The Big Dive Read online

  The Big Dive

  A Joe Stryker Mystery

  Bruce W. Most

  Big Sleep Press

  Contents

  Other mysteries by Bruce W. Most

  A Killer Strikes . . . Again

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Acknowledgments

  Story Notes

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 by Bruce W. Most

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-0-9989442-5-8

  ISBN 978-0-9989442-4-1 (ebook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 9780998944258

  Big Sleep Press

  Cover design: cheriefox.com

  Other mysteries by Bruce W. Most

  Bonded for Murder

  Missing Bonds

  Rope Burn

  Murder on the Tracks

  Praise for Murder on the Tracks

  What a great read! . . . Bruce Most has served up a clever, engrossing mystery with twists and turns you never see coming but are thrilled when they arrive.

  ~ Margaret Coel, author of Night of the White Buffalo

  “A page turner.”

  ~ Praise from judges who awarded it best genre novel of the year for the Colorado Authors’ League.

  “Stryker and his sidekick, rookie cop Moroni Perdue, are likeable characters that you find yourself rooting for straightaway.”

  ~ Historical Novels Review

  One of the best books I've read this past year.

  ~ Dan Guenther, author of Glossy Black Cockatoos and Dodge City Blues

  “Most has done a great job channeling a Raymond Chandler-style to develop his protagonist, Joe Stryker.”

  ~ Steve Berger, author of the Fat Chance and The Fifth Estate mysteries

  Praise for Rope Burn

  Delivers everything you expect from a first-rate mystery . . . Nick DeNunzio is one of the savviest sleuths to come down the mystery trail in a while.

  ~ Margaret Coel, New York Times bestseller

  “It'll grab you like a roll of barbed wire.” ~ A reader

  A Killer Strikes . . . Again

  I focused my flashlight on his chest. The killer had buried a large, black-handled knife in it. I pressed a wrist with my fingertips, holding no hope of finding a pulse. Blood drained in all directions, even under the glass case. I put my ear to his mouth and my hand on his chest, avoiding the knife sticking out of it, straining to hear a sound, feel a beat.

  Nothing but my own desperate breathing.

  I felt his dime-store notebook in his breast pocket, the one he’d scribbled in earlier in the evening. I tugged it out. The knife had narrowly missed piercing it. Blood stained the edges of the pages. I slipped it into my pocket next to my own notebook, and slumped against the glass case. The backroom clock ticked distantly, slightly out of rhythm.

  It was happening again.

  Dear god, it was happening again!

  Chapter 1

  Denver is still a nickel town, the way I figure it. Maybe Chicago or Boston can get away with jacking the price of a tune from a nickel to a dime, but I sure as hell ain’t gonna drop a dime to hear Frankie Laine warble “Mule Train.”

  I plugged in my nickel and punched B4 on the Wurlitzer, a glowing red, green, and blue monster bigger than the front end of a beer truck. Billie Holiday came on singing “Tain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do.” I returned to the counter at Al’s Diner, adjusted my Sam Browne belt, and settled on the stool next to my shift partner. He didn’t act any more sociable than when I’d left. One of his meaty hands stirred his untouched coffee, the spoon clinking against the cup.

  Benedict Greene had been staring into his coffee for weeks now, chewing on something. He was more sullen than usual tonight—edgy, too, as if whatever was on his mind was coming to a boil.

  This wasn’t his pattern. We’d partnered for the past five months, and I’d known him several years before that. He’s an upbeat guy by nature, which is something considering he’s a cop. Then again, the war shadows Benedict as it does many of us. He’d fought in the bloody Battle of the Bulge in the snowy forests of Belgium. Perhaps those nightmares had returned to haunt him. God knows, the war still haunts me.

  I considered asking what was gnawing on him, but figured it wasn’t my place. Only civilians and rookie cops ask where they have no call to ask. If it were my place to know, Benedict would tell me. Good partners are that way. If something is worth telling, they’ll tell each other before they tell anyone else, even their wives.

  So I left him stirring his coffee and reread the shocking black headline plastered on the front page of a well-thumbed copy of the morning Rocky Mountain News.

  Truman Fires MacArthur

  The bony finger of the fry cook appeared and tapped the newspaper. “The Taft folks are talking impeachment,” he said approvingly behind his stained white apron as Billie sang the blues. “Put Truman in jail with them Rosenbergs.”

  If I should take a notion

  To Jump into the ocean

  Ain’t nobody’s business if I do

  No, it wasn’t a smart move, firing a war hero like Douglas MacArthur. The Tafties were itching to impeach Harry Truman and now was their shot.

  Not that I blamed the hat man for firing the general. Sure, we need to stand tough against the commies, but the general wanted to invade China, for god’s sake. Against his president’s orders. Sounded like a nightmare to me. MacArthur had been disloyal to his own commander, and I detested disloyalty.

  On the other hand, I wasn’t buying into this limited “police action” crap. Hell, we could be bogged down in those bloody Korean hills forever.

  War and life were clearer back when Benedict and I fought in the Big One. We had a well-defined mission: kick the Little Corporal’s ass to hell, along with his puppets in Italy and Japan. Nothing limited about what we were doing. Unconditional surrender or die. But in Korea, all we seemed to be fighting for was a dumb line on a map.

  Maybe the Tafties were right. Foreign wars were like the measles. Something you got over as quickly as possible.

  I swear, I won’t call no copper

  If I’m beat up by my papa

  Ain’t nobody’s business if I do

  I finished my coffee. We’d taken our short five long enough. Time to get back to the streets. I stood to leave. Benedict glanced at his watch for the umpteenth time tonight and rose. His coffee remained untouched, but he slid a nickel under his saucer. He always paid for his coffee. No self-respecting cop pays for his coffee. It’s an unwritten code on the street. But that was Benedict for you. “Saint Benedict,” cops called him behind his back.
A regular choirboy. He never took free meals, cut-rate car repairs, free cigs to smoke or sell, juice from bookies and bondsmen—the harmless goodies that keep hardworking, underpaid cops and their families above water. He always made me feel a little guilty for not paying for my coffee. But someone needed to make the barkeeps, tamale vendors, and shop owners feel they were getting a little extra protection, an extra rattle on their doorknobs, in turn for a free bottle of milk for the kids or a hot tamale on a bitter January night.

  I shrugged toward the fry cook in apology for my partner’s saintly behavior, and we hit the streets in our patrol car, a black three-year-old Ford already on its last legs. Benedict drove, a half-smoked Old Gold clamped in the middle of his lips, as we crawled deeper into Five Points, what the locals called the “Harlem of the West.” We passed the Roxy theater, its marquee glittering as a handful of Negroes lined up to watch “Destry Rides Again.” Being a Wednesday, the street wasn’t crowded, but on weekends there was no room to walk on the sidewalks. We passed blocks of stately Victorian homes owned by doctors rubbing elbows with row houses owned by Pullman Porters. The sad sounds of jazz drifted out of the Ex-Servicemen’s Club.

  Benedict took in none of this. His eyes stared dead ahead, never glancing to either side, never scouring car tags for hot heaps or faces for wants. An asshole could have been jack-rolling a drunk for shoes and change, and Benedict would have missed it.

  Luckily, the April twilight was crisp and dry, keeping down the tempers on the streets and in the backrooms. Just the usual barflies, monte men, and hookers drifting in and out of the pool halls and jazz joints, their dark faces scowling at us as we passed. A beer bottle shattered on the sidewalk. Two men argued over a raggedy coat. The usual.

  At 9:14, we caught a call of a female screaming in one of the newer two-story brick-faced projects on Stout. A Mexican gandy dancer had been fired by Burlington Railroad and was taking it out on a bottle of cheap gin and his overweight wife. By the time we arrived, the bottle was empty and the wife insisted life was just peachy, despite a right eye resembling something worked over by Jake LaMotta. She must have been listening to Billie Holiday.

  Benedict returned to the patrol car while I hung around the building for a few minutes, picking up skinny and handing a family a sawbuck that a gin mill owner juiced me with the previous night. When I returned to the car, Benedict had already filled out the log sheet fastened to a clipboard and was scribbling in his dime-store pocket notebook. He never told me what he wrote in his brown notebook. Names of snitches. A grocery list. Poetry for all I knew.

  He glanced at his watch, again, as if he had somewhere more important to be.

  We took a smoke break with another cruiser from Precinct 52 behind K. K. Miyamoto’s Fine Photography studio. Later, cruising by the dark, silent South Platte river bottom, among the warehouses and railroad tracks, Benedict finally got around to speaking what was on his mind.

  “We got this little deal goin’, Joe,” he said in a low voice, with another glance at his watch.

  When he didn’t say anything more, I said, “Whattya mean, a little deal?”

  “Something we thought you’d wanna be part of. There’s some scratch in it for you.”

  “From this deal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what’s the deal?” I pressed.

  “It’s kinda hard to explain.”

  “Try me, Benedict. I’m a bright guy.”

  He fell silent. I came at it from a different angle. “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Some guys.”

  “What guys?”

  “You know, our kind.” It was as if he were digging for words in a junk drawer.

  “Cops?”

  “I’m not explaining this well.”

  “Shit, Benedict, you ain’t explaining it at all.”

  “Lemme show you, Joe. You’ll understand after I show you.”

  He drove us several blocks to a dark alley between Arapahoe and Curtis. As we eased into the alley, he doused the headlights, rolled down his window, and listened as we crept through the narrow canyon between the backs of small, tired businesses. Grit and broken glass crunched under the tires. A third of the way, Benedict stopped and flicked on the spotlight. Its beam snared a junkyard dog rooting in an overturned rusty barrel. The dog yanked its head out. A white sack muzzled its snout. It glared at us, sick yellow eyes glistening in the spotlight, holding them on us before slinking off into the darkness, the sack still clinging to its snout.

  Benedict drove on before stopping mid alley between a furniture store and a pawnshop. The furniture store looked fine on my side, but the security light above the rear door of the pawnshop was busted out. Benedict painted the spotlight across the building, snaring barred windows, a No Parking sign, peeling paint, and a heavy door with a small grimy window. Above the window, white lettering spelled out

  Lennie’s Loan and Music Co.

  Use Front Entrance

  “You got a tip about Lennie’s?” I said. “Half the shit he sells is stolen.”

  My partner’s eyes were large and jittery. “That’s the beauty of it.”

  “The beauty of what?”

  He killed the spotlight, drove a few feet beyond the door, and stopped.

  “See something?” I said.

  “Wait here.” He slid out and eased his door closed. He walked behind the car to the pawnshop. Normally, Benedict walked stiffly, spine erect, trying to appear taller than he was. Now he walked with his back hunched, his muscular shoulders rolled up tight, his head glancing side to side. He looked small in the alley.

  I peered out the rear window. The pawnshop door was ajar. I scrambled out of the car, the interior light spilling into the empty alley, highlighting me like a target. I eased the door shut.

  “Benedict—the door,” I half-whispered.

  He stopped and waved me off.

  “Someone’s busted into the place,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” his voice low but not hushed.

  “What do you mean, don’t worry?”

  “Trust me.”

  He merged into the shadows of the pawnshop and pulled the door farther open. Hinges screeched like lost souls. He scanned the alley in both directions.

  “Benedict! What the hell you doin’? Wait for me.”

  “Stay. Keep your eyes peeled.”

  “Peeled for what?”

  “Anything unusual.”

  Swell.

  He disappeared into the dark building.

  “Shit!”

  I stood in the alley, eyes peeled as Benedict had instructed. Peeled for what? A burglar? An alky looking for a place to sleep off his muscatel? Other cops? Jesus, Benedict and I were the good guys. Why did I feel like a juvie stealing his first car?

  I started toward the pawnshop. Grit crunched under my thick-soled shoes. I froze. The sounds of cars passing the ends of the alley echoed between the buildings. A rooftop exhaust fan hummed. The alley reeked of rotting garbage and dog shit.

  I trusted Benedict more than any cop on the force. He not only was by the book, he was fearless, and better yet, a smart cop. He carried a sixth sense, knew who to shake down and when. He worked hard, unlike more than a few slacker uniforms I knew. In six years, he’d earned more citations and commendations than Audie Murphy. The only reason he wasn’t a detective by now was he preferred working the streets. So what the hell was he doing in—

  A sharp noise caught my ear. I reached for my .38 special. Benedict emerged from the pawnshop lugging an enormous cabinet radio. Two men would have struggled with it, but he carried it to the car on his own. He set it down by the trunk.

  “What the fuck are you—”

  He raised a hand. “Shhhh! The burglar left this behind.”

  I brought down my voice. “What burglar? What the hell you doin’, Benedict? Christ, you can’t—”

  “Ellen’s been wanting a nice radio like this.” He touched the dark wood cabinet. A Stromberg-Carlson, if I wasn’t m
istaken. They build some fancy ones. “Our Crosley is on the fritz. Can’t miss Life of Riley. This one’s a combination radio and phonograph. Plays those new long-play records.” He was talking fast now, his words slamming into each other like boxcars on a fast-braking train. “There’s more of this, Joe. I know where we can get more of this.”

  “That’s swell, Benedict. Really swell. Is this the goddamned deal you were peddling? Is this how I pick up a few extra bucks—burglarizing stores?”

  He laughed uneasily. “It’s okay, Joe. It’s not like we kicked in the door. We’re just taking a little extra. Like you said, half the stuff in Lennie’s is stolen. He ain’t gonna squeal.”

  I looked up and down the alley and back at Benedict and back at the pawnshop. “I don’t believe this. Not from you, of all people.”

  “Nobody’s gonna find out.” His voice carried less conviction than my racing heart. “If somebody shows up, we tell ’em we found the place kicked in and this in the alley.”

  “That doesn’t make it right. Jesus, what am I’m gonna to do, arrest my own damn partner?”