Corkscrew

by Ted Wood

  I hung up and stood leaning on the counter, thinking. They wanted a file cabinet, I'd give them a file cabinet. It was my guess that the bikers wouldn't be able to recognize the one they wanted on sight. Perhaps Spenser had described it to them before they killed him, perhaps they had seen it in his house, but unless it had a decal on it or cards with names on them in the slots on the front, it was no different from a thousand other cabinets. If I delivered one, they would believe that we had gone and picked it up, as promised. Of course, once they opened it, I would be in trouble. That part of the idea was going to need work.

  I looked around the office. It's not fancy. Most of the furnishings look as if they were picked up in a distress sale. I have made a promise to myself to spray all the cabinets the same color sometime, but for now I was in luck. One of them matched the biker's description. Gray, two drawers, legal size. Perfect!

  It was an evidence file, filled with items of importance to cases that were pending. Each item was in a brown envelope along with the necessary arrest reports and statements. There were a couple of open bottles of liquor taken from drunk drivers, a jimmy bar I'd taken off our local housebreaker while he was home on parole from jail, a small tear-gas pistol with a box of red-nosed tear-gas shells, and a cache of firecrackers I'd taken off some kid who was throwing them at passing cars during our Victoria Day holiday weekend.

  Kennedy was watching me. "What's on your mind?"

  "I'll tell you. But first, let's put these women in the back of the station."

  He nodded and turned to them. "Okay, ladies, let's go, please."

  They were too tired or hung over to take any notice of him. Only one of them moved, rolling her head up to look at him. The others took no notice until he clapped his hands together like a man shooing birds away; then all of them started at him, painfully, puzzled. "That's better," he said. "We need you out the back for a minute or two. On your feet, please."

  They got up and walked through, following the uniformed man's pointing finger. One of them was still alert enough to look suspicious; the other two moved like zombies, coming down from whatever drugs they had taken at the bikers' camp, all of their anger fizzled out.

  When the women were gone, Werner turned to me. "What's up?"

  "I just heard from Toronto. Somebody's already broken into the house and stolen the file cabinet the bikers asked me to get for them."

  "And you're going to give them this one?" He laughed. "Why not? It'll bring them out in the open."

  "Yes. But I think I can do better than that." I opened the box of firecrackers—bangers, all of them—remembering how loud they had sounded in the warm night. There were seventeen left. I got out my pocketknife and notched one of them, then broke it in half and set both pieces upright on the desk. I took an envelope and elastic bands from the stationery drawer in the front counter and bound the unbroken crackers together, twisting their fuses as close to one another as I could get them. The fuses were too short to join properly, but they were close.

  "Sonofabitch, you're makin' a bomb," Kennedy said happily. "Any luck at all, it's gonna blow one o' them bastards' heads off."

  "No, it's not tightly enough packed to be dangerous. What it will be is loud." I inserted the bundle of crackers into the envelope and shook out the powder from the broken one into a pile that covered the ends of all the fuses. Then I dropped all the tear-gas shells into the envelope, against the firecrackers, all the way around.

  "Pretty," Werner said approvingly. "How're you gonna light it?"

  "With that propane lighter of yours."

  He laughed and brought out the little disposable lighter. It was clear plastic, and I could see there was plenty of fuel left. It had a good mechanism, flicking into flame at every touch. I adjusted the jet until it burned in a foot-long flame, then set about rigging it into place so that the action of opening the drawer would light it. That took about twenty minutes. I taped it against the inside of the bottom drawer, about six inches back, so that it would strike against the lip and jam open, blazing, when the drawer was opened. It was hard to reach, but when it was in place, it lit every time, the flame licking all around the front of the drawer. Finally, I put the firecrackers inside the drawer, the fuses and spare powder just where the flame would reach them, securing them in place with more tape. I was ready.

  "Now what?" Werner asked.

  "Now I make contact with the bikers and tell them to arrange the handover."

  "How'll you account for being so quick?" Kennedy wondered.

  "The line is, the OPP have put a plane at our disposal. The cabinet is being delivered to us by air to the field down at Severn Bridge. I'm picking it up, waiting for them to tell me where to deliver it."

  "You think they'll buy that?" Werner's cigar had gone out, and now he was patting his pockets, looking for his lighter. I gave him a book of matches from the drawer in the counter, and he nodded and lit up.

  "I think they will. You can come on concerned. You have the safety of the hostages to consider, so you pulled some strings."

  "What if they say they don't want you making the delivery?" Kennedy asked.

  "Tell them I've gone down to the airfield to pick up the file cabinet. Tell them, aw shucks, it's his woman you're holding. He isn't trying to get cute. He just wants to be there."

  He looked at me, nodding. "They might buy it."

  "It's essential. Now, next time they ring, you know what to say. I've already left for the airfield, the cabinet will be there soon. When it arrives, I'll be calling in to you, waiting for delivery instructions."

  Kennedy nodded. "I'll do it. I just wish I was coming with you. You're gonna need some backup."

  "You taking the shotgun?" Werner asked, but I shook my head.

  "I'd like to, but if I use that thing, I'll blow somebody away, and I'm supposed to be suspended. I could end up in the pen with a couple of dozen bikers waiting for me."

  "You got a dozen of 'em waiting for you right now," Werner said. "What kind'f insurance you gonna take?"

  "Sam, plus I have a pick handle in the trunk of my car."

  Werner put his cigar into his mouth and sniffed. "I don' like it, buddy. They're gonna be mad."

  "Pity," I said. "Can you help me get this thing into my car?"

  "Sure can." He took one side, and I took the other. Kennedy held the door open for us, and we loaded the cabinet into the trunk of my car. Sam padded behind me, restless to come along. I opened the car door for him, then went over everything again with Werner.

  "You know what to say. I'm at the airfield, where do they want delivery? And the only reason I'm doing the drop-off myself is because I'm concerned about the women."

  He nodded, the glow of his cigar butt signaling in the darkness. "Yeah, I know what to say to them. Just take care of yourself. These bastards can be nasty."

  "Trust me," I said. "One more thing. You've handled negotiations before, right?"

  "Right." He sounded proud. "Yeah, I took the special course in the States, in Washington last year. And that time a prisoner took a Sally Ann captain hostage in the jail in North Bay I did the negotiations for them. I know the ropes."

  "Great. Then you know how to put the pressure on for a proper handover. I'll call you by phone from close to the airport and get directions. On their side I want both women there, unharmed, and handed over as I hand over the file cabinet."

  "Okay. I'll make sure it's arranged clean. You phone as soon as you've been to the airport."

  "Will do. Now all I have to get is the rest of their junk, the videotapes and the camera, and I'm set."

  "I'll bring them out." He went back into the station, and I stood, reaching through the car window to pat Sam's big neck. He was comfortingly solid. Patting him took my mind off Freda.

  Werner came back with the tapes and the camera in an office garbage container. "Best I could find," he said apologetically.

  "No sweat. Thanks." I put the container in the open trunk, then took out my pick handle and laid
it across the seat next to me, slid behind the wheel, and set off toward the highway. It was ten miles to the airfield, and I wanted to be there before the bikers heard that the file cabinet was supposed to be arriving there and had a chance to verify my story for themselves.

  I reached the highway and turned south. As I drove, I pulled my revolver from the holster and pushed it into my right sock on the outside of the ankle. It wouldn't pass a proper search, but it might fool them in the dark as we carried out our transfer. Maybe.

  There was very little traffic on the highway. A few tractor trailers headed north to Sudbury with loads of beer for the thirsty miners, a few carloads of sleeping kids with coffee-sharpened fathers at the wheel, heading north on vacation. No motorbikes.

  The airfield at Severn Bridge was deserted. There is a beacon there to be used at nights in emergency, and they do have some portable runway lights they can set out on the grass runway, but they were not in use. The place was dark and quiet like a military post after lights-out.

  It's one of the very few places close to Murphy's Harbour that is free of trees. Our terrain is all rocks and woodland, like most of Ontario at this latitude. Unless you're looking out over water, you never have a clear field of view. Tense as I was, worried about Freda, I was glad to be in the open, and I drove out into the middle of the field and stopped the car, letting Sam get out and then joining him, standing under the open sky in starlight, looking at all the constellations, getting some perspective back into my head, preparing myself to do what I had to do within the next half hour.

  After a few minutes I got back into the car, first taking off my jacket so that my empty holster was plain to see. Sam curled onto the other front seat, and I drove back out to the highway and ran north a quarter mile to a gas station where there was a phone booth.

  The OPP constable answered the phone, and I told him, "Bennett. Can I speak to Sergeant Werner, please?"

  "Sure, Chief."

  There was a clatter and muted voices; then Werner picked up the phone. "So far so good, Reid. They swallowed that crap about the airplane. They want you to drive to the Hungry Hunter restaurant and go inside, leaving the stuff in your car."

  "That's not on. I get the women off them before they touch the material."

  Werner sighed. "I told them that. The best they'd do is say they'll call again in five."

  "Okay, meantime I'm on my way. When they call, tell them I want to see the women are safe and sound before they get anything. Tell them I'll throw their cabinet in a lake rather than hand it over blind."

  "Okay, Reid, okay. I know how to handle it. Just stay cool."

  I managed a chuckle. "When you quit this nonsense, you could make big bucks as a labor mediator."

  "I thought of that. The hours are lousy."

  The Hungry Hunter is one step above the classic northland truck stop that usually has the word "EATS" on a sheet of plywood outside. The double-H is better than that, it had the minimum number of improvements to bring it up to the standards Ontario law requires for a liquor license. The building is made from imitation logs, the kind that come in prefab sheets. It's big, for this area, seating perhaps eighty people in the kind of elegance you'd expect in a bus terminal. It lies a little south of the Harbour.

  I was there within five more minutes, and I looked around for motorcycles but didn't see any. There was one car outside, a Mercedes. I glanced at it across the lot and went inside.

  The bar was closed, but the management keeps a tiny coffee shop open all night out front, and there was a man sitting there. He was wearing a suit, and as I glanced at him, I recognized him with a sudden shock. It was Corbett.

  He noticed me at the same time and set down his coffee cup and waved. He looked angry. I didn't want to waste time, but I went over, anyway. I had to wait for the phone to ring. This would pass the time.

  "Hi, Chief. Couldn't you sleep?"

  "No, I generally take a swing around my territory before going to bed. How about you? I thought you were bunking at a friend's house."

  He shook his head. "He's not up here this weekend. I'm getting a cup of hundred-mile coffee to keep me awake, then I'm heading back to Toronto. May's well. My wife's not here this weekend."

  "Oh," I said, "that's a drag. I'm sorry about your place. We'll be out of it tomorrow."

  He finished his coffee and dropped a dollar on the counter. "Good," he said shortly. "Well, be good. I'll see you next weekend."

  "Right." I nodded and waited while he walked out. Then I went to the pay phone and dialed, watching his car pulling out of the lot while it rang.

  Werner answered the phone. "Reid, I've got directions for you. Do you know where the old trestle bridge is?"

  "Yes, over the Black River down the fifth side road."

  "That's the one. You're to go to the north end of the bridge and carry the cabinet out onto the middle and back off. Put the other stuff on top. You're to leave your headlights on, pointing to the bridge, and stand in front of the car with your hands on your head. You got all that?"

  I could see the terrain in my mind. The side road ran along the north side of the little river that connected two lakes. The bridge was about thirty yards long, and on the south side there was a rough abandoned track that bikes would be able to travel but not cars. It was a good spot to arrange the transfer. The track came out in a couple of places on the highway, but it wouldn't be possible to cover the exits without a dozen policemen.

  "The guy who chose that spot really knows the district," I said. "Okay, I'm on my way down there. Did you tell them I want the women out before they get anything?"

  "I did. He just got angry, said the women were fine, do as you're told."

  "They'd better be."

  "Look, I don't like this," Werner said. "They're gonna have the women on the wrong side o' that bridge. They'll open the cabinet and the thing'll blow and they'll take off."

  "It's our only chance. The cabinet they're after is gone. If we tell them that, they'll take out their anger on the women. This way we get them out in the open where we can at least see them. And they'll be distracted. We've got to do it." He didn't answer me, and I said, "Okay, I'm on my way down there," and hung up.

  The side road runs down toward Georgian Bay, about half a mile south of the turnoff to Murphy's Harbour on the other side of the highway. I was there in a minute, pulling down the narrow road that has birch and jack pine crowding down on to it from both sides, bumping down toward the trestle, which was about three minutes' drive in. I found it and swung the car up to it, far enough on that there was room behind me to swing back and drive off the way I had driven in. I left my headlights playing along the bridge and the engine running.

  The window was already down all the way on the passenger side so that Sam would be free to jump out if I called him. I left him there and carried the file cabinet out to the middle of the bridge, which was flat and had no parapet. At one time it had been a railroad bridge on a branch line that was discontinued in the forties. The locals had kept it open afterward until the highway was built half a mile west. Now it was a curiosity, unused except by backpackers, too old to be safe for a car. The perfect spot for the exchange. The bikers had done their homework.

  I set the cabinet down in the middle of the bridge and came back for the container of equipment. I was sheltered from the view of anybody on the other side of the river, safe behind the glare of my headlights, and I paused to retrieve my pick handle from the seat and tuck the end up under my belt at the back, leaving it hidden behind my right leg so it wouldn't cast a shadow when I walked forward into the headlights. It made walking difficult, but I covered by pretending the container was heavy and that I had to take tiny steps to compensate. I still hadn't seen anybody or heard anything over the rushing-water noise from the falls beneath the bridge, but I expected the bikers would be in place.

  When I'd placed the equipment, I stood back a couple of paces and waited, hands by my sides. After a few seconds a voice called out, "B
ack off the bridge, like you was told. An' put your hands on your head."

  I put my hands up on my head but didn't move away. "I've kept my part of the bargain. You've got your cabinet inside one hour instead of three. Now let's see you keep yours."

  "Back off," the same voice said.

  "I'm gonna count to three and then shove this thing in the river," I said.

  "You touch that, this bitch is dead."

  "Then turn the women loose. You've got to sometime. Do it now." My heart was bumping so loud I thought they would hear it. This was the hardest poker hand I'd ever played in my life. Bluffing with a nothing hand and Fred's life at stake. I waited, and when nothing happened, I shouted, "One!"

  Suddenly a single headlight flicked on from a bike standing close to the bridge. Then two more, from different angles. And then, through the dazzle that almost blinded me, I saw four figures, two tall, two shorter, coming out over the bridge toward me. Two bikers and the two women. "Here they are. Now back off," the same voice said. Was he their negotiator, I wondered, the one who dealt with every situation like this? I hadn't expected them to be so organized.

  "Okay, send them ahead. When they're behind me, I'll go."

  "You're pissing me off, Bennett. Back up or they go over the edge," he said.

  I backed up, taking tiny steps, hoping my pick handle wouldn't trip me. The four of them came forward and stopped in front of the cabinet. "'S this the one?" the voice asked, but quieter, pitching the question at the women.

  "Of course it is." That was Mrs. Spenser. The biker grunted something and I called out, "Come on, you two, let's go."

  Fred moved first. She grabbed the other woman by the arm. "Sounds fair to me," she said, and moved forward.

  The two bikers let them go. They were on their knees in front of the cabinet. Someone shouted, "Does the key fit?"

  Key? That meant they would find out in moments that they'd been fooled. "Come on, let's go," I called to the women. "Let's go. I haven't got all night."

  Fred came faster, but Mrs. Spenser moved like she was sleepwalking. I went forward, to meet her, putting my right hand behind me to hold the pick handle away from my leg, grabbing her with the left and turning in one movement as I pulled out the club and dragged her toward the car. "Get in, hurry," I said. Freda jumped in the front next to Sam, and I opened the rear door and almost threw Mrs. Spenser inside as I saw from the corner of my eye the flash from the file cabinet in the instant before my homemade bomb exploded.