Agent with a History
Chapter Six
Strung Up
Of course, the first person I had to run into when I entered the office was the Captain. Immediately I started to stumble over myself, in my hurry to apologize for sleeping in late, but he held up a hand.
“I’m just glad to see you rested, no apology needed. You’ll want to check in with Sal and Rafferty. They found out something interesting about our mystery man, Flint.” He patted me on the back and continued on down the hall.
I watched him go, all the while choking on what needed to be said, but I just couldn’t tell him. Somehow the words just didn’t come out. How could they? He’d think I was joking!
Rafferty and Sal looked up at my approach and, to my surprise, neither mentioned my tardiness, for which I was very grateful. “So, what did you find out about our mystery man?” I asked, feeling like the worst possible sort of hypocrite and traitor.
Sal swiveled around in his chair, “Well, not so much about the actual man. We’ve only been able to pull a few vague references to a man that goes by the name of Flint. The name popped up in France in a big international scandal a couple of years back. The Chinese have a three million dollar bounty if captured alive and only a million if he’s dead. Apparently, somebody really wants to have the joy of killing him all to themselves. Besides that juicy tidbit, that’s all we can find out about him.”
Rafferty looked pleased as he stated with authority, “But I thought the name sounded familiar to me so I started trying to remember where I had heard it before. It is not a common name after all. Only seven are listed in the entire country; four of those are dead and the other three are in nursing homes. I kept thinking about it and then it clicked, Louis L’Amour!”
I stared blankly at Rafferty and mimicked his outspread hand motion after a moment. “What?”
“You don’t know him? Oh, come on you two!” Rafferty exclaimed throwing his hands up in the air.
“Should I?” I asked.
“You bet you should! He’s only the greatest western writer that ever lived!” Rafferty exclaimed explosively.
I smiled, “Well that explains why I’ve never heard of him. I’m not currently up on my western fiction reading for the month, you might say.”
Rafferty crossed his arms, looking offended.
Sal broke in, “Well anyway, this author wrote a lot of books. A lot of books.” He dryly underscored his last sentence by pointing at the multiple cardboard boxes on the table.
I picked a book up out of a box.
“There must be nearly a hundred books here! These are all yours Rafferty?”
“Eighty six to be exact, and yes they are!” he finished testily, apparently still wounded over my rejection of his favorite genre and author.
“What do any of these books have to do with our case?”
Sal picked up a book and I read the cover title, “Flint!”
“Got us to thinking about our mystery man a little more. He seems to be something of an international fix-it man. While a lot of what we know doesn’t appear to be illegal, depending on your perspective, some of it most definitely appears to be. Stranger than that, he seems to have no connection with any governing body here or elsewhere in the world, but rather seems to act independently. Which got us to thinking, maybe he’s not alone. We took all of the main character names from the books by this author, both male and female, and this is what we got,” Sal said in excitement.
Sal slid his chair to the side so I could see his computer screen. It was a rough summary of thirty seven names. “As far as we can tell, characters started popping up in the international scene in the mid 1970’s and have continued on to the present. Some of the names don’t have any recent activity, while others appear to still be active.”
I nodded, “Somebody was a fan. You think this is some kind of international firm specializing in problem fixing?”
They both nodded.
“Good work you two, now what about our three killers?”
They both grimaced and Rafferty said, “Nothing on them. They entered the country two days ago with forged passports from France, but they had paperwork on them which favor an origin of West Africa. That’s all we got. We were able to dig up a good bit on Philippe though. Five years ago he acted as a guide for an archaeological expedition into the Congo area of West Africa. Something happened and only two managed to escape the expedition alive. One was Philippe Valo and the other, as you might have expected, was Ahmed Sazzar. Philippe seems to have disappeared for a while and Ahmed packed up his antiquities shop, moved to New York and starting working for the museum.”
“A thief as a guide and an antiquities dealer along on an archeological expedition?” I scoffed.
“I know, it sounds more like a tomb raiding posse doesn’t it?” Rafferty added.
The lights in the building abruptly went out and Sal cursed loudly, “Why do they always time these black outs to hit in the hottest part of the day!”
There was enough light coming through the windows to be able to see, but there was little to be done that didn’t require the internet for research. The generator backup should have kicked on by now, but it wasn’t a surprise that it hadn’t. The generators were rarely in working order.
I’d been going to question the homeless man further, but the cell bays would be completely dark and sweltering in a little while. I’d do that later.
I picked up the book Sal had been holding and asked Rafferty, “Mind if I borrow this and do a little research?”
“Sure, knock yourself out.” he responded, looking secretly pleased that I was reading one of his coveted westerns.
I smiled and made my way outside.
The blackout was a long one, lasting just over three hours. The book was a quick read and I stayed outside a few extra minutes to finish it up.
Westerns weren’t my thing, but I had to admit this was a well written book. I wondered if these fix-it agents got to pick their characters because I could see several similarities between the character in the book and my nighttime visitor. Both had hidden qualities and both were tough as nails, to put it in the western vernacular.
I had just entered the precinct building, when the alarms went off and the doors slammed shut behind me. My phone rang and I saw it was Sal.
“What’s going on?” I asked in a rush.
“You need to come to the cell block!”
I hung up the phone and ran for the stairs since the elevators were still fouled up because of the blackout.
I pushed through the gathered ranks of police in the cell bay, stopping only briefly when I saw the swinging body of the homeless man. I finished pushing my way into the cell.
Lauren, the medical examiner, looked over at me, “No, I don’t think it was a suicide. I don’t think our victim was fit enough or tall enough to climb up the bars, lean over and catch the light fixture on the wall to hang himself from it. The cell block officer says he didn’t have any rope on him either. His belt is missing, but the officer that checked him in swears that it was a leather belt and not made of rope. The worst part of it is, I think he was alive and choking to death for as much as an hour’s time. He managed to get one of his hands partially between the rope and his throat. He left scuff marks all over the wall behind him with the heels of his shoes. I found this clutched tight in his free hand.”
She held the worn stub of a white crayon out to me.
I starred at the crayon for a moment and then said, “Turn out the lights.”
People looked at me a little puzzled, but a patrol cop hit the switch. I turned my phone flashlight app on.
“Anybody got anything fine and dark, like pencil lead?” I asked.
“How about fingerprint dusting powder?”
“That should work,” I said.
A flashlight lit up and a detective from narcotics moved away. He was back three minutes later with a bag full of the stuff.
I scooped my hands into it and
threw it lightly against the wall to the left of the hanging figure. The powder puffed off the wall to fall to the floor, but some of the finer dust stuck to the marks of the white crayon on the wall.
There was a general rise of exclamation from the gathered crowd at what was revealed on the wall beside the dead man’s hand.
A man’s face was roughly captured in a profile shot, as if the man had been looking away; the image included the tops of the man’s shoulders and the open front of his shirt. The real attention had been given to a detailed tattoo.
The twisting body of a snake slinked across the exposed area of chest only to disappear up and around the far side of the neck. The body of the snake reappeared, coming around the back of the neck to culminate at a head-on shot of the snake’s head, facing us on the man’s cheek. Its mouth was open, revealing its fangs and forked tongue. The eyes were malevolent like only a snake’s can be.
One officer asked in a hushed tone, “How could he draw that not even being able to see what he was doing?”
Lauren answered him, “He was an artist, and they often have the ability from long practice to draw what they see in their mind without ever looking, so in tune are their hands with their mind’s image. The good ones are anyway,” she added.
The narcotic detective that had gotten the fingerprint dust spoke up, “I’ve seen enough of gang tattoos to know this one looks symbolic somehow. Anybody know what kind of snake that is?”
“It’s a black mamba and the tattoo is the sign of an obscure cult in East Africa,” I answered softly, even as the image on the wall ushered back in a whole host of bad memories that I had been running from for years.
My nightmares were becoming a reality again. I turned away from the scene feeling sick to my stomach.