Drop Shot (1996) (31 page)

"With a bullet in his skull?"

Jimmy Blaine shrugged again. "The Swade kid probably helped him," he said.

"That's not how it happened," Myron said. "You didn't kill him."

Blaine eyed him and then went back to his whittling. "Second time you've said that," he noted. "You want to explain what you mean?"

"Two bullets hit Yeller."

"I just told you I shot twice."

"But two different caliber slugs were pulled out of him. One of the shots the one in the head was from close range. Less than a foot away."

Jimmy Blaine said nothing. He concentrated hard on his whittling. It looked like he was sculpting an animal of some sort, like the ones on the front porch. "Two different calibers, you say?" He aimed for nonchalance, but he wasn't making it.

"Yes."

"That kid I shot didn't have a record," Blaine continued. "You know what the odds are of that? In that part of the city?"

Myron nodded.

"I checked up on him," Blaine continued. "On my own. His name was Curtis Yeller. He was sixteen years old. He did well in school. He was a good kid. He had a chance at a good life until that night."

"You didn't kill him," Myron said.

Blaine whittled with a bit more intensity now. He blinked a lot. "How did you find out about those slugs?"

"The assistant M. E. told me," Myron said. "You never knew?"

He shook his head. "I guess it makes sense though," he said. "Blame me for it. Why not? It's easier. It's a legit shooting. No one questioned it. IAD barely broke a sweat. It didn't hurt my record. Didn't hurt anyone. No harm done, they figured."

Myron waited for him to say more, but he just kept whittling. Two long ears were now evident in the wood. Maybe he was making a rabbit. "Do you know who really killed Curtis Yeller?" Myron asked.

There was a long moment of the same whittle-filled silence. Fred farted again and wagged his tail. Myron's eyes kept going back to the lake. He stared out at the silver water. The effect was hypnotizing.

"No harm done," Jimmy Blaine said again. "That's what they all probably thought. Good ol' Jimmy. We won't let him take the rap. It'll be washed clean from his record. No one will know. Hell, some of the guys will even treat him special making a shooting like that. They'll say he saved his partner's life. Good ol' Jimmy will come out of this looking like a hero. Except for one thing."

Myron was tempted to ask what, but he sensed the answer was coming.

"I saw that boy dead," Blaine continued. "I saw Curtis Yeller lying in his own blood. I saw his mother hold him in her arms and cry. Sixteen years old. If he was a street punk or a drug addict or' " He stopped. "But he wasn't any of those things. Not this kid. He was one of the good ones. I found out later he never even touched the senator's kid. The other one the Swade punk he did the stabbing."

Two ducks splashed madly for a second, then stopped. Blaine put down the whittling, then thinking better of it, picked it back up again. "I replayed that night a lot of times in my head. It was dark, you know. There was barely any light. Maybe the Yeller kid wasn't going to fire the gun. Maybe what I saw wasn't even a gun. Or maybe none of that mattered. Maybe it was a legit shooting, but the pieces still never quite added up. I kept hearing the mother's screams. I kept seeing her press her dead boy's bloody face into her bosom. And I think about it, you know, and thinking ain't always a good thing for a cop to do. And four years later, the next time a kid is pointing a gun at me, I think about seeing another crying mother. I think long and hard. Too long."

He pointed to his legs. "And this is the result." He changed tools and kept whittling. "Nope, no harm done."

Silence.

Myron now understood Jake's attitude on the phone. Jimmy Blaine had gone through enough. If he'd done wrong in the case of Curtis Yeller, he had already paid an enormous price. Problem was, Jimmy Blaine hadn't done wrong. He hadn't killed Curtis Yeller legit shooting or not. In the end Jimmy Blaine was yet another victim of that night.

After some time had passed, Myron tried again. "Do you know who killed Curtis Yeller?"

"No, not really."

"But you have a thought."

"A thought maybe."

"You mind telling me?"

Blaine looked down at Fred, as if looking for an answer. The dog maintained his bear-rug pose. "Henry and I he was my partner got the call at a little past midnight," he began. "The two suspects had stolen a car from a driveway three blocks from the Old Oaks tennis club. A dark blue Cadillac Seville. We spotted a vehicle matching the description coming off the Roosevelt Expressway twenty minutes later. When we pulled up behind the stolen vehicle, the suspects sped off. We then engaged in a high-speed pursuit."

His voice had changed. He was a cop again, reading from a notepad he had read too many times in the past. "Henry and I followed the vehicle down an alley not far from Hunting Park Avenue, off Broad. The chase then proceeded on foot. At the time we had no identification on the two youths and thus no address. We only had the car. The chase proceeded for several blocks. As we turned a corner, the driver drew a firearm. My partner told him to freeze and drop his weapon. Yeller responded by aiming the firearm at Henry. I then fired two shots. The youth fell or stumbled out of sight beyond the next corner. By the time Henry and I turned the same corner, there was no sign of either youth. We figured that they were hiding in the nearby vicinity and awaited backup before proceeding. We secured the area as best we could. But the cops didn't get there first. The so-called secret service guys did."

"Senator Cross's men?"

Blaine nodded. "They called themselves 'national security,' but they were probably mob guys."

"Senator Cross told me he had no mob connections,'' Myron said.

Jimmy Blaine raised an eyebrow. "You serious?"

"Yes."

"The mob owns Bradley Cross," Blaine said. "More specifically, the Perretti family. Cross is a major gambler. I know he's also been arrested twice with prostitutes. One of his early opponents this is back when he was just a congressman ended up in the river during the primaries."

"And you traced it back to Cross?"

"Nothing anyone could prove. But we knew."

Myron considered this for a moment. Clearly, the beloved senator had lied to him. Big surprise. He had played Myron for a sucker. Another big surprise. Win was right. Myron always went astray when he believed the best about people. "So what happened next?"

"The senator's hoods were at the scene almost immediately. Been monitoring our radio. We'd been told over the air to cooperate with them one hundred percent. A real community effort finding these two kids. I'm surprised we spotted them first. Mob goons are usually better at this stuff than we are, you know?"

Myron knew. The mob had all the advantages over the police. They were closer to the city's underbelly. They could pay top dollar. They didn't have to worry about rules or laws or constitutional rights. They could inspire genuine fear.

"So what happened?" Myron asked.

"We started combing the area with flashlights, checking garbage Dumpsters, the whole bit. Cops and goons hand in hand. We found nothing for a while. Then we heard some gunshots. Henry and I ran to some dumpy apartment adjacent to where I'd shot Yeller. But Senator Cross's men were already there."

Blaine stopped. He leaned and gave Fred a good ear scratch. Fred still didn't move except for the thumping tail. Still scratching his dog, Blaine said, "Well, you know what we found." His voice was low and dead. "Yeller was dead. His mother was cradling him in her arms. She went through all these stages. First she just kept calling out his name over and over. Sweetly sometimes. Like she was trying to wake him up for school. Then she stroked the back of his head and rocked him and told him to go back to sleep. We all stood around and watched. Even the goons didn't bother her."

"What about the other gunshots?" Myron asked.

"What about them?"

"Didn't you wonder where they had come from?"

"I guess I did," he replied. "But I figured the security guys had shot after Swade. I didn't think they'd be dumb enough to admit it, but that's what I thought."

"It never crossed your mind they might have shot Yeller?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I told you the mother went through stages."

"Right."

"Once she realized her boy wasn't waking up again, she started pointing fingers and screaming. She wanted to know who had shot her boy. She wanted to look the killer in the eyes, the murderer who had shot her son on the street in cold blood. She said that Swade had dragged her boy in like that. Already shot up and dead."

"She said all that? That Swade dragged him in and that he was already shot?"

"Yes."

Silence. No water rippling. No birds chirping. Not even whittling. Several minutes passed before Blaine looked up and squinted. Then he said, "Cold."

"What?" Myron asked.

"That mother. If she was lying about who killed her boy. I always wondered why there were no repercussions. The mother never made a fuss. She didn't go to the newspapers. She didn't press charges. She didn't demand an explanation." He shook his head. "But what could have made her do that to her own flesh and blood? How could they have gotten to her so fast? With money? With threats? What?"

"I don't know," Myron said.

Jimmy Blaine finished whittling. It was a rabbit. Pretty good one too. A bird finally chirped, but it wasn't a pretty sound. More like a caw than a melody. Blaine spun his wheelchair around. "You want something to eat?" he asked. "I'm about to make lunch."

Myron looked at his watch. It was getting late. He had to get back to the office for his meeting with Ned Tunwell. "Thanks, but I really have to get going."

"Some other time then. When you're all done with this."

"Yes," Myron said.

Blaine blew the wood dust off the rabbit. "Still don't get it," he said.

"What?"

He stared at his finished handiwork, turning the rabbit over in his hand, studying it from every angle. "Could the mother have really been that frosty?" he asked. "How much money did they offer her? How much fright did they put into her? Hell, is there enough money or frights in the world for a mother to do that to her son?" He shook his head, dropped the wooden rabbit into his lap. "I just don't get it."

Myron didn't get it either.

Chapter
41

Myron got back into his Ford Taurus and headed east. He drove several miles without seeing a car. Mostly he saw trees. Lots of trees. Yes, the great outdoors. Myron was not an outdoors kind of guy. He didn't hunt or fish or do any of that. The appeal seemed clear, but it just wasn't for him. Something about being alone in the woods always reminded him of Ned Beatty in Deliverance. He needed people. He needed movement He needed noise. City noise as opposed to squeal-like-a-pig noise.

He now knew a lot more about the deaths of both Alexander Cross and Curtis Yeller than he'd known twenty-four hours ago, but he still didn't know if any of it was relevant to what happened to Valerie Simpson. And that was what he was after. Digging into a sensational six-year-old murder might be fun, but it was beside the point. He wanted Valerie Simpson's murderer. He wanted to find the person who had decided to snuff out that young, tortured life. Call it righting a wrong. Call it having a rescue or hero complex. Call it chivalry. Didn't matter. It was far simpler to Myron: Valerie deserved better.

The roads were still abandoned. The foliage on both sides of the road blurred into green walls. He started putting together what he knew. Errol Swade and Curtis Yeller had been spotted by Jimmy Blaine and his partner. A chase had ensued. Leaving aside the question of whether it was a legitimate shooting or not, Jimmy Blaine fired at Curtis Yeller. One of Blaine's bullets probably bit Curtis Yeller in the ribs, but the key fact is that somebody else shot Yeller in the head at close range. Somebody who was using a different caliber gun. Somebody who was not a cop.

So who shot Curtis Yeller?

The answer now seemed fairly obvious. Senator Cross's men thugs or security forces or whatever they were had been carrying firearms. Both Amanda West and Jimmy Blaine had confirmed that. They certainly had the opportunity. They certainly had the motive. It didn't matter if Cross had lied to Myron or not. Either way it would be in the senator's best interest for Curtis Yeller and Errol Swade to end up dead. Live suspects could talk. Live suspects could tell tales of drug use. Live suspects could counter the claim that Alexander Cross had died a hero. Dead men tell no tales. More important, dead men do not dispute spin doctors.

As for Errol Swade the mysterious "escapee" he'd almost assuredly been killed, probably in that gunfire Jimmy Blaine heard. The senator's men could have hid the body and dumped it later. Not definite, but again most likely. Errol Swade had a lot working against him. He was no genius. He was six-four. Myron knew from personal experience it was difficult to hide when you were that big. The odds of Swade eluding the police dragnet for so long not to mention the mob's underworld army were, as they say, statistically insignificant The sun was beginning to lower. The beams were now positioned in that one spot high enough to be in Myron's eyes but still low enough to avoid the sun visor. Myron squinted and slowed. His mind shifted gears again, this time to the aftermath of the Yeller shooting. Somehow Curtis Yeller ended up in his mother's arms, and somehow somebody got to her. Through either money or fear of reprisal probably a combination of both Deanna Yeller had been convinced to let the death of her son slide.