by John Dunning
She looked at me hard. “What do you think? And don’t humor me.”
“No, I think that’s all very possible. People can get into houses— I could pick this lock myself. So I think you’d better get that stuff, wherever it is, and get it the hell out of here. Make copies. Put it in a safe deposit box. You might not be so lucky next time.”
She nodded. “I hear what you’re saying.”
“Good. So what’d you do after the prowler came?”
“I bought a gun.”
I felt my backbone stiffen. “What kinda gun?”
“Little thirty-eight. I had it in my hand when you came to my door.”
“Where is it? Can I see it?”
“Why?”
“No reason. Forget I asked if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“No, I’m fine with you.” She unfolded her shawl, took out a wicked-looking snub-nose, and put it in my hand. “It’s loaded.”
“I see that. No offense, but do you happen to know how to use this thing?”
“The man who sold it to me told me a few things. About the safety lock or whatever you call it. Other than that, what’s to know? You cock it, point it, and make someone very sorry he’s come into your house.”
I handed it back to her. “That’s basically it. As long as you don’t shoot me or the paperboy, the mailman, or some Jehovah’s Witness who’s only trying to save your soul.”
She pursed her lips. “That’s pretty strong disapproval I hear in your voice.”
“Hey, I wish you didn’t need a gun. I wish the world could be a better place.”
“But you don’t like it.”
“I don’t like it that some clown sold you this thing with you not knowing any more about it than I know about transcendental meditation. You should see what this baby will do to a pound of flesh.” I made a fist about the size of a human heart.
Her look said she could imagine. “Well, don’t worry, I’m not going to kill anyone with it. I thought it might scare someone off.”
“Jesus, Koko, that’s even worse. If he gets it away from you, you’ve just armed your enemy.”
Nothing was said for a moment. Koko put the gun down on the table.
“You never want to pull a gun on a guy unless you mean it, that’s all I’m saying.”
She looked frustrated. “I know you’re right. I’ve been uneasy with that thing in the house. But what am I supposed to do? You don’t get Jehovah’s Witnesses at two o’clock in the morning.”
“You never know. Those birds never stop trying.”
The gun yawned up from the table between us. She started to say something but again her eyes drifted nervously to the window.
“I was pretty careful when I came up here,” I said.
“Why? Did you think you were followed? Did the same cat cross your path?”
“I was careful, Koko. You know the reasons.”
“Maybe so, but I think you were followed.” She got up and went quickly to the window to peep through the curtains. “See? He’s there. He’s out there now.”
I came up and we stood together, close enough to touch.
“I don’t see anything.”
“I saw someone, across the road. He went back in the trees.”
“Same guy?”
“I don’t know. I think so. I can’t be sure.”
“I’ll go take a look.”
“No. Don’t do that.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“You don’t know that. I’ll call the police.”
“Whatever you want. But it’s different seeing a guy in your backyard and seeing one out on the road.”
“The police will laugh at me, is that what you’re saying?”
“They’ll have a harder time taking this seriously.”
“What about you? Do you think I’m imagining things?”
“I think you saw somebody. Who that was, we may never know.”
“What if it’s him?”
“He’d have to be pretty good to have followed me here.”
“But if he is pretty good, it could be done.”
“Anybody can be followed.”
“No matter how careful you think you are. And it would be a lot easier if he knew ahead of time where you were going. Or thought he knew.”
“Sure. He wouldn’t need to follow me at all then, would he?”
“Just wait for you. But what would that prove?”
“That you and I have made contact. He’d have to assume that you now know what I know. And that I’ve put you on guard.”
“So the next time he breaks in…”
“He won’t pussyfoot around.”
She stepped away from the window and sat looking down at her gun.
“None of this may happen,” I said. “But you’ve got to play it safe now. I’ll help you if you want.”
She looked up at me. “We’re in this together, is that what you’re saying?”
“We are if you want us to be.”
“I’m not sure what that means. But right now I sure would welcome your help.”
“Then you’ve got it, no strings attached, for as long or short as you want it.”
She gave me a grateful look. Then she looked uneasily around the room. “I guess there’s nothing we can do till morning. But this house has been violated. I think I’ll go crazy just waiting here.”
“Well, the alternative is to get out now. Where’s your car?”
“In the garage behind the house.”
“Get all your stuff together, if that’s what you want to do. Gimme your keys; I’ll get the car and bring it up close to the house. Then we’ll stash the stuff in the car and get it out of here.”
“Where will we go?”
“Down to Baltimore where there are people and lights. Maybe we’ll just drive around till dawn. At nine o’clock we’ll go to your bank and get a safe deposit box. The bank should be able to copy your notes. Later you’ll want to get dupes made of the tapes as well.” I shrugged. “This isn’t the greatest idea since Poe invented the detective story, but it’s the best I’ve got. Unless you want to change your mind and stay here till dawn.”
“No, that doesn’t feel…I don’t know how to explain it.”
She gave me her keys and went away. I heard her footsteps on a stairwell going down, then I heard her moving around under my feet, and I walked from window to window, looking out into the yard for trouble. The backyard looked peaceful in the moonlight, the garage a ramshackle building in the center of it, the whole property ringed by trees and underbrush. From there I couldn’t see any sign of a neighboring house.
I went out through the kitchen, through a small porch to the backyard. Nothing there either: no movements or sounds, no shadows darting away into the trees. It would be easy to find Koko guilty of an overactive imagination, but now I had a dark hunch of my own. I leaned back against the porch and wondered if we were doing the right thing. But I told her we’d go, it was her choice, so I finally moved uneasily away from the house toward the garage.
Halfway across the yard I froze. Something had moved, back in the trees. Might be a man, maybe a dog: probably nothing more than my own imagination competing with Koko’s. A breeze had come up, fluttering the leaves, and maybe that’s all it was.
I egged myself on. Come on, boy, you’re acting like a spooked kid.
I reached the edge of the garage and looked around it. I could see the door a few feet ahead: a double door for the car and a walk-in at the side. There was a small window and the interior looked pitch-black. I eased along the wall. My dark hunch had grown into a monster and I wished I had brought a flashlight, or Koko’s gun.
The door creaked loudly as I opened it and stepped inside. It was dark but I could see part of the car in the moonbeam coming through the window. It glinted off one of the fenders and fell against an empty wall.
I moved quickly away from the door and stood against the opposite wall, listening. This is damn ridiculous, I thought. Kok
o would wonder where I’d gone. But I didn’t move.
Someone was in here. I felt him breathing: I sensed his spirit. Nothing moved, there was no sound from any part of the garage, but by then my internal alarm was going crazy.
Then he did move. A slight bump, small enough to be nothing more than a rat.
A shadow crossed outside the door. Nothing imaginary about that. I leaned forward and peered out as something flitted past toward the trees. Another shape flicked past the window. There were three of them now, at least three. I eased along the wall, my fingers probing around for anything that might work as a weapon—a tire iron, a wrench, a hammer—but all I picked up was a layer of dust.
Nothing to do but go ahead. I took two quick steps away from the wall, touched the hard, cold door of the car, found the handle, and jerked it open. I was ready for what happened next; he was not. The car’s interior light came on and I saw him, in a crouch about three feet away. He shouted and came at me. I swung from the hip, caught him with a solid left just above the belt, and he dropped like a congressman’s ethics. He rasped out two desperate words, “Jesus…Christ,” and the other two charged into the garage. I slammed the car door shut—we all might as well be in the dark—and spun away as a dancing shadow moved around me. I swung and hit nothing.
Suddenly a powerful flashlight went on in my face. I smelled a gunny sack just before it was thrown over my head and jerked down over my arms. “Now, you son of a bitch,” a voice whispered. “Now we’ll see how frisky your ass is.”
I took a killer kidney punch. Someone wrapped me in another sack, my arms were pinned by some kind of rope or belt, my feet were kicked out from under me, and I tasted the floor, a burlap sandwich garnished with blood. I felt a searing pain and saw red streaks behind my eyes. One of them had stomped on the back of my head. I knew I was hurt; for the first time in years I feared for my life, and I fought like a wild man to get up and get out of that straitjacket.
I never made it. He went to work with his feet, not caring much what he hit or how hard. I took half a dozen in the gut, a bad one to the groin, and again he found my head. At some point I went under.
The next thing I heard was Koko’s voice. I felt her hands as she pulled off the gunnysack and rolled me over. It was still dark. I looked up and saw her shape behind the tiny flashlight.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” I tried to sit up. “I may have some broken bones.”
“I’ll go call a doctor.”
“Let’s see if I’m still alive first.”
“Lie still for a while. Your lip’s split open and you’ve got a broken tooth.”
I touched the tooth with my tongue and felt the ragged break. My lip was busted down to the cleft in my chin.
I tried again and did sit up. But I ached in joints I never knew I had.
“I suppose they took your stuff,” I said.
“You shouldn’t worry about that now.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“Nothing I won’t get over. You got far worse.”
“What’d they do to you?”
“One of them slapped me around, just to get my attention, he said. He put a gun to my head and said there’d only be one warning.”
I took the flashlight and played it on her face. She’d have a shiner in the morning.
“What was the warning?”
“Not to go to the police. If I do, they’ll be back and I’ll be dead.”
I got up from the floor and moved around.
She said, “Does anything feel permanently ruined?”
“Just my pride, Koko.” But as I reached out for the wall it seemed to slip away. When I looked at her by flashlight there were two of her. “Never been kayoed before. Had plenty of chances but never had the pleasure till now.”
“At least your morbid sense of humor’s in one piece. Sit down here, I’m going to call a doctor.”
“Not yet.”
“I don’t want to argue with you. You really do need some attention.”
“I’m a fast healer when I need to be. And I don’t have time for a doctor.”
I figured I had a concussion but I could live with that. I reached out and squeezed her arm. “If you really want to do something for me, go inside and make half a pot of the blackest coffee you can brew. When the spoon stands up in it, call me.”
“There isn’t any coffee. I’m sorry, I don’t use it.” Her voice was distressed, as if she had failed me in my darkest hour. In a smaller voice: “Would you like some tea?”
“Oh God, no.” I covered my face and laughed, and my laughter was the blood brother of tears. “Your tea is lovely, Koko, but please, God, no tea. Thank you for the thought.”
She squatted in the light from the open door and looked up at me like a mother hen. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
“It’s not the first time. Based on past experience, I think I’ll live.”
We sat with each other, just breathing and happy we could.
“What’d you do with that gun?” I asked after a while.
“It’s still in there on the table.”
“They didn’t see it. That’s good, I’m gonna need it.”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
“Go get your stuff back, I hope.”
She didn’t believe me. I smiled and moved away from the wall. She put an arm around my back and I hobbled across the yard to the house.
CHAPTER 17
From across the street I could see the faint light far back in Tread-well’s. Just as I had figured: they were in there trying to dope out what they’d got. I hadn’t needed the brains of a Rhodes scholar to solve this one. One and one are two; two rats plus one rat equals three rats. There they were: Carl and Dante and some other rat.
“What if you’re wrong?” Koko said. “What if it wasn’t them?”
“Then I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”
It was still well before the dawn: the deadest part of the early morning, when anyone on the street would be noticed a block away. I had parked out on Broadway and we had walked boldly up Eastern Avenue, finding a crack between the buildings across from Treadwell’s. We huddled there now, sharing our body heat just out of a cold predawn wind. I had draped the bloody gunnysack over my shoulder and it was an effective poncho in the wind. But I had a powerful do-unto-others streak in me, and I thought it might have another use before the dawn.
I had to hand it to Koko: not once had she tried to hide her horror at what I was about to do, nor had she mounted any kind of argument against it. She had only insisted on coming along, and that was her call. They had taken her stuff and slapped her around and that made it her call, as long as she understood the risks.
In the hour since Dante and his boys had left me battered and bleeding on the floor, I had made a good comeback. The double vision had not cleared up, but most of my dizziness had. My bones ached and so did my muscles, but nothing was broken. The old bones would perform well enough when the moment came. That pain would melt away and the stiffness would be gone, but I’d pay a helluva price later.
“Time to go.”
“What do we do if you’re wrong?” she asked again.
“I’ll tell you why I’m not wrong, Koko. They’re back there now, so full of arrogance they’re not even trying to hide from us. They’re so sure they put the fear of God in you, and their boy Dante knows he put it in me the first time we met. That boy plays hardball and if I don’t impress him or kill him, he’s going to be a danger to both of us forever. He holds grudges and he doesn’t forget.”
I gave her a hug and we split up. She went back for the car; I crossed the street to the front of the bookstore. I scrunched down inside the gunnysack and came into the foyer and peered in through the window. The light was coming from the same back room Carl had gone into when I’d first seen them yesterday. The door was closed but it had an old-fashioned transom, well lit and cracked open. I could see their shadows moving on the ceiling.
Three distinct rat-shadows.
I walked down the block and around the corner to the back alley; groped through the dark till I could see that guiding light from Carl’s office. Two cars were parked there, a late-model Chevy and a new Ford. These boys bought American: true patriots, born on the Fourth of July, the sons of bitches.
I turned the doorknob. Talk about arrogance, they hadn’t even locked the door.
I had to take them by surprise. Lose that edge and I might as well just walk in, hand them my gun, and let Dante kill me. I had to strike first, fast and hard.
I stepped inside and heard their voices. I recognized Dante’s, then Carl’s, over the transom. The third guy was probably one of Dante’s sidekicks, some extra hired muscle. If I could get him out of the way fast, my attitude would improve. You can’t plan those things, but at that moment, almost eerily, I heard footsteps. I got back between two shelves just as the door opened and the third man came out. He walked past me, opened the back door, and went outside. No chance to get him from there, and a few seconds later I heard one of the cars start. He pulled into the alley and drove away. My common sense said never mind him, he’s just some dummy who does what he’s told. I wanted Edgar Bergen, not Charlie McCarthy. But I was angry that even one of them had escaped, and it took a minute for that craziness to go away.
He had left the door open and now I could see into the office. Dante and Carl were sitting at a table with a cassette player between them. I could hear Josephine’s voice droning in the room. Carl was listening intently and Dante with a look of impatience, as if he didn’t know quite what to do with this voice from the dead, this old lady who couldn’t be roughed up or intimidated to make her talk faster.
Dante was sitting across the table facing the door. That would make it tough to get any kind of jump on him. Maybe I could reach the door before he heard me but I doubted it; guys like Dante all seem to have some built-in radar as part of their defense systems. Even if I made it to the door there’d be a moment before I could get at him across that table: plenty of time for him to go after his gun. I could walk in with my own gun ready, but Dante might go for it against the odds, and a gun battle was not what I wanted. Or was it?