Five O'Clock Lightning

by William L. DeAndrea

  “Mr. Garrett?” a sweet voice asked him. The note the clerk had given him said a woman had called, not a little girl. Garrett decided he’d said that only because little girls don’t stay up that late. You certainly couldn’t tell by the voice.

  “I’m Russ Garrett. Were you trying to call me yesterday?”

  “Yes, I was,” the voice said. “I know—”

  “Wait a minute, you haven’t told me who you are yet.” Unconsciously Garrett had put a hearty, avuncular tone in his voice, just as he would have if it had actually been a little girl he’d been speaking to.

  There was a pause at the other end of the line, then the voice came back. “That—that doesn’t matter. I know something about Congressman Simmons.” Another pause. “The way he died, I mean.”

  “That’s interesting,” Garrett said. He tried to get Martin’s attention by waving, but the detective was involved in a magazine. Probably didn’t want to look as if he was horning in on Garrett’s business. Garrett picked up a cuff link from the bureau and threw it at him. Martin looked up, saw Garrett’s frantic waving, and joined him at the phone.

  “That’s very interesting,” Garrett said again. “But why tell me?”

  “Well ... because.” Pause. “I have to tell somebody.”

  Martin grabbed Garrett’s arm. His handsome brown face went through comical contortions as he mouthed the words “Keep her talking.” Garrett nodded, and Martin sprinted from the room.

  “You really should be telling this to the police,” Garrett told the phone.

  “I don’t like the police. I’ll tell you, and you can tell the police.”

  “How did you even know who I am or that I’m in town?”

  No pause this time. It was almost as if she was waiting for the question. “I saw you,” the little-girl voice went on. “At Blues Stadium. You were with a lady with dark hair. I remember you from when you played with the Blues. And it was in the news that you were there when Congressman Simmons was shot. I know something about that, but I was afraid to tell the police. So I thought I would tell you.”

  That made sense, sort of. Garrett used it to stall a little more. “Are you the little redhead who used to hang around the hotel and get autographs from all the ball players?”

  “No. I just remembered you.”

  Garrett was running out of things to say. “What is it you want to tell me?”

  “No,” said the voice. “I—I want money first. I have to go to Chicago.”

  “Okay. Hell, it costs less than ten bucks to go to Chicago from here. What’s your address; I’ll mail it to you.”

  “No, I want to go there to live.” The girl sounded as if she thought Garrett’s wisecrack had been the most natural of misunderstandings. “I need five hundred dollars.”

  “Where am I going to get five hundred dollars?”

  “I don’t know. I bet you can get it if you really want to know what’s going on.”

  “Your faith in me is wonderful.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Okay. Suppose I can get the money. Then what?”

  “At midnight you bring the money to a place called Barney’s Tavern. Do you know where that is?”

  Garrett said no; she gave him the address. Down by the river, in the oldest part of town, lost in the maze of warehouses and small factories between the airport and the slaughterhouse. Not one of Kansas City’s showcase neighborhoods.

  “You go to Barney’s, at midnight, and you sit at a table facing the front window. I’ll come by and tap on it three times with a key. Then you come out. Okay?”

  “How do I—” Too late. A few minutes later Martin returned.

  “Any luck?” Garrett asked.

  “Luck? What the hell is that?” Martin collapsed in a chair and made a face. “I love it how easily they trace telephone calls in the movies.”

  Garrett wanted to know what he did now.

  “You go meet her, what do you think?”

  “You don’t think this is just a crank call, then.”

  “Why the hell should people be calling you with crank calls?” Martin had another sour look on his face. “Before I came back here I spoke to the local cops. If it makes you feel any better, Garrett, they feel the same way you do.”

  “I don’t know what I feel,” Garrett protested. “I just wanted to find out what you think.”

  “I think you can’t afford not to talk to her—I mean, I can’t afford not to have you do it.” Martin laughed. “What the hell; maybe you’ll pick this dame up and get laid again.”

  “Droll,” Garrett said. “Only if she’s as young as she sounds and I pick her up, the cops will pick me up. I can see it now: BASEBALL EXECUTIVE ARRESTED ON MORALS CHARGE.”

  Martin shrugged it off. “So what?”

  “There’s another thing,” Garrett said, suddenly serious. “This could be a setup. I mean, I may have unknowingly offended someone, and this could be their charming way of getting me to a spot where they can work off their grievances.”

  “I thought of that. Don’t worry, Garrett. You just go ahead and meet the lady. I’ll be right behind you.”

  10

  Lindy felt very happy. She walked down the street toward Barney’s Tavern humming a merry little tune. She was being useful—it was a good feeling. In all the time since she’d become Gennarro’s girl friend, this was the first time he’d ever asked her to help him; the first time he’d ever asked her for anything, actually.

  Okay, it wasn’t much, just to talk to some man on the phone, then meet him and bring him to the place where Gennarro and he would talk. Still, Lindy had done a good job so far—she’d had to stop a few times so Gennarro could whisper to her what she was supposed to say next, but when she finished the call, he had kissed her and told her he was proud of her. Lindy wanted to keep doing a good job.

  It was about one minute past midnight when she got to Barney’s Tavern. She looked in the window to see if the Garrett guy was there. There were more colored men than white men in the place, so he was easy to spot. Gennarro had given her a good description. Lindy took out her keys and tapped three times on the window.

  Garrett, inside the bar, swallowed the rest of the beer he’d been drinking and hastened outside. He was a little overdressed for the area, but not too much—he and Hal Keating had eaten at a not-too-fancy place in the Plaza, downtown.

  Kansas City was really proud of the Plaza. Built in the thirties, the hollow squares of stores and buildings were the nation’s first shopping center, the forerunner of the ones that were popping up all over the country now.

  They could use one around here, Garrett thought as he stepped back into the fetid air. The heat, humidity, and smell from the slaughterhouse made it something slimy and tangible, and it felt as if you had to push it aside to walk.

  The girl was a small platinum blond, but Garrett looked in her eyes and decided he was safe from any possible morals charge. There was a lot of experience in those eyes.

  And, he was surprised to see, a certain cheerful friendliness.

  “Hello, Mr. Garrett,” she said. “I’m glad you came.”

  “Hello. Can you tell me your name now?”

  She nodded. “It’s Lindy.” Garrett waited; the girl looked at him, wondering what he wanted. “Lindy,” she said again.

  “I was just wondering if you had a last name.”

  “You’re funny,” she said with a giggle. “Come on, let’s go somewhere we can talk, okay?” She took him by the arm and started to pull him.

  Garrett went along, but before he did he took a glance across the street, where Detective Cornelius Martin waited in the darkened interior of Hal Keating’s car. He saw the tiny flame of a cigarette lighter flicker on and off. Garrett felt better.

  11

  Garrett had expected any number of things, but not this. “What the hell are we doing here?” he asked Lindy.

  “Oh. A friend of mine is a foreman here. On the night shift.”

  She ha
d led him to the employees’ entrance of the slaughterhouse. If he leaned back a little, Garrett could see around the corner of the building to the stockyards that stretched out toward Genessee Street, a sea of dehorned heads and spotted backs of cattle waiting for their date with a sledgehammer. Every now and then a frightened bellow would cut through the background sound of melancholy mooing, as if one of the animals had realized what was going on.

  Garrett didn’t like the place. The building itself was a rickety-looking affair of unfinished wood, maybe as high as a three-story building, all ramps and conveyors and blood channels. Hand-painted signs, crudely lettered in white paint on pieces of wood that looked as if they had fallen off the building somewhere, told the stock handlers where to take the new arrivals. Similar signs along the side of the building where Garrett and Lindy now stood designated areas for “DEAD” and “CRIPS,” sunken pens for animals that had been damaged in transit. Garrett wondered how frequently someone came along and put the crips out of their misery.

  He began to regret his steak dinner.

  The scene was bathed in a pale phosphorescence, a combination of moonlight and bare electric bulbs strung on wires. It gave the whole place an unhealthy look.

  The light was better inside, but not much. Bellows were a lot more common in there; they had entered the building where the butchering process began. In spite of himself Garrett watched in fascination as hammers rose and fell like metronomes and killed or stunned cows slid down a ramp, where other men would cut their throats and hook them on conveyors to drain.

  Lindy showed him a door. “You go inside and wait a second. I want to tell my friend I’m here.” Garrett entered.

  Lindy saw the door close behind him and smiled. Gennarro would be proud of her—he’d be here any minute to talk to nice Mr. Garrett.

  12

  Chicago Ned could still swing a hammer. His muscles were a little sore, maybe, because he was out of practice, but Chicago Ned could still split a cow’s skull like a jeweler could split a diamond. He could see some of the regular employees here looking at him, wondering how a man could just walk in off the street, ignoring the union, and do a job better than any of them. The answer was he’d spread a lot of Gennarro Kennedy’s money around to union people to let him and a few of the boys in the plant tonight. The answer to the second part was that they had stockyards in Chicago, too, and Chicago Ned had built up some muscles and picked up some skill working in them.

  He watched little Blondie close the door of the foreman’s office behind this guy from New York (the foreman had been sent to the movies, too). That was his signal to show this Garrett how good he was with the hammer.

  Chicago Ned bashed one last cow, lit a cigarette, put the hammer over his shoulder, and signaled the boys to follow him.

  13

  Garrett sat before a pinewood desk in the windowless cubicle that passed for an office, dividing his attention between a girlie calendar on the wall and an article in Meat Processor magazine about compressed air guns that would shoot a bolt into a cow’s head, killing it more humanely, efficiently, and economically.

  He wondered what the hell was going on, where the woman had gone. This was starting to look more and more like a trap—okay, he’d been ordered to play along, and he had. He wished he knew where Martin was.

  The door opened; Garrett started to get up. He froze midway when he saw the men with the sledgehammers come in.

  They were Negroes, various shades. All muscular. All solemn. Garrett began to feel like the guest of honor at a New Orleans funeral.

  Garrett’s mind scrabbled for something he could do. There was a paperweight on the desk, but it was one of those water-filled things with St. Anthony trapped in a blizzard inside it. Not much of a weapon.

  The head man was a light-skinned fellow with a reddish tinge to his hair and mustache. He held a sledgehammer like he knew what to do with it. Garrett noted that there was blood on the hammer already.

  “Come on, boy,” the boss crooned. “This is gonna be just as easy as you let it be. I know what I’m doing—you won’t feel a thing.”

  Garrett was silent.

  “Just sit in the chair and close your eyes, and it all be over in a second.” He took a deep drag on the cigarette in his mouth.

  Garrett swallowed. There was something hypnotic about the voice, but not quite hypnotic enough for Garrett to offer himself up like a head of cattle. The paperweight wasn’t much, but it would have to do. Slowly Garrett reached behind himself for it.

  Still crooning, the man with the hammer came closer.

  14

  Detective Cornelius Martin watched Garrett and the girl enter the slaughterhouse, cursing the Kansas City Police Department the whole time. They wouldn’t listen to him. They were so busy trying to convince him they weren’t prejudiced, they hadn’t heard a word he’d said about needing some help tonight on a tail. And he hadn’t felt, considering their attitude, like spilling the whole story to get their attention. So he left the party, met Garrett, and followed through on his own. Up until Garrett had gone inside, that is. What did he do now?

  He was still trying to decide five minutes later when the girl left the building. Without Garrett. Martin waited until she reached the sidewalk and stayed there before he started his serious thinking.

  It was getting to be obvious the girl wasn’t going to move. A lookout? Martin didn’t believe it. Maybe she was waiting for a lift.

  It didn’t matter; Martin had to get inside. He could handle the girl if he had to.

  He didn’t have to. She took no notice of him, that he could tell. She might have nodded at him, or even smiled, but Martin wouldn’t have sworn to it. He was preoccupied.

  He pulled his gun as soon as he entered. God only knew what he’d be up against in here. He found the one thing he never would have guessed. Solitude.

  Martin was alone in what he took to be the main killing room of the slaughterhouse. Blood, more or less fresh, gleamed stickily in the glare of bare electric bulbs. Freshly killed cattle had been abandoned at various stages of the process. It was unsettling; more upsetting, in its way, than if cattle were being killed at full working capacity. There was something ... Martin didn’t know; something unholy about the whole business.

  He circled the big room, listening, holding his breath. At last he came to a door with voices behind it, one of them Garrett’s.

  Martin pulled back his leg and kicked in the door. He could see Garrett across the room, on the other side of a bunch of ugly men with sledgehammers. One had his hammer raised over Garrett.

  That was the one he shot. The man crumpled. Garrett ducked the hammer as it fell. “Thank God!” he said. Martin thought he sounded sincere enough for both of them.

  “All right,” the New York detective said. It sounded stupid to him, like a movie. But there weren’t any Negro detectives in movies, and he couldn’t think of anything better to say.

  “All right,” he said again. “Just stay put. Garrett, you come over here and get behind me.”

  “Bet your ass,” Garrett told him and complied.

  “You all right?” Martin asked.

  “Tell you later,” Garrett told him. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Chicago Ned’s boys were standing quietly at attention, but one at the back was starting to fidget. “Brother,” he said, “let’s stop talking and all us get out. This place gone catch fire!”

  15

  That, Garrett saw, was not exactly accurate—the place had caught fire. Chicago Ned’s cigarette had landed neatly on the magazine Garrett had dropped when the boys came into the room. From there the flames had apparently spread to the varnish on the foreman’s desk and then to the wood. As the thugs fled past him and Martin, heedless of Martin’s gun, Garrett could see the wood darken and the flames climb. Above the desk the ceiling was beginning to char.

  Garrett shook himself out of it; Martin still seemed to be mesmerized. Garrett grabbed his arm. “Come on,” he said.
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  Martin shook his hand off, pointed with the gun to the man lying on the floor. “What about him?”

  “What about him, for Christ’s sake? Let’s go!”

  “Bullshit! We can’t leave him here to burn!”

  “You shot him! He’s probably already dead!” The flames had stopped crackling; now they were making a low, level roar.

  Martin didn’t say anything else. He bent forward and went to Chicago Ned. Garrett shook his head, cursed under his breath, and followed.

  The fire was hot—it hurt to breathe the air at that end of the room. The mustache had been singed off Chicago Ned’s face on the side near the fire. The skin was blistering from the heat.

  Martin and Garrett each grabbed one of the gangster’s feet and dragged Chicago Ned the length of that long office to the doorway and through.

  A bullet whistled past Garrett’s head. His initial reaction was to be more hurt than afraid. Those ungrateful bastards. He almost wished Martin had gunned them all down. Garrett hit the floor, heard the thud of Martin’s body a fraction of a second later.

  “You hit?” Garrett said.

  Martin shook his head. “Uh uh. Shit.” More shots rang out. Martin peeked out from his shelter alongside the door frame and returned fire.

  Fire. Garrett had almost forgotten about the blazing monster behind him. He guessed it was difficult to be scared to death of more than one thing at a time.

  Garrett stayed low and pulled Chicago Ned to him as Martin fired again. “Ha!” the detective said. “Got the son of a bitch in the kneecap.”

  Garrett wiped his hands on his jacket. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re a hell of a shot, all right. You killed this guy, too.”

  “Wish I’d known that a minute ago; I wouldn’t have tried to save him.”

  Garrett had had about enough. He slammed his hand to the floor. The wood was hot to the touch. “Goddammit, Martin!” he exploded. “Let’s stop proving to each other how brave we are and figure out how the hell we get out of this!”