Ray Tate and Djuna Brown Mysteries 3-Book Bundle. Lee Lamothe
“No question.” Ray Tate watched Djuna Brown close her notebook and look at him with a raised eyebrow. He shrugged. “One of us’ll stay on the door, skip. The other’s going to get the witness, take a statement from him.”
“What project you in?”
“Hauser South.”
“This witness, I guess, then, he’s a black guy?”
“Yep.”
The skipper was silent a moment. “Okay, I’ll put out a silent hit on Harvey’s car. You send the douchebag to scoop up the witness. Keep him on ice until I get some more bodies out there then take his statement. You stay by the door, Ray, okay? Just in case.”
Ray Tate clicked off. “He wants one of us on the door, one of us to go get the witness.”
“That’s be me, right?”
“He thinks I might get twitchy. You want to wait until some troops get here, take someone with you?”
“Naw. No, Ray, I’ll sweet talk him.” She made a weak smile. “He’ll talk, or he’ll wear his ass for a hat.”
He laughed and watched her silhouette walk down the long hallway to the fire door. Her slippers whispered on the cheap tile floor. He hadn’t spent much time with dykes but he got the feeling she knew he was watching her sway.
* * *
The Big Chan’s new dep tasted fruit salad. Another scoop on his shoulder boards would look good. He’d be in line — if he was careful and did it all right — for the big oak desk. He could sit and study the dents made in the surface by the Chinaman’s lumpy skull. He could count the dents and send minions out to wreak all kinds of havoc in the squads and stations. There were fuckers who needed fucking and he was just the fucker to fuck them.
“Gordie, Gordie, Gordie. That pouty-faced motherfuck at City Hall is all over us. The Chinese Menu is ragging him. Those kids, fried up in Chinatown, they were Willy Wong’s. It’s all about chemicals, so gimme something, anything. The Chan wants this speeder, Captain Corn, behind the pipes.”
“Captain Cook. His name’s Captain Cook.”
The dep began yelling into the telephone. “Captain Corn, Colonel Klink, Corporal Cornhole, or Commander Fucking Cocksucker, I don’t give a fuck. Where we at? Am I going to have to send someone down there, take over the fucking thing?”
“Okay, okay, yeah, we’re on it. We found a stash house, we ID’d one of the Captain’s goons. We’re doing interviews at the stash, we got a silent hit out on the goon and his car. We got a missing person, maybe, probably a witness we can turn around. We’re looking for the super lab.”
“Super lab? What the fuck?”
“Those double C pills, like the ones in east Chinatown and the ones at the lab fire, we have intell they come from a super lab this Captain guy’s running. Churning out, like a million a day or some fucking bullshit.”
There was a pause on the line. “Okay, Gordie. I’m all stupid, okay? First, who found the stash house? Where is it?”
“The Statie dyke and the gunner. I had an idea and I sent them out to the projects and they tracked it like I told them to. Like I thought, it was in the Hauser projects. There was only a couple of pills around, but they had double Chucks pressed in them.”
“Right, okay. The goon, this henchman of Captain whatever. Who be he?”
“Phil Harvey. Speed cooker. The Captain’s number one henchman. We think he was the guy at the branding out east Chinatown. When I sent the guys up to the Hauser they spotted him lurking around. He got free, but they found a witness who saw him with the girl last night.”
“Whoa. Hold it. What girl?”
“The missing witness. Agatha Burnett or Barnett or something. She lived in the stash house, left a note saying if she didn’t come back, Phil Harvey had offed her.”
“Ah fuck. We got maybe a homicide, here?”
“Dunno. I told the guys to debrief the witness, seal off the apartment. And now I need someone to go in there and take some evidence away, if there is any.”
Big Chan’s new dep laughed. “And you don’t want the hammers from the Homicide Squad involved, right?”
“We lose control of this thing, we get nothing, dep. The pills are real. The Captain’s real. Phil Harvey’s real. But a dead body? Based on a note? I don’t know. You want to take this down to the guy next door that runs the Homicide Squad, we’re going to lose it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay. Good thinking.” The dep was silent on the line for a few moments. “Yeah, I get it. Okay. Now, the witness, this missing broad. If there’s a strong chance she’s in the ground we gotta slide this under the door down the hall.”
“Slight chance. Real slight. I think Ray Tate’s overreacting.”
“Anything, ah, on that front?”
“Not yet. Tate says he’s gonna be able to put the hat on the dyke. Then we’ll put the hat on him.”
“What did you promise him, if he spikes her down?”
“I hinted at maybe duty sergeant with his own meat puppets to worship him.”
“A duty? Right, Gordo,” the dep laughed. “Fat fucking chance.”
* * *
Djuna Brown contacted the Statie headquarters and was told that the coroner said the smoking remains in the burned-out truck lab up north appeared to be that of a woman. DNA was going to be harvested from the bone marrow but it would take a while, then they’d do some comparisons, if they found anything to compare it to. The Statie major-crime investigator said there were tire tracks near the scene from a Firestone set, the wide kind of rubber GM slapped on several performance cars, including Camaros. Djuna Brown tapped out a memo suggesting the remains might be the missing Agatha Burns and the tires maybe indicated the Camaro driven by Phil Harvey. She printed it, gave Ray Tate a copy, and said he could deliver it to the skipper. She’d had her life’s limit of Irish dickhead bullshit.
In the glass office, Ray Tate handed the skipper the memo. “We should get the hammers in on this, skipper. This is going to be her, I know it.”
“No, no. Ray, slow down. If it’s a homicide then it ain’t our homicide. The case lies where the body lies. If that’s her up in the burned truck then it’s a Statie case. So fuck it for now. We’ll wait for the DNA. The dep’s on it, he’s coordinating with the homicide guys and they’re working with the Staties, they’re on standby. They want something more substantial. The stuff from the apartment, maybe that’ll give them something. Right now, we just concentrate on this super lab and the guys running it, okay? The Chinese Menu is leaning on the mayor and the mayor’s leaning on us. You guys getting anywhere?”
“We got an address for Phil Harvey. We’re going to set up on it later. You okaying the overtime?”
“Sure. For now just note it in your book. I’ll try to get you some guys, you give me the location.”
“Okay. Send me the memo, skip, okay? You and me’ve got to protect our asses until we take her out. She’s in with the Gay-Glo and when we put her down they’re going be grabbing up paperwork for her lawsuit. We want to be covered.”
“Good thinking, Ray.”
* * *
The skipper was hovering, bugging, questioning. Ray Tate and Djuna Brown put up with it for a half hour, then grabbed two rovers from the charger, their files and jackets, and headed out while he was on the phone. They took the Intrepid for a spin.
“Interesting things happen when you’re around, Ray. This is turning into, like, work.” She turned out of the driveway and headed north on Huron Street. “You think we