Ray Tate and Djuna Brown Mysteries 3-Book Bundle. Lee Lamothe
kid was playing in the garage, lit himself up with some solvent. Horrible, wicked mess of his ear, neck, and shoulder. Not as bad as what you got going on there, but it ain’t a mild dose of acne either. Long story short: the little guy says it still hurts, that when he dreams about it, he gets the pain all over again, like it’s happening right then. I babysat him a while ago and when he woke up screaming I told him that’ll go away. But really, I don’t know. He wants to stay in and never go outside.” Her face became sad. “He calls himself a circus freak.”
Phil Harvey seemed to have forgotten Ray Tate was there with a gun in his pocket. He couldn’t take his eyes off hers. They sat in silence for several seconds.
She lightly clapped her hands together, “Okay, sorry. So: why we’re here. You know who we are, right? We’re the Chemical Squad. I’m Trooper Brown with the Staties. This beatnik here is Ray Tate with the city. You’ve heard of the Chem Squad, right?”
Phil Harvey made a single blink.
“Good. Anyway, we’re pretty much fucked from coast to coast on this thing we’re doing. Probably we’re going to lose our jobs after we fuck this up a little more. So, what we’re doing, Harv, is we’re looking to seize some pills. Double Cs on them. Save our jobs. For a while, anyway.” She glanced at Ray Tate. “Right?”
“Killer pills.” Ray Tate nodded and forced a yawn, “Bummer.”
“Yep, Harv, those ones. Captain Cooks.”
There was a flicker in Harvey’s eyes.
“Oh, we know about the Captain, Harv,” she said. “We’ve been on this a long time. We know about Agatha Burns’s stash house up in the south projects. But you know that because you seen us up there. We know she moved a bunch of boxes out of there and put them in the back of your cool Camaro and you guys drove off together. Her and you and a silver gun. She hasn’t been seen since. At first we thought, Whoa, neat, we got a homicide, find Harv and link him up, promotions all around. See, she left a note behind, said if I vanish, whip Phil Harvey with bicycle chains until he tells you where my body is. Then … Ah, what else, Ray?”
Ray Tate was content to sit back and watch her work. It was pure free-form jazz. It was hard, he knew, sometimes, in an interview to shut the fuck up and let the one doing the work, work. Everybody wanted to get their oar in the water, pull for the winning team. Always a mistake. When she wanted him, when she sensed her voice might be taking up too much space, she’d toss him a softball. He said, “Then there was a camper truck blew-up up north, dead body inside. Turns out it wasn’t Agatha like we thought, it was some old broad.”
“Right, Ray. Then, Harv, there’s an incident in Chinatown, bunch of kids get branded with double Cs. This is where the trouble really began for you guys. The kids were students being looked after by Willy Wong, a pal of the mayor. Now, we know this mayor’s a fucking dipshit, but c’mon, putting a branding iron to people’s flesh? He’s pissed off and he’s right for once. There’s things you do and there’s things you don’t do and branding girls on the tits, that’s too weird, even for Chinatown.”
Phil Harvey seemed dazed. His head started to shake but he caught himself.
She gave him a few seconds then continued: “Then those two other kids died of an overdose — Double Cs. In the mayor’s ward. Well, that’s that. The leashes come off and away we go. Get that fucker Harv, they said. Noose him up with barbed wire, put him so far back in a cell he’ll get sunlight by U.S. Post. Melt the key. My God: stop the madness.”
Ray Tate was impressed. It was a perfect interview even though it was borne of free-form jazz. It had a Bitch’s Brew quality that somehow, impossibly, came together and you could find something warped in there to snap your fingers to. She had facts but she presented them slightly wrong. She didn’t mention the Chinaman getting the blank fortune cookie at Willy Wong’s warehouse, but she got Willy’s name in there. She didn’t look at him so he didn’t speak. He waited for her to change gears, let up pressure on one place, apply it in another.
She did. “Not for no reason, Harv, but let me ask you: you went through something there on your face, right? And it hadda hurt, it hadda hurt like nothing else hurts that you could imagine. And it had to stink something awful, I guess. So how come you’d put that fucking iron on a girl’s tits? What the fuck is that all about? I interviewed that poor little girl and I gotta tell you, if you’d been in firing range at that moment I’d’ve just shot your fucking nuts off. Fuck — ah, shit, you fucking cocksucker.” She rubbed her face and got up unsteadily. She had tears in her eyes. “Never mind. Ray, I’m gonna buy a melon. Anyone want one?”
Phil Harvey turned to watch her walk to the front of the shop.
“She’s not much of a cop, Harv. You’ve met a lot of cops in your time, I know you have. You ever seen one like that? Laughs and cries. Buys melons. Probably not much of cook, either.”
Harv twisted again to look at Djuna Brown paying out the melons. He murmured: “How old’s the kid? In the garage?”
Ray Tate had found his role and he shrugged. “This is her interview. You know how it works. We don’t do good cop bad cop. We do strange cop weird cop and she’s both of them. But there’s rules in my job, there’s rules in yours. Me? I don’t give a shit. People get fucked up if they’re not careful. You fool around in a garage and there’s stuff in there that’ll burn you, well, hello? You can’t be surprised that you get burned. Same thing, you don’t watch the temperature when you’re cooking, whether it’s making fried potatoes for dinner or cooking something else for profit. But hey, you know that too, right? Me, I don’t mind a good crispy French fry once in a while.”
Harv stared at him.
“I know, Harv, I know. I’m an asshole.” He wanted to give her time to get back into her bag with Harv. He needed Phil Harvey to like her more than him. He prattled. “But like they say: If you want sympathy, it’s in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. I have to tell you, I’m putting in my papers so I don’t give much of a shit about Double Cs or how you burned the girl’s boobs. Fuck her, right? I’m moving to Paris. That’s in France. I don’t speak French but that just means I won’t have to listen to mutts lie to me in English all fucking day.”
Harv looked at him in absolute neutral. Ray Tate felt a chill.
Djuna Brown sat down and put a bag of melons under her chair.
Ray Tate said, “Harv spoke, Djun’. He wants to know how old the kid is, got burned in the garage.”
“He’s eleven, Harv.” She turned to Ray Tate. “Sorry about that, guys. I kinda lost it. If you had boobs you’d understand.”
Phil Harvey looked at her, then looked away, then looked back, “There’s a vitamin E cream he should use. It don’t work very much but he’ll feel he’s helping himself, got some control. He’ll see it working even if nobody else does. He should fuck everybody and go out. Be who he is. If the family’s got dough, graffs.”
“Graffs?”
Harv nodded. “They take skin off your ass or something, graff it on your face. Sixteen grand and get in line. Or get some bum ID and go over the border to Canada, maybe get it for free.” He stopped talking and clamped his mouth.
“Sixteen grand. Jesus.” Djuna Brown took out her notebook and made some marks. “How come you haven’t had it done, Harv? You’re a high-miler so I’m not gonna bullshit you and tell you you’d be a good-looking guy again, but how come not?”
He got an innocent look on his face. “Sixteen grand. Where’d I get that kind of dough?”
Ray Tate waited for Djuna Brown to laugh then he did too. He said, “Nice one, Harv.”
“Guys,” Harvey said, “I gotta go now.”
“Hey, if you gotta, you gotta.” Djuna Brown drained her coffee. “We’re heading down towards the city in a few minutes. Get yourself a coffee for the road. We’ll give you a