Murder in the Bermuda Triangle: Stanley Bentworth mysteries, #8

By Al Stevens

Trouble follows P.I. Stanley Bentworth like a baby duck. When a brutal murder at sea interrupts his romantic getaway with Grace, his new girlfriend, the ship’s captain recruits Stan to investigate. Stan and Grace soon find themselves the targets of a desperate killer who intends to thwart the investigation whatever it takes. If Stan fails to expose and overcome the villain, he could lose Grace forever and find himself treading water and feeding the sharks somewhere in the expanse of ocean known as the Bermuda Triangle.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mockingbird Songs & Stories
• Release date: Jun 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513081823

Book preview

1

The Saturn station wagon wheezed its way slowly through the small-town streets toward the Projects. It was December, the air was cold, the streets dry, and the sun shining. Every few strokes the four-cylinder egg-beater missed a beat, making me wonder whether it would make it all the way. Just like every other day.

I’m Stanley Bentworth, proprietor of the one-man operation known as the Bentworth Detective Agency LLC, an investigative service in the small town of Delbert Falls, Maryland. At the moment, I was broke with only my credit card and its outrageous credit limit to pay my expenses. It was like a Ponzi scheme. Every month, I’d pay the minimum while the total amount owed climbed upward with new charges and new finance fees. Eventually, the card would hit its ceiling, and I’d not only be broke again, I’d be in serious debt. Bernie Madoff would have been proud.

This P.I. business had its ups and downs, and it was in one of its downs lately. During a recent era of ups, I’d leased a nice car, a belch-fire neck-snapper, I called my mid-life Chrysler. When times became tough and money became tight, I sadly returned the beauty to the dealer and resurrected the old Saturn from its resting place in my sister’s back yard. Now the faithful old heap was my main ride again and was probably more suitable to my needs because it blended into the background when I had to venture into the Projects.

My immediate concern was not the financial pickle I was in or the rattletrap I drove, but a bail jumper named Doobie Sievers. I had the assignment to find him. It wasn’t a high-paying job, but every little bit counted. If I kept taking these small jobs, got enough of them, and closed them quickly, I could keep the doors open. I drove around the Projects looking on every corner and in every doorway. I didn’t know where to find Doobie.

My only lead would have to come from his sister if she was willing to give him up. Ruby Sievers ran a floating crap game at the edges of the Projects. I’m not a crapshooter, but Ruby’s action was popular among those who were serious about the game. High rollers with plenty of juice ventured into the Projects to follow her around. If Ruby didn’t know where Doobie was tucked away, or if she didn’t want to rat him out, maybe one of her patrons would. It was worth a try.

I stopped at a tobacco shop on the edge of the Projects where Ruby bought her expensive cigars. I bought a box of the brand she liked and asked the proprietor, Any idea where the game is today?

The old guy looked from side to side as if to make sure nobody was listening. Nobody could have been. There was nobody else there. She’s five blocks down in the alley just before you get to the bowling alley. That kind of information was volatile to say the least. Ruby moved her game with some regularity to keep the cops from busting her. And if she got word some stranger was looking for the game, she’d tell her players to scatter, she’d gather up the dice, and within seconds, other than for knee prints in the dirt, there’d be no sign that a game had been underway. Then she’d set up somewhere else, word would spread, and soon the dice would be rolling and money would be changing hands again with ten percent of each wager going into Ruby’s tin cash box.

I drove to the bowling alley. I was wearing my grubby street person clothes so my presence didn’t raise any alarms. I strolled down the street until I was within earshot of the game. You could always tell when a good crap game was underway. Crapshooters are noisy, and the shouting can be heard two blocks away.

I made my way down the sidewalk to the alley. As I got closer, the shouting became louder. A turn into the alley exposed the game, about seven guys on their knees in a semicircle against a wall and several others standing behind them, leaning forward and shouting, wads of currency clenched in their hands. One of the guys on his knees was rolling the dice, and the others were cheering the dice on, rooting for the number to deliver them a winner depending on how they’d placed their bets.

Ruby made me right away. If she hadn’t known me, I would have been witness to a major stampede when she signaled her players to scram.

But Ruby knew I was okay. I’d never worked Vice, I was a P.I. now, and whatever I wanted, it wouldn’t have anything to do with her game.

She swaggered up to greet me, rubbing her scrawny rawhide hands together. She was about five feet four with short-cropped sandy hair, no jewelry, and somewhere in her middle years. Her face showed the ravages of a lifetime on the streets fending for herself. She wore threadbare, patched jeans, a denim shirt, and a leather motorcycle jacket with matching boots. The jacket had the faded colors of a long since disbanded motorcycle gang. She was smoking a cigar, not a woman’s cigarillo, but the real thing, a stogie. Stanley the manly. What brings you out on a cold night? Looking for some action?

I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke away from her. I handed her the box of cigars, a peace offering. I’m looking for Doobie. He’s out on bail and didn’t show for his appearance.

She screwed up her face and spat on the sidewalk. Shit! I didn’t even know he’d been busted. What the fuck did he do this time?

Went into the Laundromat to crack some coin boxes. All he got was caught. You know where I can find him?

He got a crib. Borrowed it from our cousin who don’t need it now bein’s she’s doing a stretch for soliciting the mayor’s chauffeur while the fucking mayor was right there in the goddamn limo, you know what I’m saying?

You gonna tell me where the crib’s at?

Yeah. Doobie’s getting himself in some bad company. I’m worried about him. He’s better off in stir. She told me the address and apartment number and I took off, eager to make an easy several hundred.

It would be easy because Doobie wouldn’t put up a struggle. He was my kind of fugitive. I tried to avoid physical altercations whenever I could. Once he knew he was caught, he’d come along peacefully. He was an easy-going dude whose only problem was with controlled substances.

Doobie and I went way back. When I was a narc during a hiatus from Homicide, Doobie had been one of my most reliable confidential informants, what we cops called a ‘snitch,’ but not out of disrespect. Snitches were our valued resources. Without them we’d never have made a collar on the streets. Doobie had been my favorite snitch. He’d give up a dealer in a heartbeat for a twenty dollar bill that he could spend with a different dealer. It didn’t matter to Doobie.

I drove to the address Ruby had given of a tall tenement building in a row of tall tenement buildings. I parked two blocks away in a gas station parking lot. Any closer and some of the dwellers might decide my heap’s tires would be worth stealing. I walked the two blocks to Doobie’s crib. The tenements all looked alike, and the courtyard that separated rows of buildings was littered with trash but pretended to be a playground. The swings had missing chains or seats, the merry-go-round was rusted and looked like its pivot was stuck, and those were the nice rides. The see-saw was busted in half, and the chin-up bars had been bent down to the ground. No children were anywhere around to use the playground equipment. The only occupants of the playground were into different kinds of play. Drugs, crap games, prostitution in the alleys. Just the kind of neighborhood Doobie would be comfortable living in.

His crib was up two flights of stairs. I don’t like stairs, but that’s all they have in the Projects. My legs were aching by the time I found myself looking at his door, paint chipped away, and two bullet holes at chest level—entrance wounds on the outside, I was happy to see.

I knocked and called his name. Doobie! Open up.

Who is it? came the weak voice from inside the crib.

Stan Bentworth. I need to see you.

His voice perked up. Stanley! How’d you find me?

Ruby. Open up.

It’s open.

It was. I opened the door and stepped in. Before I knew it, a round blob of a person rushed me, bounced off my body, and ran out the door. I was knocked against the wall and took a moment to catch my balance.

The crib was the usual tenement dwelling. A bedroom off to the side and a combined living room and kitchenette with peeling wallpaper and a bare window so grimy it let only a glimmer of light into the room. The sparse and ratty furniture was littered with debris: magazines, pizza boxes, fast food bags, and soiled laundry.

Doobie was sitting on a torn-up old sofa with one of his sleeves rolled up, a rubber tube around his bicep, and a syringe in his other hand hovering in the neighborhood of his basilic vein.

Who just bumped me? I said.

Doobie’s eyes were slits. His skin was gray and he needed a bath and a shave. He lowered the syringe. Dealer, he said. Don’t know his name. I wave at him out the window and he makes home deliveries. What you want with me?

You skipped out on your bail, Doobie. I got to take you in.

He raised the spike again ready to plunge it in. He looked up with regret on his face. Bail? Oh. That. I forgot. Tell Bondo I’m sorry. Let me finish here, first. I think it’ll be my last fix until I can score in the slam.

When I was a narc on the force, I wouldn’t have let him proceed with his fix. I’d have confiscated the drugs and the paraphernalia. Now it didn’t matter to me.

What you waiting for? I said.

Can’t find the fucking vein. He examined his other arm. They’s all collapsed.

I took a closer look. His arm was scraped and scarred from below his elbow to halfway up his bicep. I’d seen those kinds of marks before, and they always defined a junkie who wouldn’t quit, whose arm would never heal and would always carry the signs of a serious addiction. They wouldn’t be helped and they wouldn’t help themselves. They’d keep pumping that shit into their veins until it killed them. For most of them, I didn’t give a rat’s ass what they did to themselves. But every now and then, I’d come across someone whose surrender to the monkey was a waste of spirit, the destruction of a good soul. And I’d be sorry. Like I was for Doobie now.

That’s quite a collection of battle scars, I said, pointing to his arm.

He laughed. Yeah. I had the highest marks in my class.

Well, get it over with so we can go.

Be right with you, he said and sunk the spike in his arm and slowly pushed the plunger. His head moved back as if to look up, but he closed his eyes with a dreamy glaze on his face. Yeah, he said. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Then he opened his eyes and stared out the door past me.

Ready to go? I said.

He didn’t answer. He stayed in position leaning against the back of the sofa. He didn’t blink either. I pressed my fore and middle fingers against his neck and couldn’t find a pulse. I thought about CPR, but wondered what would be the point. I had just watched a wasted life shut down and come to an end. Letting him die was the best gift I could give him. I was sad for my lost friend, but glad too. I called 9-1-1 and asked for an ambulance. I told them it was an overdose. Then I called Sonny Calderaro, my old partner in Homicide.

What’s up, Stan?

Got a body here, Sonny. Overdose. I think it’s a homicide. Somebody’s pushing bad heroin in the Projects. I’d seen the dosage Doobie had injected. It was a small number of units. Street variety heroin shouldn’t have killed him. It had to have been spiked with something more potent, something a frail user like Doobie couldn’t tolerate. A tox screen by the coroner would tell the tale.

That’s all we need, he said. You know who’s dealing the bad horse?

I got a face but no name. Maybe one of the narcs knows him from the description I’ll give. I’ll wait here until somebody gets here. Not going to be all day, is it?

No. A slow news day. I’ll head out now.

We rang off and I called Bondo, the bail bondsman.

I got Doobie, I said. The meat wagon’ll be bringing him in.

Shit, Bondo said. Nice guys finish last. Stop by and I’ll write you a check. Thanks, Stan.

As I rung off, my cell’s battery expired. As usual, I’d neglected to charge it. No matter, I’d called everyone that needed to be called, and if something came up, I could use one of the cops’ phones when they got here.

I’d seen guys die before. Some of them were good guys and some not, but it always affected me. One instant, they’re standing there giving me or somebody else a bunch of shit, the next, they’re face down on the pavement.

I sat in a chair opposite Doobie and looked at him long and hard. He was a mess. But that didn’t matter because now he was dead.

Seeing that always brings me to terms with my own mortality, which was why I thought I was in the wrong business and why I drank. I didn’t expect it to keep happening now that I was a freelance agent. But it did, and here I stood, looking at the fresh remains of somebody I’d liked. Not loved. Not even cared for. Just liked. As a friend. And that was a loss.

A friendship is mutual respect, a willingness to offer one’s hand to help, having and showing concern for one another’s welfare. A friendship is an energy, an entity unto itself, something of worth and tangible. We can see it and we can feel it. And it can be eliminated in the blink of an eye, leaving only memories. We don’t just lose friends. We lose friendships, and each time it happens, we lose part of ourselves.

It takes years to build a friendship. It takes milliseconds to tear it down. I hate how that makes me feel. I was pissed at Doobie for putting me in that kind of situation, having me watch him die, to mourn the loss of a no account junkie.

I needed a vacation. I needed to go where the potential for such loss was not so great, where men didn’t stand in the way of bullets, knives, and spikes of bad drugs as a routine part of their lives. If I could find such a place, maybe I’d stay there.

***

I spent the next hour or so in Doobie’s crib with Sonny and the crime scene boys as they worked the scene. Because it was a narcotics-related death, Detective Grover from the Narcotics Unit was in on the investigation. I sat with a sketch artist and described the fellow who’d bounced off me in his hurry to leave the crib. Between us we got a reasonable image of the guy.

Grover looked at the picture and said, That’s Sanchez. We’ve been after him for a while. But he never gets caught holding anything.

Sonny looked over our shoulder. We pick him up, Stan, you available for a lineup?

Yeah, I said. Call me.

Sonny said to Grover, If it turns out to be an OD, we’ll let you know and you can have Sanchez. But Stan says the dosage wasn’t potent enough. That means toxic heroin, and he’s ours.

We stand a better chance of nailing him, Grover said. I know where he hangs.

I didn’t care who got the collar. Let them fight their turf war. I just wanted to get out of there and collect my check from Bondo so I could get some time in at Oliver’s. I’ll talk to you guys later, I said and went out the crib and down the two flights of stairs.

I started to walk the two blocks to my car when I sensed something was wrong. There was no one on the street. Something had cleared out the curb dwellers who hung out, dealt and bought drugs, and generally socialized. It wasn’t the police presence. Innocent onlookers usually stuck around to see what was happening when the cops rolled in. Only one thing could scare off the locals. Something was about to happen on the street, something that could involve collateral damage, and that meant one thing: bullets.

Somebody was about to be taken down. I wondered who it was. I hurried to get to my car before it hit the fan. Gang killings were no longer my problem. If I stayed around at best I’d wind up a witness. At worst, I’d be caught in the crossfire. Even so, I wondered who was on someone’s shit list and who was the someone. Was it a rumble with two gangs shooting it out? Was somebody targeted for a hit? Some poor bastard who woke up this morning for the last time. Who could it be?

Then I found out.

The bullet slammed into the block wall just above my head before I heard the shot. That’s because I was close to the wall and not to the shooter. Which probably accounted for his miss. But the shot was so close that fragments of cinder block rained down onto my hat and the shoulders of my topcoat. My first reaction was to take cover. Well, duh. Somebody was shooting at me. I ducked into an alley and squatted down behind a dumpster. The stink was unbearable. The dumpster hadn’t been emptied in a while, yet it had been used to deposit garbage. I could smell an abundance of dirty disposable diapers.

My Glock was back in my office. Roscoe, my .38 special, was in a holster clipped to my belt. I wished I’d worn the Glock. I pulled Roscoe from the holster, swung open the six-shooter cylinder, and checked the load. Five rounds and an empty cylinder for under the firing pin. I only had five shots. With the Glock I’d have had nine. I snapped the cylinder shut and cocked the pistol, which I kept in my hand at the ready.

Nothing stirred in the street. I couldn’t hear a sound. Not even a car.

Armed and ready, but scared shitless, I waited for my assailant, wondering who he was and why he wanted to kill me. I try not to piss people off that much. I ran down a mental list of cases I’d worked in the past few months and came up with nobody who was still on the street who’d exact this kind of revenge. I ran down another mental list of women I’d been partial to who might have had jealous boyfriends. There were none because there hadn’t been that many women, and I was partial to women without that kind of baggage.

The only possibility was Sanchez, the drug dealer I’d just encountered in Doobie’s crib. He might be smart enough to know I could identify him, but he was stupid to do anything about it a block away from where the cops were holding forth over his victim. Whoever it was, he was holding his ground. If I came running out of the alley, he’d get another shot at me. If I waited, he could wait me out until I froze or starved to death.

I couldn’t call for help or for a pizza delivery. My cell’s battery was dead.

I needed to make better preparations if I was going to get my sorry ass pinned down in an alley.

I wondered if the guy was still out there. I moved behind the dumpster to where I could reach a trash can. It was overflowing with garbage, and I dumped it out and threw the trash can as far as I could toward the street. It made a clattering noise when it hit the pavement, and three shots rang out, two of which apparently