Dead Birmingham Read online

  The real truth was, of course, that I had already gotten money from the case; Malvagio’s advance felt heavy in my pocket. I hadn’t made any headway yet, and this was a case for a beginner, on its face. I had really counted on the all-seeing eyes of the North Side vice empire turning up something. I had asked a lot of people a lot of questions, and come up with nothing.

  Were they lying? Holding out on me to check and see if my story was true? I didn’t think so. The sad fact was, most likely, none of them knew anything. This was genuinely puzzling to me, since that was the stratum of society that the dispossessed always found themselves moving through. The bungled, the lost, the victims of the Big Mistakes we sometimes make in life.

  Malvagio’s little group of educated, hipster twenty-somethings should have stood out like a big fat bug in an ice cream parlor. But they were unknown to the drug culture; rang no bells with the up-all night homeless who stood outside the porno shops and liquor stores begging for the guilty dollar of the shameful; and had never been seen by the street walkers on the North Side, who notice every little detail and turn it over and over in their long hours of talk, talk, talk, that come between fixes and back alley dates. So, it seemed, maybe these kids were not going to be quite so easy to find, after all.

  Out on the ironically named expressway, the traffic was backed up as far as I could see. I could see the landing lights of planes coming into Birmingham International Airport; and the headlights of cars flooding into the city from the opposite direction after a long work day, on their way to catch a movie, grab a meal, or see an opera or a play.

  So many lights. But no real light for many of us.

  I had spent years as a police officer and several years more as a private detective. I had heard and seen a million hard things, things that a younger, more idealistic version of me might have been a little more cocky about. “I can handle it,” I might have said, and that younger me would have been right, for a while. But the truth is that every ugly thing you see, every battered wife or dead kid, leaves a scar on your soul, and when you get to be a certain age, those sad images come back to haunt you in those wee hours when you lie awake and ponder what your life has meant.

  You are thirty-six years old. How long can you keep this up, when man’s every inhumanity to man makes you see ghosts?

  Ghosts. Stuff of the past. I had grown up in the projects, a poor black kid whose mom had been a college dropout. She didn’t let that happen to me. She made sure that I developed a love of reading, of learning. She wanted me to stay in academics, and earn a PhD. But I’d taken my English degree and joined the army. And after my tour was up, I’d gone to the police academy.

  I smiled and shook my head. No good wallowing in regret. A man has to live in the here and now.

  Everything considered, though, this case didn’t sound too bad. Just locate a bunch of up-to-no-good kids, in a greater metropolitan area of around a million, and take some priceless object back from them. Piece of Cake. Yeah, Piece of Devil’s Food cake, maybe. So maybe the kids hadn’t attracted as much attention around town as I had assumed they would. But someone would have noticed them. Someone always does.

  I smiled suddenly, thinking about some of the strange cases that I had shared with my old partner, Lester Broom, when I was still on the Birmingham Police Force. I wondered what Les was up to, at that very moment.

  Chapter 4

  On the north end of Birmingham, it had begun to rain. Water slid down the dusty windows of the North Precinct in gray slow motion, and put a layer of white noise between the sounds of the city and the hum of the office where Detective Lieutenant Lester Broom took a momentary pause from his grim work to watch the rain, and to brood.

  This was rough stuff, broom decided. Everybody dies; it’s never easy. When your maiden aunt called to tell you that your grandfather went peacefully in his sleep, it was bullshit. He probably went hacking and coughing, with painful gasps, confused looks, and bad smells. But at least he had been old.

  Lester Broom worked homicide. He was a big man, even as big men go, closer to seven feet than six. He was massive, and as strong as he looked. He had been on the Birmingham Police force for twenty years, the Homicide Squad for fifteen of that. He had seen some hard things, but what he was looking at now still made him queasy, although no one, save himself, would ever know it.

  “You with us, Detective?” Arthur Walker, the Medical Examiner was asking.

  Art was a tall, spare black man with a nimbus of gray hair around his head, and steel gray glasses balanced on his nose. He gave off a serene, kindly air. He looked more like a history teacher than an M.E.

  Broom’s attention snapped back to the present. He stood in the basement morgue of the North Precinct, where The M.E. was conducting a post-mortem examination. “Yeah, yeah, I’m listening. Just lost myself there for a second. Get on with it, Art.”

  Art nodded serenely, pressed a red button on the side of his pocket recorder, and continued: “Subject is a white male, approximately 20 to 25 years of age. Several lacerations and ante mortem perforations around the abdominal thoracic areas; some trauma to the head. Both hands have been separated from the body and are currently missing, separated above the radialis by a sharp instrument. All wounds seem to be ante mortem.”

  Broom heard the door slide open behind him. He turned to see McMahon walk through the doorway. McMahon was a thickly muscled man in his early thirties, nattily attired in a light blue suit and a burgundy tie adorned with silver “Erin Go Bragh” pin. Detective McMahon was Broom’s latest partner. He’d had other partners, including Roland Longville.

  McMahon, or “Mack,” as he preferred to be called, was a good cop on the job, methodical and unshakable. He grunted a greeting and handed Broom a folder. “The dead kid’s name is Mueller. George Harmon Mueller the third, no less. Father’s some kind of real estate magnate. He’s been listed as missing since August of last year.”

  “The parents know he’s dead?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Want me to call them?”

  “No, Mack, I’ll do it.”

  “Any priors?”

  “A bunch. Take a look.”

  Broom frowned and opened the folder. He let out a low whistle.

  “Shoplifting. Shoplifting. Shoplifting . . . hmm. Attempting to sell stolen merchandise. Three counts. Jeez. If he’s from money, why’s he pilfering?”

  McMahon nodded at the corpse on the table. “Looks like the kid was a professional shoplifter, what they call a “booster.” Lots of kids are into it now, especially among these neo-hippie types. They’re got their own subculture, nowadays. Steal whatever you can get your hands on, and then go “return” it for cash. Lots of them do the deal where you find a receipt, go jack the merchandise to go along with it, and then return it for cash. Beats panhandling. Maybe he’s got a drug habit. That’s what has pulled a lot of kids like him into this sort of racket. Maybe he fell in with the wrong crowd, or started doing it just for fun.”

  Broom rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Yeah. I was checking out some of those tattoos on the body. Seem to be the names of hippy bands. A bunch of bands that try to sound like the Grateful Dead and don’t succeed.”

  Broom turned to McMahon. “Mack, I need you to do me another favor.”

  “Sure.”

  “Get together a list of all the shoplifting reports that have come in over the last three months or so.”

  “You mean for the whole city?”

  Broom nodded. “I mean for the whole city.”

  “Christ, Broom, that’s going to be some list. Three months? Every two-bit shoplifter in town’s going to be on there.”

  “Yeah, Mack. I know. But it looks like this kid picked up something he shouldn’t have. Looks like someone wants it back. Maybe awfully bad, at that.”

  “What makes you think they didn’t get it from him already?”

  “I thought about that, but it looks like they didn’t have any luck. Look at him, Mack. He’s been cut
to shreds. If they had gotten what they were after, there would have been a quick coup de gras. They wouldn’t have wasted so much time torturing him like this. And that tells me something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He didn’t know where it was. Because if he had, he would have told them, long before he looked like that.”

  “So maybe the killer doesn’t know which kid stole it? He’s just going around killing kids until he finds the right one?”

  “Maybe. But, maybe not. I think this guy is pretty methodical, a professional, so he might know exactly who and what he’s looking for. I’m still just guessing, though.” Broom turned and started to walk away.

  “Hey, Broom,” McMahon called after him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Somebody has to go tell this kid’s parents.” Broom shrugged. “In this case, that somebody is me.”

  Chapter 5

  The children loved their new castle. They had found it after many nights of searching. The six of them had been living in an old office building, until one day workmen showed up and disturbed their rest. Then they had faded into the shadows, killed the day roaming the city, and moved on. They had spent a few nights in an abandoned supermarket in a crumbling postwar neighborhood, but the people there were older and more vigilant. The old had eyed the young suspiciously as they walked down the street. The kids had known immediately that it was time to move on again.

  Scott had found it. He was the best of them, the quickest, usually picking things first when they boosted. He stole the best items. He always found the best places for them to squat. This time, he had found a place that was heaven, pure gold. The place was perfect for them. The name of the place was the Cabana Hotel, a beautiful abandoned hotel near the middle of old downtown. It was a twenty-three-story Wonderland, where at last they had been able to throw their tired young bodies down, and after a long rest, go exploring in the labyrinthine that was their new home.

  Scott was their leader, and they were his followers, his disciples. He had preached to them the gospel of Stealing for Freedom. “Reject the order that has been imposed upon you,” he told them. “Swipe whatever you need.” They had met him in college. Most people had thought he was crazy, but not these five; they thought he was a genius, and had signed on for whatever adventures that becoming his follower promised.

  There was Bone, the black kid from Missouri, an ex-engineering major; Yim, his girl, from South Korea, who had studied the violin; Mule, the rich kid from Mountainbrook who hated his life, who changed his field of study every semester; and Mule’s girl, Dextra. Then there was Angel, Scott’s girl. She took his every idiosyncrasy in stride, and never doubted his words or his convictions. Scott was a rebel, her rebel, and he was the leader of them all.

  They were from the upper crust, disaffected, bored, looking for a way out of lives that had been laid out for them the moment they were born—boring lives. Scott told them (though no one knew where he’d gotten the information) that the Cabana Hotel was taken by the City of Birmingham against back taxes. It had been vacant for almost thirty years. Many more years might pass before anyone came to run them out. And ‘many more years’ seemed forever, to ones so young.

  * * *

  “This place is a trip.” It was Bone, coming out of the shadows of a room in the Penthouse. “The damn table is still set in the next room, like it’s been waiting for a hundred years for someone to come to dinner, only they never showed up.”

  “The beds in the rooms down the hall are still made,” Angel said brightly, as she pranced into the room, Yim close behind her. “No one’s had any fun here in a long time.”

  “The downstairs rooms are all cleaned out. Only the top floors still have stuff in ‘em. It’s like whoever was hauling things away just got tired and stopped at about the twelfth floor. Maybe somebody was trying to save the place, maybe trying to reopen it or something,” Bone mused, picking up an embroidered pillow and staring at the inscription. “Weird, like all this stuff is sittin’ here, waitin’ on somebody to come home.”

  Dextra was stretched out on a couch, staring at a blank, dusty television screen. A black-haired girl with olive skin, and pierced upper lip and eyebrows. She was dressed in black. The television wouldn’t work, since the old hotel had no power, but she watched it anyway.

  Dextra’s boyfriend, Mule, sat at her feet. She frowned. “Yeah, it’s kind of spooky how everything’s still just sitting here. Reminds me of that book where the old lady still has her wedding cake on the table . . . after like, thirty years, or something. What’s it called, uh . . .”

  “Great Expectations,” Scott announced, as he walked in from an adjoining room. “I think Charles Dickens would agree with you. This hotel certainly speaks of purloined hope.”

  Dextra gave him a theatrical roll of her dark eyes. “Thank you, mister genius. Any time I need to know something irrelevant, you’re the man I’ll come to.”

  “Oh, Dextra, you are one catty bitch,” Angel said, and everyone laughed.

  Scott smiled. “All I mean is, I believe some optimist must have intended to resurrect the place, but probably was unable to escape the legal entanglements. Why else would a lot of the furnishings still be in place? Lucky for us, though. I found these in the closet down the hall.” He produced a pack of paper with Hotel Cabana letterhead and a pack of pens.

  Bone came over and slapped Scott on the back. “I know that makes you happy. Now you can finish your manuscript, and we can start taking over the world.”

  “Hey, it’s more than a manuscript,” Mule put in. “It’s our ‘how to’ book to the world. Our . . . what’s the word . . .”

  “Manifesto,” said Angel, as she threw her arms around Scott from behind. “Our brave leader’s manifesto.”

  * * *

  Excerpt from Scott Anthony LaRue’s unpublished manuscript, Shoplifting in the 21st Century: Boosting for Fun and Profit:

  People steal for many different reasons. The things that we steal say a lot about us. The destitute steal for food, but hunger robs them of reason. They steal just enough to fill their bellies, and tomorrow, they are hungry again. The banker steals the money with which he is entrusted, because he has seen the super rich, and he feels that he deserves to live as they do. He is right, but so do we all. We cannot all live that way, though. This book is a rejection of a society that holds such extremes over our heads.

  The starving man goes to jail, for stealing what he needs to survive. Millionaires fly over the prison in which he is housed and the money they have in the banks, that the banker so covets, was made from the sweat of countless poor people’s brows, and through other, even more sinister, designs.

  So steal what you need. But don’t get caught. He who gets too greedy without weighing the danger ends up in the prison, above. He who is cautious and awaits the best opportunity might just end up in the private jet. Of course the latter is preferable. So read carefully the following examples, and you will learn the secrets of the Booster, the modern, anti-corporate thief. And you just might end up beating the system, and finding yourself a nice big jackpot, if you’re very, very careful.

  Chapter 6

  As I drove across town I considered the ramifications of this strange little case. Malvagio had paid me three thousand, up front, to hunt down a ragtag group of shoplifting kids. He’d agreed to pay more when the item they had stolen was returned safely. If the empty jewel case were truly that valuable, I thought, he damn sure shouldn’t have left the thing lying around where quick-fingered kids could snatch it. If the old man was willing to put out so much money to have it back, why not just offer the money to the thieves?

  Maybe that’s what he plans to do, my chiding little inner voice told me.

  I had developed a healthy distrust of most people, over the years. Yes, most people I met were genuinely distraught, and yes, most of the time what they told me was close to the truth. Whether they misled me intentionally or not,
most people skewed details, forgot, or blurred events because they were looking at life through the filters of their own perceptions, like everyone else in the world does.

  Others, though, just plain lied. Malvagio’s story could very well be the unadulterated truth, of course. Maybe the missing box was, after all, just a box, and nothing more. But something just didn’t seem to add up about his story.

  If the old man was sitting on something that valuable, why not sell it off right here in the U.S of A, and spend his twilight years on the Riviera? Did one have to travel all the way to Italy to unload a Medici item, or any other? Maybe there was another angle. Maybe someone had paid the kids to get the item, since it was an antiquity. Maybe . . . maybe.

  I needed something else to go on—a second opinion, and a well-informed one, at that.

  I remembered something about the Medici from college. Machiavelli had written The Prince for one of them. They had been rich people, I remembered, Old World Royalty, powerbrokers and real heavy hitters. Lords or barons or some such, like most people with power were back in those days. But I couldn’t remember much else.

  Well, then, I’d better go back to college and find out, I reasoned.

  * * *

  The History Department of the University of Alabama at Birmingham was in the old liberal arts building. I had earned a degree in English down there, years before. The grounds of UAB looked much the same. I still remembered my way around inside, but the names on the doors had all changed, of course.

  I examined a faculty roster posted in the hall, and found my man: Dr. M. Boswell. Specialty, Medieval to Nineteenth Century European History. According to the posted office hours, the doctor was in. “That almost never happened when I was in school,” I mused aloud.