by Ford, G. M.
Having had quite a bit of practice jimmying doors lately, I made short, silent work of the back door. I shifted the bar into my left hand and found the Smith & Wesson with my right. I leaned in close to Jessica. “Just stay out here until Gabe and I have things under control. One of us will come back and get you.” I pressed the car keys into her hand. “Just in case things get hairy, you get the hell out of here.”
She nodded.
“And if Sidney shows up, you better come inside and get one of us,” I added.
She nodded again.
Since the door wasn’t wide enough to accommodate both of us at once, Gabe gave me a big grin and stepped aside. “You first this time, big guy. I already had my annual melon mashing.”
I pulled open the door and stepped inside of what was like an old-fashioned mudroom. Coats hanging on hooks. Shoes on the floor. Nobody home. Light glowing through a thick set of curtains. Gabe was glued to my back now as we shuffled forward in unison, parting the curtains with our shoulders as we soft-shoed into the next room.
Big modern kitchen. Lots of stainless steel and granite. Twenty feet across. Dark-haired guy, back to us, rinsing his hairy hands in the sink. He must have had some sort of Central European radar, because I didn’t get more than three silent shuffles in his direction before he spun around and started reaching for his belt. There was no doubt. It was the shorter of the UPS guys.
I rushed him. I was close enough to smell his breath mints by the time he got the gun out, but not close enough to stop him from raising it. I lashed out with the crowbar, caught him flush on the wrist, heard the bone snap like a dry twig, and watched as the gun went bouncing across on the floor.
He let out a groan and cradled his arm, which was now hanging at an angle unknown to Mother Nature. Gabe stepped quickly around me and pressed the barrel of the big automatic into his forehead. Something about cold steel boring into your skull surmounts the need for verbal communication. A freeze-tag moment ensued. I kicked the Croatian’s gun toward the far corner of the room.
The guy leaned back against the sink, rocking on the balls of his feet as he fondled his mangled arm and moaned. Gabe reached in a coat pocket, pulled out a handful of black plastic zip ties. “Get down,” Gabe growled into the guy’s ear. The guy began doing as he was told, dropping, one at a time, to his knees in front of the sink.
The noise the guy made when Gabe pulled his hands behind his back and fastened his broken arm to the other was truly piteous. His ebony eyes filmed over when Gabe pushed him over on his side.
Gabe rolled him onto his belly with his foot and then, keeping one knee planted in the middle of his back, fastened his ankles together. Then he zip-tied his ankles to his hands, leaving the guy trussed up like a calf in a rodeo roping contest. I grabbed a dish towel off the kitchen counter and stuffed it in his mouth. He started flopping around like a trout on a riverbank. I leaned down in his face.
“I hear any noise from you, I’m gonna come back in here and make you wish you’d shut the fuck up,” I told him. He turned his face away from me and brought the noise down to a low moan.
“He’s not going anywhere,” Gabe assured.
I poked my head through the double swinging doors and looked around. What, these days, they call the great room. Big stone fireplace and a bunch of overstuffed leather furniture. Nothing whatsoever on the walls. No people. I could hear water running somewhere and took two tentative steps into the room. Above my head, a wide mezzanine ran the length of the space, with a freestanding metal staircase at either end. I was about to head for the set of stairs at the far end when the trussed-up guy’s phone began to ring in his pocket. Gabe made a dive for him.
I eased the doors closed and watched as Gabe rifled his pockets, rolling him over and patting him down until the phone was located. Gabe’s thick finger stabbed hard at the phone. The ringing stopped.
And then it started ringing again five seconds later. Gabe hung up again and hustled over to the only other door in the kitchen and pulled it open. A bathroom. From the doorway, Gabe lobbed the phone at the toilet and swished it, getting a satisfying plop as it hit the water and sank to the bottom of the commode.
Gabe had just turned a grin my way when the damn phone began to ring from underwater. Muted and a bit bubbly, but ringing nonetheless.
“Takes a flingin’ and keeps on ringin’,” Gabe stage-whispered.
I motioned out toward the great room with my head. Gabe got the message. We went through the doors together. I tiptoed the length of the room and then looked back at Gabe. We started up the stairs at opposite ends of the mezzanine.
Sounded like somebody was filling a bathtub upstairs. I kept moving up. At the other end of the room, one of the stairs objected and emitted a loud squeak. Gabe and I stopped. So did the running water. I heard the snick of a door latch opening, ducked down, and held my breath. The second UPS guy leaned out over the railing.
He saw me at the same moment I saw him and immediately pulled his head back from the bannister. With the element of surprise gone for good, both Gabe and I abandoned stealth and rushed up the stairs at flank speed. No sign of the guy, so I started kicking open doors, looking for Charlie.
I found him behind door number two. He was lying on his back in bed, his eyelids fluttering like hummingbirds. Out cold. I pulled up one of his sleeves. His arm had more holes than the Albert Hall. I reached down and put a couple of fingers on his carotid artery. His pulse was slow but steady. I was betting they kept him doped up most of the time so he was easier to deal with.
That was as far as I got with the speculating. The scrape of shoes behind me jerked my head around in time to catch sight of the second UPS brother working the slide on a nasty-looking 9 mm. He got it about up to knee level before Gabe piled into him from behind, sending him lurching forward, right up into my face. I hit him in the head with the crowbar. I watched his eyes roll in his head like a slot machine. The 9 mm went off when it hit the floor, plowing a jagged hole in the hardwood about six inches from my right foot. UPS went down in a heap and stayed there, his left foot twitching to some faraway music. Took us less than a minute to find the gun, pat him down, and truss him up.
I pointed down at the GPS monitor on Charlie’s leg. “We’ve gotta get rid of that thing, or we could take him to the moon and they’d find us.” I dropped the crowbar to the floor and hurried over to the bedside.
We hauled Charlie out of bed by the armpits, threw our shoulders under him, and waltzed him out of the room. The stairs were harder. The three of us were mashed together on the narrow stairway like an alcoholic tango troupe.
We one-stepped it to the ground floor. I’ve gotta admit that, at that point, I was feeling pretty good about things. The Croatians were under control. We had possession of Charlie. Things had gone about as well as we could have hoped.
As we backed through the swinging doors, dragging Charlie, I was preoccupied, still patting myself on the back for how easily things had gone and thinking about what kitchen utensil I could use to remove the GPS tracker from Charlie’s ankle. So when the gun went off I damn near baked a load of brownies in my shorts.
Within the confines of the kitchen, the roar of the gun sounded like a howitzer. And then the operatic screaming started. A moment passed before another shot screamed through the swinging door, and the air was suddenly full of splintered wood. Gabe and I dropped Charlie and dove for the corners.
The impact of the round pushed the door all the way open. Croatian number one had somehow gotten his hands loose and managed to worm around the floor and find the gun. I cursed myself for not picking it up when I had the chance.
He raised the weapon and pointed it in our direction. I ducked my head back around the corner. Another round ripped through the doorway. I could hear his ragged breathing as he crawled around on the floor. The phone in the toilet began to ring again.
Bluuuuuurb. Bluuuuuurb. Bluuuuuurb. Bluuuuuurb.
“Pssst.”
I looked over a
t Gabe. The big automatic was cocked and ready to go. “He’s shootin’ with his left hand,” Gabe said. “You busted his gun hand. Give him something to shoot at. He gets up on his knees again, I’ll put him out of his misery.”
I shook my head. I wanted to come out of this without a corpse to explain away. I used my foot to push the door open again. Another round whistled through the doorway, smashing into the stone fireplace on the far side of the room. And then another, sending a spray of pulverized river rock into the air.
Much as I hated to admit it, Gabe was right. Something had to give. We couldn’t afford to be pinned down for very long. Much as I didn’t want to have to shoot the guy, everything else I could think of was worse.
“Okay,” I whispered to Gabe. “But try not to kill him, if you can.”
“Better him than one of us.”
I nodded, stuck the Smith & Wesson back in my belt, got my feet under me, and then popped sideways into the open doorway, like one of those mechanical bears in an arcade shooting gallery. UPS number one was sitting on the floor clawing at the zip tie around his ankles. He caught sight of me in his peripheral vision, snatched the gun from the floor, humped up onto his knees, and pointed it my way. I pulled myself back behind the door frame a nanosecond before both guns went off at the same instant. The fireplace took another hit.
Gabe’s round took him just below the left elbow, painting the far wall with a mist of blood and bone. UPS went all operatic again. The gun fell from his hand.
I was on him before he stopped screaming. Something about profanity transcends language. I didn’t understand the words he was spewing into the air, but I was pretty certain it wasn’t scripture. This time, first thing I did was pocket his 9 mm.
Gabe used the same dish towel I’d stuffed into UPS’s mouth to bind the gaping hole in his arm, then looked over at me. “That’s the best we can do for now. We can call 911 once we get out on the road.”
“Let’s went,” I said.
Gabe and I were quick-stepping across the kitchen carrying Charlie when I looked up and caught sight of Jessica Harrington. And the gun pressed to the back of her head.
And Sidney Crossfield holding the gun.
“Put your weapons on the kitchen counter,” Sidney said.
When neither of us complied, he threw Jessica to the floor and pointed the gun at her head. “Guns on the counter.”
“No.” When I looked over, Gabe was grinning at him.
“I’ll kill her,” Sidney snarled.
“Have at it, motherfucker,” Gabe said, grinning wider. “You’ll be dead before she hits the floor.”
The disbelieving look on Jessica Harrington’s face was priceless. If she’d had a dialogue bubble over her head, it would have read: “Hey, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to go.”
It’ll be quite a while before I stop asking myself what might have happened next, had things played out a little further. Whether we would have actually let him shoot her, rather than give up our weapons. I’d like to think not, but violent moments have a way of working out in strange, unanticipated ways. It’s like Mike Tyson said: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Didn’t really matter, though, because right at that life-defining moment, a large-caliber lead projectile hit Sidney Crossfield in the back of the head and then shattered the microwave oven a couple of feet to the right of Gabe.
When I looked up, the right upper quarter of Sidney’s skull had gone missing. He staggered one step forward and began to drop. Even with his right eye and most of his medulla oblongata vaporized, his left eye managed to register surprise on its way to the floor.
Jessica Harrington looked like she was going into shock. Gabe and I each had Charlie in one hand and a gun in the other when Patricia Harrington stepped into the kitchen, with her driver, Thompson, in close attendance. In her bejeweled right hand was an enormous old British service revolver. A Webley, I thought.
She lifted the gun above her shoulder, pointing it straight up at the ceiling. Thompson took it from her hand, wiped it clean with an old-fashioned pocket handkerchief, and then refurbished the bulge under his left arm with it.
“We should call the cops,” I said to nobody in particular.
“Thompson,” was what she said.
He stepped around his employer and lifted Jessica from the floor. I guess after forty-seven years with somebody, you sort of automatically know what they want. We watched in silence as Thompson, with Jessica cradled in his arms, pushed his way through the curtains and disappeared.
Patricia Harrington started to leave. Stopped and turned around.
“I’ll send an ambulance for Charles,” she said.
I told her about the Homewood clinic and what we’d arranged for Charlie.
She set her jaw and nodded. “I’ll instruct them to take him there,” she said.
The phone in the toilet began to ring again. Nobody said a word until it stopped.
She raised her chin and fixed me with those blue eyes. “He was going to shoot my daughter,” she said. “I had no choice.” She thought for a moment. “And . . . yes, you should call the authorities. If they have any questions, they know where to find me.”
The second Croat began to groan. The toilet phone started ringing again.
Patricia Harrington turned and walked away.
Gabe looked over at me. “Well . . . that went well, don’t you think?”
I pulled out my phone and dialed 911.
When the announcement arrived in the mail I thought it was a joke. Then I realized it had to be Patricia Harrington. I mean, who else was gonna treat me and up to twenty guests to a night at the most expensive restaurant in the Pacific Northwest? The note said that all I had to do was call Canlis a week or so in advance, tell ’em when and how many, and they’d close the joint for the night and give us the royal treatment. Gratis, of course.
It undoubtedly says something about me that when it came time to sit down and make a list of who I was going to invite, I couldn’t come up with anything like nineteen other people I wanted to have dinner with. That’s when it came to me.
So you won’t be thinking I’m completely nuts, I want you to know I did the best I could on my end. I rented a ten-seater van and took ’em all out and got ’em coiffed at HairMasters. Then dropped ’em off at the Y for showers before hauling them all down to K&D in Renton for some new duds. Rebecca had done much the same for the girls, so by the time we arrived at the restaurant that night, we didn’t look half-bad. George, Ralph, Harold, Billy Bob Fung, Red Lopez, Heavy Duty Judy, Large Marge, Frenchie, and Nearly Normal Norman marched into the joint like they were old, valued customers. Lots of brand-new shirts and ties and dresses that rustled like the wind. Rebecca and I and Eagen and Gabriella made up the rest of the guest list. I invited Joey Ortega, but like I figured he would, he begged off, so I invited the van driver to join us.
And I’ve got to admit, the restaurant staff was marvelous. Never batted an eye when we came marching in, and I assure you that, despite my best efforts, nobody was ever going to mistake this group for an itinerant accounting firm.
Life on the streets takes its toll. Baths, haircuts, soft lights, and a new suit of clothes can do only so much. Every form of refuge has its price.
Ralph wanted to start out with the oysters in a red-wine mignonette. George favored the Dungeness crab with bok choy and fermented ajoblanco. It went on and on. They were like gypsies in the palace. Perusing the wine list with the sommelier. Hooting and hollering, throwing napkins at one another. Everybody having something to say about what everybody else ordered. It was a sight to behold.
Wasn’t till we were damn near two hours in that I noticed glances being pitched back and forth by the waiters. I’m pretty sure they’d never seen a group who could put booze down quite like these folks, but, to their credit, they swallowed hard and kept on pouring. I was betting they were gonna need an emergency liquor delivery first thing in the morning.
He wiped his mouth with his napkin and said, “Absolutely nothin’.”
“Me neither. I checked the papers. The Internet. Not a peep.”
“Story disappeared like Jimmy Hoffa,” Gabe said around a mouthful of Japanese cheesecake.
Eagen chuckled. “We asked the court for a search warrant to go through Harrington Hall. You know . . . see if maybe the place wasn’t wired for sound. They laughed in our faces. Her attorneys have got this thing cinched up tighter than a frog’s ass.”
Rebecca leaned in. “Sidney’s remains didn’t come through us either. I got a note from the attorney general to the effect that the family had made private arrangements. A very carefully worded butt-out message, if you read between the lines. Nobody’s filed a death certificate either, at least nothing that can be found in public records.”
“How long did the county mounties hold you and Cinderella for?” Eagen asked.
“Less than an hour,” I said. “Never put either of us in a cell.”
“With your history and Gabriella’s rap sheet, I think it’s safe to say you’ve got friends in high places.” He took a sip of coffee. “What’s going on with the kid?”
“The story that Charlie was autistic was just what Crossfield told people. He’s got some brain damage from whatever he was injected with, but nothing to the extent that Crossfield claimed he had. They’re saying he might be okay to go back home fairly soon.”
“But nothing about who injected who and why or who killed the girl.”
“They won’t let us talk directly to the kid.” Eagen made a disgusted face. “According to his attorneys, anyway, he doesn’t remember anything before waking up in jail that night. Doesn’t remember going up to the park. Doesn’t know who injected him. Doesn’t know a damn thing.”
“You think that’s true?” Rebecca asked.