Gun Hands

         MacGraw said, “The warrant is for some chucklehead out in the valley. CPA by day, little girl-creeper by night. Scares the shit out of the coeds at Bennigan’s. Jesus, what a crock. Like a freaking asylum here most days. But enough about me, what do you want, O’Day?”

         I looked at MacGraw and smiled more sweetly than truly heartfelt. “You called me. Tag, you’re it.”

         He made a slithery smirk with his mouth, shuffled the paper on his overworked desk to one side, and came up with an evidence baggie with two bullet casings inside.

         “Seen any like this before?”

         “Looks like a Nine or something close,” I said.

         “Nope. .45 ACP.”

         “So I’m not a ballistics tech, anything else?”

         MacGraw’s black eyebrows took a little hitch up. “Yeah. I wanted to ask why these bullet casings from your gun were found at the scene of the Rollins killing.”

         Uh-oh.

         But I’m a little ahead of myself here.




         Earlier that day, I was doing a run out from City Point to the river. I’d just finished the leg outgoing, and was ready to hit the trestle and turn back toward home. I heard a voice grate, “O’Day, hold up; hold up a minute.”

         Jesus, I thought, Now what? Can’t I have a half hour?  Then, Quit your bitching; see what’s up.

         What’s up was big ole Chet Knight, police Detective 2nd Class, leaning against the bridge rail, dressed in camo cargo cut-offs, and a holey tee. The tee was printed on the front with a fading hippy-dippy font that read “Space Cowboy, Gangsta of Love.”

         Knight was sweating, but wasn’t sagging. He was that kind of ropy guy that looks like they were molded from thick vines, all cabled and veined cords. Me? I’m a kind of “little-bitty thing” like we smaller women and girls were called back home, but there are equalizers in this world, and I knew how to use them.

         “Well, Chet, so nice to see you, but I’ve got this run to get done, and your pace won’t get me home before dark. I remember your PT runs in Basic Training made ordinary foot-soldiers seem like The Chariots Of The Gods.”

         “Funny, O’Day, but I’m not going your way. Right now, you and me need to have a wee confab. Take a breather,” Knight said. “You look winded.”

         “Knight, you wuss, what do you want? Or should I say, want this time?”

         “Not me that wants, O’Day; the boss wants.”

         I thought of another dig, but Knight was acting serious for a change, so I went along, but not without spitting the bit a little.

         “And exactly what does your boss want, then? And will Brownie points be awarded?”

         “No idea; none at all.” Knight’s look said different. “Just that he wants you now, right now.”

         In a way that I was sure Knight would understand, I said, “Yeah, right.”

         It wasn’t the beginning or even the end of a beautiful friendship between the two of us. In fact, Knight and I were on our way to something completely different this time from anything like friendship. I mean, if you think murder is different.




         The guy I was telling you about before was Knight’s boss, police Lieutenant Miles MacGraw, who’d started his after-the-service grownup professional life as a lawyer, and then, coming to his senses, became a cop, and wasn’t near as bad a cop as most lawyers are bad lawyers.

         He’d had some time “over there,” as Georgie Cohan would have sung, and he’d come back like Knight and me, a little worse for wear, blown-sand ground-down and pissed, knowing that the Video Game War was over, and we’d won in 100 hours, but the Iraqi asshole and his sons who’d started it all were still living large in gold palaces, still killing their own people for fun and profit.

         MacGraw sat behind his old scarred desk, and looking directly over half-moon readers, said to me, “Well, Ms. Nita O’Day. So glad you could join us.” His face was in shadow, his jaw being the shade of 300 grit emery paper. He never seemed hurried, always showed a face that could bluff you even if you had an ace-high straight.

         “Tops off my day, too, Lieutenant."

         Knight sat on a wooden chair by the door, resting up. He had decided against his previous route, and we had come back to the city at a more leisurely pace. Now I was here, just as requested. I had on pressed jeans and black tee under a light canvas jacket. Hair pulled up, light touch of lip gloss. Just the basics, but with enough heat to warm the room up a little.

         MacGraw spoke to Knight before taking up with me again. “Go see what’s taking so long with the warrant. Ellington’s got the lead, so get going on it.”

         “Gone.” Knight pushed up from the chair and left us.

         Then to me, “Why am I feeling that you wouldn’t have come without an engraved dinner invitation? I haven’t been seeing near as much of your meddling ass around here lately. Decide to go straight?”

         Such a charmer: every girl’s vision of Man-of-My-Dreams.

         “Lieutenant, every day above ground and out of your clutches seems like a gold medal day to me, and, for the record, I’ve always been straight, and I’ll pass on the dinner invitation. But thanks, anyway.”

         “Fuck that,” MacGraw said.

         “Fuck that,” or “Fuck a whole bunch of that,” was MacGraw’s way of making nice; just an old softie tucked away under all that cop bullshit. But that’s the way cops everywhere, and for all time, have survived, by dispensing bullshit. And when necessary, dispensing with, said bullshit.

         Of this I was too painfully aware, because out in The Sandbox, I’d been a girlie MP in a pack of high testosterone, kick-ass cop MPs, and bullshit from up, down, and all around was the uniform of the day. And today wasn’t such a grand day that my bullshit dance card quotient wasn’t already maxed out.

         That I attended to a number of what I called “private investigations” seemed lost on MacGraw; like only real cops were crime-fighting heroes. As for me, bread on the table came only with successful results, and there wasn’t a PI Union Rep to complain to if I was being treated without the respect I was most certainly due. What a load.

         When MacGraw started in with his little speech about dead Sonny Rollins, and bullet casings, and my gun, I said, “The scene? My gun? What about it? It wasn’t anywhere near that part of the city. The gun was riding with me that day. Across the river, as a matter of fact.”

         My New Agent Colt Lightweight is in .45, and Rollins and I, well, we’d had our differences in the not-so-distant past.  Our man Rollins, Sonny to his admiring public, was a punk, born and bred, watered and tended to in the CJ system, blossoming into a deep-rooted, strong-trunked thug of a pistolero and strong-arm practitioner, along with suspected-but-not-convicted killer, so word of his demise had scarcely dampened the party spirit in the city.

         That was the good.

         What was the bad, though, was that my gun had seen the light of day in an extraction marks match in the last year, in another case where the mistaken identity of a less than stand-up citizen had been one of those rare instances when justice and revenge had indeed been measured and meted out; served cold, just as the recipe recommends.

         MacGraw said, “So your gun was taking a trip, huh? I’ll bet that’s a fun time, riding all snug up on that sweet little hip of yours. Did it have any company who might be willing to allay my suspicions? Someone who might vouch for your gun’s travel habits?”

         “We were riding solo that day, working at Armstrong’s over in Westside.” Armstrong was the divorce lawyer I had business with from time to time, but just as little time as possible. She was a serious pain-in-the-wallet to those on the other side of disseverment proceedings, and she usually bagged just what game she hunted.

         “I had a meeting with her on some issues we had.” It had been money; or rather the lack of the prompt payment thereof for services rendered, that had convinced me that I had to do the meeting.

         I said to MacGraw, “Met her about 5:30, stayed about forty minutes, drove around a while to air the lawyer out of my clothes, came on back home, ate supper.” I still called it supper, even though I’d been gone from the old homeplace for a lot of water over the dam and under the bridge.

         “What time back home? Alone?”

         “Maybe 7:30, 7:40, somewhere there. And no, I wasn’t alone; my gun was still with me, if that’s what you mean. We had supper together, although the gun doesn’t require a lot of calories to stay fit and trim.”

         “No reason to think that you’d leave a lot of spent brass laying around in Eastie, then?” MacGraw was watchful, still, his eyes looking hungrier than I liked.

         I didn’t figure how this whole thing was going, not this fast. “I haven’t seen Sonny in a while. So sorry to hear of his passing, though; such a model citizen. Must have been a terrible blow to all concerned.”

         MacGraw smiled that cobra-in-a-basket smile of his. “Well, his latest girlfriend sure has got her hair on fire about it.” Going all Mr. Figurative. “Girl was kind of a looker, in a way. A little dykey, though, with that hair.” And still Mr. Sensitive after all these years.

         I said, “Sonny uses girls to rent out to the horny upstanding and down-standing alike, but I don’t think any of those girls would ever want to get close enough to be his paramour.” Sonny’s idea of romance was more like the grapefruit-smash-in-the-face that Cagney did in that movie.

         “Girlfriend? Who is she?” I asked.

         He glanced at a pad with scribble on it. “Ruth Lee Jones, calls herself Dinah. Small paper trail. Grifter stuff, mostly. Grieving widow-wannabe bit when she came in, but in and out of here at double-time, even with the wailing and gnashing. And no, we don’t see her for it, not even there. Got a girlfriend she hangs with. We’ll get to her too.”

         “Somebody hears a backfire that turns out to be two to the heart of Sonny-Boy. He must have been down when the gun just worked its way up-close and personal inside his shirt. Real personal. Had powder burns on his chest, big holes in his back, slugs mashed to hell on exit, but still rockin’ enough to blow through to the crawl space under the floor. The casings were still with the dearly departed, though, one on top of him, one under. ACP ammo runs through an auto-loader, one just like yours, maybe.”

         I looked at MacGraw and didn’t blink. “Under him? But no prints, right?” I had to try to know what he thought he knew, even if he didn’t know it yet. I didn’t want him within a mile of me on this one, because badman Sonny and I weren’t eye-to-eye on some things, like his violence toward the vulnerable. Then there was that problem of mine. The one about taking some frustrations out on those who violate and show violence toward the vulnerable.

         “Smudged,” he said, “but maybe readable. We’ll soon see.”

          still didn’t like the insinuation. McGraw was waiting for something that I couldn’t compartmentalize just then, and I sure wasn’t going to help him out.

         “Come on, MacGraw, I wasn’t there. You say the girlfriend wasn’t there. Nobody was there, maybe. No chance that Sonny did us all a favor himself, though, since I didn’t lend him my gun. So why am I here?”

         “Need to answer the questions about that brass is all. Long way from Westside to Eastie, and if we discount Time Travel, some way those shells get from W to E. Whatcha’ think O’Day?” He said it like it made him think of an unscratched itch; something that got worse as time went on.

         Try harder, I thought.

         I said, “The armorer at the range checked the slide on my gun a couple of weeks ago. I had a jam, and it needed attention. Worked fine afterwards.”

         “You want to let us test-fire it again for you? We could do that here; you wouldn’t even have to drive to the range. Clear up everything and we’re all on our way.”  So there he was, all Cheshire Cat smile this time, sharp teeth and no twinkly eyes: Here kitty-kitty.

         “I’m not thinking that, L.T. Seems a little like too much home cooking here on the ramparts of law and order. I
might not like the way you test-drive the little beauty. Putting unnecessary trips on it could be harmful, and we wouldn’t want to cloud the real issue, which is: it wasn’t me and wasn’t mine.”

         Knight came back in, and, in time, I went out. The sun wasn’t shining like it had been in the morning, and now the clouds scraping overhead looked like the ashes of a burned-down house made into the floor of Heaven.



         For a week or so after that, I had another chance at Lawyer Armstrong’s parsimonious largesse and took it, running down the action on the wife of her client, the Petitioner. Seems wifey wasn’t just two-timing on her man, she was three-timing, even four-timing, and pretty quickly, certain indications of a salacious nature were revealed. It looked like Mr. was going to get to keep at least a little of what he had. Less, of course, the blood required to fuel Armstrong’s divorce-practice Bloodmobile.

         MacGraw’s voice was tinny in the phone. “Come in; we need to talk.”

         I said, “About what?”

         “Dead-guy Sonny’s problem that’s now your problem. The prints came back belonging to someone that shares your whorl patterns. Come on down.” He said it like they used to on The Price Is Right, and he sounded just as enthusiastic. I went on down.

         He got right to the point. “You said before you had all your brass, none missing. How do you know? Did you count it?”

         “Well, no, not exactly.”

         “Well what, exactly? The where and the why, too. And the how would be a good place to dive in, especially since some folks a bit higher in pay grade are looking to clear this. Even a scumbag’s hide like Sonny’s has value when the FBI stats come out; his hide wrapped up with a cute bow will make sure that we get back some of the tax money we all send so dutifully and cheerfully to DC.”

         I said, “At the range, for sure. Stuff is flying all over the place, and if I stopped to shovel it up, I’d be there an extra hour. They charge by the hour, you know.”

         “By the hour,” he said.  The Look was there. I shrugged.

         “The hourly is high enough when I’m making the bad ole targets pay their debts to society. Playing janitor too seems a little much. Besides, the place is noisy.”

         “Noisy.” Him repeating everything I said was making the neuroreceptors in my head sing like Robby The Robot: “Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!”

         Knight came in and set a little filigreed pewter box shaped like a heart on the desk between MacGraw and me. MacGraw grinned a little, looked like he knew a secret.

         “OK, so you wouldn’t know anything about a big stack of Benjamins that Sonny had? Girlfriend now says he was saving up for them to get married, and she wants to know when she can get it back, there being no next-of-kin and all. There wasn’t anything there when we checked in on Sonny’s checking out.”

         I said, “I damn well haven’t been living it up with Sonny’s money, if he had any. Even if he did have some cash, it was most likely stolen in the first place. And if you believe any of this crap about his nuptial intentions, then you aren’t quite as quick as I thought. And what’s with the girlfriend?”

         Knight spoke up, “She says a key to the safe where the money was kept stayed in this box and with Sonny when he was home, or on a chain around his neck when he went out, but, no key, no chain, just the box. The safe? Still bolted into the floor. No prints there to find, even if there was money. And our girl says there’s a lot of money, going to have the big splashy wedding and all. And do you know what a wedding costs these days? Maybe 100K, flowers and all you’d need; big cake, lots of hootch, you know, for the reception at the Kiwanis Hut.”

         I said, “Sonny at the Kiwanis. Cute picture. So she took it, so what? She wants you to think she didn’t have anything to do with the money, or with Sonny’s put-down. And what about the other girlfriend?”

         “What about her?” MacGraw said.

         “Did she alibi the story this Dinah gave? Maybe they saw a way to take Sonny apart, if this cash deal you’re talking about makes sense.” I had to make MacGraw see the error of his ways.

         He said, “The two of them are tight; can’t see sunlight sneaking in between them, but that isn’t the issue. What is the issue is you and your ammo at the scene, and if there’s money involved, well that is maybe a motive besides ridding the city of a particularly noxious pest. “You seeing where we’re going here?”

         “No place, mostly,” I said. “So, can I go someplace else? I really need to see about drapes for my place. They’ll make it so much more homey and merry and bright.”

         “Uh-huh, you can go.” I got up from the table, and pointed myself towards the door. MacGraw said, “But it was funny that the Dinah chick asked about you. She got it we asked you a few hard questions about Rollins, and I thought at first she wanted to see if somebody else was getting it on with her squeeze.”

         I said over my shoulder, “Did you tell her that I wouldn’t let Sonny touch me even if I was dead?”

         “No, we never really got into who was into whom. But I could see how she’d be interested, good-looking honeydip like yourself.  Maybe she had something else on her mind. Maybe a 100K somethings.  You have a nice day. Y’all come back now, you hear?”

         Southern accent by way of Compton.

         Knight went out with me, closed the door behind him, said, “I don’t think he’s looking at you on this, but it is going to get resolved.”

         e was staring at me, and his eyes looked like shadows on the face of an ancient primordial sea. “See you soon.”

         “I’ll keep that in mind.”

         I drove home, parked the car behind, in the alley, and came through the gate and yard and to the back door. The door wasn’t closed right, a bit off, and I stood there looking at it and took out the gun. The voice in my head said, Combat Grip, safety off, do it now.

         The door stuck a little as I keyed the lock, but swung inward as I trailed it through its arc. Through the door and to one side, then quick-searched the place, just the one floor to survey; everything there, nobody home. Maybe.



         That night, late, Knight called. “You up?”

         “No, dead to the world. Of course I'm up. What do you want?”

         “Half,” he said.

         “Half? Of what?”

         “Sonny’s money. The money you took when you put him down.”

         I said, “Who’s on the line, Knight? What kind of bullshit is MacGraw spreading now?”

         “No MacGraw in this; just you and me, partner. And the Lieutenant, well, he’s still wondering why that brass of yours was at Sonny’s. Just not wondering enough to do much with it yet. Wants to see who does who first.”

         I said, “I think the girlfriend wants it to be me. Maybe got hold of a casing or two, planted them to make me look bad so that she and her girlfriend could take the money and make a run for the border. Nice pretty beaches in Baja; just stay away from the narcotrafficantes. They’re so mean.”

         Knight again. “Half. And then we do a little private partnership that helps us both out. I turn things a little
this way or that so maybe you stay out of jail for taking Sonny out, and I don’t have to worry quite so much about my pension. The Union is busting my balls with the dues thing.”

         I said, “I really don’t know what you’ve been smoking, but it seems to be causing hallucinations. I don’t have any of Sonny’s money, if he ever had any. Dinah seems like the problem here, all squishy about Sonny and the stash, if there even was one.”

         Then, I heard the back door creak a little, like it was being pushed. I turned off the light.

         “Where are you?” I whispered into the phone.

         “Close.” Knight’s voice grated like chain twisting tight.



         There was a sound of breaking glass, scraping hinges, and crunching shards underfoot as boots shuffled coming down the hall. No voices. Center of mass, I thought, Center of mass. Shadows in the doorway, gun coming up, then a grunt, and the world made red, then black.



         A little later: “Why’d you want to go and do a thing like that?” said Knight.

         We were working on this new Partnership of ours. It wasn’t going to be on paper and it wasn’t going to be recorded at the courthouse, but it was going to be permanent nonetheless.

         “Her or me, looked like, only at first, I didn’t know she was a her,” I said.

         Knight said, “Yeah, that’s real good, keep talking.”

         I said, “Gun that size, pointing my way, damn hard to miss, and just to be crystal here, this is my place. Anybody doing B & E at that back door is not getting a whole lot of warning before there’s going to be a ruckus.”

         Knight’s lip curled, his dark eyes a glinting obsidian. “OK, so then I’d say something like, ‘A ruckus? What the hell is that? Is that what you’d call it?’” He was getting into character with it, you could see.

         “No, actually, good work on the bullseye is what I’d call it,” I said.

         He said, “Yeah, yeah, that’s good, too. Just keep telling it that way.”

         Knight looked at the floor, then back up. “But, we’ve got a little problem on this, see? Her gun wasn’t pointing at you; it was aimed just a little higher, like under her chin. You helped some in the send-off department, but only edge-wise,” he said, “‘cause when the top of her head was coming off, that’s when your keen marksmanship skills came into play. See how that works? That’s what the cops will be asking you. They don’t need to know that I was helping her with her gun aim. That’s just between you and me, see?”

         I could see the script being written in his mind, the niggle.

         I said, “So why’d she come after me, with a gun, in the dark? And then use the gun on herself? Seems like a bad hair day in spades, don’t you think?”

         “If I were taking your statement,” Knight said, “I’d say,‘Beats me, O’Day; beats me.’ “You need to say this over and over: ‘I don’t know why Dinah came after me. I don’t know why she’d off herself. I don’t know.’ That’s the only way to play it, so play it good.”

         He was right on that one score . . . grace note, then coda.

         “Call the cops now, Nita,” Knight said. “I won’t be responding to this one because I’m not on duty. I’m not even in the city. Been away all day. Had to take comp-time, because of too many hours on the job last few weeks. The river’s a good place to relax alone, and I’ll be sure I was alone there all this day, and all this night.”

         Sonny and Dinah were both dead-gone, so I guess the big expensive wedding was off for sure. But now the Partnership between Knight and me was official, signed in the blood of two gun hands. Nobody was going to be Managing Partner, though, because we were in deep, and in deep together. Maybe ‘til Death do us part.