Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 12 - Murder Among Friends (20 page)

Sitting with his back to the blazing fire in the rock fireplace, Weinshank sneered. “Come in, Mr. Boudreaux. We’ve
been waiting for you”

To say I was stunned would be an understatement of the
same magnitude as saying Noah’s flood was a passing
shower. I had been flimflammed, fooled, faked out, and like
a country bumpkin, I’d walked right into it. I tried to cover
my confusion. “I beg your pardon? I didn’t know I was expected”

From an adjoining room came Alex White, wearing a
sneer on his face that put Hymie’s to shame. That meant the
one with the face of a skeleton had to be Maury Erickson. I
glanced at Alex, who also wore lightweight clothing, then
frowned down at Hymie.

Weinshank nodded. “Oh, yes, you’ve been expected.
You’ve been sticking your nose in business that doesn’t
concern you. We got you up here so we can make sure you
don’t stick it in nobody else’s business,” he said, his voice
icy with menace.

My mind racing, I glanced around into the hard face of
Maury Erickson and grinned at him before turning back to
Hymie. I tried to put just the right amount of belligerence
into my reply. “To be honest, mister, I don’t know you or
your friends, and I haven’t the remotest idea what you’re talking about. I came up here to see Carl Edwards, not to
cause any problems. His family asked me to find him. That’s
the only reason I’m here”

My answer was the chilling click on a hammer being
cocked on a handgun. I looked around into the muzzle of a
.44 magnum revolver. It really looked like a .900 magnum
except they don’t make them that size, but at the moment,
you couldn’t have proven it by me.

“Let me do him now, Hymie,” said Maury in his thin,
almost ghostlike whisper.

Hymie studied me a few moments, crossing one leg over
the other. I saw that he wore low-cut slippers. Apparently,
none of the three planned on staying around long enough to
dress for the weather.

Keeping his black eyes on mine, he grinned. “No. Not
here. I got a feeling Mr. Boudreaux nosed around down in
Lost Lake enough that citizens there know he’s up here.
Ain’t that right?”

I pretended to play dumb, but I didn’t have to pretend
to play scared. I was. “Look, Hymie-is that your name?
What’s going on here? I’m just a poor slob trying to earn a
buck by running down a missing husband, that’s all.” I tried
to laugh, but the chuckle caught in my throat. “That’s no
reason to kill someone”

Alex White laughed. “He’s a cool one, Hymie.” He took
a couple of steps toward me and sneered. “Yeah, you might
be cool, buddy, but you can’t hide that black eye or that
knot on your head. Remember him, Hymie? He was out at
the Zuider Zee and Bernie’s Crab Shack last week when
someone was spying on us”

Hymie nodded slowly, a smug grin on his face. “I remember. I recognized him right off”

I played along with them. “Yeah. I was there. Edwards was supposed to hang out at the Zuider Zee. I dropped by,
didn’t see him, then went over to Bernie’s for supper.
What’s the crime in that?”

“Ain’t no crime. Just stupid,” growled Hymie.

“Yeah,” Alex chimed in. “I bet he’s the one what knocked
me into the river.” He took another step forward and pulled
an automatic. “I ought-”

Hymie snapped. “You ain’t oughta do nothing”

Alex hesitated, the hate blazing in his eyes obvious.

I tried another tack. Holding my hands out to my side in
supplication, I said, “Look, fellas. You got this all wrong.
This is one crazy coincidence. Yeah, I was out there where
you say, but I didn’t spy on no one, and I sure didn’t kick
someone in the river.” As soon as the word “kick” rolled
off my lips, I cringed, hoping no one had caught the slip of
tongue.

As usual, I was wrong.

Hymie’s eyes narrowed in triumph. “Nobody said nothing about kicking, Mr. Boudreaux. The only way you could
have known that is if you was down there that night.”

Alex frowned, failing to comprehend Hymie’s explanation. Then his watery eyes lit with understanding. “Hey,
yeah. That’s right” He raised his automatic over his head
as if to club me. “You dirty-”

“Alex!” Hymie’s cold voice stopped the larger man in his
tracks. “Not here. I don’t want no blood anywhere around
here. I don’t want no chance of them bluebirds finding any
kind of DNA out here” He gestured to the door. “Put him
in his car.”

I knew now I couldn’t convince them I was nothing more
than an innocent PI searching for a missing man. I had no
one to blame but myself, but still, I played for time, trying
to figure out my next move. Once they got me in the car, my goose was baked and basted better than any Christmas
dinner.

“All right, all right.” I drew a deep breath and released it
slowly. With what I hoped was an appropriate degree of resignation, I asked, “At least tell me what happened to Carl
Edwards”

All three laughed. Hymie nodded to Maury behind me.
In his thin voice, he chuckled and replied, “Don’t worry.
You’ll be meeting up with him before long.”

I stared at Hymie. “He’s dead?”

Pursing his lips, Hymie sneered. “Give the man a blue
ribbon. At the bottom of a canyon along with his car.”

Maury leered. “Yeah. At the bottom of Copper Canyon”

Suddenly, everything fell into place. “You were the ones
Sal saw transferring the body out at the park.”

Hymie’s scarred face twisted in a frown. Alex explained,
“Sal was that wino down at the train yard. You remember.”

“Oh, that one. Yeah. I remember.”

I took a wild guess, although it was not as wild as it
would have been a few minutes earlier. “Frank Cooper
planned it, and when Edwards stumbled in, Cooper knocked
him out, and shot himself. You threw Edwards in the armored car, then transferred him to your car at the warehouse downtown where you killed him.”

Nodding his square head and grinning in appreciation,
Hymie laughed. “You ain’t so dumb after all.”

Alex snorted. “Dumb enough to get hisself whacked.”

“Yeah, but there’s been a lot of marks dumber.” His face
went cold. “Search him. See if he’s packing heat”

From behind, Maury patted me down, pausing at the envelopes of dried food in my parka, and then dismissing
them. He paid no attention to the fire starter on my zipper
tab, and to tell the truth, at the time, neither did I.

Maury backed away. “He’s clean, Hymie”

“Put him in his car. Alex, you drive with Boudreaux in
front. Maury, you sit in the back. This joker moves a muscle, blow his stinking head off.”

Maury’s watery eyes filled with a gleam of perverted excitement. “Can I do him, Hymie, huh? Can I do him?”

Alex shook his head and shrugged.

“Sure, Maury,” replied Hymie. “But not until I say so”

Maury grabbed me by the arm and pushed me toward the
door. “Let’s go, Boudreaux”

As quickly as one scheme popped into my head, it popped
out again. I couldn’t break and run. All three had pieces.
They’d nail me before I made ten feet. Same as outside. For
a moment, I considered shoving one into another as we
headed down the steps, creating enough confusion so I could
dash to the end of the porch and disappear into the forest
above the cabin.

I paused when we stepped onto the porch, ostensibly to
zip my parka, at the same time gauging the distance to the
end of the porch. About a hundred feet. A long, long, long
hundred feet. There were a few chairs I could yank behind
me, possibly deflecting or throwing off their aim.

Alex gave me a shove. “Don’t worry about zipping up.
In a few minutes, you ain’t going to feel the cold no way”

Hymie spoke up. “Hold it right there”

We froze.

He stepped past us and down the steps. At the base, he
turned and held his automatic on me. “Now, come on down,
boys”

“What’s up, Hymie?” Alex asked.

“Nothing. It’s just I got the feeling Boudreaux here has
something up his sleeve, and I ain’t going to give him a
chance to play it. Now, come on down”

I muttered a string of curses under my breath. Another
option blown. Behind me, Maury gave me a shove. “You
heard the man, Boudreaux. Get on down”

Hymie waved the muzzle of his automatic at my rental
car. “Get behind the wheel, Alex. Once they get in, lock the
windows and doors from your side. You, Boudreaux, climb
in the passenger’s side. Maury, you get in behind him while
I hold my gun on him. Keep yours cocked. He makes one
move, waste him. Understand?”

“Yeah, yeah, Hymie. I understand”

Moments later, I closed the door. Alex locked both it and
the window. Only then did Hymie lower his handgun. He
went around to the driver’s side and spoke to Alex. “I found
a spot a couple of miles from here where we can dump him
and the car. Nobody will find them for a few weeks” He
paused and glanced up at the dark clouds. “And if we get
lucky and it snows hard, he might stay covered for months”

As if in answer to Hymie’s remark, light flakes of snow
started falling from the forbidding sky.

Hymie laughed. “What do you know? Look at that.
Snowing. We must be living right.”

While the irony of his remark was not lost on me, I was
too busy trying to lay out another plan, keeping in mind that
a skeletal lunatic with a cocked magnum was sitting directly
behind me, the muzzle of that cannon no more than mere
inches from my skull.

Alex started the car, and then glanced over at me. “Buckle up.”

I looked at him in disbelief. “What?”

He nodded to the seat belt. “I said buckle up.”

“Why? You’re going to kill me in a few minutes anyway.”

“Because,” Maury growled from behind me, “the road
is steep, and if you start bouncing around, I’ll blow your
head off just like Hymie said.”

I buckled up.

“Here we go,” Alex announced, pulling in behind Hymie
in the Cadillac.

“Don’t get too close to Hymie,” muttered Maury from
the backseat.

“I know what I’m doing,” Alex snapped. “Just do your
job and leave me alone.”

We headed down the steep road to the secondary road,
slowly easing around the switchbacks.

“Easy,” muttered Maury. “You’re too close to the edge of
the road”

“Shut up,” Alex shouted over his shoulder without taking
his eyes off the narrow road.

“The snow’s getting thicker,” Maury announced.

“I see it, I see it.”

Mentally, I crossed my fingers, not wanting to take a
chance on any kind of overt movement, for Maury was obviously on edge. I kept my left hand at my side, ready to
release the seat belt at a second’s notice.

As Hymie slowed for a switchback, a deer suddenly burst
across the road just behind the Cadillac. Alex slammed on
the brakes, throwing us all forward.

I punched the release button and hurled myself backward,
spinning my shoulders and swinging my elbow around. I felt
the point of it slam into Maury’s skull. At the same time, I
jammed my foot on the accelerator, sending the Taurus
hurtling forward, slamming into the rear of the Cadillac
and sending it careening over the switchback and down the
steep slope of rocky talus with us right behind.

Bouncing over the rocks jostled us around like PingPong balls in a bingo machine. In the backseat, Maury was
cursing and tumbling about, scrabbling to find the magnum
bouncing from door to door.

Scooting around in the seat, I drove both feet into Alex,
slamming him against the door, which burst open. With a terrified scream, he tumbled out, and I was right behind him.

Fortunately, he cushioned my fall, although I picked up a
couple more knots on my head. I clambered to my feet and
scrambled for the forest.

Just before the two vehicles shuddered to a halt on the
road below, I reached the forest. I paused to look back, and
the boom of a handgun exploded across the slope. A chunk of bark and wood the size of my fist ripped out of the pine
beside my head.

The snow grew heavier.

I ran. Behind me, I heard excited voices.

I paused a moment, crouching beside a pine and listening for their shouts. Then, trying to avoid leaving tracks, I
headed down the mountain, from time to time stumbling
over the tangle of wild grape vines along the edges of clearings. I figured I could find a stream somewhere, and perhaps follow it to civilization, if I could survive Hymie and
his boys and the weather.

I heard the crashing of their pursuit behind me.

I lost track of time, but in the mountains, dark comes
early and with it the chilling cold of night. The average low
temperature in March was in the mid-twenties. At least, I
told myself, I’m dressed for it, grateful I had taken the
advice of those back in Santa Fe and Lost Lake.

I was still heading down the mountain slope, but with the
light quickly fading, I started searching for some shelter
out of the cold.

Abruptly, I jerked to a halt, standing on the rim of a
twenty-foot drop-off. The hair on the back of my neck tingled. Another step and- I shook my head. I didn’t want to
think about it.