"You don't have to. Roll over--now!" The policeman did so, with a little help. Kelly pulled the cuffs off his belt and secured them to both wrists. "Relax, Officer Monroe."
"What do you mean?" The man kept his voice even, earning his captor's admiration.
"I mean I'm not going to kill any cops." Kelly stood him up and started walking him back to the car.
"This doesn't change anything, sport," Monroe told him, careful to keep his voice low.
"Tell me about it. Where do you keep your keys?"
"Right side pocket."
"Thank you." Kelly took them as he put the officer in the backseat of the car. There was a screen there to keep arrested passengers from annoying the driver. He quickly started the patrol car and parked it in an alley. "Your hands okay, not too tight on the cuffs?"
"Yeah, I'm just fuckin' fine back here." The cop was shaking now, mainly rage, Kelly figured. That was understandable.
"Settle down. I don't want you to get hurt. I'll lock the car. Keys'll be in a sewer somewhere."
"Am I supposed to thank you or something?" Monroe said.
"I didn't ask for that, did I?" Kelly had an overwhelming urge to apologize for embarrassing the man. "You made it easy for me. Next time be more careful, Officer Monroe."
His own release of tension almost evoked a laugh as he walked away quickly to the rear. Thank God, he thought, heading west again, but not for everything. They're still rousting drunks. He'd hoped that they'd gotten bored with it in the past month. One more complication. Kelly kept to the shadows and alleys as much as possible.
It was a storefront, just as Billy had told him and Burt had confirmed, an out-of-business store with vacant houses to the left and right. Such talkative people, under the proper circumstances. Kelly looked at it from across the street. Despite the vacant ground level, there was a light on upstairs. The front door, he could see, was secured with a large brass lock. The back one, too, probably. Well, he could do this one the hard way ... or the other hard way. There was a clock ticking. Those cops had to have a regular reporting system. Even if not. sooner or later Monroe would be sent a call to get somebody's kitten out of a tree, and real quick his sergeant would start wondering where the hell he was, and then the cops would be all over the place, looking for a missing man. They'd look carefully and hard. That was a possibility Kelly didn't want to contemplate, and one which waiting would not improve.
He crossed the street briskly, for the first time breaking his cover in public, such as it was, weighing risks and finding the balance evenly set on madness. But then, the whole enterprise had been mad from the start, hadn't it? First he did his best to check out the street level for people. Finding none, Kelly took the Ka-Bar from his sheath and started attacking the caulking around the full-length glass pane in the old wooden door. Perhaps burglars just weren't patient, he thought, or maybe just dumb--or smarter than he was being at the moment, Kelly told himself, using both hands to strip the caulking away. It took six endless minutes, all of it under a streetlight not ten feet away, before he was able to lower the glass, cutting himself twice in the process. Kelly swore quietly, looking at the deep cut on his left hand. Then he stepped sideways through the opening and headed for the back of the building. Some mom-and-pop store, he thought, abandoned or something, probably because the neighborhood itself was dying. Well, it could have been worse. The floor was dusty but uncluttered. There were stairs in the back. Kelly could hear noise upstairs, and he went up, his .45 leading the way.
"It's been a nice party, honey, but it's over now," a male voice said. Kelly heard the rough humor in it, followed by a female whimper.
"Please ... you don't mean you're ... "
"Sorry, honey, but that's just the way things are," another voice said. "I'll do the front."
Kelly eased down the corridor. Again the floor was unobstructed, just dirty. The wooden floor was old, but had been recent--
--It creaked--
"What's that?"
Kelly froze for the briefest moment, but there was neither time nor a place to hide, and he darted the last fifteen feet, then dived in low and rolled to unmask his pistol.
There were two men, both in their twenties, just shapes, really, as his mind filtered out the irrelevancies and concentrated on what mattered now: size, distance, movement. One was reaching for a gun as Kelly rolled, and even got his gun out of his belt and coming around before two rounds entered his chest and another his head. Kelly brought his weapon around even before the body fell.
"Jesus Christ! Okay! Okay!" A small chrome revolver dropped to the floor. There was a loud scream from the front of the building, which Kelly ignored as he got back to his feet, his automatic locked on the second man as though connected by a steel rod.
"They're gonna kill us." It was a surprisingly mousy voice, frightened but slow from whatever she was using.
"How many?" Kelly snapped at her.
"Just these two, they're going to--"
"I don't think so," Kelly told her, standing. "Which one are you?"
"Paula." He was covering his target.
"Where are Maria and Roberta?"
"They're in the front room," Paula told him, still too disoriented to wonder how he knew the names. The other man spoke for her.
"Passed out, pal, okay?" Let's talk, the man's eyes tried to say.
"Who are you?" There was just something about a .45 that made people talk, Kelly thought, not knowing what his eyes looked like behind the sights.
"Frank Molinari." An accent, and the realization that Kelly wasn't a policeman.
"Where from, Frank?--You stay put!" Kelly told Paula with a pointed left hand. He kept the gun level, eyes sweeping around, ears searching for a danger sound.
"Philly. Hey, man, we can talk, okay?" He was shaking, eyes flickering down to the gun he'd just dropped, wondering what the hell was happening.
Why was somebody from Philadelphia doing Henry's dirty work? Kelly's mind raced. Two of the men at the lab had sounded the same way. Tony Piaggi. Sure, the mob connection, and Philadelphia....
"Ever been to Pittsburgh, Frank?" Somehow the question just popped out.
Molinari took his best guess. It was not a good one. "How did you know that? Who you working for?"
"Killed Doris and her father, right?"
"It was a job, man, ever do a job?"
Kelly gave him the only possible answer, and there was another scream from the front as he brought the gun back in close to his chest. Time to think. The clock was still ticking. Kelly walked over and yanked Paula to her feet.
"That hurts!"
"Come on, let's get your friends."
Maria was wearing only panties and was too stoned to do any looking. Roberta was conscious and afraid. He didn't want to look at them, not now. He didn't have time. Kelly got them together and forced them down the stairs, then outside. None had shoes, and the combination of drugs and the grit and glass on the sidewalk made them walk in a crippled fashion, whimpering and crying on their way east. Kelly pushed at them, growled at them, making them move faster, fearing nothing more grave than a passing car, because that was enough to wreck everything he'd done. Speed was vital, and it took ten minutes as endless as his race down the hill from SENDER GREEN, but the police car was still there where he'd left it. Kelly unlocked the front and told the women to get in. He'd lied about the keys.
"What the fuck!" Monroe objected. Kelly handed the keys to Paula, who seemed the best able to drive. At least she was able to hold her head up. The other two huddled on the right side, careful to keep their legs away from the radio.
"Officer Monroe, these ladies will be driving you to your station. I have instructions for you. You ready to listen?"
"I got a choice, asshole?"
"You want to play power games or do you want some good information?" Kelly asked as reasonably as he could. Two pairs of sober eyes lingered in a long moment of contact. Monroe swallowed hard on his pride and nodded.
"Go
ahead."
"Sergeant Tom Douglas is the man you want to talk to--nobody else, just him. These ladies are in some really deep shit. They can help you break some major cases. Nobody but him--that's important, okay?" You fuck that up and we'll meet again, Kelly's eyes told him.
Monroe caught all the messages and nodded his head. "Yeah."
"Paula, you drive, don't stop for anything, no matter what he says, you got that?" The girl nodded. She'd seen him kill two men. "Get moving!"
She really was too intoxicated to drive, but it was the best he could do. The police car crept away, scraping a telephone pole halfway down the alley. Then it turned the corner and was gone. Kelly took a deep breath, turning back to where his own auto was. He hadn't saved Pam. He hadn't saved Doris. But he had saved these three, and Xantha, at a peril to his life that had at turns been both unintentional and necessary. It was almost enough.
But not quite.
The two-truck convoy had to take a route even more circuitous than planned, and they didn't arrive at the destination until after noon. That was Hoa Lo Prison. The name meant "place of cooking fires," and its reputation was well known to the Americans. When the trucks had pulled into the courtyard and the gates were secure, the men were let down. Again, each man was given an individual guard who took him inside. They were allowed a drink of water and nothing more before assignment to individual cells that were scattered around, and presently Robin Zacharias found his. It wasn't much of a change, really. He found a nice piece of floor and sat down, tired from the journey, resting his head against the wall. It took several minutes before he heard the tapping.
Shave and a haircut, six-bits.
Shave and a haircut, six-bits.
His eyes opened. He had to think. The POWs used a communications code as simple as it was old, a graphic alphabet.
tap-tap-tap-tap-tap pause tap-tap
5/2, Robin thought, the novelty of the moment fighting through fatigue. Letter W. Okay, I can do this.
2/3, 3/4, 4/2, 4/5
tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap ... Robin broke that off for his reply.
4/2, 3/4, 1/2, 2/4, 3/3, 5/5, 1/1, 1/3
tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap
1/1, 3/1, 5/2, 1/1, 3/1, 3/1
Al Wallace? Al? He's alive?
tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap
HOW U? he asked his friend of fifteen years.
MAKIN IT came the reply, then an addition for his fellow Utahan.
1/3, 3/4, 3/2, 1/5, 1/3, 3/4, 3/2, 1/5. 5/4 1/5
Come, come, ye saints ...
Robin gasped, not hearing the taps, hearing the Choir, hearing the music, hearing what it meant.
tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap
1/1, 3/1, 3/1 2/4, 4/3, 5/2, 1/5, 3/1, 3/1, 1/1, 3/1, 3/1 2/4, 4/3, 5/2, 1/5, 3/1, 3/1
Robin Zacharias closed his eyes and gave thanks to his God for the second time in a day and the second time in over a year. He'd been foolish, after all, to think that deliverance might not come. This seemed a strange place for it, and stranger circumstances, but there was a fellow Mormon in the next cell, and his body shuddered as his mind heard that most beloved of hymns, whose final line was not a lie at all, but an affirmation.
All is well, all is well.
Monroe didn't know why this girl, Paula, didn't listen to him. He tried reason, he tried a bellowed order, but she kept driving, albeit following his directions, creeping along the early-morning streets at all of ten miles per hour, and, at that, staying in her lane only rarely and with difficulty. It took forty minutes. She lost her way twice, mistaking right for left, and once stopped the car entirely when another of the women vomited out the window. Slowly Monroe came to realize what was happening. It was a combination of things that did it, but mainly that he had the time to dope it out.
"What did he do?" Maria asked.
"Th-th-they were going to kill us, just like the others, but he shot them!"
Jesus, Monroe thought. That cinched it.
"Paula?"
"Yes?"
"Did you ever know somebody named Pamela Madden?"
Her head went up and down slowly as she concentrated on the road once more. The station was in sight now.
"Dear God," the policeman breathed. "Paula, turn right into the parking lot, okay? Pull around the back... that's a good girl... you can stop right here, okay." The car jerked to a halt and Paula started crying piteously. There was nothing for him to do but wait a minute or two until she got over the worst of it, and Monroe's fear was now for them, not himself. "Okay, now, I want you to let me out."
She opened her door and then the rear one. The cop needed help getting to his feet, and she did it for him on instinct.
"The car keys, there's a handcuff key on it, can you unlock me, miss?" It took her three tries before his hands were free. "Thank you."
"This better be good!" Tom Douglas growled. The phone cord came across his wife's face, waking her up, too.
"Sergeant, this is Chuck Monroe, Western District. I have three witnesses to the Fountain Murder." He paused. "I think I have two more bodies for the Invisible Man, too. He told me I should only talk to you."
"Huh?" The detective's face twisted in the darkness. "Who did?"
"The Invisible Man. You want to come down here, sir? It's a long one," Monroe said.
"Don't talk to anybody else. Not anybody, you got that?"
"He told me that. too, sir."
"What is it, honey?" Beverly Douglas asked, as awake as her detective husband now.
It was eight months now since the death of a sad, petite girl named Helen Waters. Then Pamela Madden. Then Doris Brown. He was going to get the bastards now, Douglas told himself, incorrectly.
"What are you doing here?" Sandy asked the figure standing next to her car, the one he had fixed.
"Saying goodbye for a while," Kelly told her quietly.
"What do you mean?"
"I'm going to have to go away. I don't know for how long."
"Where to?"
"I can't really say."
"Vietnam again?"
"Maybe. I'm not sure. Honest."
It just wasn't the time for this, as though it ever was. Sandy thought. It was early, and she had to be at work at six-thirty, and though she wasn't running late, there simply weren't the minutes she needed for what had to be said.
"Will you be back?"
"If you want, yes."
"I do, John."
"Thank you. Sandy... I got four out," he told her.
"Four?"
"Four girls, like Pam and Doris. One's over on the Eastern Shore, the other three are here in town at a police station. Make sure somebody takes care of them, okay?"
"Yes."
"No matter what you hear, I'll be back. Please believe that."
"John!"
"No time, Sandy. I'll be back," he promised her, walking away.
Neither Ryan nor Douglas wore a tie. Both sipped at coffee from paper cups while the lab boys did their job again.
"Two in the body," one of them was saying, "one in the head--always leaves the target dead. This is a professional job."
"The real kind," Ryan breathed to his partner. It was a .45. It had to be. Nothing else made that kind of mess--and besides, there were six brass cartridge cases on the hardwood floor, each circled in chalk for the photographers.
The three women were in a cell in Western District, with a uniformed officer in constant attendance. He and Douglas had spoken to them briefly, long enough to know that they had their witnesses against one Henry Tucker, murderer. Name, physical description, nothing else, but infinitely more than they'd had only hours before. They'd first check their own files for the name, then the FBI's national register of felons, then the street. They'd check motor-vehicle records for a license in that name. The procedure was entirely straightforward, and with a name they'd get him, maybe soon, maybe not. But then there was this other little matter before them.
"Both of them from out of town?" Ryan asked.
"Philadelphia. Fr
ancis Molinari and Albert d'Andino," Douglas confirmed, reading the names off their driver's licenses. "How much you want to bet ... ?"
"No bet, Tom." He turned, holding up a photograph. "Monroe, this face look familiar?"
The patrol officer took the small ID photo from Ryan's hand and looked at it in the poor light of the upstairs apartment. He shook his head. "Not really, sir."
"What do you mean? You were face-to-face with the guy."
"Longer hair, smudges on his face, mainly when we were up close I saw the front end of a Colt. Too fast, too dark."
It was tricky and dangerous, which wasn't unusual. There were four automobiles parked out front, and he couldn't afford to make any noise--but it was the safest course of action as well, with those four cars parked in front. He was standing on the marginal space provided by a sill of a bricked-up window, reaching for the telephone cable. Kelly hoped nobody was using the phone as he clipped into the wires, quickly attaching leads of his own. With that done, he dropped down and started walking north along the back of the building, trailing out his own supply of commo wire, just letting it lie on the ground. He turned the corner, letting the spool dangle from his left hand like a lunch pail, crossing the little-used street, moving casually like a person who belonged here. Another hundred yards and he turned again, entering the deserted building and climbing to his perch. Once there he returned to his rented car and got out the rest of what he needed, including his trusty whiskey flask, filled with tap water, and a supply of Snickers bars. Ready, he settled down to his task.
The rifle wasn't properly sighted in. Mad as it seemed, the most sensible course of action was to use the building as his target. He shouldered the weapon in a sitting position and searched the wall for a likely spot. There, an off-color brick. Kelly controlled his breathing, with the scope dialed to its highest magnification, and squeezed gently.
It was strange firing this rifle. The .22 rimfire is a small, inherently quiet round, and with the elaborate suppressor he'd constructed on it, for the first time in his life he heard the music-note pinggggggg of the striker hitting the firing pin, along with the muted pop of the discharge. The novelty of it almost distracted Kelly from hearing the far louder swat of the impact of the round on the target. The bullet created a puff of dust, two inches left and one inch high of his point of aim. Kelly clicked in the adjustment on the Leupold scope and fired again. Perfect. Kelly worked the bolt and then fed three rounds into the magazine. dialing the scope back to low power.
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