Cold Kitten

By Thomas Cox

Prostitution--
Murder--
Extortion--
threaten to scandalize a large Midwestern high school, Sylvester Overton Barton (known as S.O.B.H.S.) unless school security chief Nick Cotton, partnered with a friend of shady background, discovers answers that can save lives and reputations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468508895

Thomas Cox

Thomas Cox is an award winning writer of adult crime stories in the mystery/suspense genre. He also writes adventure and fantasy books for your readers. Currently the author lives in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Book preview

1

Standing in the entrance to a public park in a light drizzle that blanketed the small southern town, Roscoe E. Buckmiller waited for the men who were coming to kill him.

Roscoe smoked a cigar, hard to keep lighted in the rain unless he drew incessantly on it. If it got too wet, he could bite off a chunk and chew it. Waiting, what he really would have like to have would be a joint. But he didn’t want to fight one of those in the wet either. So he waited and watched the glistening street.

He thought about the beautiful woman with whom he spent the past several days and nights. Vicky was something to think about.

The nights had been especially satisfying.

Roscoe E. Buckmiller hunched inside his raincoat with the hood up over his unruly black hair. From his vantage point he could watch the sparse street traffic for the people he expected. Two of them, Tully had told him, would be coming.

Let’s get it on, was Roscoe’s philosophy.

Only thirty minutes earlier he had placed the beautiful and sensual Vicky on a bus, telling her to visit her sister in Baltimore. Stay there ‘til you hear that Gino’s dead, he told her. Then you can square things with Tony.

She said, I can talk to Tony for you.

No good ‘til his old man’s gone. Roscoe sucked on the joint he was working at that moment, then passed it to her for a quick and final hit. Other people in the bus line sniffed the air and looked over at them. Tony’s got to make a symbolic gesture. I want you out’a the line of fire.

Thanks for caring, Roscoe, she said, touching his permanently five-o’clock-shadowed cheek lightly. You did me a favor I’ll never forget.

My pleasure. It had been his pleasure to share a bed with her those several nights. Good luck to you, Vicky.

That’s how they had parted. Now, this late at night, and this far from the city center, the town had practically closed itself. Other than the row house lights in the distance, the only lighting was the corner street lamp, and it illuminated none of the park.

Across the street from the entrance the neon sign of the all-night diner glittered. Roscoe had purchased a coffee there, left a huge tip, given the counterman his name, and told him if anybody asked he would be over in the park.

He looked skyward.

The moon remained obscured by the dark clouds, so it was a good night for a killing. Or two, if necessary.

Roscoe tried relighting the cigar stub, but it was so soggy by now the fire wouldn’t hold. He bit off a piece, chewed for a minute, spat it out, and dropped the remains of the stogie squarely in the center of the entrance to the park. An open invitation, he thought.

He wondered if he had time to find shelter somewhere for another joint but discarded that idea, as appealing as it was. He wanted to be waiting and ready when they showed up.

The waiting, doing nothing, was the hard part since Roscoe was a man born to perpetual motion. The rain had dampened his shirt collar and his trousers, giving him added irritation. Beneath his raincoat Roscoe wore the shoulder rig holding the 9mm. Browning automatic that he had carefully cleaned, wiped and loaded with fifteen rounds. The luminous dial of his watch showed nine-thirty.

He opened his coat and withdrew the pistol. In no hurry, and with no pedestrians in sight, he worked the slide and jacked the first cartridge into the chamber before returning the gun to the shoulder holster. Three times within the next thirty seconds, he tested the holster’s spring and smooth sliding action as the weapon cleared.

Then he saw the car cruise slowly past from his left to his right, two men up front, both hatless, the driver with his head turned away to peer from his side, the passenger looking in the direction of the park. Roscoe peered as hard as possible and thought he recognized Virgil Tully. It appeared that Tully had told him the truth. There were only two of them. Roscoe was sorry that Tully had to be one, depending on what Tully had in mind.

2

When the car was out of sight, Roscoe stepped from his place of concealment to look after it. A few seconds later he saw the car coming back in his direction to slow and stop in front of the all-night diner at an angle across the street. He moved back inside the park entrance.

The driver was a stranger to him, a thin man whose face was narrower than Tully’s, who let his sports coat hang open and kept his right hand inside it near his belt. The guy wasn’t even bright enough to wear raingear. Tully had a plastic raincoat over his sports jacket and a Marlins baseball cap tugged down on his head. Roscoe watched Tully peer inside the café’s front window, then open the door. He couldn’t hear what was said, but Tully gave a little wave inside and rejoined his companion on the sidewalk.

The two men spoke together, Tully nodding first, then the stranger. Tully unbuttoned his coat and shook his head, and Roscoe wondered what he was thinking. The stranger looked anxious to come into the park, leading the way across the street, Tully a little behind and to his left.

Roscoe turned and walked along the path toward the park’s center where the brick walkways intersected to form a circle in the middle of which stood a statue of a man on horseback, a Civil War, or Revolutionary War, or Spanish-American war officer—Roscoe had never thought to inquire—with drawn saber astraddle a rearing horse, bulking gray in the dimness. On the tip of the saber some jokester had climbed up and stuck a woman’s panties, which now had become a wet, drooping, pink flag.

He walked halfway around the monument before exiting the path to wait behind the curved base of another large tree. He looked back to see his footprints on the bricks which was fine with him. If they had flashlights, which undoubtedly they would, the footprints would lead them to him; the tree would provide cover.

He heard them before he saw them. They had left the walkway to come in among the trees. He hoped that Tully would stay out of it, or at least not be the first one on him. He palmed the automatic pistol and lightly cupped his left hand underneath his right on the grip. Whoever came first would be the one he killed first.

The stranger closed first, stepping out of the tree-line onto the pathway, shining his light to both sides and down at the footprints on the bricks. Roscoe saw the outline of a gun with attached suppressor in the man’s fist. He could discern the man’s wariness by his movements, the quick lifting and turning of his head. Next came the larger bulk of Virgil Tully, hanging back, stepping onto the path behind the first man. Watching both of them, Roscoe drew a long breath and held it. He raised his pistol into firing position, tightening his left-handed cup beneath the butt, and started exhaling slowly, evenly, as he sighted.

Tully shined his flashlight onto the other man and called, Fisk!

The first man, caught in the beam, spun around. "Damn it! Git that light off me!"

Tully shot him twice, the silenced shots making spatting sounds. The man called Fisk stumbled and fell. Tully stepped forward, shining the light on his downed partner, aimed and shot him in the head. He stepped back, made a little wave with the flashlight and shut it off.

Roscoe! he called, not loudly. Don’t shoot me, you prick.

Tully raised both hands, one holding the flashlight and the other holding his gun so that Roscoe could at least see them in silhouette. I’m putting it away, he called.

Roscoe stepped into the opening, his own gun still held at ready. Good evening to you too, Virgil.

We cool? Tully tucked the flashlight in his armpit, removed the silencer from his pistol and put it and gun into the pockets of his sports coat, then readjusted his raincoat. Shining the light on the dead man, he nudged the body with his toe. Nobody liked him. He was a hotshot from Boston, one of Gino’s imports.

Roscoe put his own automatic on safety and holstered it. He stooped and pried the pistol from the dead man’s hand. It was a King model .22 automatic fitted with an 8-inch suppressor. He hefted it up and down in his right hand. Nice piece, he said, removed the silencer, and tucked both parts into the deep side pockets of his raincoat. It would make a neat addition to his growing collection.

Fisk’s got no use for it now. Tully walked on the dead man’s back, stepping onto and over him to seat himself on the ledge at the base of the statue. With his toe he nudged the corpse, then put his feet upon it, using the body as a footstool. He turned off his flashlight. Tony says you should get scarce for awhile.

Roscoe laughed. Like Tony gives a shit? Besides, his old man’s still alive.

Payback for Vicky, Tully told him. Tony was pissed when he found out it was Gino you stole her from. He didn’t know it was his ol’ man been fuckin’ both of ‘em. So Tony don’t want you dead. Just don’t tell him you been fucking Vicky, too.

In the dimness Roscoe made a zipping motion across his lips.

She as good as they say? Tully asked. The best of Tony Banelli’s girls? Gotta hand it to you. For an ugly son of a bitch you get more women.

Roscoe shrugged. I can’t help it if women like me.

Shit, I’m getting a woody thinking about her, Tully said. You get all the breaks, dimwit. Why couldn’t I have rode to the rescue instead of a shit like you?

I got the bigger dick.

TMI. Okay, tell me this. Why’d you give us your location? You wanted us to find you.

Roscoe, too, walked on the corpse to sit beside Tully. I want to close this thing with Gino and Tony Banelli.

Forget the old man. Gino’s been indicted, and he will be convicted this time. When he gets to prison, there are guys there who’ll see he don’t come out. Besides, he’s dying of cancer. I don’t know how many contracts he put on you, but I figure they’ll wash out when he’s dead. In the meantime, my friend, I think you should take Tony’s advice and lay low ‘til that happens. There might be other guys already contracted.

Hey, I figure if somebody’s shooting at me, I must be doing something right.

Tully drew a breath. I brought you something you might need. He carefully withdrew a packet from an inside coat pocket and passed it to Roscoe. Courtesy of Meg in Jersey City. Three different I.D.’s, one for each of the three times you fucked her, so she says, social security numbers, driver licenses, credit cards, and passports. She’s still the best paper cutter going. You okay for money?

Not a problem. That I have a lot of. Roscoe tapped him with the packet. I’ll pay you for this.

Forget it, Tully said. You saved my ass a couple times. Got a place to go?

Yeah, a sort of side trip to Indiana. Drop in on my folks.

Indiana? Are you serious? That’s where you go from, not to.

Roscoe said, I can visit my old high school teacher, one I told you about, the guy who got me graduated. ‘Sides, who’s gonna look for me in Indiana? Whenever I feel the need to get depressed, I go home.

I can see how that might be, Tully said.

Way I figure, said Roscoe, is you can’t appreciate the up’s if you don’t experience the down’s.

It’s scary, Tully said, but sometimes you make weird sense.

3

Roscoe reached over with his foot and nudged the dead man’s head. How will you square this?

I got wounded and couldn’t give chase. Tully stood, walked across the corpse again, and clicked on the flashlight, withdrew his left hand from his pocket and extended it, open-fingered in the beam, toward Roscoe. He maneuvered himself so that the statue was behind him. Little finger, please? Try not to take my hand with it.

Roscoe trampled the dead man yet another time positioning himself. He took the .22 and reattached the suppressor.

It’ll hurt.

Do it before I change my mind.

Roscoe aimed with Fisk’s silenced .22, and shot off the tip of Tully’s little finger at the first joint. Tully hunched forward, clutching his hand beneath his arm. The light beam made wild spirals in the trees. He let Roscoe take the light from him, jerked a handkerchief from his pocket and wound it tightly around his left hand. His breath sounded raspy when he straightened up.

Son of a bitch, it does hurt, he said. I don’t like pain. He turned sideways to Roscoe. Stop wasting time. Find that little bugger. We can’t leave my nub here for some cop to pick up.

With the flashlight they searched the base of the monument that now had a red streak and a bullet gouge on it. Roscoe found the bloody stub and motioned Tully closer. He used his own handkerchief to pick up the digit, wrap it, and stuff it inside Tully’s raincoat pocket.

Now I’m feeling queasy, Tully said. Car key’s in Fisk’s pocket. Get it for me.

Roscoe found the key and handed it to Tully, then returned the flashlight. Get yourself to a doctor.

I will. You get yourself lost.

Roscoe started off until Tully called his name. He stopped and looked back.

We’re even now, Tully said. Nobody owes nobody.

4

Indiana, our Indiana

Indiana, we’re all for you

We will fight for

The Cream and Crimson,

For the glory of old I. U.

At one-thirty Monday morning, Nick Cotton’s cell phone rang to the tune of the I.U. fight song, dragging him out of yet another sleepless nightmare in which he saw the familiar face of a school board member grinning in triumph at him from inside a toilet bowl. The nightmare left him nauseous.

Nick fumbled the phone from his bedside table and got it positioned to the side of his head. He swallowed the bile and grunted an irritable hello.

The youthful female voice at the other end of his cell said, Hi, Coach. You’re in luck. You’re getting a present tonight.

For a couple of seconds before he drew a breath, Nick massaged his eyelids with the fingertips of his free hand. Who the hell is this? Do you know what time it is?

Your lucky time, Nick. This is Kitten. You like kittens, don’t you? You’ll love me.

What? Nick shook his head to clear it.

Okay, it’s Rhonda Lewis.

Now it registered. Rhonda Lewis was a sixteen, almost seventeen, year old student at S.O.B. and had been in one of his classes the previous semester, which would have been spring of the past school year. Pretty couldn’t come close to describing her. Gorgeous and Sexy were better.

He remembered the way she teased the boys in class when she wore dresses and how she opened and shut her legs, flashing a quick glimpse of muff at the gasping males. I don’t often wear panties, she told the class one day. They’re too confining. The very next day local physical therapy outlets had a run on neck braces from S.O.B. male students who had suffered whiplash craning around to look at her. Several had to be treated in the nurse’s office, and it was rumored that some had to be given special drugs to induce withdrawal from semi-permanent hard-on’s.

Rhonda’s exposed little joy-box had flustered Nick himself more than once. He was only human. One time she had asked him, You like what you see, Mr. Cotton? Nick hadn’t responded. Of course you do, she added. I can tell from the drool on your chin. I’m too old for this, he thought.

Now, into his ear, Rhonda Lewis went on, I’ll be at your apartment in ten minutes. I’ll knock real soft on your door and you can let me in.

No! Go home and go to bed.

If that’s how it’s going to be, Nick, then I can’t promise quiet. I can make a real scene when I want to. I can get the cops called.

What do you want, Rhonda?

I’m your present for tonight. Come on, Nick, I’ve seen how you look at me. Don’t tell me you don’t want it.

Don’t do this, Rhonda.

Oh, I must, she said. You can make it easy or hard for yourself. If I have to scream and cry how you tried to seduce me, who do you think the cops and the school bigwigs will believe. Nick, I done this before. I know the game. Few minutes, Nick, and I’m yours for the night. We’ll negotiate later.

She broke the connection.

Oh, shit! Nick sat up on the side of his bed. It took him less than ten seconds to decide what to do. He punched in the numbers for his neighbor’s phone, the woman who lived next door along the hall. After a few rings, Annie Mercer answered sleepily.

5

I’m sorry, Annie, to get you up at this hour—

That you, Nicholas? I fell asleep in my chair in front of the TV, she said. Are you hungry? I got half a meatloaf we can heat while we watch the rest of this ballsy movie.

Not now, Annie. I got a problem, Nick said and explained it to her quickly.

Let me grab my robe and I’ll be there in a second, Annie said.

Nick pulled on trousers, threw on a jacket over his bare chest, and, shoeless, waited just inside his own door until he heard his neighbor’s door shut. He opened his and motioned her in from the lighted hall.

Seventy-year-old Annie Mercer, a retired English teacher who could play the piano and organ and did so at various public functions, had hung it up several years ago when she claimed that, with the current mores, parents, and kids, she was never sure when she entered her classroom if she was going to be greeted by Good morning, Miss Mercer, or Yo, what’chu lookin’ at, bitch? In retirement, she watched action movies and imagined herself as a mad avenger who could teach some young punks good manners. She hated and never failed to express what public education had become.

Annie wore a flowered housecoat with her white hair pinned up and bunny slippers on her blue-veined feet. She patted Nick on the chin. Don’t worry, big boy. You got a witness. What’s she want?

A passing grade on the state exams. That’s my guess.

Undeserving, huh?

She failed the mandated annual test and was supposed to be in the remedial class I taught last summer. She never showed.

Sure, how else can she manipulate a passing grade? Ah, the wonderful age of entitlement. Can’t her parents do anything?

When I called them, the father told me to fuck off. He said it’s our problem to get his daughter through school.

Annie chuckled. Where’ve I heard that before? It’s time for you to get out of it too, Nick.

I know.

What will you look for?

That I don’t know, he said. Maybe I can snare a job teaching and coaching in another state. Reciprocity.

It’ll be the same all over.

I can’t imagine not coaching, Nick said.

Imagine it, pal, Annie said. You slammed that door on yourself when you dunked the board member. God, I wish I’d been there to see that. She patted him on the chin. Everything progresses, Nick. We’re in the first stages of our Brave New World. Technology is God. Teachers are to blame for bad parenting. Nobody fails in school. And we teach to the state mandated tests.

Nick massaged his temples again.

Annie was on a roll. That’s the order of the day. If a kid fails the state tests, he then takes remedial summer classes. Those results stay within the school district. No one is allowed to fail. The magic pencil.

It’s a bunch of shit, Nick said.

Annie merely shrugged. No luck with your apps and resumes?

No, and the longer it goes—

He didn’t finish. It was painful. One year and two days ago he had officially lost the job that had made life bearable and had given him a sense of purpose. He had been removed as head football coach of the Sylvester Overton Barton High School Beavers.

For the previous seven years—seven—Nick had won the Central Indiana Conference and once had finished runner-up in the state championship game. For Nick, it had been the job. It was meaningful. The fact that he also was a teacher at the high school was an adjunctive necessity, not a position he took with a whole lot of seriousness. Coaching was it. The job he lived for. The only way it could’ve been better was if the actual job of sideline coaching could’ve stretched to twelve months instead of the usual three or four, counting summer practices.

But on one fateful night, the ax had fallen.

All it had taken to bring his world tumbling down was a single, newly elected, asshole school board member and some bad timing.

Following a close loss to a neighboring opponent, the new board member and father of a totally mediocre player had charged into the locker room to berate Nick for not playing his son, who, incidentally, had found mastery of the simple playbook beyond his comprehension. It wasn’t the first time the board member had gotten on Nick’s back. There had been a steady stream of e-mails and text messages telling Nick how to coach the team. Nick took it until he exploded.

With an evil grin he had arm-locked the protesting father and marched him into the boys’ toilet stalls, where he proceeded to put the man onto his knees and shove his face into the commode. The man came up sputtering. Nick had then strong-armed the man to the locker room exit and literally kicked his butt out the door to the collective cheers of the squad, including the man’s own son.

The next day, early Saturday morning, an emergency school board meeting had been called. Of course, the board member wanted Nick fired immediately. When wiser, experienced heads tried to calm him and remind him that Coach Cotton was liked by the kids, he responded with: "Fuck the kids! I’m the one who had to swallow toilet water!"

No one could dissuade him that the coach had to be more than just reprimanded. Assistant Superintendent Larry Voight came to Nick’s rescue with a compromise.

Nick was to be removed from his job as coach, for unexplained personal reasons, but not fired from the school district since he was a tenured teacher. If that happened, the media would jump all over it, and, certainly, the aggrieved board member wouldn’t want it publicized that he had his head pushed into a toilet. Reluctantly, the board member grunted his agreement. So a non-existent job called Chief of High School Security was created and pinned on Nick Cotton. All it really meant was that he could remain on full pay as a part-time teacher for the remainder of the year. The school’s hope was that Nick would quickly resign and move on. There was to be no more coaching, and no more interacting with any school board member, especially the pissed-off one—or rather, pissed on.

But Nick had fooled everybody by accepting his demotion. His inner hope was that the particular board member would be voted out and he might be able to return to coaching.

A light tapping on his apartment door snapped him back to the present.

6

Nick opened the door wide and looked at Rhonda Lewis.

She definitely was teenage gorgeous. She wore a sheath dress with a single shoulder strap, high heels, dark mesh stockings, carefully coiffed dark hair, and just the right touch of makeup. No wonder heads would turn when Rhonda dressed well. Tonight it looked like she had dressed for a party.

But it wasn’t going to be Nick’s party, he decided.

He kept the door wide to allow Rhonda to get a good look at gray-haired Annie Mercer. Rhonda’s bright smile faded.

Annie, this is Rhonda Lewis, a student of mine last summer. Apparently she has some issues to discuss.

Then we must listen to her, Annie said, sweetly.

But Rhonda was backing up, shaking her head, turning and retreating into the corridor to the outside door. She left quickly without looking around.

Or maybe not, Annie said.

Thank you. Nick shook his head. I don’t think she’ll be back tonight.

She’s young and pretty.

Like probably seventeen at the most.

Nicholas, about that meatloaf—?

Nick was certain Annie wanted to adopt him, but for what he didn’t know. I can’t eat and sleep both, Annie. I need my sleep. It was a lie. He probably wouldn’t sleep any the rest of this night.

If you need me again, call me, Annie said. What are you going to do about it?

I can’t get the job back.

Annie gave him a puzzled look before comprehending. Nicholas, I don’t mean coaching. She nodded toward the hallway. I mean her.

Tomorrow I will see the girl at school and try to find out what the hell is going on, Nick said.

But the idea had occurred to him that tonight’s little episode with Rhonda Lewis might have something to do with another reference to Kitten. Last week someone called Kitten had been busy fucking a high-profile politician right inside the high school. Unfortunately, the image of the fat, naked legislator was one that stuck with Nick.

Now he had an identity for Kitten.

Nick had chased a naked man through the building at night. Nick wouldn’t have believed it himself had he not been involved. He had gotten the phone call from the head night custodian at his favorite watering hole, Let the Big Dog Eat, a pub/restaurant on the north side of Indianapolis.

The custodian had said, Mr. Cotton, there’s a naked man in the building.

Nick’s reaction had been a blank stare as he sat with his beer bottle halfway to his lips and his cell phone to his ear. Finally, he said, Tell your guys to quit flashing each other, George.

Not one of mine. We’re working upstairs. I came down to get something, and this fat guy runs out of a classroom. I’m too old to chase him down. There’s a naked girl, too. But I got only a glimpse of her. She’s fast. She went the other direction.

I’ll be right there.

To see the guy or the girl?

Smart ass.

When Nick used his master key to let himself into the rear of the building, George met him in the corridor. I think I got him cornered in the science wing.

This is a kid?

"No, sir. I’m talking grown man. Middle-aged, fat ass, bouncing belly, balding head, little dick. I think I’ve