By the Balls Read online

  I’d only been in one serious fight before in my life, way back in the seventh grade when Dale Van Holten’s girlfriend decided I was her boyfriend. Van Holten took it hard and came at me in the locker room. It was over fast. I don’t remember much about it, other than Van Holten helicoptering his arms at me in wild haymakers.

  I ducked then, and I ducked now. The hammer whipped over my head and hit the wall behind me with a heavy crunch. Plaster, dust, and wood showered down around me.

  I came up fast, burying a fist into Brockman’s guts. I didn’t really know how to throw a punch, but Brockman grunted and staggered back so I must have done something right. Then he slammed me behind the ear with his elbow. A firecracker went off inside my head. I went down, hitting the floor like a bag of rice.

  I scrambled to get up, but my legs weren’t cooperating. My ankle hurt like hell. I could hear Brockman’s ragged breathing. I twisted, looked up. Brockman stood over me in a wide-legged stance, sledgehammer held high over his head.

  He swung. I rolled.

  The sledgehammer tore through the floor where I’d been lying. I heard—felt—a deep crack and the building shivered. The place definitely wasn’t all that stable, and I feared that Brockman’s blow splintered a floor joist.

  I kicked out at his legs, caught him in the shin. He was off-balance after his swing, and he toppled over onto his back.

  I managed to pull myself to my feet, tried to breathe. I held my hands out toward Brockman. “Look, let’s talk this out . . .”

  That’s when he tackled me. We fell backward, a struggling mass of arms, legs, anger. Somehow he ended up on top, and somehow his fist found my jaw. Once, twice.

  I could taste iron in my mouth, and a black hole started to close in around me. A small part of me was saying I should give up, dive in, lose myself, and go find my wife in the big upstairs. I told that part of me I wasn’t the quitting type. I reached out, and frantic fingers closed around a chunk of something heavy—wood, I thought. I slammed it into Brockman’s temple.

  He toppled off me. I scrambled away from him as he slowly rose to his feet. He wiped at the blood pouring from the cut I’d opened above his eye. “You’re a dead man, Drake. Dead as McInnis.”

  He ran at me. I struggled to get up again, but couldn’t. I thrust my legs straight out in front of me.

  Piledriver.

  Brockman didn’t see it coming. He ran straight into me, taking my heels on his chin. He bounced off, staggering backward, arms flailing, off-balance, slipping, falling. He hit the floor with a heavy thud, then a crack as the floor gave way beneath him.

  He disappeared from my sight, letting loose with a garbled cry of surprise cut short when he hit the cement floor of the basement below.

  I crawled over to the crater and peered down. There was just enough light to see Brockman lying there, motionless. It looked like he’d landed headfirst. Hollow eyes stared out from a rainbow of blood and brains.

  I threw up.

  * * *

  When I got home I found the flowers where I had dropped them by the front door. The desert heat had reclaimed them, draining them of color and all moisture. I kicked them to the side. They turned to dust.

  I opened the door. The house had a warm, sweet smell. The air conditioner had been turned off for a couple days, leaving everything inside with a radiant heat that filled the thin air.

  I cranked the thermostat, heard the fans kick in. Went to the refrigerator to look for something cold to drink. All I found was her stuff.

  I closed the fridge. Sat at the kitchen table and let my eyes get wet.

  I needed to make so many damn calls. I needed to call the station and tell the chief I quit. I needed to call Pappy, tell him my plan for a new career, ask for his help. Needed to call the funeral home and make all kinds of arrangements. Christ. I needed to call Weisnecki, tell him his partner was dead, littering a crime scene that included a safe full of cash.

  I stood, went over to the wall, picked up the phone. I held the receiver at my waist, but I could still hear it. The dial tone wailing its relentless cry for a connection, any connection.

  _______________________

  Tires squealed as the end of the big Dodge Monaco swung around the corner, followed by the sharp sound of blaring horns. The big cop switched his big foot to the gas pedal and spun the wheel back to the right; the car fishtailed, then straightened out, before it managed to catch some air off a poorly patched manhole. Duke Wellington took his eyes off the road for just a second to glare at his nonplussed partner sitting next to him.

  “Sweet Jesus! I need a little notice before I gotta turn!” he shouted. “Next time give me some notice, would ya?”

  Mark Weisnecki slouched down in the passenger seat and shrugged. “It’s like I told you—it makes more sense for me to take the wheel until you learn your way around the city.”

  “An’ it’s like I told you—Duke Wellington always drives. I’ll get the layout of this crazy town mapped out in my head as I go, but I always drive.”

  “Hey, I’m not one of these guys who’s going to tussle over who gets to be wheelman. But I ain’t used to riding shotgun, so you’re gonna have to put up with the occasional last-second navigation, at least till we get all the bugs worked outta this arrangement.”

  Duke Wellington grunted in response and stared straight ahead as the car screamed down Cherry Boulevard.

  Weisnecki had never driven this fast to a murder scene in his near fifteen years on the force. Sure, he ignored speed limits often enough, mostly on his way to shootouts, heists, or bachelor parties—anything that had a little action and opportunity.

  But the guy they were visiting was dead. No need to rush. The afternoon sun’s reflection swam in the storefront windows they raced past.

  Weisnecki grinned a little through his square mustache. “So, what’d you think of breakfast?” he asked, digging between his teeth with a mint-flavored toothpick. “Pretty good grub, eh?”

  “It was all right,” Duke Wellington said with a wave of his large black hand.

  “All right? Man, you don’t like anything, do you?”

  “I’ll tell you what I don’t like.” DW gestured wildly with his index finger, wagging it about like a cat toy. “I don’t like that cook.”

  “You mean Papademos? You didn’t like him?”

  “That’s right. Not one bit. And that made my breakfast taste foul.”

  “What’s not to like? He’s a damn good cook.”

  “He had no right to hassle those boys at the counter like he did. No right at all.”

  Weisnecki turned slightly toward his new partner, arching an eyebrow. “You mean the couple of bums stinkin’ up the joint?”

  Duke Wellington tilted his head forward and lowered his voice an octave. “Just ’cause they’re down and out don’t mean he’s gotta resort to racial slurs.”

  “What are you talking about? Man’s got a right to clear his restaurant of . . . undesirables.” Weisnecki dislodged a chunk of breakfast stuck between his back molars, then turned and spat it out the window.

  More horns blared as the unmarked cop car sailed through a long yellow light.

  Weisnecki let out a sigh that could have been a chuckle. “You’re gonna have to learn to calm down. I mean, you’re not even on the job three days. You’ve still got a helluva lot to learn about Testacy City, that’s for sure.”

  “And Testacy City’s got a lot to learn about me.”

  “Partner, this ain’t the kind of town where a button-down lawman can come strollin’ in and clean the place up overnight. This might be the West, but those cowboy days are long gone.”

  “We’ll see, Weisnecki. We’ll see.”

  Weisnecki shook his head and pointed down the road with his now-frayed toothpick. “Turn right, up here on Carter.”

  The brown Dodge rolled right behind the patrol car that rested in front of a ramshackle cottage. Duke Wellington jammed the car into park, wishing the thing had a manual tr
ansmission, then stepped from the car.

  Weisnecki pulled himself out of the passenger seat. “Welcome to Testacy City’s glorious south side, home of the finest dirtbags in the Southwest. Today’s special smell is . . .” he sucked in a big breath of air, “garbage.” He took a second to light up a cigarette before he plodded up the cracked cement walkway to the house.

  The ripe smell settled on the back of Duke Wellington’s tongue. He spat onto the dusty street, but he could still taste the air. He scowled and pushed his Panama hat far back on his forehead. A quick scan of the neighborhood, packed with beat-up cars parked in front of claptrap buildings, didn’t improve his mood much. So far everything he’d come across in this city made his head hurt, a throbbing right behind his eyes.

  “Hey! You coming?” Weisnecki’s shout shocked Duke Wellington out of his thoughts and back to the job at hand. He lumbered up the walk to where his partner stood chatting it up with a young uniform cop. DW stole a glance at the kid’s shiny brass name badge: Coffman.

  “Hey, Billy,” Weisnecki said, “let me introduce you to the new man on the job. Duke Wellington, Billy Coffman. Billy here is a real career man. You need something special done, he’ll be glad to take care of you, if you get my drift.”

  “Good to meet you, detective,” Billy said, blushing at the attention. “They say you worked Atlanta?”

  “On the job there ten years, and I gotta say—”

  “Speaking of partners,” Weisnecki interrupted, “where’s Chuck?”

  “Inside. Tidying things up,” Coffman said, jerking a thumb at the front door.

  “Tidying up? What’s this about tidying up? This Chuck better not be messin’ up my crime scene,” Duke Wellington said, poking a thick finger in Billy’s face. “I don’t like it when beat cops go messin’ up my crime scene.”

  Coffman started to stammer, caught by surprise. Standing out in the desert sun always made a man in uniform sweat; there was no real escape from the heat.

  The tension broke when Weisnecki let loose with a big laugh and said, “You sure got a way with folks. Come on, let’s check this out.” He clapped Duke Wellington on the back and started walking him toward the front door.

  The two detectives stepped into a hot, muggy living room. Thick orange shag carpet ran wall-to-wall, accentuated by dirty, lemon-yellow wallpaper highlighted with some sort of swirly, carrot-inspired design. Duke Wellington squinted his eyes as the pain in his head throbbed on.

  Immediately inside the door, a big red stain discolored the already ill-colored carpet, and in that stain lay the massive frame of a man wearing a grubby undershirt, white cotton boxer shorts, and too-thin black dress socks. His thick arms were spread wide, as if waiting for an embrace that would never come, and his big legs formed a macabre figure four. Blood covered his body.

  A nervous-looking uniform cop in his late forties stood on the other side of the body, next to a bank of steel filing cabinets, the tall kind with four drawers. One of the drawers stood suspiciously open. The cop relaxed when he saw Weisnecki walk in.

  “Oh, hiya, Mark. Mighty fine mess we got ourselves.”

  “A mess is good goddamn right. What’s the situation here . . .” Duke Wellington moved around the body and peered in close to get the cop’s name, “Raffety?”

  “Relax, big fella,” Weisnecki said. “Chuck here’s one of the good ones. Ain’t that right, Chuck?”

  “One hundred percent grade-A.”

  “This is Duke Wellington, new boy in town. Now, he ain’t used to how we do things around here, so do me a favor and break him in gentle, won’t ya?”

  “Gentle it is.” Raffety threw Weisnecki a sly wink, then turned to Duke Wellington. “Good to have you on the job, detective. You need anything, you know who to call.” Raffety threw his wink at Wellington.

  “All right, all right. Now that we’re all friendly an’ such, what do we got?” Wellington gestured at the body. Blood continued to slowly trickle out and pool on the floor.

  “What we got is, someone finally caught up with old Bones,” Weisnecki said. “Was bound to happen eventually.”

  “Bones? This guy’s name was Bones?” Duke Wellington took a step back and sized up the body. “Looks like he must’ve weighed 350.”

  “Yeah, well, he ain’t called Bones on account of his figure, you can be sure of that,” Weisnecki said. “Chuck, give DW the skinny on our man.”

  Raffety stepped up with the facts. “Tyrone ‘Bones’ Tyrell. They called him Bones ’cause of his magic touch with the dice. Didn’t matter what game he played or where he played it. The man had a gift for getting the dice to do what he wanted.”

  Duke Wellington made a brief survey of the room as Raffety prattled on. On the left side of the room, a well-worn easy chair extended to its full length waited patiently for someone to recline. Within a short arm’s reach of the right side of the chair stood a low, narrow table with a bank of phones, six in all, each with its receiver off the hook. Four of them were black, cradle-style jobs. One was an off-green color. Duke Wellington remembered that Sears used to call it “avocado.” The last phone was a pink princess model. A girlie calendar hung slightly off-center over the whole arrangement. A small table—stocked with plenty of pens, pencils, and pads of paper, as well as a simple off-yellow ceramic table lamp—sat just to the left of the recliner. Some kind of cartoon played on the large color television a few feet in front of the easy chair.

  “This guy a bookie?” Duke Wellington asked as he bent over to pick up a crumpled sheet of notepaper.

  “Not just a bookie, my man. The bookie. Biggest in Testacy City—and I’m not talking about weight. I mean, them phones were ringin’ so bad when I got in here, I had to take ’em off the hook just so’s I could think.”

  Weisnecki squatted in front of the huge body. “Three shots,” he muttered, pointing at each wound with his smoldering cigarette as he talked. “One in the belly—like that did anything to him—one in the chest, and one in the face. That’ll be the one that did him in.”

  “We got suspects lined up?”

  “That’s the hard part. Way I see it, every two-bit gambler in the city has a motive for whacking this guy.”

  “Yeah, a lot of people are, or were, in deep with him,” Raffety said.

  Duke Wellington flattened out the notepaper he’d picked up. It contained two columns of numbers: on the left were dates, about a week apart; on the right, dollar amounts, all under five hundred. “I hope this isn’t what you’re calling deep. In Atlanta, this is more like a grocery bill than a racketeer’s profit margin.”

  “This ain’t Atlanta.” Raffety plucked the note from the detective’s fingers.

  Duke Wellington’s eyes narrowed. He pointed at the open filing cabinet. “That why you’re digging through those files?”

  “What time is it?” Weisnecki asked.

  His partner glanced down at his wrist. “Almost quarter past one. Ain’t you got your own watch?”

  “All right, then,” Weisnecki said as he stood up and dusted his hands on his rumpled suit. His cigarette stuck out at a weird angle from the corner of his mouth. “Time for us to get going.”

  “Go? Hold on a second, we gotta wait for the scientists, and I want to do a walk-through of this whole place . . .”

  “Do you wanna solve this murder or not?”

  “What the hell kind of question is that?”

  “It’s like I said earlier—you’ve got a lot to learn about this town. Until then, follow my lead. Chuck and Bobby will wait here for forensics, won’t you, Chuck?”

  “You know it. We’ll get everything wrapped up here, no trouble. Do up a nice report on it, even.”

  Duke Wellington looked at Raffety and back to Weisnecki. He didn’t like leaving a crime scene before he was done with it. He sure didn’t like leaving Raffety and Coffman behind to keep an eye on it. But Weisnecki hadn’t steered him wrong yet, as much as he hated to admit it.

  “All right, Weisnec
ki. I’ll play this your way, for now. So where we goin’?”

  “We’ve got a date at the Glass Slipper.”

  * * *

  Weisnecki described the Glass Slipper as a dirty little secret right in the heart of Testacy City’s downtown industrial district. Hidden down a narrow alley, spitting distance from the Testacy City police station, the seedy strip club sat clandestinely behind a tall fence topped off with razor wire. To any casual observer, the place looked like the beat-up back entrance to one of the many warehouses that lined the alley, the sort of door a blue-collar Joe would slip out of to grab a quick smoke. The only thing giving away its veiled existence was the small, inelegant plastic sign that read: No Minors.

  Duke Wellington squared his shoulders and reached for the bent handle of the door, but Weisnecki clamped a firm hand down on his partner’s bicep.

  “Hold up there a sec. Let’s lay a few ground rules before we hit the playing field.”

  Duke Wellington crossed his arms and shot a cockeyed glance at Weisnecki. He’d never been the type to follow someone else’s lead. But he had to admit that this town seemed to operate with a whole different set of odds, and Weisnecki seemed to know the rules of the game.

  “I’m listenin’.”

  Weisnecki combed several fingers through his mustache and said, “It’s like this—the boys we’re meeting here, you ain’t gonna like ’em. I’ll tell you that straight out. They’re hard-core vice, and sometimes they get a little touchy about that. The way you’ve been charming your fellow cops today won’t get us very far with them, so let me do the talking.”

  Duke Wellington nodded, then pulled open the door and stepped off to the side. “After you.”

  Weisnecki spotted Brad Makoff and Leo Nolan right where he knew they’d be: in the center booth at the back of the room, a seat that gave them a clear view of the stage, the bar, and anyone who walked through the front door. Makoff, an apelike guy with the forehead and nose of a turtle, had his hands full. He had one chubby fist wrapped tightly around what remained of a pastrami sandwich; the other hand stroked the long hair of the worn-out blonde curled up against his thigh. Next to Makoff, Nolan, a sloppy cop with a bad haircut and a heartless face, entertained a redhead with too-slim limbs who lounged on his lap. She kept sliding the sloppy knot of his tie up and down in a slow, rhythmic fashion.