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G21 FICTION - DEATH TONE (Part 1 of 3): The serialization of the opening chapters of the rough draft for ROD AMIS's new novel, a New Orleans mystery.Black Heart
The offer from Blackhart Security had come at the right time. Harry had been on a run of luck, none of it good.
Things had started to go south with the death of his wife, Mara. She had finally succumbed to the black dog of depression which had haunted her all of h er life. That happened after they tried to make a family. The child had been stillborn.
At first she pretended (or did she?) that mourning was enough. Six months later, she seemed (or did she?) to be her old self again and hopeful for another try. Six months later, after Harry had decided to give up his job at Cosdemonic Assurance as a death claims investigator and go into private practice, become yet another gum-shoe in a city with too many, he had come home to find Mara in a warm tub of water and her own blood. She had opened her veins and abandoned him, as the black dog had dictated.
Harry Trotter had known his entire life had been centered around death, from his days of becoming a homicide detective, to his time as a death claims investigator for the insurance company. Even as a P.I., death was always a hair's breadth away. He had married a woman who he had mistaken as a nurse while standing in line in the cafeteria of a mental hospital, mistaken as a nurse because she was dressed all in white. He hadn't noticed, standing in that line, the bandages around her wrists. Even after learning she was suicidal, he couldn't stop himself from wanting to love her.
Now, she was gone.
After finding Mara in the bath tub, Harry had checked himself into an institution voluntarily. He went into therapy. When he got out, he went back to his office and hoped that he could drown himself in his work as a private investigator but all those months of getting his answering machine had soured people to Harry Trotter. They probably thought he had gone out of business, he figured.
Then, out of the blue, the offer from Blackhart Security, a company specializing in dealing with dire situations - kidnap and ransom, international terror - had come in his mail box. He jumped at the offer. At forty years of age, another offer like this was unlikely to come along.
How had they heard about him?
As it turned out, he discovered during his initial interview, he had been referred by another of their operatives, Quinn Martin, Harry's old partner from Homicide. Quinn had stayed with the Rockford police department, become a Homicide captain - while encouraging Harry for years, until he was hoarse, to go into private practice. Harry demurred back then and Quinn jumped at the chance to join Blackhart at the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. He was a great cop and so moved up quickly in the ranks.
When he learned about Mara's death and Harry going into therapy, he decided to throw his old partner a bone. Quinn knew that Harry would always be a detective at heart. You can't go back, once the death tone has become the music of your life.
Death tone. The term was a private joke among Harry Trotter's small circle of close friends. It sprung from Mara's talent for malapropisms. She had begun attempting to sing Harry a song one afternoon when he was visiting her at the mental hospital. Realizing that the rendition was going badly, she had apologized by saying, "Oh, I'm sorry. I've always been death tone.
"I can't carry a tune worth a damn!"
Harry had informed her that the correct term was "tone-deaf." But it didn't take. Mara had said "death tone" until the day she died.
It wasn't very funny to Harry anymore. Sometimes, alone at night in his apartment, he would wonder whether it was his own association with the tone of death, his constant digging into the lives that dead people had once had, that had contributed to Mara's choice. He had to wonder about her choosing a man whose life and income was built around trying to find justice for the dead. And what was wrong with him that even after leaving the police force he had continued to follow the trail of corpses that every city provides? There was something morbid about that, he knew.
During his third and final interview with Blackhart, they asked Harry about Mara's death and his time in therapy. In the middle of the interview they asked him questions that sounded like they were straight out of the movie "Blade Runner."
"You are driving across the desert and you come upon a camel with a broken leg."
"I shoot it in the head. I don't like to see any creature suffer."
"You are in a room with no doors or windows. It is illuminated but you can't identify the source of the illumination. How do you feel?"
"Curious. Fascinated. I'd probably try to look for some solution to the mystery."
The final part of this final interview focused on how Harry handled having to take the lives of others.
"I don't go for my weapon," he told the team of interviewers, "unless I intend to use it."
Harry was informed during a telephone call that afternoon that he was hired by Blackhart Security and would receive a briefing on his first assignment the following Monday.
"Hey, Lady, like horses? Wannah see my hairy trotter?"
"You never change," Harry responded.
"Congrats, Boyo! I knew you'd get the job!" Quinn enthused.
"You are driving across the desert and you come upon a camel with a broken leg."
"Yeah, yeah. I know. Hokey shit. I think those corporate types would have been better off sticking with Myers-Briggs - except anyone with a brain knows how to ace that one."
"I've always been brainless. One of my many talents."
"You'll fit right in."
"I'm forty years old. This is a job for guys in their thirties. What do you think they'll throw at me? Bodyguard for some poobah in the Green Zone?"
"Doubt it. Like you say, you're long in the tooth for that detail. I'm thinking they want you to do what you do best, suss out the bad guys."
"I don't speak Arabic."
"Blackhart is international. I figure they send you to some country where English is lingua franca. You'll probably end up in Europe is my guess."
"Can't wait."
Harry Trotter examined his face in the mirror while he was shaving that Monday morning. Jaw still square but showing the early signs of a double chin; strands of grey cutting through his brown hair, some in his eye brows, too. Grey feathering starting to show at the temples, he noticed. His eyes were getting veiny and had a tinge of yellow. He probably shouldn't have had that third Scotch last night. Crow's feet around his eyes from squinting over too many reports.
Stop it! What are you doing tearing yourself apart like this?
He need to get dressed and head down to the Black Heart office.
What? It's Blackhart. Like some kind of deer. But hart's are red deer, ain't they? Who cares? Black hearts are what people get when they have been concentrating on death for too long.Harry's new supervisor, Shaunessy, was straight out of the military mold you would expect in an organization like this. Closed-croppeed hair, beady eyes, didn't look liked he had smiled much during his entire life.
His desk was as tidy and prim as a cell. When he sat down after shaking Harry's hand, his back was straight and he folded his hands before placing them on the blotter on his desk.
Blackhart assigned Harry to New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
New Orleans? What the -"After Katrina we got one of the contracts down there. Beef up the security. Keep the looters in check. We ran into a situation."
"As in?"
"One of our guys allegedly killed a local."
"Not pretty. Did he do the shooting?"
"He's a good guy. You'll get the file. We pulled him out of Afghanistan for this assignment. He says he didn't do the shooting and we believe him. We think he's being set up.
"A lot of the locals, they resented us being called in. They claim we were acting like cowboys. Considered us 'carpetbaggers' benefiting from their misery. Didn't take too kindly to our presence, even though we were there because their own cops had basically deserted them," Shaunessy explained.
"So what makes you believe they aren't at least partially right?"
"Our guy was making a grand a day in Afghanistan guarding some big wig. He got a percentage of that by volunteering to help those crackers in New Orleans. What motive did he have to do a bad shooting?"
"Maybe someone pissed him off?"
"I thought you were a detective."
"Okay. Why would they set him up?"
"Because they can. You ever been to Louisiana?"
"Not even in my worst nightmares. What do the guys on his detail say?"
"Their statements are all in your paperwork. They back up Bartlett's story."
"So why'd the cops pull our guy?"
"Powder residue. He had to put down a feral dog ten blocks from the incident. They were tired and frazzled and weren't having any of it. It's Napoleonic Code down there, guilty until proven innocent. They dragged him off to the Amtrak station and threw him in with all the other poor bastards they were pulling off the streets."
"They didn't bother checking on the dog?"
"Hell no. And our guys didn't think to go back to try and find it until the next day. They found a blood trail from where it had been dragged off by other wild dogs or some other animal and then tore apart, mostly eaten. Not worth a damn for evidence."
"The victim? He happen to be Black and unarmed?"
"Exactomundo."
"I've heard stories --- "
"Everybody's heard those stories! But our guys are professionals. They don't take part in those kinds of turkey shoots! They just don't. Bartlett's being set up. It was our guys who called the ambulance for the victim when they found him bleeding in the street, ferchissakes!
"For all we know those cracker cops might have done the shooting and were just looking for a fall guy." Shaunessy's knuckles were white on the balled fists on his desk.
"The New Orleans cops don't have the best reputation in the country, do they?"
"Not by a long shot. Bastards! I mean we go down to help them reclaim their down city and this is what we get."
"Ask Houston. This incident must have happened almost a year ago. Hasn't it gone to trial yet?"
"In New Orleans? They're still working on cases from pre-Katrina. It's a freakin' joke! That whole system down there is a shambles.
"We bailed out our guy, of course. But he can't take an assignment out of the country or even leave friggin' Louisiana until this thing is laid to rest. He's stuck. We finally moved his family down there a couple months back just so they could be with him. We need to get this thing done."
"Poor bastard."
"We need you to go down there, find the real shooter and get our guy off the hook."
"When's my flight?"
"This afternoon. See Gracie outside, she's got your ticket and all the paperwork. Then go home and pack."
Blackhart had thought of everything. Included in the paperwork was Harry's permit to carry a weapon in Louisiana. His instructions told him that he would check in with Ordnance in New Orleans to get outfitted with all they thought he needed. This company was a machine.
He was met at the airport by a driver in a black Hummer who took him to Blackhart headquarters in the Garden District. Kind of deserted, a lot of renovation work going on, but none the worse for wear as far as Harry could see. People were strolling slowly through the late summer heat of that town; doing a "mosey," he thought, like time had turned into molasses.
He liked the street cars rolling through this part of town, up and down St. Charles Avenue. He liked the smell of honeysuckle in the air. But it was so hot he thought he might faint. How could people live with this weather? He was glad of the blasting cold air conditioning at headquarters.
Blackhart Field Operations was housed in a brown prefabricated building in a vacant lot, surrounded by black Suburbans and Hummers. The guy behind the desk this time was a corpulent good ole boy who looked like he might even have been born and raised here. After shaking Harry's hand, he eyeballed his credentials.
"So you're the new dick! Trotter is it?"
"I'm assigned to Criminal Investigations, if that's what you mean."
"We don't stand much on formalities down here, Son. Doesn't sit well with these folks. Sit yourself down there and let's see what I can do to he'p you get acclimated."
Harry sat. "Thank you, sir."
This guy behind a desk, for all his jocularity, was also behind a black nameplate that announced "Col. Beadle."
"You're a big galoot aren't ya?Ex-military or ex-cop?"
"Both. Then I did a stint with an insurance company before going private."
"I'm not checkin' your teeth, Son. Just curious is all. I like to try to figure where they pull their C.I.D. recruits from. You married, Trotter?"
"Widower, sir."
"I'm sorry to hear about your loss, Son. Truly I am. Must be hard on ya'."
"It happened years ago, sir."
"Well, I'm sorry." Beadle reached down to his lower desk drawer and pulled it open. "You a drinking man, Trotter?"
"Yes, sir. But not while I'm on duty."
"This ain't a test, Son. It's New Orleans. Drinking is part of the culture down here, always has been. I'm willing to bet you get more information out of bars on this case than you'll get anywheres else. The social life of this city takes place in its bars and that there's a fact.
"Hell, you just got off a long flight and we ain't even given you a chance to get to your hotel yet. It must be after six by now, so you ain't on duty anyway." Beadle put a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of water on his desk. He opened another drawer and retrieved two short glasses. "Let's us just sit back and get to know one another before you get started on Steve Bartlett's case."
Beadle poured two fingers of whiskey into each of the glasses, added a little water and then nodded toward the sofa on the far wall behind a glass-topped coffee table. "Like I said, we don't stand much on formality down here. Lets us go sit over on that there couch and get acquainted."
Harry moved to the sofa while Beadle ferried over their drinks. He wasn't much into this little ritual of Beadle's but sensed it was best to just play along.
"So how you figure you gonnah go about this case, Trotter? You read the file on your flight out, right?"
"Yes, sir," Harry said and took a sip of the bourbon. "I was thinking that I'd start with the arresting officers."
"Damned smart idea! Good place to start, let them know you're looking into things, get a sense of the lay of the land. But you cain't."
"Why's that?"
"Those fellers done skeedadled, Son, like a lot of other folks. Weren't wiling to put up with this mess. Moved on to greener pastures. It's New Orleans."
"So how's the state intend to make its case? How can they try Bartlett without calling the officers on the scene to testify?"
"Frankly, Son, they ain't in a particular hurry to bring this here case to trial. Too many worms in that can.
"The shooting took place over in Algiers. You hear about what it was like over in Algiers back then? Lots of bodies found on the streets. Locals taking pot-shots at our boys all the time.
"Damned doctors and college professors were looting supermarkets all over this town. Thugs were jackin' people just because they could. A damned third of the cops went AWOL. It was as bad as Beirut in the '80s when we deployed down here, Son, and that's a fact."
"What about the ballistics report. I didn't see one in the file."
"'Cause there ain't one, Son. Don't' you get it? Nobody had time for real police procedures down here back then! It was all catch as catch can and we'll sort it out later. It was the wild West down here back then and ain't that far from frontier town today. You'll see.
"Half these damned people are whacked out of their minds most the time and don't even know it because most of their neighbors is just as damned whacked. They have no baseline by which to judge what normal behaviour is like anymore. And most of the shrinks have left town anyways. They had money, why come back to this Hellhole and rebuild they houses when they can just buy a place cheaper in some place a real person would want to live?"
Harry wagged his head. "This your idea of a pep talk?"
"I'm just trying to get you acclimated, Son. Like I said, it's New Orleans. You cain't go about this case like you would anywhere else." Beadle paused for a while and savored his own bourbon. Then he gave Harry a serious gaze before continuing. "Lookahere, Trotter, I know you know I read your file as soon as word came down you'd been assigned to this case. You're a good guy, I can tell. So I wanted to have this chat with you and get you on the right page.
"I'm familiar with Bartlett and know he's a good kid. Plays by the rules. He wouldn't draw down on an unarmed man anymore than he'd sell his own children. But he was at the wrong place at the wrong time with just enough circumstantial evidence for these folks to paint him as the shooter.
"What I'm sayin' is, Trotter, this man's life and his future is in your hands. So you gottah know what you're dealin' with down here. It's corrupt and rotten and these folks could give a damned about Bartlett. He ain't one of theirs so he don't count.
"So if you think you're gonnah get Steve Bartlett off by investigating this like any other case and finding out who did kill this guy Washington, give yourself another think. It ain't gonnah happen, Son. What you need to do is find some way of proving that Bartlett is guarandamnteed not the shooter and that there was no way of discovering who was."
"I understand, sir," Harry said after a moment. "This is a mess."
"Yes indeed," Beadle drawled and gulped more of his bourbon.
[CONTINUES Next Edition]
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