Frank Kellerman – part III

The linebacker goon at the bar spots me coming in his direction. No choice. I move fast, charging at him, watching his hand disappear inside his jacket. Nope. That’s not happening. Massive rookie mistake, hoss. In Portland’s foam party chaos, everyone’s slipping and sliding. Everyone except the one guy who spent close to three decades chasing scumbags through rain-slicked alleys of Portland.

My shoulder catches him dead center, knocking us both down together, foam exploding in every direction, almost like a cheap special effect. The gun, a small-caliber pistol with zero stopping power, skitters across the wet hardwood floor, disappearing under the rich folks’ dancing feet. Pouncing atop of him, I’m driving my knee straight into his solar plexus. He’s gasping. Foaming at the mouth, ironically enough, eyes wide.

“Who sent you?” I shout. He’s still gasping.

He’s done talking, the bass is still thumping, pounding with the same rhythm as his heart. The fight? It’s gone out of him. He can’t stand up thanks to his lungs briefly collapsing.

Hanady is scrambling toward the exit. Now he’s got the phone in hand. Smart man. Behind me, screaming cuts through the music. This is not party screaming. These are the screams I expected earlier. The real deal. Goon number two? Abandoned his post, bailing outside before anyone noticed his pal on the floor.

Pushing through the foam, I make it to the restrooms, the door wide open. Inside, it’s a horror show painted in neon light filtering through the small window on the back wall. The blonde woman’s on the floor. The foam on her is turning pink, right around her head. Jessica’s backed against the far wall. Blood on her hands. Full of terror, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Frank!” She hugged me, tight. “He came in swinging!” She sobbed into my shoulder. I should’ve pushed her away; all the blood on her now covering me. “I didn’t mean to. . .” As a detective, you get used to this sort of thing. But now that I was retired? I didn’t know what to expect from the department. It was a whole new world, politics ruling over police work and common sense.

The second linebacker? He’s on the women’s restroom floor. Groaning, holding his skull, blood oozing from between his fingers. The blonde woman’s purse sat near him. I didn’t touch it, but it looked heavy, from the way it was leaning. An expensive designer leather handbag now lay beside him. If it wasn’t for the blood and the deceased blonde, it’d be almost comical; a linebacker and his clutch.  

“Self-defense,” Jessica whispers in my ear. “He killed her. Then he came for me!”

I check the blonde’s pulse. Nothing. Check the linebacker? He’ll live. Maybe. But just barely. Clicking into place like bullets sliding into a magazine, I’m getting the bigger picture. The blonde? Not some random rich floozy. She was the real target all along. Hanady’s witness? His insurance policy? So she was someone who knew too much about the wrong people. Right?

“We need to move,” I tell Jessica, grabbing her arm. “Now.”

Footsteps splash through the foam outside. Jack fills the doorway, his yellow shirt soaked with foam and sweat, chest heaving. “Cops are coming,” he pants. “Someone called it in.”

Portland’s finest. Yeah. They’ll sort out this mess. Find two hired killers. One dead witness. And more than enough evidence to keep Multnomah County’s prosecutors busy for months. But who wanted the blonde dead? That’ll take longer. And I don’t have time to be detained by Portland PD.  

Through a back exit, the three of us slip out into the damp Portland night air, drizzle trying to decide if it should rain or quit. The industrial district seriously looks like a noir movie set, all shadows and sodium lights reflecting off wet pavement. I’ve been doing this way too long. My boots find solid ground again. So does my heart.

Jessica’s shaking. “Frank, I don’t get it. I don’t understand any of this.”

“You don’t need to,” I say. “Sometimes bad math works out.”

In the distance, sirens wail through the empty night of Northwest Portland’s empty streets. Inside Sven’s? My guess is the foam party is raging on, patrons oblivious to the ensuing commotion of police about to flood the place, worse than that awful foam. The bass is still pounding. The lights? Strobing. And somewhere in that chaos? A killer is bleeding on the floor of the ladies’ room.

Just another Friday night in the City of Roses.