Upside Down wm-2 Read online

  He watched the Trammels get inside the black and white taxicab, which because it was headed the wrong way on St. Charles, would turn around to head uptown. Styer had the Rover started, the lights on, and was watching the cab in his side mirror. As the cab made the U and came back up the street, he pulled out into traffic to lead the way. Styer caught a flash of yellow in his headlights, and he had to brake hard to keep from hitting a young boy in a rain slicker who had come off the sidewalk and was riding his bike, hell-bent for leather, across St. Charles. The taxi bearing his targets shot past him. Lifting his cell phone, Styer called his helpers to tell them the time had come for them to earn their fee. One of them was in the Lexus, the other was playing taxicab driver.

  16

  Faith Ann had pedaled from the drugstore to an isolated gazebo in Audubon Park. Sitting on a concrete table, she went over the torn-out pages, calling the guesthouses she thought might be on a street near the vast city park.

  After making thirteen calls without finding the Trammels registered, she read through the list again and one name struck her. The guesthouse was on St. Charles. She called it and asked the clerk if the Trammels were registered there. To her excitement, they were. She asked for the location and it was less than a mile away, so she pocketed the phone, jumped on her bike, and took off.

  Within sight of the Park View, she barely missed getting hit by a dark SUV as she left the sidewalk to cross St. Charles. She swallowed the surge of fear the near-collision gave her. Dropping the bike in the grass, she ran inside.

  Faith Ann's legs and feet were soaked from the rain, and inside the poncho she was perspiring. A skinny young clerk was on the phone and Faith Ann waited, feeling like she would scream. He finally completed the call and looked down at her. “Yes?”

  “I just called to see if the Trammels were here.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me what room they're in?”

  “They're staying here, but you just missed them. Do you want to leave a message?”

  Faith Ann felt her heart drop into her shoes and her lip quiver as she fought back tears. “No I guess not… Do you know where they went? How long they'll be?”

  “I heard them say they were eating at Dot's Steakhouse. It's on-”

  Faith Ann knew where it was, and she didn't wait for the address before running back down the hall and out the door.

  17

  The Trammels remained silent while the cabdriver complained about the bad condition of the streets, the rain, the Friday-night traffic, and the price of gasoline, which, since we “owned” Iraq, didn't make sense.

  The cab's tires hit numerous potholes because in the rain they had become standing pools, indistinguishable from the pavement. Despite the weather, the restaurants and bars on the street were busy. Hank was pleased they had decided to use cabs so they wouldn't have to worry about parking or navigating.

  “I tried to call Kimberly to see why Faith Ann called,” Millie told him. “Maybe she called to tell us that they wouldn't be at home this evening or something.”

  “We'll see her first thing in the morning. I'm pretty sure she's just excited about us coming,” Hank said as the cab pulled to the curb outside the bar.

  “If it was important, Kimberly would have called the guesthouse.”

  Hank climbed from the cab and he waited on the sidewalk for Millie to pay and exit into the protection of his open umbrella.

  Together, they entered into the bar. Hank hadn't been there in four years, when he and Nicky Green had last been in New Orleans together. It seemed to him the crowd had been vastly different then-certainly much older.

  “Reckon any of these people are legal age?” He had to raise his voice for Millie to hear him over the music and general din of socializing youth. “Times like this I can see how old I am without a mirror.”

  “We used to be this age,” Millie said.

  “I'll make a fast swing through the place to see if there's a table,” he told her. “You stay here and feel free to stick your fingers in your ears if you need to.”

  Millie's expression was as unreadable as weathered-down hieroglyphs on limestone when Hank returned.

  “There's one in the back, but it's in the line of fire, right near the speakers.” He looked at his watch. “Nicky's running late.”

  “Can we go outside?” Millie asked.

  When they went out under the awning, they saw that the rain had intensified.

  “We could go across to the restaurant and wait there.”

  “You think? The reservation isn't for twenty minutes yet.”

  “Don't you imagine Nicky's a good enough investigator to figure out where we went? Surely he's smart enough to cross the street… to get in out of the rain.” She laughed.

  Hank frowned at her. “He's a good P.I.”

  “I'm sure a man ingenious enough to have a skunk on hand, then go about tossing it into a window, ought to be able to cross a street. A chicken can do that.”

  Hank had to laugh. “I suppose you're right.”

  A rain-drenched couple ran up to the doors laughing. They embraced and kissed before they entered the bar.

  “Once we were like those kids,” Millie said cheerfully. “In love in a bright fresh world.”

  “I remember.” Hank put his arm around his wife, and she leaned against him. “That hasn't changed.”

  In a grand gesture, Hank pulled Millie to him and kissed her passionately before he leaned back to study her face.

  He saw, but didn't see, the lines, the way her face had changed into that of an older woman. The gray in her hair mattered so little. To his heart, Millie still looked eighteen years old, with a face as smooth as polished agate. After almost forty years, he could still picture her as he'd first seen her-standing behind the counter in a department store selling perfume.

  Millie looked over Hank's shoulder and tugged at his sleeve. “Look there. That child looks like…”

  Hank turned. He saw a figure pedaling a bicycle furiously toward them. The helmet with the hood pulled up didn't disguise the familiarity of the drenched features. “Faith Ann,” Hank finished.

  The child leaned the bike against the wall and ran into the restaurant across the street. Through the restaurant's window they could see that the child, who looked exactly like their niece, was talking to the hostess.

  “It's her,” Hank said. He opened the umbrella, and they stepped off the curb. Immediately, Millie cried out and Hank knew she'd wrenched her ankle. She insisted she could walk just fine. So, supporting his wife and holding up the umbrella against the downpour, Hank looked up and down the street to check traffic. Not seeing any headlights close enough to be a danger, he walked Millie toward the restaurant. “What in the world is that child doing out in this?”

  Faith Ann turned from the hostess and ran outside.

  Hank asked his wife, “Where's Kimberly?”

  “Faith Ann!” Millie called out.

  Faith Ann saw them coming and her face filled with emotion. She waved frantically. Hank couldn't tell whether she was laughing or crying.

  Halfway across the street, Hank heard an accelerating engine and tires on wet pavement as a car roared up the street behind him. There was no time to clear the thoroughfare, so he drew Millie close. Keeping himself between his wife and the onrushing monster, he formed the smallest possible obstacle and prayed the driver would go around them, since there was a world of room to do that.

  He saw the child's pale, wet face-her mouth opening to scream and her eyes locked on his. He shook his head, praying for her to look away.

  As Millie tightened her grip on his arm, he was aware of a sudden pressure and… the sensation of taking flight.

  18

  A single image had fueled Faith Ann's frantic dash to the restaurant. All the way over she pictured the Trammels sitting at a table in the restaurant, and she knew that, as soon as she saw them, she would finally be safe. She had almost burst into tears when the hostess told her that t
he Trammels weren't there, that their reservation wasn't until eight. With twenty minutes to kill, Faith Ann went outside intending to lock her bike and wait for her relatives to show. Then she spotted Hank and Millie across the street, waving at her and looking worried. Millie was leaning on Hank and walking funny. Barely able to contain herself, Faith Ann started over to meet them halfway but stopped abruptly when she heard the roar of an onrushing car. Hank froze in the middle of the street. Faith Ann glanced at the car, then back at Hank.

  Unbelievably, the SUV didn't veer or brake. It just hit them. She heard the impact, saw her uncle and aunt launched up into the air, and stared after the dark vehicle, which sped off down the street.

  For what felt like forever, Faith Ann stood frozen in the driving rain, stunned. Others ran into the street. Several people yelled, “Call 911!”

  911. The police are 911.

  Approaching cars skidded to a halt. People kept pouring out from the restaurant and the bar across the street, moving like a gathering mob toward the broken figures lying in the street.

  Faith Ann reached Hank. A man wearing a jacket and tie was kneeling down beside him with his hand against Hank's neck. The man shook his head sadly, then went to kneel down beside Millie. Faith Ann looked down and saw that her uncle's left eye was open and rain was filling the socket. His face was sliced open and rosy water ran off it in sheets.

  Feeling like she was being pressed under a great weight, Faith Ann left Hank and walked over to where her aunt was lying in the intersection, illuminated by the streetlight. The same man who had checked on Hank hardly touched Millie before he stood up, shaking his head. Faith Ann wondered if he was a doctor, because he didn't look all that affected by what he was doing.

  Faith Ann stared down. Millie's features looked like they had been mixed up in a red batter and poured onto her head. Her limbs were at impossible angles. Faith Ann realized that she was turning away-no, that someone was holding her by her shoulders, turning her around. The kneeling man wearing the tie was looking into her eyes and talking, but Faith Ann couldn't focus on the words. “Are you all right?” he said.

  Faith Ann nodded.

  “Darling, did you see the accident?”

  She nodded again.

  “Are you with those people?”

  “I'm fine,” she managed to say.

  “Where do you live? Do you live near here?”

  “Where are your parents?” a woman asked. She was holding an umbrella over the man in the tie, who was already soaked.

  Faith Ann pointed back toward the restaurant where her bike was. It wasn't anything she thought about before she did it. She just didn't want to talk to the man any longer.

  “She lives in the neighborhood,” the woman told the man. “She'll be fine.”

  “Go on home,” he told Faith Ann calmly. “This isn't anything for you to see.”

  She took a few steps, then looked back to where cars had stopped and people were getting out of them. Through the rain, she saw the strangest-looking man limping toward the intersection. He wore a long raincoat, a white cowboy hat, and matching boots, and he was using a walking cane for balance.

  The man in the white cowboy hat removed his coat to expose a bright red suit with white accents. His belt was also bright white. He spread the coat over the body in the wet street as gently as a mother might cover her sleeping child, then went to Hank and knelt beside him.

  A siren was wailing in the distance. Faith Ann turned back to the restaurant and joined the crowd on the sidewalk beneath the awning. She moved to her bike and put a hand on the crossbar. She tucked her wet hair behind her ears and snugged her hood.

  She saw the blue lights approaching, but she remained standing there because she had absolutely no notion of what else to do.

  19

  Paulus Styer hadn't planned to run down the Trammels with the Rover. He despised the sloppiness of it. He liked precision, especially in his wet work.

  He had the stolen taxicab waiting nearby with his driver, the second man. Up until the kid showed up out of nowhere, again, and screwed everything, the plan had been to see that Nicky Green never got to the restaurant. Then, when Green didn't show up, the Trammels would have called a cab, and Styer's taxi would have picked them up. He'd have met the cab a few blocks away and clipped them while they were still in the backseat. His stocky accomplice in the Lexus, two blocks away, was the plan's wild card-ready to do whatever Styer needed him to do. When Styer saw the Trammels come out of the bar and spot that kid, he knew instantly the plan was dead, so he'd pulled out of his parking space and mowed them down.

  He was glad the child hadn't run out to meet them, because he would have had no choice but to hit all three.

  After hitting the Trammels, Styer sped off, stopping only after he was far enough away to safely hand off the vehicle to his second accomplice for disposal. He had climbed out of the Rover and walked briskly on a parallel street back to the accident scene. Once there, he took a few seconds to admire his handiwork. The Trammel woman was obviously dead. Hank wasn't yet, but he would soon be.

  Styer saw the kid in the overlarge yellow poncho across the street holding up her bicycle. Having her show up like she had had been a shock, and now that he was able to think it over he was certain she was the very same whelp he'd almost run over in front of the guesthouse thirty minutes earlier. He knew from eavesdropping that morning and through the afternoon that Faith Ann Porter was their niece, so this kid had to be the same girl. Styer had no idea why she was on a bicycle flying around alone in the rain, or why her lawyer mother would allow it. He wasn't really worried about her being a factor in his deal, because she couldn't have seen him through the Rover's dark windows.

  Styer stood in the crowd under the awning of the bar watching the EMS technicians waste their time and energy trying to save Hank Trammel's life. Now that the Trammels were down and out of play, all he had to do was sit back and wait for his victim to come running into his web.

  20

  Detective Manseur had been at home, napping before eating dinner with his wife and daughters, when he got a call ordering him to respond to a vehicular homicide. Vehicular homicides were handled by Traffic, unless Traffic requested a homicide detective or the victim was a cop or a VIP capable of generating a lot of heat. According to Sergeant Suggs, this victim was in the VIP category. Still tired and upset over being pulled off the Porter/Lee homicides, Manseur parked short of the intersection, climbed from his Impala, popped open his umbrella, and surveyed the scene. Fifty feet beyond the intersection, where a corpse had been covered by a raincoat, an EMS unit was working on the other victim. Four patrolmen worked to keep the street cleared, the crowd back. Manseur walked over to the body, leaned down, and lifted the coat to look at the woman underneath it. Her crushed head was almost severed.

  The detective looked up the street, trying to spot the point of impact; but due to the pelting rain he couldn't see any debris. He let down the coat and walked up the street to where the second victim, a silver-haired man on a cot, was being fed into the ambulance.

  “How is he?” Manseur asked, showing his shield to the EMT.

  “Has a very weak pulse,” the tech, busy securing the gurney, answered impatiently. “We'll take him to Charity Trauma Center. Maybe they can perform a miracle.”

  Seconds later the ambulance pulled away, siren whooping.

  A patrolwoman approached Manseur. “Sir, your eyewitnesses are under the awning over at the steakhouse.” She handed Manseur two driver's licenses, which he read as she talked. “Henry and Mildred Trammel from Charlotte, North Carolina, were crossing the street when a black or dark blue Range Rover traveling at a high rate of speed struck them. All the witnesses agree that the driver didn't apply the brakes, just kept going. The driver never turned on his lights. Probably drunk. We're talking extensive front-end damage. Lots of glass back there.” Manseur turned to look at the glass and orange plastic, much farther back than he had imagined it could be.
r />   “Put a BOLO on the damaged Rover,” he said, referring to a “be on lookout” alert.

  “I already have.”

  “Good.”

  Manseur looked over at the restaurant and scanned the crowd clustered under the awning, then at the bar where another crowd was standing like an assembled audience. His eyes were drawn to a cowboy chewing on a toothpick, standing on the sidewalk, wearing a water-saturated red suit, and staring directly at him. As if he had been waiting for Manseur to see him, the cowboy limped out into the street. Raindrops splashed harmlessly on the stiff brim of his pristine white Stetson. It looked to be an expensive bonnet. Otherwise, the entire outfit looked like a stage costume.

  “I'm Nicky Green. I'm a private investigator out of Houston.”

  Manseur hoped he was dealing with a trained witness. That would simplify his job considerably. “Detective Manseur, Homicide. You witness this?”

  “No. I arrived a couple of minutes afterward. I was supposed to meet them here for drinks and dinner. I had a meeting at the Clarion that ran long, and I had trouble finding a parking space.”

  “Where were y'all staying?”

  “I'm at the Columns. Hank and Millie are staying… were at the Park View. They're good friends of mine. I've known Hank since I was knee high to a jackrabbit and Millie since '73 or so. Hank was a U.S. marshal until he retired a few months back.”

  “That so?”

  Manseur saw that either a cell phone or a handgun was pushing Green's jacket out slightly.

  Green saw him looking at it. “I've got a carry permit,” he said, opening his coat to expose a Colt. 45 with yellowed stag grips. The right base cover was broken and the blue steel on the butt was scratched.

  “Did you drop your piece?” Manseur asked.