Tail Spin

Everett sobbed into his one available open hand. Sherlock straightened. “You’re disgusting,” and she kicked him hard in the knee.

“Wha—?”

“Listen, you moron,” she said, getting in his face. “You’ve done so much bad stuff in your miserable life you nearly fill up a computer disk. You’ve never shown an ounce of remorse about any of your victims, and now you have the gall to whine and cry? You make me sick.

“Now, you pathetic butt worm, you will tell us who hired you or I’m going to get ahold of some really appalling photos of kids who’ve been molested and write your name on the photos in big block letters. I’ll have the warden paper the bathrooms and the cafeteria. I expect there’ll be bets on how long you’ll last. Can you imagine having a big bar of soap stuffed in your mouth, your jaws held together?”

Everett stopped crying, shut off like a spigot. He believed she was dead serious. “I heard about that,” he said, and couldn’t help the shudder. “You can’t do that, there are rules you cops gotta stick to. You’re constrained.”

“Do I look constrained, Don?” Savich shook his head at him. “You don’t get it, do you? You tried to kill our friends at Slipper Hollow. You think we wouldn’t make up a story about you, that we’d hesitate to do anything we need to get the people you were with?”

Don shook his head back and forth, back and forth. “Oh, damn, this wasn’t supposed to happen. It was supposed to be easy, in and out, that was it, then home again and I’ve got enough money for a nice vacation in Aruba. But there was this big guy and he walked into the kitchen and shot me right through the shoulder, then he went after poor Clay, shot him dead. Perky called me a couple of hours ago, told me she was glad I made it out, that even though everything went south, we should be okay if I didn’t do anything stupid. I told her I was clean, no way they’d find out about me. I didn’t leave any ID in my wallet—no driver’s license, nothing. I had to tell her about Clay, that the big guy shot him dead. She told me to lay low, take care of my arm, that everything’d be all right.”

Sherlock asked, “Did you tell Perky about leaving all your blood on the kitchen floor?”

He shook his head, muttered, “Fuckin’ DNA.”

Savich grabbed his chin and squeezed. “Watch your mouth. I won’t tell you again.”

“Who was the fourth member of your team?” Sherlock asked.

“T-Rex—he’s down in Florida by now, runnin’ in the surf at Palm Beach.”

“And what would T-Rex’s real name be?”

“Marion Croop. You can see why he likes his nickname.”

“That’s good, Don. What’s Perky’s real name?”

“No one calls her anything but Perky. It’s the only name I know, honest. She always grins real wide and pokes out her tits, says they’re as perky today as they were ten years ago.”

“How old is Perky?” Savich asked.

“Maybe forty, in there somewhere. She’s a real pro, knows exactly what she’s doing. Got a big mess of blond hair, always wears it up with dangling curls, and she always wears opaque sunglasses. I’ve never seen her eyes.

“This job, dude, it was screwed up from the beginning. Perky bitched and moaned about how we couldn’t be sure of anything, and it frosted her but good to be sent out to this backwoods place with no clue where anything was or who was where. Then she said she started counting the money and that made her think about it some more. She said there were four of us, and chances were that this Rachael Janes would be by herself, maybe with one family member, that was it. It’d be easy. Overkill, that’s what we’d have. It wouldn’t be a problem, and we’d have all that money. Perky was really pissed.”

He looked at Sherlock, and tears trickled out of his eyes. “Nothing went the way it was supposed to. There must have been a half-dozen people there, and all of them knew how to shoot. They had more weapons than we did. We didn’t have a chance. How could that happen? Dude, I really hurt. Can I have one of my pills?”

“I’ll give you two pills, Don,” Savich said, “the minute you tell me who hired you to kill Rachael Janes.”

“Damn, I knew you’d want that. You won’t believe me, but it’s the truth: I don’t know, I don’t know who hired Perky, who gave Perky all that money. She’s always the lead, always, and she gets the contracts, briefs us, maps out the plan we’re going to follow, hands out our shares. And then we split up until the next time. Clay wasn’t one of our usual guys, but Gary’s in bed with the flu, so there were only the three of us we could really count on. I’ll bet you those were military people at that Slipper Hollow. It all went to hell.”

“Did Perky tell you anything about Rachael Janes?”

“Only that she wasn’t supposed to still be kicking around, said she should be lying at the bottom of Black Rock Lake, said those barbiturates were good. She laughed.” Everett shrugged, then moaned. “Perky said Rachael Janes was some artsycraftsy fluff head who arranged furniture and painted walls, and so she should be real easy to knock off. But look what happened. That Rachael Janes must have been another Hou dini, getting herself free like that. Perky was pissed again.”

“Keep it up, Don, you’re doing good,” Savich said.

“It was Clay who kept asking her questions since he hadn’t worked with her before. She finally let on that Lloyd Roderick—that dumb-ass rockweed who’s into teenagers—he’d got himself shot while trying to nail Rachael Janes in Parlow, Kentucky. Who ever heard of Parlow, Kentucky? He was in the hospital, Perky said, so now it was our turn. This girl was a civilian, hiding out, thinking she was safe from the big bad wolf. And then Perky growled.”

He sighed, the tears dry on his cheeks now, and itchy. “That damned girl, she wasn’t alone. Surprised the shi—crap out of everybody, all those shots coming from inside that house. It was close.”

He hung his head, scratched the fingers of his injured arm. “You’re just trying to do a job and look what happens.”

“What exactly happened?” Savich asked.

“Well, when we found our way through the woods to this Slipper Hollow, we saw the girl the first thing, but there was this big guy with her. Perky said it’d be okay, the guy would bite the big one along with her. But before we could get close, a guy comes running outside, yelling for them to get into the house. He obviously knew something was up—I don’t know how he knew, but he did. Rachael Janes and this big guy made it through the front door just as we began shooting. Perky split us up. Clay and me slipped through the woods around to the back of the house to go in, get them in a cross fire. I decided it was best for Clay to stay back, since he was new to the team, to cover me, to shoot anyone who tried to get out the back.