Dead Men's Dust Read online

  I placed the first sheet of paper on the table and looked across at Jenny. She’d retreated to the opposite end of the room, staring vacantly into space. The letter was my problem now.

  John said that he’s got a half-brother over in England. Someone he called Hunter. I know they didn’t get along that well, but John said once that if anything ever happened to him I had to send for Hunter because he would know what to do. So I’m asking, I’m begging, please do this for me. And if you won’t do it for me, do it for John. Send for his brother.

  Please. L.

  “This woman,” I asked, “who is she?”

  Jenny returned to stub out her cigarette. Her words held more vehemence up close. “John’s bitch.”

  “Is she American?”

  “No. She’s English.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Louise Blake.”

  “How did John meet her?”

  “She worked for the same company as him.” She gave me a pointed stare. I just watched her, and Jennifer added, “By all accounts they were seeing each other for six months before he left me.” She gave me the pointed look again. “Everyone knew but me.”

  “I didn’t.”

  She wiped at her mouth with the back of a hand. “Well, you’re about the only one who didn’t.” Her words became softer as she recalled the betrayal. “Louise stole my husband from me, Joe. Now she wants help to find him. What does she want me to do, hand him right back to her?”

  “Have you ever met her?”

  “Not formally. I saw her a couple times where John worked.” Jenny laughed. “When I think about it, I suppose you’d say she’s a younger version of me. Without the baggage around the waist from carrying two kids. Basically John traded me in for a younger model.”

  “But you still want me to find him?”

  She sighed. Her gaze flickered toward the bedroom. The kids were very quiet and I wondered if they had their ears to the door.

  “He’s still their dad, Joe. He should be doing more to support them.”

  Yes. A sad fact. But not something I was about to put into words.

  Jenny said, “Probably Louise is right: John does deserve everything he gets. But my kids shouldn’t be made to suffer, should they?”

  She could look all she wanted but she wouldn’t see any sign of disagreement from me. After a few seconds she asked, “So…what do you think? Is there anything you can do?”

  “There is,” I promised her.

  And I meant it.

  3

  WHEN WORKING, I DON’T USE A VEHICLE THAT I CARE ABOUT. I use an old car I picked up at an auction. That way, when the disgruntled dig a key into the length of the paintwork, I don’t get too upset. The car has many scars. The only concession I make to roadworthiness is to have the engine regularly overhauled and tires of the puncture-proof variety. Both have proved invaluable in the past.

  Before setting up the takedown on Shank, I had parked the old Ford a couple of streets away. Okay, I wasn’t that protective of it, but neither was I going to make my wheels a sitting duck. I was approaching the car when the BMW swung into the street behind me. To be fair, I thought I’d seen the last of Peter Ramsey, yet here he was, back for more.

  Maybe I should’ve done a better number on him the first time. My fault, but as I said, I can be a compassionate guy.

  “This time…no messing about,” I promised.

  In an effort at stealth, the music volume had been turned down. Still, the thud-thud rhythm sounded like the heartbeat of a predator coiling for the death lunge. Thick tires whistled on tarmac. The engine growled. Even without looking, I’d have known they were coming.

  It was like patrolling in-country all over again. Only then I was an inexperienced rookie, immortal in my battle fatigues and holding a submachine gun. Unprepared for what happened, I hadn’t even realized I’d been shot until I surfaced through a morphine haze the following day and blinked up at my nurse.

  You don’t hear the bullet that kills you. Which meant the two bullets Shank fired at me missed their mark. Good job I’d leaped forward at the right time. The sidewalk was a little unforgiving, but a scraped elbow and knee were the least of my worries.

  The BMW was a sleek black shark, as dangerous as the .38 Shank aimed at me. It made sense that the driver swung the BMW onto the sidewalk. A half-ton of metal on my head would finish me as quickly as a slug in the heart.

  “Get that son of a bitch!”

  Even as I rolled away from the car, I had to smile at Shank’s determination.

  The BMW bumped down off the curb, knocking value off the alloys. I rose up behind them. From beneath my shirttails, I drew my own gun, a SIG-Sauer P226. Unlike these cretins, I had a full load. In addition, I knew how to shoot. One round into a rear tire, two into the trunk, and one through the back windshield for good measure. More than the deflated tire, panic spun the car across the road and drove it into my parked car.

  In this part of town, gunfire would ensure that witnesses kept their heads down. On the other hand, a good old-fashioned car wreck would bring the ghouls running.

  “Out of the car,” I shouted. “Now!”

  The driver was slumped over the steering wheel, blood frothing from both nostrils. Sound asleep for the second time that evening. Shank wasn’t in much better shape. Half out the window when the car collided with my Ford, he was now on the road, crying like a baby and cradling a busted elbow. His gun had slid harmlessly beneath my car. Only the third guy, the big baldy, posed any threat.

  “I said, Out of the damn car.”

  Staring down the barrel of a SIG is enough to motivate most men. He was surprisingly sprightly when offered the correct form of stimulation. His hands went up. “Okay! Easy, man, easy.”

  His gloves were gone. Heavy gold rings made a rich man’s brass knuckles on his right hand. Fancied himself a pugilist.

  “Pick Shank up,” I told him.

  Conditioned to taking commands, he didn’t object. He quickly stooped down and lifted Shank to his feet.

  “Up the alley.”

  Opposite us was a narrow alleyway between a vacant lot and a video rental store that was closed for the night. Maybe the store had closed for many nights, judging by the faded posters.

  I knew what was going through the big guy’s mind. He thought the ignominious alley was where he was going to end his days. Give him his due; I think he was braver than he was stupid.

  “You aren’t taking us up there to shoot us.”

  “I’m not?”

  “If you’re going to do it, do it now. Out here in the open.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Not so keen, Shank whimpered.

  Baldy gave his boss a look that suggested there were going to be changes in their arrangement—if they managed to get out of this alive. Shank was left swaying as the big man stepped away from him.

  “Go on,” he challenged. “I don’t think you’ve got what it takes.”

  I gave him my saddest smile.

  The big man took that as a sign of weakness. He snatched at a gun tucked into his waistband.

  I caressed the trigger and his right kneecap disintegrated.

  He collapsed to the floor, and despite his bravado he screamed.

  “What about you, Shank? Do you think I haven’t got it in me to do you?” I aimed the SIG at a point directly between his eyes. “After you tried to shoot me?”

  Think of an air-raid siren and you’ll imagine the sound that Shank made.

  “You know something, Shank? You should have listened to me.”

  I pulled the trigger again.

  Shank fell next to his friend, clutching at his own shattered knee.

  “Next time I will kill you,” I promised.

  4

  HE HAD THE DESIRE AND THE PASSION. HE CERTAINLY HAD the ability. But that wasn’t everything. Tubal Cain also had an agenda.

  Right now he was short on materials.

  There wasn’t much hope of acquiri
ng what he needed here, but for these cretins, he’d make the effort.

  “You know something? You should all be damned straight to hell!”

  There weren’t too many things that got him riled, but these pigs on wheels were the exception. Motor homes! These monstrosities of engineering were a blight on the landscape. Colossal steel bullets fired from the devil’s cannon to cause woe and destruction wherever they landed.

  Without their intrusion, this oasis turnoff beside Route I-10 in Southern California had its own beauty. A semicircular drive ran up to an artesian well, and trees had been artfully arranged to block the view of the interstate. Laurel trees made a pretty silhouette against the star-filled sky, but not when a goddamn Winnebago hunkered beneath them, square, unnatural, and spewing light from a cabin the size of the flight deck of the USS Enterprise.

  “It’s enough to make you sick,” Tubal Cain said.

  Neither Mabel nor George or whatever the hell they were called argued the point. George was equivocal on the entire subject. However, that could be expected. Speaking could be difficult with a gash the width of your thumb parting your trachea.

  For her part, Mabel was pretty verbal, but nothing she’d said up until now would change his opinion. She was too intent on screaming for her unheeding husband. Another thing: she wasn’t giving any clues to George’s actual name. She’d only refer to him as Daddy. She was obscene, like a wrinkly Lolita.

  “Aw, for crying out loud!” Cain said. “Put a lid on it, will you? How do you expect me to work with all that racket you’re making?”

  Mabel hunkered down in the kitchen compartment. She was a hunched package stuffed beneath a fold-down counter, looking like the garbage sack George had been about to drop into the bushes when Cain surprised him.

  “Daddy, Daddy! Help me, Daddy!” she screamed for about the hundredth time.

  “Daddy’s not interested,” Cain pointed out. “So you might as well shut up.”

  Daddy sat in the driving seat, surrounded by the luxury of leather and walnut. But he was of no mind to point out the lushness of his surroundings. The elderly man was currently preoccupied with trying to stem the tide of blood flowing down the front of his pullover. Chalk white, his features showed he was losing the battle.

  “Daddeeee…”

  Cain took the man’s hands away from the wound, guiding them to the steering wheel. His final earthly experience would be gripping the wheel as though with the intention of taking the Winnebago through the Pearly Gates with him.

  The knife snicked through tendons and gristle, the old man’s death grip loosened, and his hands flopped onto his thighs. Sans thumbs, his hands looked like dead squid.

  Moving toward the woman’s hiding place, Cain slipped the thumbs into a sandwich bag and dropped them in a pocket.

  “People have to learn to take their trash home with them, Mabel.” If there was anything that got his goat even more than motor homes it was the irresponsible and harmful littering George had been engaged in. Bad enough that he destroyed the picturesque beauty of the desert with this huge beast—but then he deposited its shit before he left. “Maybe if George wasn’t so indiscriminate with his garbage, I wouldn’t have had to call on you and teach you such a valuable lesson.”

  “You killed Daddy because there were no trash cans?”

  “Yes. And for his ridiculous taste in vehicles.”

  “You’re insane!” Mabel shrieked.

  “No, Mabel. I’m angry.”

  “You killed Daddy!”

  “Yes.”

  He stooped down, pulled her from beneath the counter. She slid out as boneless as an oyster from the shell. Cain didn’t like oysters. Didn’t like anything boneless.

  He rapped a knuckle on her head. Just to be sure. The clunk was only partway reassuring.

  “How old are you, Mabel? Seventy? Eighty?”

  Her turquoise-framed spectacles lent an extra dimension to her incredulous blink. Confusion reigned, terror tamped down by befuddlement. Her mouth drooped. At least she’d stopped screaming.

  “I wouldn’t ask, but it is pertinent,” Cain said.

  “Eighty-three.” Saliva popped at the back of her throat.

  “Hmmm. Quite elderly.” Cain gripped her shoulder. He kneaded with a masseur’s skill. “Frail under all that padding. I bet you suffer from arthritis, eh?”

  She showed him her misshapen knuckles.

  “Thought that might be the case.” His sigh sounded genuinely remorseful. “What about osteoporosis?”

  He was offering hope, and she wasn’t so distraught that she didn’t recognize it. Even after such a long life, when faced with dismemberment, an octogenarian can still desire further years. “I’m riddled with it. I only have to sneeze and I can break a rib.”

  “Doesn’t bode well.”

  “What do you want from us?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You cut off Daddy’s thumbs…”

  “I did, Mabel. I have a purpose for them. But you needn’t fear. You have nothing that I want.”

  “Thank the good Lord!” Mabel sobbed.

  “But only for small mercies,” Cain concluded as he slipped the knife back in his pocket. He didn’t require a knife when dealing with an invertebrate. The heel of his shoe would be all he’d need.

  Ten minutes later he was back on the road.

  The Mercedes SUV he drove made a fine chariot. Interstate 10 stretched out before him, an umbilical cord drawing him ever westward, toward the fertile stalking-grounds of Los Angeles.

  Billy Joel was cranked high on the SUV’s CD player. A window open so that the warm breeze ruffled Cain’s fair hair. He was a happy man. Beside him on the passenger seat were the tools of his trade, flagrantly displayed in total disregard of law or common sense. If someone saw them, well, so what? A cop died as easy as any man did.

  With that thought in mind, he reached over and lifted the flap of the pouch. Inside was an array of knives, scalpels, and other cutting utensils. Tap, tap, tap. He danced a finger over the dozen or so hilts. Tap. Rested momentarily on the sturdy hilt of a Bowie knife.

  “Ah, sweet baby,” he said. Such fond memories.

  A would-be knife fighter back east in Jacksonville had bestowed the knife upon him. What unashamed southern generosity. Such a polite man, too.

  “You’re going to have to take it from me first, sir,” he’d offered.

  “Gladly,” Tubal Cain had agreed.

  The blade was broad and easily a foot long. Whenever it was thrust into flesh, it made a satisfying thunk! A firm favorite for instilling fear in the hearts of his victims. Sadly, it lacked finesse. If carnage was your only desire, then fine. Ever the artist, he preferred a little more delicacy to his cutting.

  Now this was more to his liking. Black plastic hilt, slim and unadorned. Grasping it lightly, he teased out the cutting edge. Muted moonbeams played on a curved, very utilitarian blade backed by saw-toothed serrations. Beautiful in its simplicity. It was a fish-scaling knife acquired during a northern foray to Nova Scotia. The blade had seen employment on a number of occasions since, but never on anything so mundane as trout or salmon.

  Happy with his choice, he pulled the scaling knife free and held it up for closer inspection. With a thumb, he tested its keenness. “As keen as I am, eh?”

  The knife went into an inside pocket of his sports jacket.

  Billy Joel was winding down, Christie Brinkley demanding his full attention. The CDs spread over the passenger seat beckoned. Cain selected a Robbie Williams disc: Stoke-on-Trent’s best-known export doing his best to capture the cool of Sinatra and not doing a half-bad job. He changed the CD, then bobbed his head along with the tempo swinging from the speakers.

  “My kind of music,” he whispered. An aptly named track—a cover of “Mack the Knife.” He cut lazy figures of eight into the air with his right hand. Like conducting a big band, but instead of a bandleader’s baton he imagined a blade in his hand. With each swing of the music, he cut anothe
r strip of meat from a faceless victim.

  “Swing while you’re sinning.” He grinned. A nod toward the title of the album.

  5

  THAT EVENING, AFTER THE EPISODE WITH SHANK, I RETURNED home to a house in darkness. Nothing new there. It’s been like that since Diane and I divorced.

  The auction car wasn’t registered to me, so I was happy to leave it in place. A cab took me to the lock-up garage I used, so it was my other car, an Audi A6, I parked on the tree-lined street. My two dogs, Hector and Paris, were inside the house, and I could just make out their forms as they pressed their noses to the glass doors leading to the patio. I must have made an indistinct shadow against the deeper night. Hector, largest of my German shepherds, huffed once, then I watched as the two dogs became animated.

  I was conscious of disturbing my neighbors, but it was pointless trying to be quiet; Hector and Paris were making enough racket to wake the neighborhood. I pushed open the patio door. Instantly I was assaulted by twin black-and-tan whirlwinds. We went through a round of play fighting before the dogs would obey my command to sit.

  As always, the TV cabinet became a receptacle for my car keys and wallet. It was a habit my ex-wife used to frown upon. It was only one of the many things that annoyed her before our split. Probably the very least of them.

  Sometimes I wished Diane were still there to keep me right, but she wasn’t. As soon as I tendered my resignation from the army, the death knell for our marriage was rung. Probably she understood me in a way that I never could. Physically I’d resigned, but mentally?

  “Married men can’t just rush off, placing themselves in life-threatening situations all the time,” Diane told me the night she left.

  “So you want me to sit at home and die of boredom?” I demanded.

  “No, Joe.” She’d shaken her head sadly. “I just don’t want to be the one who has to bury you.”

  Diane wanted someone she could grow old with. Understandable, but it wasn’t something I could promise her. I’m way too impulsive for that. My promise to Jenny was nagging at me to get going. I wanted to make a start with some phone calls.