Beluga (30 page)

“Kendell and them?”

“Fine. She mowed down a bunch of … cronies,” Tula told me. “Went crazy with this damn thing.” Her foot found what turned out to be the ninja assassin's TEC-9. Tula kicked it halfway across the yard.

Shambrough's hound wanted to chase it, but I still had him by the scruff. He whimpered some on general principles.

“Who's that?” Tula asked me, looking at the hound.

“Friend of mine,” I told her.

We both heard the engine turning over and the roar of it starting up.

“Where's Shambrough?” I asked.

Tula had her cuffs out. She shook her head. “Never saw him.”

I'd been in the Delta long enough to know an Air Tractor when I heard one. That big Pratt and Whitney engine was singing as the plane headed off away from us, down some kind of airstrip, I had to guess.

I hustled across the yard with Shambrough's hound giving chase. There was the usual Delta dirt strip at the edge of the soybean field. Just as I got to where I could see the full length of the runway, a canary yellow crop duster pivoted around, and the pilot goosed the throttle.

Kendell and the beefy officer jogged into view. They got as close to the strip as they dared. They both had their sidearms drawn, but neither one of them raised and aimed.

“Shambrough?” I shouted.

Kendell nodded. He holstered his pistol and watched as that bright yellow Air Tractor came bumping along the dirt strip and lifted into the air. Shambrough tipped his wings at us as he nosed up over the live oaks. He had the big plane. Even I could tell that. If his tank was full, he could fly probably six or seven hundred miles before he had to set down.

He made a tight circle around the house, not a hundred feet off the ground. I walked out toward the front of the lot.

I saw Desmond standing in the driveway with his rifle raised and level. He was drawing a bead.

Lucas Shambrough kept circling and grinning at us from under his canopy. Desmond exhaled and squeezed slowly like he'd been taught. He wasn't the sort to miss.

That Air Tractor kept on for a bit, went up the road about a mile. It was flying slightly south of level and so finally clipped a power pole. It didn't explode or anything gaudy. It just plunged straight into the ground with a
thump
and raised a cloud of loamy Delta dust.

“Wasn't counting on that,” I said to Desmond once I'd reached him in the drive.

“Never had much use for a show-off,” Desmond told me.

 

TWENTY-SIX

Ninja schoolgirl assassin's given name was Alice Marie Fennick, and she was a public school product from Zanesville, Ohio. According to the records Kendell dug up, she'd stolen a LeBaron once in greater Cincinnati, but that was the only crime she'd ever been convicted for.

It turned out she was forty-eight years old and had a son named Luther. He was a chiropractor in Phoenix. Kendell talked to him on the phone. He still didn't know who his father was and hadn't spoken to his mother in years.

“Kind of a hothead,” Luther told Kendell.

I think Kendell just told him back, “Right.”

Captain Riley Greer got written up in the
Memphis Commercial Appeal,
mostly for having been shot twice in the line of duty. He had an upper-right-arm through-and-through and got a slug dug out of his ankle, which meant he went around for a while with both a sling and a walking stick. It turned out the gunplay had started when one of Lucas Shambrough's cronies had dropped his sidearm on the hardwood floor and it went off. Apparently, that was the sort of thing to bring out the worst in a ninja schoolgirl assassin.

She wasn't much of a delight to interrogate. She never said anything useful, and when she got bored or put out with a question, she'd dredge up something choice and spit. She wouldn't talk about Lucas Shambrough. She wasn't interested in a deal, and she didn't seem to care if she got locked up for the rest of her natural life. Fortunately, they didn't need her to build a case since they had Izzy and Skeeter and the Sunflower lady along with Kendell and Tula. The thinking was they'd put her away for assault and wait for the Hoyts to start barking. The odds seemed high they'd add on the murder of that catfish boy after a while.

Lucas Shambrough, naturally enough, didn't survive his crop duster crash, and he didn't survive it in about a half-dozen pieces. The rescue squad boys had to haul him off in a sack. His relations—sisters mostly—tried to get Desmond indicted for murder, but the county attorney declined. The state's attorney as well. Word was they even petitioned the governor, who just told them, “Hell of a shot.”

Me and Larry got off with a letter of apology to Jasper and the Greenwood PD, and when I rode with Desmond to K-Lo's to see what help we could offer, Kalil informed us that Dale was plaguing all of his shiftless deadbeats just fine.

“You don't need us,” Desmond said.

K-Lo didn't have to think about it. “Nope.”

“Got nothing?” I asked him.

“He's a goddamn terror.”

Me and Desmond couldn't complain. It was almost rewarding to see Dale make a little something of himself.

The money we'd given to Larry more or less evaporated. Not just actually but also in Larry's head. Not that we pressed him for it, since he would have needed to rob a casino to get it, but he might have pretended like he owed it and apologized a little. Instead he tried a new scheme on us until Desmond shut him up.

I ended up with Lucas Shambrough's hound, fairly commandeered him, in fact. His given name was Octavius, to judge by the brass plate on his collar. He wouldn't answer to it, and I decided I'd rather him not answer to Buddy instead. He kept Fergus up in the Nuttall oak. He liked to sprawl in Pearl's impatiens. He could hardly believe I'd let him sleep in the bed or eat Pearl's freezer-burned casseroles. He rode in my Ranchero like a champ, with his head out the window and his ears blown back. Mostly Buddy delighted in just going around not getting kicked anymore.

The dinner we had was Pearl's idea. Skeeter and Izzy were both up and around by then. We dressed up Pearl's screen porch, threw good linen on Pearl's picnic table, and then proceeded to get tamale and cole slaw juice all over the place. Kendell brought his wife, Myrna, who was too Baptist for most parties but seemed to start enjoying herself once Pearl had nattered at her for a while. Pearl was like a prattle jackhammer. She'd loosen anybody up in time.

Tula parked right next to me on the bench, and I was grateful for that. I hadn't seen much of her, what with her shifts and her depositions. I'd taken CJ fishing a couple of times, and I guess I'd won points for that, but dinner out on Pearl's porch was the most time we'd had together since Tula had jumped out of Shambrough's window and taken that ninja assassin on.

It was only two days later as I was whipping past Herndon in my Ranchero when a cruiser lit me up. It was crowding dusk, and all of the pivot irrigators were going. I pulled over by a wheat field and could hear the rhythmic slap of the spray hitting the plants. I fished out my expired Virginia license—hadn't yet made time for the DMV—and I went fishing for my registration in my cluttered glove box.

“Step out of the car, sir.”

It was Tula. I exhaled with relief and kind of laughed.

Not a dent from her. “Step out of the car.”

I climbed out of my Ranchero.

She closed one bracelet on my right wrist, cranked my arm down, and cuffed my left one as well.

“Watch your head,” she told me as she shoved me into the back of her cruiser.

She went back and got Buddy and let him up front with her. Without another word, she eased onto the road.

“Nice evening,” I tried. Nothing. “What's CJ up to?” Not a thing.

She cut north across the truck route and then back west on a road I knew by now. She reached back to unclamp her hair and let it fall as we pulled in her drive.

“Step out of the car, sir,” she told me again.

And that's precisely what I did.

 

ALSO BY RICK GAVIN

Ranchero

 

About the Author

When he's not writing, RICK GAVIN frames houses and hangs Sheetrock in Ruston, Louisiana. This is his second novel.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

BELUGA
. Copyright © 2012 by Rick Gavin. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Gavin, Rick.

       Beluga / Rick Gavin.—1st ed.

          p.  cm.

       ISBN 978-1-250-01522-8 (hardcover)

       ISBN 978-1-250-01599-0 (e-book)

       1.  Money laundering—Fiction.   2.  Delta (Miss.: Region)—Fiction.   I.  Title.

       PS3607.A9848B45 2012

       813'.6—dc23

2012030068

e-ISBN 9781250015990

First Edition: November 2012