Before The Killing Starts (Dixie Killer Blues Book 1) (4 page)

Chapter 8

Dixie
was just about to get in the car
when his phone rang. On the other side of the car standing by the driver's door
was the guy everybody called Crispy. Dixie hadn't met his mother but he felt
sorry for her even so, because Crispy was the size of something you’d normally
climb with rope and pitons, not give birth to. His head sloped straight down
into his shoulders like a lamp shade. They called him Crispy because his
parents had named him
Chris
and then either been stupid or unkind enough
to give him the middle initial 'P'. Dixie didn't know what his last name was
but if there was any justice in the world it would be
Bacon
.

Crispy was a butt-ugly
recidivist who killed as if it were a reflex action. Nestled somewhere between
the too-small ears that perched on his head like warts on an egg his brain was
solely occupied, as far as Dixie could tell, by thoughts of the different ways
of hurting people. He liked to tell anyone who would listen that the real
reason he was called Crispy was because he'd set a guy on fire one time and
watched him burn to death. Ordinarily Dixie managed to keep out of his way but Chico had insisted he take him along him and that they take Crispy's car.

Dixie
checked the screen and the name he
saw raised an eyebrow: Dave the bartender from Kelly's Tavern. He walked out of
earshot and answered the call. In the background he could hear country and
western music playing on the jukebox and the sounds of a bar starting to fill
up.

'I thought you'd want to
know there was a guy in here asking about you,' Dave said.

'Did he leave a name?'

'He left his business
card. Hang on a minute.' Dixie heard Dave put the phone down as he went to
fetch the card. Anyone with half a brain would have picked it up before making
the call, but anyone with half a brain wouldn't be working at Kelly's in the
first place. It was probably the worst bar Dixie knew, but it served a purpose
for certain people to get in contact.

'His name's Evan Buckley,'
Dave said. 'He's a private investigator.'

'Never heard of him.'

'That's what I said when
he asked about you.'

'That's the way I like
it, Dave,' Dixie said in an encouraging tone. 'Did he say what he wants?'

'No. Just that he wants
to find you.'

'He didn't say why?

'Uh uh.'

'Did you ask him?'

There was a long,
uncomfortable pause. Behind Dave's breathing Dixie could hear the music in the
background. It sounded like some idiot had put the same track on again. He
didn't think he was going to get much more out of Dave, who wasn't the sharpest
tool in the box. Face to face, Dave liked to watch your mouth in case there
were any difficult words, which put him at a disadvantage on the phone. Dixie often wondered who tied his shoes for him in the morning.

'He said he wasn't
working for your wife,' Dave said suddenly. He sounded pleased that he'd
remembered something else.

Dixie
closed his eyes and let out a
God
give me strength
sort of sigh.

'I don't
have
a
wife, Dave.'

'Right.'

'There's probably a
whole bunch of other people he's
not
working for either. The President,
the Pope, Father Christmas . . .'

'Right.'

That short word conveyed
a lifetime of put downs by people who were smarter than he was. Dave's
temporary enthusiasm had pretty much run its course.

Dixie
looked up at the sky in
frustration. 'There's nothing else you can tell me about him?'

'He had a photo of you.
Well, half a photo.'

Dixie was tempted to
point out that you couldn't have half a photograph, just like you couldn't have
half a hole or half a piece of string, but he knew it wasn't worth the effort.

'What do you mean?' he
said, trying to keep the growing irritation out of his voice.

'It was a photo of you
cut in half. It looked like you and a woman and the woman was cut off.'

That was more interesting.
'Okay,' Dixie said, stretching the word out a couple of extra syllables as he
took the information on board. 'That all?'

'Yeah . . . Apart from
the fact that he broke Charlie Watson's finger and busted up his nose pretty
bad. I gotta say I was impressed.'

Dixie
laughed. 'Charlie's an inbred who
doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. He probably deserved it. I bet
he started it, too.' He heard Dave grunt in agreement. 'I think I like Mr
Buckley already; my kind of guy. Give me the details on his card.'

Dixie
took down the address and cell
phone number and ended the call. He walked slowly back to the car turning it
over in his mind. Where had the guy got his name? More importantly, how had he
known to start looking at Kelly's Tavern? And what the hell was that about a
photo?

He got back to the car
but didn't get in. He stood and drummed his fingers on the roof as he tried to
think it through. It came to him like a mini epiphany and he smiled to himself.
It was the mention of the woman cut out of the photo.
Ellie
. It had to
be. She must have asked Buckley to find him. She gave him the photo, told him
where to go. The question was,
why
? Well, at least it made his job of
finding
her
a whole lot easier. He'd worry about the
why
later.

The smile slipped off
his face. Before he did that, though, he had to go and talk to Alvarez. He knew
it was a pointless exercise. It was all very well Chico saying
talk to
Alvarez
. What was he going to say?
Hey Alvarez, Chico wants to know if
you took the drugs but kept the money for yourself.
It was going to take
some careful phrasing to avoid a slap, that was for sure, and there wouldn't be
much help coming from Crispy's corner unless there were some heads needed
punching.

He rubbed the back of
his neck and rolled his head, feeling the vertebrae pop, hoping to ease out the
tension. It actually made it worse. Finding a diplomatic way of asking Alvarez
if he was a double crossing, cheating beaner wasn't his biggest problem,
either. He opened the door and climbed in. Getting rid of the idiot sitting in
the driver's seat was. He couldn't be one hundred per cent sure, but he
reckoned Chico had insisted he take Crispy along because he didn't trust him.

He could hardly blame
the guy.

Chapter 9

Out of the frying pan and
into the fire was a phrase that crossed Evan's mind as he walked away from
Kelly's Tavern. It appeared that he'd exchanged one barroom brawler with a pool
cue for two serious looking Hispanics with . . . he didn't like to think what.
As he'd suspected, one good kick had snapped the pool cue in half and the doors
had burst open. Looking over his shoulder he'd been surprised to see it was the
Hispanics who'd followed him out of the bar and not the inbreds. They were
about fifty yards behind him.

At first he'd been
surprised—and grateful—when they'd helped him in the bar, but now he wasn't so
sure. Their interest must be to do with him asking about Dixie, and he couldn't
help but wonder if their concern to stop him being beaten up was driven by the
desire to do a better job of it themselves. They didn't look like the types to
use something as prosaic as a pool cue, either.

He reached his car,
jumped in and pulled out into the traffic. Behind him on the sidewalk the two
guys started to run back to their car which was parked directly outside the
bar, but facing the other way. It gave Evan a few seconds head start but
traffic was light and in his rear view mirror he saw them make a u-turn before
stamping on the gas.

Evan accelerated until
he was alongside a semi-trailer truck lumbering along. He looked in his mirror
and saw the two guys right behind him. He saw a turning on his right just up
ahead. He waited to the last second and wrenched the wheel hard, swinging the
car in front of the semi-trailer and into a narrow side street, missing the
truck's fender by inches. There was a blast on the horn and the angry squeal of
rubber as the truck slammed on its brakes and the two guys shot past it. Evan
glanced in his mirror again and saw the side of the semi-trailer completely
blocking the entrance to the street. He was in the clear.

He goosed the gas and
shot forward between the cars parked either side of the narrow street. Another
quick look in the mirror and he was still in the clear. Eyes snapped front
again, he did a double take and stamped on the brakes. He couldn't believe his
eyes. In front of him a Fedex delivery truck had reversed into the street and
was coming towards him. He twisted in his seat and looked over his shoulder.
Behind him the semi-trailer was on the move again. He hit the horn but the
truck in front of him kept on coming. He leaned right into it and the truck
stopped. The driver jumped down from the cab and made his way round to the
back. Evan hit the horn again and the driver held up his hand, fingers splayed—five
minutes.

He turned in his seat
again and saw the back end of the semi-trailer clear the end of the street and
disappear from view. Behind it, the two guys had reversed and were waiting as
it finally got out of their way. They pulled into the street and stopped. Evan
was boxed in.

In front of him the
delivery driver had opened up the back of the truck and was climbing out again,
a stack of boxes in his arms. He looked towards Evan, smiled apologetically at
him, and then looked past him. Evan watched him go rigid for a split second, an
incredulous look on his face, then throw the boxes away from him as if he'd
just been told they were radioactive. Then he turned and ran.

Evan looked behind him
and saw the two guys were out of their car and striding towards him, guns in
their hands. The driver made it to the cab and scrambled in, dropping the keys
in his panic. He half jumped, half fell out and snatched them up again. But he
didn't get back in. He looked back at the two guys, then at Evan and then the
two guys again. He was wasting too much time. Evan knew he was thinking of
forgetting the truck and making a run for it.

He pulled forward until
he was almost under the truck's loading ramp. He couldn't see the driver any
more. There was a sudden cough of black smoke as the truck's engine fired. It
jerked forward and stopped again. The idiot had stalled it. The engine turned
over and over but it wouldn't catch. Evan looked in the mirror—the guys had
quickened their pace and were only yards away. The truck's engine fired again
but still it didn't move.

What the hell was the
guy doing? Finishing up his paperwork?

Evan hit the horn again
and the truck started to crawl forward. The two guys broke into a run. Evan
inched the car after it, his palms slick on the wheel. The truck made it to the
end of the street and stopped, waiting for a break in the traffic.

Too late.

Evan's door flew open
and the guy who'd helped him in the bar leaned in and tried to pull the keys
out of the ignition. Evan knocked his hand away. Then the passenger door opened
and the other guy threw himself into the passenger seat, his gun trained on
Evan's chest. The first guy stepped back and motioned for Evan to get out. In
front of him the Fedex truck started moving again, made a right and was gone.
The street ahead was clear, but the truck might as well have still been parked
in front of him for all the good it did him. There was no way he could drive
off without getting shot.

Evan climbed slowly out
of his car and wiped his hand on the side of his pants, his heart banging away
in his chest. The second guy came around the front of the car and stood behind
him. He was trapped between them. He took a closer look at the guy in front of
him. He was heavyset and a couple of doors down from good looking with a
bandit's mustache and the sort of eyes you didn't want to catch if you knew
what was good for you.

'Thanks for stopping
that guy in the bar,' Evan said and grinned nervously.

'No problem,' the guy
said and grinned back, not so nervously.

'I don't suppose you've
chased me because I forgot to say thanks,' Evan said hopefully.

The guy dropped his eyes
and worked a small, sad smile onto his face. 'It
was
quite rude,' he
said, 'but, you're right, there is something else.'

Evan nodded. 'I thought
so.'

'Why are you asking
about Dixie?'

'Why don't you tell me
who you are first?'

The guy smiled. 'Sure.
I'm Juan and this is José,' he said with a sweep of his arm towards his friend.
José gave a slight nod of his head.

Evan looked past Juan to
where their car was parked. Juan saw him looking and shook his head. 'Don't be
silly.' He needn't have worried. Evan wasn't about to put himself at risk. He'd
already done more for Ellie than she deserved. He wasn't thinking of making a
run for it anyway; he just wanted to get a look at their license number.

'So, now you know who we
are, why are you looking for Dixie?'

'A client asked me to
try to find him.'

Juan nodded. 'What are
you? Some kind of investigator?'

Evan nodded back.

'So who's your client?'

'You probably wouldn't
know them.'

Juan smiled again. 'Try
me. I know a lot of people.'

'His name's John
Thomas.'

Juan cocked his head at
that, his eyes diminishing to slits as he gave it some thought. 'You're right—I
never heard of him. If he exists that is.'

He nodded to José
standing behind Evan who stepped up and slammed the barrel of his gun into the
side of Evan's head. Evan let out an involuntary gasp and staggered sideways
against one of the parked cars. A trickle of blood wound its way down the side of
his face.

Wrong answer,
obviously.

'Let's try another one,'
Juan said as if nothing had happened. 'Why does this John Thomas want to find Dixie?'

Damn
. Evan knew another bang on the head
was on its way whatever he said. Should he make something up? The truth—that he
didn't know—was guaranteed to annoy them.

'He didn't say,' Evan
said, glancing round at José behind him. 'That's the truth, by the way. Said I
didn't need to know.'

There must have been
something about the resignation is his voice that stopped them from hitting him
immediately. Juan cocked his head to one side again and studied Evan's face,
trying to make up his mind whether further motivation was called for. It didn't
take long. He nodded and José obliged with another clout on Evan's ear.

'That might teach you to
take a fuller brief from your client,' Juan said. He grinned again and José
chuckled.

'Thanks for the advice.'

Juan gave a
no-problem
flick of the hand. 'My pleasure.'

He didn't say anything
more for a moment. Maybe he was all out of questions.

'Well, if that's it, I
think I'll run along now,' Evan said, and gestured with his chin towards his
car.

José stepped forward and
drew his arm back to give him another whack when a noise in the distance made
them all freeze. The sound of police sirens. The delivery driver must have
called it in. Evan managed to keep the grin off his face but Juan saw it in his
eyes nonetheless.

Juan gave a small shrug
and pointed directly at Evan's face. 'You're a lucky man. If I were you, I'd
drop this.'

The sound of the sirens
was quite close now. They couldn't be more than a block away. It didn't seem to
worry him.

'Tell your client that
you couldn't find Dixie. Give him his money back. Whatever. Just drop it,' he
said and patted Evan's face a couple of times.

Then the two of them
turned and jogged back to their car. They reversed out into the main street and
drove off just as the first police cruiser pulled across the other end of the
street. Evan got another look at their license plate then turned towards the
police and raised his hands above his head.

The police didn't take
long with him. With the delivery driver's story to back him up, he managed to
convince them it had been a mugging that went wrong. They probably didn't
believe him but they let him go anyway, which was the main thing, with a
promise to come in and give a full statement in the next couple of days.

As soon as they'd gone
Evan got back in his car and made a couple of calls.