The two dead ones tried to blow us away.”

  “They must not have known who they were messing with,” he grinned and holstered his weapon. The younger cop did the same.

  “They weren’t rabbit hunting, not with those guns,” Nelson said.

  Sergeant Nelson was a small man with big brown puppy-dog-eyes, a beer belly and a whiskey nose.

  “This is my partner, Officer Sid Gilliam,” Nelson said. “I’m teaching him the ropes until I retire.”

  Sid was an athletic-looking young man with bright blue eyes and blonde hair. He looked like he was born about the time Nelson became a cop.

  He stuck out his hand. “I’ve heard of you, Mecana, you’re one of the best. Nice to meet you,” he said as we shook hands.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I don’t feel very competent right now, almost got my client killed.”

  An ambulance made a quick turn into the alley with the deafening sound of the siren shaking the walls. The ambulance stopped, the siren stopped and two well-built paramedics jumped out with a gurney.

  “Any of them alive?” one of the medics yelled, to anyone listening.

  “Detective Modele, the one with the tourniquet on his leg,” I said.

  One medic hurried to him and checked his vitals, inserted an IV into Modele’s arm, strapped him on the gurney and headed for the ambulance.

  The other medic verified the two gunmen were dead then stopped in front of Nelson.