When the Night Bird Sings Page 6

  DeMax walked in wearing a #4 Dallas Cowboys jersey.

  I was eating cereal. “Get you something to eat, DeMax.”

  “Too early for me. I’ll run down to McDonalds later,” he said. “Miss Darcie said I can’t have a gun when you go to New York.”

  “Well, not legally, but if someone breaks in you can use one in self-defense.”

  “You going to leave one?” DeMax said.

  “I’ll leave a .45 over there by the aquarium,” I said.

  “How long are you going to be gone?”

  “We have to go to the doctor’s funeral today and then I need you to hold down the fort for a day or two while I’m in New York. Call the cops if someone comes around who shouldn’t.”

  “I will,” he said.

  “Hopefully, all you’ll have to do is watch television and feed the fish for me.”

  “Big job,” DeMax said and turned on the TV.

  We left the lake house around two that afternoon and headed for Memorial Gardens.

  When the hearse arrived, two men reeled out the coffin, sat it on a stand beside the grave and backed off. I didn’t see a preacher.

  “Is anyone going to give him a send off, Candy?”

  “No. I just have to certify he’s buried and go by the bank to have his money signed over to me. You can be witnesses.”

  A man on a backhoe showed up. Three men lowered his coffin into the grave and the man on the backhoe covered it up. The shortest and coldest funeral I ever saw.

  “Take me to the bank.” Candy pitched a single flower on the grave and we left without another word.

  Darcie and I parked outside the bank with Candy and went inside. We sat outside the bank president’s office with the door open so we could keep an eye out.

  She conducted her business. We heard bits and pieces of their conversation. She was asking him to close the accounts and give her the cash. The president looked at her like he was totally surprised at what she wanted him to do and shook his head no. She stood up and shook a finger at him and he sat back down, wrote something on a paper handed it to her. She signed it, pitched it back to him and walked out of the office.

  “Don’t ask, let’s go,” Candy said. “You don’t have to sign anything.”

  On the way back to the lake house, we stopped by Brogans and picked up another special meal for Candy. When we got to the bungalow she poured a glass of wine and ate most of her meal.

  “I’m going to get my stuff shipped to France and make arrangements to leave the day after tomorrow,” she said. “I'll put another hundred grand in your account and you’ll be done with your job.”

  “For whatever reason, people are still looking for you. We’ll have to let the cops know what you’re doing,” I said.

  “Since you put it that way, forget the hundred grand. I’ll take care of myself from here on out.” She drained her wine glass.

  “You can do what you want, but you’re not getting killed on our time. We’ll keep a watch until you’re gone. Unless the cops want you,” I said.

  “Suit yourself,” she said and walked away with her glass and a fresh bottle of wine; Darcie following with a TV dinner.

  DeMax and I took ours into the living room to watch television; Dallas Football was coming on in the next thirty minutes. We sat down and devoured our TV dinner just in time for football.

  A roaring airplane-like sound shook the walls of the house. We thought it was the TV for a second. I looked out the window and saw a monster truck with huge Caterpillar-size tires bouncing down the driveway at an incredible speed, headed straight for the house.

  A man in the passenger seat leaned out the window and started firing an automatic weapon at the house.

  We hit the floor.

  I yelled “Stay down!” as loud as I could and crawled faster than a snake toward the hallway. DeMax was right behind me following suit.

  We barely made it to the hallway before the monster truck crashed through the wall, sending debris flying everywhere. The driver and another man jumped out, spraying the room with bullets.

  I heard a woman scream and knew it was Candy. I jumped up in the hallway and ran as fast as I could toward the bedroom, DeMax in hot pursuit.

  Darcie came running out of the bedroom holding her Berretta, Candy right behind her naked and wet.

  “Go back,” I told them.

  They turned around and I saw a black bird sitting on a limb tattooed on Candy’s butt. We all ran into the bedroom. I grabbed a suitcase on the bed, smashed a window with it and we climbed out with the burglar alarm screaming at us. We ran to my truck, me hoping the suitcase I was carrying held some clothes for Candy.

  I opened a back door, threw in the suitcase and Darcie and Candy got in and hugged the floorboard. I started the truck, peeled out and headed for the gate.

  DeMax jumped on his bike and slung dirt everywhere as he took off.

  The two killers ran out the door firing at us, bullets ripping holes in Henry’s parked truck and mine as I drove through the open gate to the street. All those holes in my truck were going to end my love affair with it. And I would have to find Henry a new one now, too.

  DeMax wheeled his bike up beside the truck. “Everybody okay?” he asked.

  Both women answered yes and I nodded at him.

  “Let me borrow your bike,” I told DeMax. “I have to get them before they come after us.”

  “You want me to go with you?” DeMax said.

  “No, stay with them and take off if you see anyone besides me coming.”

  DeMax jumped off the bike. I jumped on, made a circle and headed back to the house.

  As I wheeled through the hole in the wall, I saw the two men walking back toward the monster truck. I went full-throttle and jerked the front wheel up; it deflected some bullets and caught one man on top of his head, crushing his skull. He dropped his weapon and fell to the floor, blood streaming down the side of his head.

  I brought the wheel down and dove off the bike, letting it slide across the floor to the other man, cutting his feet out from under him. He hit the floor and lost his machine pistol. I fired as quickly as I could. He yelled and crawled toward the gun. I emptied my Glock in him and blood surrounded him like a red rug.

  A patrol car shot through the gate, lights flashing and siren screaming, and spun to a stop in front of the hole in the wall. I tossed the empty Glock to the floor and sat down with my hands behind my head. Two cops jumped out with their weapons drawn and ran inside.

  “Don’t move,” one of them said.

  “Don’t shoot,” I replied. “My weapon’s on the floor in front of you. I’m unarmed.”

  “Stretch out on the floor, put your hands behind your back,” the other said.

  I did what I was told and a cop with sergeant stripes and ‘Knowles’ on his nametag handcuffed me. The other one was named Sawyer. He picked up my Glock and the other weapons while Knowles checked the dead men.

  “You know them?” Knowles asked.

  “No, I’m an ex-cop. Chief Verves knows me. Call him,” I said.

  “Stay where you are,” Sergeant Knowles said.

  From a worm’s-eye view, I saw another patrol car appear, then another; lights flashing and sirens blasting from all of them. My truck roared up behind them.

  “That’s my people in the truck, Sergeant, don’t shoot.”

  They all exited the truck with their hands up. Candy was now wearing pajamas, the bird tattoo now out of sight.

  The cops shoved them to the ground and handcuffed them as a small crowd gathered at the gate.

  The cops helped me up and led me out of the house to a cruiser.

  “Are you alright?” Darcie called out.

  “Yeah, you?” I yelled back, competing with the sirens.

  “We’re okay,” she shouted back.

  They put us in the cruisers. A crime scene patrol and coroner’s ambulance drove up as we left the property.

  Chapter 12

  They put me and
DeMax in a cell together and took Darcie and Candy to the women’s jail across the street to sort out everything.

  Verves showed up two hours later wearing jeans and a police t-shirt.

  “Mecana, you’re beginning to be a real pain in the ass.”

  “Seems like somebody up there don’t like us,” I said.

  “I stopped by the morgue,” Verves said. “They look like Swiss cheese. You know them?”

  “Let me guess, they didn’t have any ID, either,” I said.

  “Nothing. I’ll see if I can get bail set and get the info over to Darcie, too.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Behave yourself, Mecana.” He walked away, a guard following him out.

  “He likes you,” DeMax said. “Are we gonna get out?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “I need a gun,” DeMax said. “I never got a chance to shoot back.”

  “You don’t have a license,” I said.

  “Won’t make any difference when I’m dead.”

  “Good point. I’ll see what I can do.”

  The next day, Darcie walked in with a paper in her hand; a gray-haired overweight turnkey with a keychain attached to his belt following her. He stuck a key in the lock and opened our cell, and motioned for us to come out without a word.

  “Where’s Candy?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Darcie said. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  When we walked outside Darcie led us to a new truck and handed me the keys. It was the same make and model as the one that got shot up.

  “You bought a new truck,” Darcie said.

  “I did?” I said.

  “Yeah the other one had too many bullet holes to fix. I got you another like the one you were in love with.”

  “Cool,” DeMax said.

  “Good and bad,” I said. “My damn insurance premiums are going to go through the roof. And I have to get Henry a truck.”

  “Never promised you a rose garden,” Darcie said.

  “I always smell flowers when you speak,” I said.

  “Well isn’t that sweet. You must be glad to get out of jail,” Darcie said.

  “Where’s Candy?”

  “Deposit your butt in the truck,” she said. “DeMax, you can ride up front.”

  I got in and there was Candy, sitting in the back seat.

  “Here I am,” she said. “As you can see, the cops don’t want me. Find me a place to pee then take me back to my place to pack, I’m leaving today.”

  “There’s a station across the street,” DeMax said. “I got to go, too.”

  “Make it quick,” I said and pulled into the station’s parking lot. “Looks like the restrooms are inside. What about you, Darcie?”

  “I’m good,” she said.

  “Go with Candy,” I said.

  “You think I need a chaperone to pee?” Candy said.

  “I don’t want anyone to kill you on our watch,” I said. We got out and headed to the restrooms.

  When DeMax and I walked in the men’s room, two big men wearing suits followed in behind us. I could see them in the mirrors. They stopped in the middle of the floor and drew automatics out of their coats.

  “Don’t move,” the older-looking man said and motioned for us to move against the wall. He placed his revolver against my head and removed the Glock from my shoulder holster while the younger one patted us down.

  “Stay put you two,” the older one said. “You poke your head out that door and we’ll blow it clean off.” They bolted from the room in a run.

  We stopped at the door but it wouldn’t open; they had pushed a vending machine against it. We heard a woman screaming outside. We could see through a crack in the door they were carrying Candy to their car. We shoved the door open but they were already gone. We ran into the ladies restroom where Darcie was crawling out from under a locked stall.

  “They took Candy,” she said.

  “What did they look like?” I said.

  “Two white men in suits. One had a shaved head and the other one was smaller and thinner with a beard.”

  “Same ones who came after us.”

  “Damn, they’re fast,” DeMax said.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “Maybe we can catch up.”

  We started for the door when a little man with shaggy blonde hair ran in with a .38 in his hand. According to the nametag on his black fast food shirt, his name was George and he was the manager at the fast food place inside the station.

  “I called the police,” George said, waving the .38 at us. “The other ones got away but you and Sambo ain’t.”

  DeMax looked at me with a fire in his eyes.

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  DeMax jumped toward the little man, kicking the gun out of his hand. He spun around and laid a right cross on his chin so hard he staggered across the restroom, his arms flying around like a windmill. He banged his head on the wall and fell to the floor, out cold.

  I picked up his .38 and stuck it in my pocket.

  “What’s he doing that for?” Darcie asked, staring at DeMax.

  “The little man was insulting him,” I said.

  “Holy shit,” she said.

  “They take your Berretta?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “We fucked up, didn’t we,” DeMax said.

  “Yes we did,” I said.

  We hurried out of the restrooms and into the station.

  “Anyone see the car the men put that lady in?” I asked aloud.

  Four or five people in the store stopped shopping for a moment and stared at us, but said nothing and went back to shopping.

  A young woman behind the counter wearing the same black fast food shirt as George held her hand up like a schoolgirl in class.

  “Are you a cop?” she said, looking at me.

  “Was at one time, Sally,” I said, looking at the name on her shirt.

  “Two guys came out of the ladies room carrying a blonde lady, kicking and screaming, with her panties hanging around one ankle about to fall off,” she said. “They put her in a white van and took off north down Reilly Street. A big black car followed.”

  “Do you remember any plate numbers from either one?”

  “First two on the van were 16,” she said. “That’s all I remember.”

  I reached in my pocket and pulled a hundred dollar bill off my money clip and handed it to her. “You’ve been a lot of help, Sally. Thanks.”

  Sergeant Nelson and his young partner drove up beside us in the parking lot as we were headed to the truck.

  “Just received a disturbance call,” Nelson said. “You have anything to do with it, Mecana?”

  I stopped beside my driver-side door for a second as DeMax and Darcie were getting in. “Can’t explain now, Nelson. Have to run. My client was kidnapped.”

  I got in the truck and started the engine. I waved at Nelson and floor-boarded the gas pedal.

  Chapter 13

  The sun dropped out of sight over the next few minutes, making it harder to chase the perpetrators in the dark. If they intended to kill Candy it was done by now. I stopped at a red light and a white van roared by, heading the other direction.

  “That was a 16 on the plate, wasn’t it,” I said. “He’s doubling back”

  “I saw it,” DeMax said.

  “I did too,” Darcie said. “But we don’t know if it’s the right one.”

  I whipped the truck around and followed the van for several miles but didn’t see the big black car. The van turned off I-20 onto Highway 49 toward Houston and the black Mercedes appeared almost out of nowhere, following it.

  “It’s the right van,” I said. “When I find a place I can block the van, I will. Darcie, you and DeMax get out of the truck and haul ass when I stop.”

  “You can’t do that,” Darcie said. “They probably have all kinds of weapons.”

  “May be our only chance,” I said. “Plus, I’ve got that manager’s .38.”

 
The van changed lanes to the right, headed towards the next exit. I waited for cars to come around me and dropped back a ways. The van made a right at the first street and the Mercedes followed.

  “They must still have her. Somebody may want her alive,” I said.

  The van and the Mercedes made a right turn on Mable Street and headed north. I stayed back a ways, keeping the two vehicles in sight. The van moved over to the right again and, the Mercedes still following, pulled into a lit-up driveway with a big iron gate topped with 1924 SOUTH HALL ST; a rock fence surrounding a two-story brick building.

  I drove past the gate and stopped under the shadow of a tree two blocks away and cut the lights and engine.

  “What we do now?” DeMax asked.

  “We call the FBI. We’ve got a kidnapping,” Darcie said.

  In the next instance, a whishing sound crash-busted out both front windows, glass flying all over. The two men we encountered at the station appeared on each side of my truck with AK-47s pointed at us.

  “Throw out your weapons or we’ll kill you,” the bearded one said.

  I tossed the .38 out the busted window. “That’s all we’ve got.”

  “Come on, the rest of it.”

  “You already have it.”

  “Get out of the truck,” the bearded guy said.

  We opened the door and stepped out of the truck. I saw the baseball bat he used to bust the glass laying on the ground. Must be another one on the other side, I thought.

  “Give me the keys,” the bearded one said.

  “They’re in the truck,” I said.

  The shaved-headed one pushed Darcie and DeMax toward the front of the truck with the barrel of his AK-47 and motioned for them to keep walking.

  “Go to the gate,” he said.