Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  “I don’t know.”

  Gail ignored his comment. “And then, just a week later, you show up on my doorstep.” She shook her head. “That is an awful large coincidence, don’t you think?”

  Sandy’s throat felt dry. His mind raced. When Gail looked over at him, he offered her no mask in his expression. He thought about telling her the truth, though he didn’t know what good it would do, or how she would react.

  Before he could speak further, she said, “But life is full of coincidences, isn’t it? They happen by the bucket full, if you care to keep count. I think that’s all it was.”

  Her smile was warm, her eyes knowing.

  “Besides,” she added, “I didn’t like the man who came asking last week. He was polite but there was something about him I didn’t trust. And Cal always told me to follow my instincts. He said that you don’t have to know why you know something, you just have to know it.”

  Sandy chuckled lightly. “That sounds like Cal. Only, on the job, he would always add that knowing it isn’t proving it.”

  It was Gail’s turn to laugh. “That would be him. My big, tough lieutenant. He was hard on you all, wasn’t he? On his men, I mean.”

  “At times,” Sandy admitted. “But he was fair.”

  “Good,” she said. “That’s good.”

  “He was loyal, too.”

  She smiled. “Of course he was. And he believed in what he did. He was quite certain about that.”

  They sat in silence again. Sandy thought about Cal and the Four Horsemen. The Odoms file was a righteous file. Cal would have believed in it. Then he wondered about the unopened file under his car seat.

  Sandy forced himself back on task. He considered the man who had visited Gail last week. If that man already knew about the concept of The Horsemen before he talked to Gail, and she shared those names with him…

  “Mr. Banks?”

  Sandy shook himself from his reverie. “Yes?”

  “I get the feeling that you came here to ask me something.”

  He nodded. “I did, actually.”

  “I have to tell you, though,” Gail said, “I really don’t know any more about this than what I’ve already told you.”

  “I understand. Can I ask you one question, though?”

  “Of course.”

  “Who was the man that came to talk to you? Was he FBI?”

  Gail shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. He didn’t properly identify himself by his profession, actually.”

  “Did he use a name?”

  “Yes. He said his name was Larson. George Larson. Do you know that name?”

  Sandy shook his head. “Was he alone? No partner?”

  “Yes, he was alone.”

  “Did he wear a suit?”

  She shook her head. “No, he was much more casually dressed. He wore a pair of those casual slacks…oh, what are they called?”

  “Dockers?”

  “Yes. And a short sleeved shirt. But one with a soft collar. And the little animal on the chest?”

  “A polo shirt?”

  “I think that’s it, yes. But he wore very formal shoes,” Gail added. “They were nicely shined. I remember that because it was the only thing I liked about him.”

  Sandy felt his stomach drop. “Formal shoes? What were they?”

  Gail smiled. “He wore a pair of very stylish wingtips. They were quite stylish.”

  ELEVEN

  “That was dangerous,” she said to him, stepping out of her heels. “He could have made you.”

  “Not a chance,” he said. He slid off his belt, catching his holster as it came free. He put it on the motel room dresser. “He was a little suspicious, but when he saw me get into the BMW, that pretty much melted away.”

  “Where’d he go from there?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I came here.”

  She sighed. “But did he – ”

  He stepped in close to her. His arm snaked around her waist and he pulled her close. “Relax. I got what we needed.”

  She cocked her head at him. “You’re sure? He had it?”

  “He has it. I watched him leave the post office with it. And I saw it on the front seat of his car when I did my walk past.” He leaned in and kissed her neck. “Shouldn’t be long now.”

  She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her mind still whirring. “And you’re still okay with all of this?”

  He pulled his head away from her neck and stared her straight in the eye. “Okay with it? Babe, this is a gift from heaven. It is the answer.”

  “You’re sure?” she asked, though she knew he was. They both were.

  He smiled. “I’m positive.”

  She smiled back. He kissed her then, deep and passionate.

  When they broke, he started to unbutton her blouse slowly. “I’ll get into contact with my buddies at Fort Dix,” he said. “They’ll get me some background on this Banks character from when he was in the service.”

  “I don’t know if we need that,” she said, surprised that her voice was trembling slightly, but not because of the conversation.

  “Intelligence is always worth it,” he said, “especially when it comes cheap.”

  He finished with the last button and pulled the blouse back over her shoulders.

  “You’re ready for the next move?”

  “Oh, I’m ready,” he whispered, caressing her bare shoulder near her neck.

  “We need to make sure,” she said. Her words wavered in the face of anticipation. She lowered her own voice to match his. “He has to follow through.”

  “Don’t worry,” he murmured, lowering his mouth to her neck and kissing it softly. “I’ll make sure he understands that. And I have a pretty good idea where he’ll be heading next.”

  “Where?” she whispered.

  “Shhhh. It won’t be long now.”

  Not long, she thought. “You have a plan to motivate him?”

  “I’ve got a good story, yeah.” His hand drifted to the small of her back. “He’ll believe what I tell him.”

  “And what about the other loose end?” She said. “There can’t be anything that ties to us. Not if we’re going to get out of here clean.”

  “I’ll get to that, too,” he said.

  He worked his way slowly up her neck to the corner of her jaw. Then she turned her face. They found each other’s lips, kissing again, and this time she gave herself completely.

  TWELVE

  Sandy drove without direction. He turned down residential streets and cruised slowly along, checking his rear-view mirror often. When he was finally satisfied that he wasn’t being tailed, he considered his next move.

  All the while, a single thought burned in his mind.

  Who the hell was George Larson?

  He didn’t have an answer.

  He drove for almost an hour, letting the mechanics of controlling the small Mazda become almost like a meditation. Neighborhoods he’d patrolled as a cop flitted by. He passed within blocks of several jobs he’d finished and resisted the urge to drive past them. That was all he needed, if the FBI was onto him. To be a suspect that returns to the scene of the crime like something out of a bad detective novel.

  After an hour, he found himself driving north on Wall Street, the curiously residential arterial with a few small businesses sprinkled in every so often. As he crossed Francis, he realized where he was headed. Instead of resisting the inclination, he embraced it. Several blocks later, he made a right hand turn into Holy Cross cemetery.

  It had been a long while since he’d visited the gravesite, but he drove to it unerringly. Once parked, he walked down the neat row of graves. Some were punctuated with large headstones, but Spokane was mostly a blue-collar town, so the majority were labeled with simple grave plaques.

  He stopped, and looked down. A raised inscription rested on a darkened bronze background.

  Calvin Jacob Ridley.

  And under that, the dates of his life span, followed by the
epitaph.

  Beloved Husband and Public Servant.

  “Don’t forget ‘Keeper of the Four Horsemen,’” Sandy whispered down at the stone. “What would you do now, you son of a bitch?”

  He let memories of Cal on the job flow past his mind’s eye like a ribbon of film. He remembered the grizzled lieutenant taking him aside when things were at their worst for Sandy. When it looked like IA was going to drill him and put him out of a job. How Ridley offered him another alternative. How he trusted Sandy. Even more than his own wife, apparently.

  “At least until you got near the end,” Sandy said aloud. “Then you started to run at the mouth a little, didn’t you, Cal?”

  The raised letters on the burial plaque stared up at him in silence.

  Sandy stared back, thinking.

  “What do I do now?” he finally asked aloud. “I can’t get to the Keeper to warn him. Brian is probably already gone. Odoms the sick pervert is still walking above ground. Same thing for whoever is in the file in my car. All unfinished business.”

  He sighed. If the Feds were onto him, though…

  “Maybe it’s time to cut and run,” he muttered. “It wouldn’t be the first time in my life I had to do that.”

  Calvin Jacob Ridley’s neatly lettered name spoke no words, but Sandy could imagine the man’s presence. Cal always had an air about him that calmed men, settled them down. And he could break a complex situation down to its simplest terms. Sandy let that idea wash over him for a time. He listened to the wind in the trees that lined the cemetery as if the sound were Cal’s words.

  “It’s done,” he finally said. “I’m done.”

  A bittersweet relief welled up in his chest.

  “It’s time to move on,” he said, looking down at Cal’s grave marker. Then he smiled slightly. “Thanks, Cal.”

  Sandy turned to go.

  One last thing to do, and then he would be a Horseman no more.

  Brian Moore lived in a neighborhood filled with affordable rancher style homes. Sandy always thought of it as the kind of place that people stopped off when they left the realm of the rentals on their way to upper middle class suburbia. Of course, for some people, it was a permanent stop.

  Most of the yards were small, but neatly tended. Some were enclosed with four foot chain link fences while others remained open. There were no driveways, so an array of cars lined the street. Sandy imagined every third home had children in it. This was still a neighborhood with some identity. People worked all week. Kids went to school. In the evenings and on the weekends, everyone played. Probably together.

  He imagined coming home every night to a wife. Helping a son or daughter with homework while the wife made dinner. Sitting on the porch later, sipping a beer and talking to the neighbor about Gonzaga basketball.

  Sandy pushed away the burst of sentimentality. There was no time to pine over a life not led. He’d made his choices.

  Brian’s house was dark blue with white trim. The paint was fading slightly, but had yet to begin to peel away from the wood siding.

  Sandy passed the house, parking his car a half block away. He sat for a short while, scanning the block for anything that raised his suspicions. All he could see was a quiet, working class neighborhood. It was exactly where you’d expect a cop to live, especially if he retired on a reduced pension.

  When he was satisfied, he opened the car door and walked up the sidewalk. He noticed that Brian’s lawn was starting to get long. The fact bothered him a little, but he couldn’t figure out why. He didn’t know how meticulous Brian was about such things. The fading paint spoke to at least a casual attitude toward home and yard maintenance. And maybe he’d simply been preoccupied with his decision to leave the Horsemen.

  Sandy exhaled, letting the thought go. It didn’t matter, anyway.

  As he climbed the steps, he noticed that the angle of the door seemed slightly crooked. When he reached the top of the porch, he realized why. The door wasn’t completely shut. A half-inch of the inner door jamb was exposed. It wasn’t enough for a crack to appear, but it was clearly not closed.

  Sandy paused, considering. Did Brian leave in a hurry and not shut the door all the way?

  Or was something wrong?

  Sandy wished for a moment that he had brought his gun with him. His mind flashed to one of Cal’s sayings that he’d no doubt cadged from the National Rifle Association.

  “Better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it,” the old lieutenant always chimed when the subject of carrying off duty came up.

  Sandy didn’t know if he needed a gun right then, but he sure as hell wished he had one.

  It was probably nothing, he said to himself. People make the mistake of not closing the door securely all the time.

  He frowned. People did, yeah. Not cops, ex or otherwise.

  His finger snaked out toward the doorbell. He pressed the button. Faintly, he could hear the two chime tones fill the interior of the house.

  He stood and waited.

  No answer.

  After thirty seconds, he pressed the button again. This time he gave it two quick shots right on top of each other. The resulting chimes conveyed the same impatience he was feeling in his chest. Further down, in his stomach, a sense of unease had started to simmer.

  Almost a minute passed with no answer.

  Sandy stood, considering his options.

  He could walk away. Maybe Brian was already gone. Maybe the unsecured door meant absolutely nothing. He’d tried to warn him, but maybe it wasn’t even necessary. Maybe Brian was already in the wind.

  Sandy took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  Maybe.

  Or maybe he was inside. Maybe he was hurt. If he was, he might need help.

  Or maybe, God forbid, he’d hurt himself. Maybe the guilt got to him. Maybe if Sandy went inside, he’d find Brian hanging in the shower stall, or sprawled out over the bed with a pistol next to him.

  Sandy shook his head to clear the image. It faded from his mind, but not quickly.

  Christ, he thought, if Brian needs my help, I have to go in. And if he had an attack of the guilts and did something stupid, who’s to say he didn’t leave some kind of confession lying around?

  He had to go in. He had to know.

  Sandy thought about walking around the house, looking through the windows. He rejected the idea. Brian’s neighborhood didn’t strike him as the nosy type, but it seemed like the kind of neighborhood where someone would notice a strange man walking around the neighbor’s house checking windows. Those neighbors would almost certainly call the police.

  So it was go inside or walk away. And he’d already decided he was going inside. Sandy turned his body, naturally blading his stance as he reached out and gave the door a firm shove.

  The heavy wooden door swung inward, creaking slightly on its hinges. Sandy waited a moment, letting the smells of the house drift out to him. He braced himself for the possibility of that tell-tale odor of death.

  Sandal wood incense greeted him instead.

  Standing on the doorstep much longer was running the risk of attracting attention. Without further hesitation, Sandy stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  He sniffed again. The strongest odor remained incense, but the air seemed a little stale.

  Sandy stood still and listened. From the kitchen, he heard the quiet hum of the refrigerator. Somewhere in the living room, a clock ticked lightly. Nothing else.

  The interior of the house was lit up by the daylight that streamed in through the windows. None of the shades were drawn. Sandy saw nothing suspicious in the hallway.

  So why was the hair on the back of his neck prickling?

  He forced himself to step forward. Two steps and he was in the entry way to the living room. A modest loveseat and a coffee table were set up in front of a large screen television. A few magazines lay on the table next to the remote control. Other than that, nothing.

  Sandy moved further
down the hall. As he approached the door to the kitchen, the hallway took a sharp left. No doubt that led to the bedrooms. He’d have to check those.

  But first, the kitchen.

  Sandy stepped through the doorway.

  Seated at the kitchen table to his right was the man from the Wal-mart parking lot.

  Adrenaline shot through Sandy, electrifying his limbs. He forced himself to remain still. His eyes automatically went first to the man’s hands, looking for weapons. Seeing them empty, he returned to the man’s face.

  “Hello, Sandy,” the man said. The scar on his lower lip stretched out as he smiled slightly. He pointed to the chair opposite him. “Why don’t you sit down? We have a lot to talk about.”

  Sandy didn’t move. “Who are you?” he asked.

  The man’s smile broadened. “I think you already know that.”

  Sandy nodded. “Yes, I do. You’re George Larson.”

  The man’s smile faltered slightly, but then returned even grander. “That is a name I use sometimes. But it’s not who I really am.”

  Sandy wondered if the man had a gun. He wished he could see his waistline and his lap, but he couldn’t from the angle he stood. He considered engaging but if the man was armed, then it wasn’t likely Sandy could get around the table to him before he accessed a weapon. At least Sandy knew he could duck backwards through the doorway if the man made a move. “Then who are you?” he asked, stalling.

  The man raised his eyebrows. “You haven’t figured it out yet? That disappoints me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I imagine you’ve got a lot on your mind these days.”

  Sandy’s eyes narrowed. “How would you know?”

  The man chuckled. “I know a lot, Sandy. In fact, I know just about everything.” He leaned forward. “You see, I’m the Keeper.”

  THIRTEEN

  Sandy stood stock-still, staring at the man. His mind raced, trying to put together facts as quickly as possible.

  Was this man telling the truth?