Dead Bang

by Robert Bailey

  “The cops pulled the drywall and paneling off the walls.” said Karen. “They uprooted all my plants, and my clothes were all over the bedroom.”

  Agent Azzara took a notepad and pen from his pocket. “Please describe the men who were here last night.”

  “I already told Matty,” said Karen.

  “So, it will be fresh on your mind,” said Agent Azzara. “Please.”

  Karen started with Manny. She told Agent Azzara how cute Manny was and what a great sense of humor he had. Azzara had to pry the rest out of her, a detail at a time, until Matty stepped out of the side door carrying two small suitcases. Karen slid out of the car and ran to meet her.

  “So what do you think?” I asked. “This terror-related?”

  “I’m a new agent,” said Azzara. “I don’t think. I make lists of facts and read them to Agent Svenson.”

  “I’m not Matty Svenson,” I said.

  “Home invasions of this nature are usually drug-related,” said Azzara.

  “I’ve known Karen for long enough to doubt that,” I said.

  “Perhaps you don’t know her as well as you think.”

  Matty set the bags on the front deck of the Oldsmobile. Azzara and I climbed out to join Matty and Karen at the front of the car. Matty flopped the bags open. Karen had jammed her clothes into the bag pretty much the way she’d found them. In one of the bags, the clothes were damp and, in fact, were a pile of laundry.

  “I had clothes in the washer,” said Karen.

  Matty pushed and groped the clothing before she checked inside the shoes. She tried and failed to unscrew the bottom of Karen’s hair spray and deodorant and then threw up her hands like a calf roper at a rodeo. “Take ‘em,” she said, her face a doubtful frown.

  “What?” asked Karen.

  “Nothing,” said Matty. “It’s just that I’d pack underwear.”

  Karen made narrow eyes and said, “I’m going to buy some real soon.” She plowed the clothing about until she could close the suitcases.

  “Whatever,” said Matty. “We have to wait here until you leave. And don’t come back here until I call you.”

  Karen had Wendy’s car keys so I threw the suitcases on the back seat. She wanted to know if I was going to drive.

  “Nah, go ahead,” I said. “When you dropped me off, you’d just have to reset the mirrors and adjust the seat.”

  Behind the wheel of Wendy’s old Cadillac, Karen looked like a child playing in her daddy’s truck. Her driving was another matter, and I hooked up my seat belt in short order. No lane of traffic moved fast enough to suit her. And, to Karen, a yellow traffic signal meant “gun it.”

  Karen fought the traffic in silence until we reached Twenty-eighth Street, when she announced, “My underwear is nobody’s damn business but mine.”

  “Right you are,” I said.

  Karen turned right, and we drove in silence for half a block until she waved a hand at me and said, “And?”

  “And, I have no opinion concerning your underwear.”

  Karen threw up her hand. “Well, everybody else seems to. Wendy had a shit fit last night and now that FBI bitch is making catty remarks.”

  “Matty’s always been good to you, and I don’t think she meant to be catty,” I said. Of course she had, but Sears was still too far to walk. “Not to change the subject, but do you know what kind of flowers Wendy likes?”

  Karen turned a smug smile in my direction. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”

  The car Karen was tailgating hit the brakes, and I mashed the floor mat with my right foot. “Watch the road!”

  Karen juked over a lane to the loud-horn complaint of the car now behind us. “Oh, my God. It all makes sense now. I saw you checking me out. Wendy caught ya.”

  “I apologize,” I said, and tightened my seat belt. “It wasn’t appropriate.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Karen. “You’re old, not dead.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But I think we can both testify that Wendy didn’t think it was silly.”

  Karen pursed her lips and drummed the steering wheel with her palms. After a moment of watching me out of the corner of her eye she said, “Wendy’s slacks size went from ten to twelve. Did you know that?”

  I put the window all the way up so I could hear better. “No,” I said. “What difference does that make? My slacks are bigger too.”

  “Not the same,” said Karen. “For a woman a size twelve is almost a size sixteen, and after that, it’s eighteens.”

  “Wouldn’t the next size be fourteen?” I asked.

  “No,” said Karen. She waved her hand at me. “Well, yeah, but that’s not the point. The point is that size ten is the largest size on the rack Wendy has been shopping from for most of your marriage. Now she’s on the rack that starts with twelve. And there aren’t that many twelves because there has to be room for all the bigger sizes.” She made one more flourish of her hand and put it back on the wheel.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  Karen turned her head to show me how big her eyes got when she did her “astonished” face. “I can’t believe you don’t get it! Size twelve is the smallest size on the biggest rack. Wendy is feeling fat and vulnerable. She saw you checking out me.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said.

  Karen turned down the music. “Looking is looking, Art.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

  “You don’t look at men like that.”

  “What’s to look at?”

  Karen laughed. “I guess you don’t get it.”

  “I get it,” I said. “I think we’re talking roses here, but I don’t see how they’d make up for anything.”

  “You’ve always been a gentleman, and you’re crazy about Wendy,” said Karen. “Everybody knows that.”

  “Maybe we could get them all to call her up and tell her,” I said and let the seat back to find some leg room.

  “Wendy doesn’t want any flowers,” said Karen. “She wants you to worry about the flowers. How long have you been married?”

  “Thirty-five years.”

  “Oh, my God. You could have been my parents.”

  “Wendy mentioned that.”

  “Maybe I should get a motel room until I can go back to my house.”

  “Why?” I asked. “You didn’t do anything. Besides, I don’t think that’d be safe right now.”

  “Maybe it’s better if you and Wendy have some space. I can take care of myself. I’m a tougher cookie than you think.”

  “It’s better if you stay. You’re important to Wendy and a good friend. The boys call the guest room ‘Karen’s room.’”

  Karen swallowed and rubbed her neck. We finished the ride to Sears in silence. At the auto service center she parked next to my car and said, “I don’t deserve to have friends like you and Wendy.”

  I said, “Wendy and I think you do. The boys think you do. It’s your other friends I worry about.”

  Karen let a smile melt her wistful face.

  I opened the door but turned back to say, “Stay with me until I get to the gas station. I should have bought gas before I dropped this beast off.”

  Channel Six blazed away on the waiting room TV in the auto service center—footage of Mark Behler getting his hand wrapped in the back of an ambulance at the Woodland Mall. The voice-over touted, “In the shadow of this recent tragedy, tune in for a Second Amendment rematch with local gun-rights advocate and private investigator Art Hardin. The Mark Behler Show, live at five o’clock on Channel Six.” I put the oil change on my bank card and fled.

  Karen followed me out of the Sears parking lot. She stayed in the lane behind me, but we got separated when she caught a red light that I made on stale yellow. The gas station, one of my favorites—you got a discount for cash—stood a half block down, on the right. As I plugged the gas nozzle into the tank Karen drove past with a honk and a wave.

  Two cars behind her, a green Ford Windstar van caught my eye.
“Couldn’t be,” I said aloud. The man with the unibrow sat in the front passenger seat, his arm in a sling. The driver, Manny, wore a gauze bandage on his face.

  12

  I’D FORGOTTEN SOMETHING. I’d clanked the gasoline nozzle back into the pump, screwed the cap on the gas tank, and snagged my radio off the floor of the back seat. Still, as I roared out of the gas station, I knew I’d left a mistake lingering behind me like sly flatulence in a crowded elevator.

  The news reader on my dash radio wrapped up an update of the Shatner shooting—the wounded pregnant woman remained in “guarded” condition but had not lost the child—by hawking the “Second Amendment rematch” on The Mark Behler Show. I snapped off the dash radio, clicked on my handheld FM radio, and barked, “Five-six, five-zero base, over!”

  Karen Smith in the Cadillac and Manny and his vanload of pals had faded into traffic and out of sight.

  Twenty-eighth Street is the crowded main artery serving the heart of commerce, where Grand Rapids meets the north side of the bedroom-community suburbs. Two lanes in each direction, sharing a central left-turn lane, channel a torrent of traffic east and west, through shops, restaurants, and auto dealers.

  I darted into the left lane and eased on the gas, but had to take the left-turn lane to escape a lady in a black Lincoln Navigator who cut in without a signal. Marg spoke from the radio. “Art,” she said, “it’s after three, and I’m on my way out the door.”

  “I’m westbound on Twenty-eighth Street,” I said, and tooted my horn at the lady in the Navigator—some old bat in a babushka, yakking on a cell phone, who now seemed intent on running me from the left-turn lane into oncoming traffic. “The men who shot up Karen’s house are in a green Ford Windstar van in front of me.” I hit the brakes and swerved back into the travel lane.

  “Do you have the plate number? Over,” said Marg.

  The Lincoln Navigator roared past me and swerved into my lane. “I’m working on that,” I said. I had to nail the brakes. “Right now I’m trying to get past some lady having a traffic tantrum. Over.”

  “Five-zero base standing by. Over,” said Marg.

  The brake lights on the Navigator lit up. I took the left-turn lane again and put my foot into the five-hundred-cubic-inch engine that lurked under the hood of my Buick Sport Coupe. Once around the Lincoln, I could see Karen passing under the traffic light at Breton, the green Windstar tick-tight on her bumper.

  I scampered through the light at Breton on some very pale yellow—might have been pink. I caught up and slowed down, hanging in the Windstar’s blind spot. “Five-zero base, this is five-six. Over.”

  “Base,” said Marg.

  “Lima, hotel, tango, five, six, nine. Over,” I said. Marg read it back. “They’ve changed the plate from last night, but I recognize the occupants. We are still westbound. Need you to call the cavalry. Over.”

  “I got ‘em. Stand by. Over,” said Marg.

  The Navigator roared by, cut me off, and threw out the anchor. I stood on the parking brake, spun the wheel, and slid the Buick sideways to save the radiator. The move garnered poor reviews from the traffic around me, but nobody got hit. When the Buick stopped, I could have reached out the window and touched the trailer hitch on the back of the Navigator.

  “Five-zero, take this plate,” I said. “Mike, alpha, golf, three, eight, seven—black Lincoln Navigator. Over.”

  Marg clicked twice. It’s hard to talk on the radio and the telephone at the same time.

  Traffic piled up behind us. Squalling tires gave way to honking horns. The Navigator roared off. I cranked the Buick straight and nailed the gas. “Five-zero, the green Windstar just passed Kalamazoo, westbound in the left lane on Twenty-eighth Street. Over.”

  Marg clicked twice. I caught the Navigator and pulled alongside. The old bat in the babushka had the cell phone pasted to her face again. I honked. She looked. The old bat couldn’t have been more than thirty—fancy that—and looked real surprised. She cranked the wheel toward me. I surrendered the lane and cut behind her to take the lane to her right. Sure enough, she locked up her brakes again.

  I saw the blue rollers in my rearview mirror before I heard the siren. The Navigator made a U-turn and took the first right. Karen, now just ahead, rocketed from lane to lane, swinging her head and arms, bopping to music. Wendy wouldn’t like the station she found on the radio. I fell in behind the green Windstar.

  The van made two attempts to pull around Karen but she hogged the traffic openings, and the van didn’t have the horsepower to overtake the Cadillac. A marked Kentwood cruiser pulled up behind me. I stuck my arm out and waved for the cop at the wheel to pull up alongside. He hit his air horn.

  I waved him up again, and he came around. I pointed, pecking my finger, at the van. The officer in the passenger seat pointed to the curb. I let down my window and yelled, “The green van!”

  The officer yelled, “Pull over.”

  “The van, the green van!”

  “Pull over. Now!”

  I turned right into a used car dealership, jumped out, and ran for the police car. Over a PA speaker, the officer broadcast, “Stay in your vehicle!” Both officers stared at me with stunned faces as I ran for the patrol car. The driver put his window up. I opened the back door, climbed in, and found myself looking into the barrel of a Magnum.

  “The van,” I said. “The men who shot up the house in Wyoming last night are in the green van following a red ‘81 Coupe De Ville. The lady in the Cadillac owns the house they shot up.”

  “Why would they do that?” asked the officer from behind the Magnum.

  “Finish the job?” I said. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  “What’s in your hand?”

  “A radio.”

  “Put it down and give me your driver’s license.”

  I dropped the radio on the seat and showed him my detective’s license from the breast pocket of my jacket. The officer lowered his weapon.

  “That’s not a driver’s license.”

  I fished out the driver’s license and gave it to him.

  “Mr. Hardin,” said the officer. “Maybe you would like to start by telling us why you left the gas station without paying for your gas.”

  “The van!” I said. “The guys in the van!”

  “You didn’t call the police?” asked the officer. “You were just going to take care of it yourself?”

  I pointed at the radio. “May I?”

  “Sure,” he said, mocking.

  “Five-six to five-zero base. Over.”

  “Base. Over,” said Marg from the radio.

  “Where are we at with the police? Over.”

  “They switched my call to Wyoming Detective’s Bureau,” said Marg. “I’m on hold. Over.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’ve got the police here now. Five-six out.” I snapped off the radio and dropped it in my lap. The officer in the passenger seat sat silently staring at me, his face the mixture of doubt and horror I expect he’d set aside for his first encounter with a space alien.

  I said, “I’ve got the police, and we’re sitting here with our thumbs in our asses.”

  “I don’t think I care for your attitude, Mr. Hardin.”

  I leaned forward to look over the seat and read the officer’s name tag. “Officer Styles, a vanload of heavily armed men are pursuing a woman down Twenty-eighth Street.”

  The officer behind the wheel hit the sirens and rollers, nailed the gas, and squawked the tires onto Twenty-eighth Street. “Green van?” he asked.

  “Green Ford Windstar—Lincoln, Henry, Tom, five, six, nine.”

  Officer Styles typed my name into the computer for wants and warrants. He came up blank and tried again, pecking out my name and date of birth slowly with his index finger. No joy, and his face hung as long as a stocking with a lump of coal in it on Christmas morning.

  The radio dispatcher reported a hit-and-run involving a green minivan at Eastern and Twenty-eighth. We found the green Windstar sti
cky side up with the wheels still spinning. A ready-mix cement truck had splashed it across the intersection at Eastern Avenue. Officer Styles summoned the fire department.

  A teenager with a spiked hairdo and a studded black-leather dog collar around his neck surfed up to the patrol car on a skateboard and announced, “Man, they’s a dude still in there!” He waved an arm at the van. “And man, he ain’t movin’!”

  Witnesses agreed that the van had run the red. Two men, both bleeding, one with his arm in a sling and the other with his face bandaged, had crawled out of the wreck and walked away. The man in the back of the van had eaten a truck bumper sandwich and, sure as hell, wasn’t moving.

  A fishing license, the only ID in his wallet, indicated that he had been Amed Gemaal, which left the fire department scratching their heads over the roast they had found in his burned-out flat on Sigsbee—which had been reported on the radio earlier in the day. The medical examiner later learned that Mr. Gemaal had two bandaged and sutured gunshot wounds to his leg. An X-ray of the burned corpse found in Gemaal’s flat revealed a male pubic arch and a .30 bullet that shattered the sternum and lodged in the spine.

  Officer Styles abandoned the milling witnesses, turned to me, and made a sarcastic announcement about looking for the “heavy artillery.” When he found two AKRs and four quarter-pound blocks of plastic explosives, his attitude brightened right up. But when a witness told him that the men who crawled out of the wreck had caught a bus, he got all cranky again.

  I had to walk back to my car. As I left, Officer Styles wagged a finger at me and growled a threat about making me a “personal project” if I failed to settle up the tab I’d left at the gas station.

  • • •

  “Why you not pay?” demanded an Asian lady from inside her Plexiglas booth.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I had to go. An emergency. I’m sorry for any inconvenience.”

  “No ‘mergency!” she said, her face growing red. “You pay.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said and gave her a dollar bill. “Please keep the change for the telephone call.”

  “You no come back!”

  Pennies, nickels, and dimes splattered around me. “Yes, ma’am.”