Tunnel Vision

by Sara Paretsky

  “Anton’s itching for a go at her,” Jasper said. “I left him with your security boy near the plant entrance. Anton’s so pumped he may rape the exhaust pipe.”

  They roared again. Suddenly, when I thought I couldn’t take another word of it, we heard a car drive up next to the hangar. A couple of men joined the musketeers; in another minute came the rasping clatter of the corrugated doors opening. Someone started an engine—from the sound it was one of the little carts.

  Murray peered around the edge of the door, then put his mouth next to my ear. “They’ve all gone out to look.”

  We looked at each other, weighing curiosity against safety. I jerked my head toward the front. Murray nodded and slid from the bench out into the hangar. I packed up the tape recorder, stuck it in my backpack, and followed him, my gun in my hand. Using the bigger machines as cover, we slipped forward toward the entrance. We stopped behind the crop duster closest to the workbenches, where we could crawl if the musketeers returned to the building.

  In the light pouring from the hangar we could see the tarmac glistening with rain. Behind the shelter of the wing we watched Gantner talking with a man in yellow waterproof coveralls. They stood next to the motor cart, with Heccomb and Blakely behind them under the shelter of the hangar. The man in coveralls was gesticulating at the overcast sky; Gantner seemed to be arguing with him. It was frustrating to watch and not know what they were saying.

  “If they abort the flight we still have enough on tape to go to the federal prosecutor,” I said to Murray in a prison-yard mumble.

  “They can’t abort the flight if it’s come all the way from the Caribbean. It’ll have to land somewhere,” Murray rumbled back.

  As if on cue the man in coveralls suddenly sprang to life. He picked up a couple of wands from the cart, glowing sticks for guiding an airplane, and walked forward. The three musketeers pulled out rain gear and climbed onto the cart, which trundled to the middle of the runway. In another minute the landing lights of an airplane appeared below the clouds.

  Murray and I ran past the open hangar doors to the side entrance. No one was looking our way. We quickly skirted the building and reemerged on the cornfield side, where we dropped into the drainage ditch. Murray turned the camera on again. He filmed the small jet as it screamed down the runway, then moved up the field so that he was directly opposite the plane. I watched through the binoculars.

  As soon as the plane stopped, the driver hopped from the cart to put chucks under the wheels. The musketeers jumped down and waited by the door. Murray filmed the door opening, two men coming down the stairs carrying suitcases, the musketeers slapping backs and taking the suitcases from them. The man with the cart drove them all to the hangar.

  The man who’d guided the plane up the runway ran up and removed the chucks. His partner zipped back with the cart. The two of them climbed into the plane. I supposed they were servicing it.

  We were about to leave when a security car drove up outside the hangar, its roof light flashing orange. I trained the field glasses on it. They were powerful enough that I could pick out the Gant-Ag logo on the side, with security written underneath in big black letters.

  A man in a tan uniform got out of the front seat and went to open the back. An enormous man in a Stetson emerged, shepherding what seemed to be a prisoner. My bowels turned to water. It was Conrad. Anton was holding his arms.

  59

  Fiery Finish

  “What’s he doing here?” Murray demanded.

  I couldn’t imagine. My heart twisting, I kept the glasses trained on the hangar. The man in uniform was talking to Gantner, gesturing at Conrad. Blakely and Heccomb stood by watching. Anton held Conrad’s arms behind him while they searched him. I couldn’t see what they came away with—maybe his badge, because the musketeers seemed both alarmed and more menacing.

  “I have to find out what they’re doing,” I told Murray. “You go back to your car and try to raise the state police on your car phone. The local guys are apparently in Gant-Ag’s pocket. If the state troopers won’t listen call Bobby Mallory. In fact, call him anyway. Unless you get flushed wait in your car for an hour. If the state cops don’t respond by then, or we haven’t arrived, run like hell for help.”

  I gave him Mallory’s home phone number, which I know by heart, and sent him back through the cornfield. Murray thought he should stay, in case it came to a fight, but I persuaded him that our best bet was to get help: if they caught both of us we were doomed.

  The rain was falling in a steady thin curtain, turning the ditch grasses to glass. I slipped several times as I ran through the ditch, but pushed myself upright at once, ignoring my wobbly legs, the cramp over my cracked rib, retracing my route to the hangar. I crawled over to the edge of the apron but couldn’t hear anything—the mechanics had just started up one of the engines and were turning the plane around. I skirted the building once more and went to the side entrance. I was uncomfortably exposed there if anyone happened to be in the office block at this point, but I managed to open the door a crack. I could hear the conversation but not see any of the speakers.

  Blakely was demanding whether Conrad knew me.

  “I’ve heard of Ms. Warshawski, yes—she’s a private detective who gets in our way so often that most homicide cops know about her. Is she working for you? If you want a recommendation I’d say she was hardworking and thorough, but too pigheaded to make a good employee.”

  Despite my pounding heart I grinned a little. That would bear repeating—if we made it through the night together. Blakely didn’t know what to make of that answer, so he asked why Conrad had been hanging around the plant entrance. From Conrad’s response they’d been through that ground more than once: he had reason to believe he would find evidence of a Chicago homicide, he said, but he couldn’t give more details without the permission of his watch commander. Whom he would be happy to ask if Gantner would let him use a phone.

  “Mr. Rawlings, you’ve got to understand our position.” That was Gantner, his voice calm, pleasant. “You may be a Chicago policeman, but our security force found you trespassing on our property in—well, what the police themselves might call suspicious circumstances. If Chicago thought we had murder evidence out here, they would have come through our office. So I’m going to ask Deputy Klavin here to hold you outside for a few minutes while we check your story. I know someone in your superintendent’s office. This shouldn’t take more than ten minutes.”

  I didn’t hear anything for a short bit, then Blakely burst out, “I thought you had the Chicago cops covered. Is this guy legit or is he something to do with Warshawski?”

  “Maybe he’s really a cop, but is moonlighting,” Heccomb suggested. “She’s a solo operator, but he might work with her on certain projects.”

  “Whoever he is doesn’t really matter,” Gantner said. “If he is a cop—and he did have a badge, remember—we can’t afford him taking the tale of the three of us here, and this midnight plane, away with him.”

  “You going to send him off with Klavin and Anton?” Jasper asked. “I suppose if they drop him ten miles south of here we’d be long gone by the time he made his way back on foot.”

  “We need a more permanent solution than that,” Gantner said. “If he really is a cop he may have some kind of evidence tying you and Don to Deirdre’s murder. You say your girl Tish is upset by questions Warshawski’s been asking, and that she especially wanted to know about the bat Don brought in a couple of weeks ago. I don’t want to be connected with that.”

  “Damn you, Gantner, you’d better not be trying to backpedal now. Even if you weren’t in Warshawski’s office that night you’re connected,” Blakely said, breathing hard.

  “I don’t see how any of us can be tied to a maniac like Anton.” Gantner, after a brief pause, was at his smoothest. “Didn’t Charpentier ask him to go to Deirdre, try to persuade her she was mistaken in what she’d found in Heccomb’s files? If anyone’s to blame it’s Charpentier, for employing s
uch a loose cannon. Maybe Anton—or Charpentier—saw Messenger’s bat. Not realizing Don had borrowed it—as a prank toward our esteemed but hypersensitive colleague—they took it away with them to try to implicate Messenger in his own wife’s death.

  “Jasper, I think you should come in for censure for letting such assholes onto your premises, but I don’t see any other connection between us and them. Unless the girl saw Jasper when he went back to erase the disk, we’re clean. And we’re going to deal with her when she resurfaces anyway.”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Blakely burst out laughing. “You’re a cool son of a bitch, Gantner. I’ve got to hand it to you. So what do you want to do about this cop?”

  “The fact is, we’re all out here tonight, with a plane that hasn’t responded to the local air controllers,” Jasper put in. “That’s a story we can’t afford the press or the Chicago cops getting. Especially if Warshawski does show up. How would the senator explain away a dead detective on the family farm, Al?”

  “My dad’s been able to keep the heat off the murder investigation through his connections in the state’s attorney’s office. But even the senator might have trouble fixing this story,” Gantner responded.

  “Klavin says no one else was with this Rawlings when they picked him up. We’ll get Klavin to throw up a roadblock around the property. Meanwhile he can check with the sheriff’s deputies and the Morris force to see if Chicago let them know they were sending an officer in. If Rawlings does have backup in the area, no harm done. If not, he’ll be found face down in the mud with a bullet in the back of his head—ten miles from here—and Chicago can figure out what happened to him.”

  The blood thudded in my head. I leaned against the side of the building, dizzy and panting. Wild visions of leaping into the hangar and shooting all of them swam before me. Through the roaring in my head I heard Gantner call sharply to Klavin to come back into the hangar. I couldn’t see anything, but Conrad and Anton must be on the apron. Now or never, Warshawski.

  I again ran the length of the hangar and hopped into the drainage ditch on its west side. After pulling a spare clip from my backpack and sticking it in my pocket, I took a minute to use the field glasses. Anton and Conrad were on the apron. Klavin was in his squad car on the other side of the fence from the hangar, presumably ordering the roadblock for Gantner. I couldn’t see the musketeers.

  The plane had been turned around. As I watched, one of the mechanics took a fuel hose from the wing and coiled it back in the ground. He returned to the airplane, leaving the little baggage cart near the tail.

  I clambered out of the ditch and sprinted across the wet tarmac to the cart. The men had left the motor running. I jumped into it. After fumbling around the controls I found the brake: it worked by hand. I disengaged it and pulled on the gear lever. The cart started forward. It moved clumsily, swaying from side to side, its single back wagon acting like a flapping tail.

  I trundled unsteadily across the tarmac to the apron. When I pulled up next to Anton he looked at me casually, assuming I was a mechanic.

  “Conrad!” I screamed. “Get in. It’s Vic, get in!”

  Both Conrad and Anton stared at me dumbly.

  “Conrad! I heard them! They’re going to kill you. Get in!”

  He finally moved toward me. Anton bellowed a warning and reached for his gun. I fired the Smith & Wesson at him and he jumped back. As I turned the baggage hauler in a wide, ungainly circle Anton started toward us, waving a giant cannon. Clutching the wheel with my left hand I fired point-blank at him. He shot again, wildly, then clutched his groin.

  As I headed up the runway I heard more gunfire. I risked a quick look over my shoulder and saw Blakely behind us, sprinting after us. I tried to stay between the runway lights, but I bumped into one and the cart started to turn. I slowed to keep it upright. More shots rang out behind us. Conrad cried out and fell forward.

  I pulled up in front of the plane. Using it as a brief screen between me and the guns behind us, I looked at Conrad. Someone in the cockpit switched on a headlight, pinning us, but giving me a good view of my lover. He’d been hit in the right shoulder. He was bleeding, but conscious.

  I couldn’t take time to bind him up. “We’re going to have to try to cross a cornfield in this cart. Murray’s waiting in his car about a mile from here.”

  He nodded, gasping a little, clutching his shoulder with his left hand. I stamped on the accelerator. The cart moved, but it was no Corvette. Clamping my hands to the wheel, I tried to keep it upright as I headed for the edge of the tarmac.

  Behind us the plane engines sounded very loud. Conrad, bracing himself, turned his head. His face went ashen in the jet’s headlight. I looked over my shoulder. The plane was taxiing toward us. I gunned the cart’s engine but it couldn’t go any faster. The jet was fifty yards behind and rapidly closing the gap.

  I jerked the wheel hard to the right. The cart caught on one of the runway lights, lurched, and slowly tipped over. We were pitched onto the tarmac. I tried dragging Conrad away toward the field but the plane was almost on us. Flinging myself to the ground, I started firing wildly at its tires. The screaming engines were so loud I couldn’t hear the report of the gun. I emptied the clip as the plane roared toward us.

  Suddenly it began to lurch, a wounded bird, with smoke spiraling from its wheels. It flopped to the right and landed heavily on one wing. Gyrating on its side, it caromed into the cart. A burst of hot air singed my eyebrows. The turbines were so close I could make out their striations. Bits of the baggage hauler spewed across the runway.

  I forced myself to my feet. My legs were shaking badly. Conrad was barely conscious. I managed to hoist him across my shoulders. Somehow I staggered to the ditch. As I collapsed into it the plane exploded.

  Sirens sounded in front of us, startling me back to life. I poked my head over the edge of the ditch. The plane was burning in a great white-hot tower. A fire engine moved as close to it as possible and began spraying foam.

  I removed my muddy clothes and used my T-shirt to make a pad for Conrad’s shoulder. I wrapped him in my sweater and pulled my windbreaker back over my own naked body.

  The ditch was wet, not the place for a wounded man, but it would protect him while I found a way to move him. I couldn’t support his weight all the way back across the field. I fumbled in my backpack for Mr. Contreras’s blanket. Conrad stirred awake as I swaddled him.

  “The old man called me,” he whispered laboriously. “He was scared. You out here with Ryerson. The goons picked me up by the side of the road. They kept calling me nigger and wouldn’t believe I was a cop.”

  “That’s all right, baby.” I cradled his head on my lap. “I’m here. You’ll be okay, but I need to find a way to move you. You bleed to death out here and your mama will never forgive me.”

  He smiled weakly but didn’t speak again. I propped the backpack under his head and tried to come up with a coherent plan. Our only hope was if they thought the plane exploded when it ran into the cart, and that Conrad and I were incinerated. That might give me time to find help. But that meant I had to make the trek to the stream and hope Murray was still there. I wasn’t sure whether my body would keep moving long enough to get there, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  “I’m going to be gone for a while,” I said. “I’m leaving my gun with you. But I hope these guys think we’re dead, so that they won’t bother to hunt us.”

  I changed the clip and pushed my trembling legs upright. I was just starting to crawl backward through the field when I heard a new sound. Above the roar of the fire, the noise of the fire truck, louder engines roared. Two helicopters were approaching from the north. I dove back into the ditch as they landed near the hangar. I poked my head up through the grass again and strained to look. They had insignia painted on the side.

  I moved Conrad’s head to get the glasses from my backpack. The helicopters had turned, so I couldn’t make out the logo. Men in brown uniforms poured
from them, followed by Murray with his camera photographing the scene. State troopers. I gave a glad cry and scrambled over the top.

  60

  A Poet Surfaces

  The rest of the night passed in a series of jerky frames. Conrad on a stretcher in the helicopter. Orderlies prying me from his side at the hospital. Me in a hospital bed, being treated for burns, Terry Finchley at my side asking the same questions over and over, telling me Conrad was fine but that he needed blood. Stupidly fighting with the nurses to give a pint—my AB negative wasn’t much use to him. Mrs. Rawlings, who showed up around dawn, crying, “What did you do to get my baby shot?”

  Lotty appeared at noon and life began to run smoothly again. She tried to persuade me to come home with her. My injuries were minor—a couple of missing eyebrows and a large burned patch on my right forearm—but I wouldn’t leave Morris while Conrad was in the hospital, so she booked a room for me at a nearby motel.

  They’d extracted the bullet, but hadn’t attempted work on his shoulder: Lotty wanted the reconstruction experts at Beth Israel to do that as soon as he was strong enough to move to Chicago.

  In the middle of the afternoon, freshly washed and dressed, I went to see him. He was lying so still that my heart contracted. I put my head on his chest to make sure he was still breathing.

  His eyes fluttered open. “Hi, Ms. W. I came out to rescue you. Good work, huh?”

  “Perfect.” I kissed him softly. “You’re going to be okay, you know. Lotty’s here. Top surgeons are already saluting like privates.”

  At that he gave a shadow of his familiar grin. I held his hand until he drifted back to sleep, then went out to meet a phalanx of state, local, and Chicago cops. They would have been on me like terriers as soon as I woke up if Lotty hadn’t held them at bay.

  Bobby Mallory came to represent Chicago, along with Chief of Detectives Kajmowicz and an exceedingly formal Terry Finchley. The state police sent two senior officers, while the local boys provided two each from the town and the county. And the head of Gant-Ag’s own security force, Klavin, came, the corn tassel on his uniform gleaming. The feds sent an observer, bringing us to an even dozen, all crammed into a badly ventilated room at the local police headquarters. The stifling air only stoked the ill will among the different jurisdictions.