Cook's Night Out

by Joanne Pence

  Klaw glanced furiously at Warren.

  “Excuse me, Mary Ellen,” Warren said, taking her arm and turning her quickly from Klaw’s side. “Why don’t you and I check on the caterers, since Miss Amalfi isn’t here?”

  “Why, I didn’t know you were interested in food, Mr. Warren.”

  “I’m interested in a lot of things, Mary Ellen. Call me Van.”

  “You’re, like, all tied up!” Lili cried. “This is totally mind-blowing.”

  “Untie me, quick!” Angie screeched.

  “Thank God! A miracle!” Reverend Hodge cried.

  “Lili, you’re wonderful,” Paavo said calmly. “You did everything exactly right.”

  “I watched and waited, just like you said.” She ran over to him. Then she smiled. “Wait till you see. This is too unreal.” Pulling a switchblade out of her purse, she cut the ropes binding his hands. “A girl’s got to protect herself. Some guys are such retards. Show them this knife, though, their behavior turns all sublime fast.”

  “I’ll bet it does,” Paavo said. He took the knife and freed Angie and Hodge.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Angie cried. “That bomb will go off in about fifteen minutes.”

  “As if!” Lili said, looking from one to the other. “No joke?”

  “Lili, there’s one more thing I need you to do for me,” Paavo said. “Will you do it?” He took the notebook that he used to take notes at crime scenes from his breast pocket, ripped off a sheet, and started writing.

  “Name it.” Lili leaned close to him as he wrote. “Just like this time. I waited until it was all clear, then came in. I was way good, right?”

  “Totally good, Lili. Now, out at the gate is a police inspector named Yosh. Take this note to Yosh—it tells him there’s a bomb set for eight o’clock. He’s got to clear the place right now.”

  “Yosh.” She nodded. “Got it.”

  He took hold of her arms and looked her straight in the eye. “After that, get far from the building and hide until it’s safe to come out. And keep away from Klaw. He wasn’t going to warn you about the bomb.”

  Her fury grew slowly, filling her face, as his words penetrated. “My God! That dirtbag! After all I’ve done, riding goddamn smelly buses and crowded BART trains. I am so totally pissed—”

  “Take the back exit,” Paavo interrupted. “Now go!”

  She ran like a woman possessed.

  Paavo, Hodge, and Angie took a deep breath, then ran up to the main hall. Klaw stared in shock as the three of them burst into the room. Hodge grabbed the microphone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention? We’ve just received word that someone may have planted a bomb in this hall. We need to clear the premises right now. Proceed out to the far end of the parking lot.” People began screaming. “Stay calm, and walk!” Hodge ordered. “There’s no immediate danger. We simply need to ask all of you to leave quickly.”

  Ignoring him, the crowd pushed and shoved, rushing toward the exit. Almost immediately, uniformed policemen appeared and began shepherding people out of the hall.

  “Hurry, Angie!” Paavo turned her toward the door. She started to run along with everyone else. Paavo didn’t follow. He scanned the crowd for Klaw, spotting him finally on the opposite side of the room, heading for the east exit. He started after him.

  “Hold it right there, Smith.” Van Warren stepped up behind him, his gun steady on Paavo’s back. Klaw reached the back of the crowd that was squeezing through the side exit and began to knock people out of the way to get through. He was about to escape. Paavo whirled on Warren and jammed his elbow into the arm that held the gun. Then grabbing the arm, he raised his own knee and slammed the arm down on it with all the force he could manage. The bone cracked.

  Warren shrieked and dropped to his knees. Paavo hit him in the jaw, stepping into the punch with all his strength. Warren skidded across the highly waxed floor, out cold.

  Paavo clutched his side, trying to breathe and focus despite the pain, and hurried as best he could toward the door Klaw had used. But Klaw was no longer in sight.

  “Hold it!” Angie grabbed Hodge’s arm just as he made it out the doorway. “We’ve got to try to find the bomb. There are people all over the building. They’ll be killed.”

  “That’s their tough luck!” Hodge tried to pull his arm free.

  “We can try to find it,” she said, “and get it out of here.”

  “You can, maybe. I don’t even know what a bomb looks like.”

  “I do. I once had one in my dishwasher.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “Anyway, I was in the room before the caterers set it up. I know what they brought with them. Anything else has to be the bomb.”

  “That’s why I’m out of here!” He slipped away from her hold.

  “Reverend!” She caught his coattails. “Stop! It’s thirteen minutes to eight. We can spend five minutes searching and still get out in plenty of time. We’ve got to try.”

  “What if it’s with the donations? We’ll never find it.”

  “The donations are all the way across the terrace. Klaw put us under this hall, saying the floor would come down on us. The bomb’s got to be here.”

  “Maybe. But Klaw’s insane. Who can trust an insane man?”

  “There’s no insanity in his self-preservation,” Angie said. “We can do it, Reverend.”

  Hodge’s shoulders slumped. “You’re right. People will die and it’ll be all my fault.” Hodge straightened his jacket with dignity. “Let’s search.”

  “I’ll check around the food and under the tables,” Angie said. “You look in garbage cans, in corners, under chairs. Whatever.” She ran over to where the food had been set up. There were a number of chafing dishes for the hot hors d’oeuvres, with stands rigged to pump gas to the flames under the dishes. She was almost positive that she’d find the bomb in that area. An explosive side by side with canisters of gas—that was a great way to create maximum damage.

  But she didn’t see a single object that seemed out of place or even resembled a bomb. Not that she was sure what a bomb would look like, despite what had happened to her dishwasher, but it was most likely bulky with lots of wires and some tubes or pipes or dynamite—in other words, weird and dangerous-looking.

  She hurried over to the long table where her angelina sat and lifted the skirt. She saw another tablecloth. Lifting it slightly, she saw that it covered a huge wooden box—over six feet long.

  “Reverend! What’s this?”

  He ran to her side. She tried to pull the box out into the open, but it was too heavy. She motioned to Hodge to take the far end of the table. They easily slid it out of the way.

  Angie lifted the tablecloth off the box, fully expecting to see something that looked like a bomb inside.

  Instead, she screamed.

  So did Hodge.

  The two clutched each other and looked down at a young, very dead African-American man. On his finger was Axel Klaw’s opal ring. Against her will, Angie’s gaze lifted to his mouth. It was puckered and shrunken as if he had no teeth.

  Except, maybe, Axel Klaw’s.

  “Oh, God!” Angie spun around, and the world kept spinning. Bile rose in her throat.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Hodge cried.

  “Right.” She took a deep breath, then stumbled toward the centerpiece. “I’m taking my angelina with me.” She tried to pick up the plastic tray. It was heavy. Very heavy. Too heavy.

  “Reverend!” she cried. “My angelina!”

  “Let’s go.”

  “I think the bomb is in it. It wasn’t this heavy before.”

  “Isn’t it solid chocolate?”

  “It’s light, airy fudge. And the base is a wooden box I turned upside down. A bomb could fit in there—I think.”

  “Lift off the chocolate and let’s see. Wait! On second thought, what if that triggers the bomb?”

  “Let’s carry the whole thing
out of the building,” Angie said. “We can take it out back by the trees.”

  “There’s no time!”

  She checked her watch. “Eight minutes. We’ve got to.”

  He gritted his teeth. “You just won’t listen, will you? Grab one end. We haven’t got all day!”

  They each picked up a corner of the plastic the angelina sat on, and they started running out of the building. They went out the back, away from the parking lot and the public. Reverend Hodge’s face turned red, and he was breathing hard.

  Angie urged him on. They were outside the building. The hillside fell away, and off in the distance was the ocean. A narrow walkway with some stairs led to a service area with a small parking facility. Beyond was Lincoln Park. “To the trees,” Angie said. Hodge was wheezing, perspiration dripping from his forehead. When they reached the few steps that led down from the outside walkway to the service area, he was trying to blink away the perspiration and hold on to the angelina with sweaty palms. He tripped.

  “Don’t!” Angie screamed. She held the board tight, afraid that if it fell and hit the ground, that might trigger the bomb. She locked her knees, trying to hold the whole thing up herself and somehow steady the reverend, who was wobbling wildly. He, too, was afraid to let go of the angelina. As he gyrated, trying not to fall, he pulled her forward. She stepped down hard, still trying to brace herself, and stepped right off the walkway and onto the hillside, about twelve inches below the pavement. Her high heel hit, then broke off, her foot twisting in one direction while the rest of her twisted in the other. The pain that shot through her ankle was so great that for a moment she thought the bomb had exploded.

  She cried out as she went down, the reverend right behind her, but somehow they managed to keep the chocolate from bouncing onto the ground. The globe cracked but didn’t shatter. The angel remained intact.

  “Oh, God, Angie,” Hodge said, “are you all right?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied, her voice small and shaky.

  “We’ve got to get up.” He was panting hard, almost wheezing. “It’s three minutes before eight. Come on, Angie. We’ve got to get this thing away from us.”

  She tried to stand, to put some weight on her foot, but the pain made the world sway.

  Paavo searched the crowd for Klaw. It was pandemonium. After Paavo had called for immediate backup, Yosh had brought the detail they’d planned to bring later that night, at eleven o’clock. Paavo hadn’t been sure exactly what might happen, but he’d been certain something was going to—and well before eleven o’clock. He’d been right. Now patrol cars and officers swarmed over the grounds. Some people had gotten into their cars and pulled out of the parking spaces into the driving lanes. Everyone wanted to go in different directions, and the result was gridlock. Horns honked and tempers flared.

  The pedestrians weren’t any better. They shoved each other, fists swinging, as they all tried to run as far from the Palace of the Legion of Honor as they could.

  Paavo wiped his forehead, blinking hard, searching among the blurry figures for Klaw or his black Lincoln. He scanned the crowd for Angie and couldn’t find her either. Nor did he see the reverend. But Angie was small; she could easily have been swallowed up by the huge crowd. She must have gotten out. He’d seen her and the reverend heading toward the exit when he went after Van Warren. There was no need to worry.

  He spotted Lili having an animated conversation with a young policeman. She looked fine, but where were the others?

  At the edge of the lot, in the distance, he saw a light blur—a blond blur—down the hill among the trees on the ocean side of the grounds. Could it be Klaw? He peered hard, desperately. The stature, the stance. It was him.

  Klaw must have circled around, trying to stay out of sight, and was now heading through the trees to the back side of the Palace of the Legion of Honor.

  Paavo ducked to the side of the Palace. From there, he could see a van parked in a small area probably used by janitors, gardeners, and other service people. The van must be Klaw’s. That was probably why he didn’t see Klaw’s black Lincoln in the regular parking lot. He and Klaw were about equally distant from the van, but he could go downhill to reach it, while Klaw had to go up. He had the advantage.

  If he could somehow keep himself hidden until the last minute, he’d reach Klaw, face him, and—if their struggle came to that—gladly kill him. Kill him for what he’d planned to do to Angie, to all the innocent people here. For Snake Belly, for Jessica…for himself.

  He was only minutes away from it, minutes from the confrontation he and Klaw had been hurtling toward ever since Klaw returned to the city.

  Klaw had played him like a fish on a line, purposely baiting him with one incident after the other, watching him twist and fight, trying to break free but, with each new yank on the hook, finding the point deeper and tighter. He’d watched his job, his life, grow more precarious with each day.

  He loathed Klaw and wanted nothing but revenge against him. He’d lived with rage against Klaw for twenty years, thinking he’d buried it deep, when all that had happened was that he’d grown a thick skin over it, while inside the rage festered, wanting to erupt.

  He darted to a huge Grecian-looking pillar and ducked behind it. From there, he ran to the next pillar. That was when he saw Angie sitting on the ground, holding her foot and rocking in pain. The reverend was staggering toward a Dumpster at the back of the service area, carrying Angie’s chocolate angel. What the hell?

  The centerpiece. A thought struck him.

  They couldn’t have found the bomb. They wouldn’t have tried…but why else would they be here? Why else…

  On his left were Angie and Hodge. On his right, Klaw was climbing the hill, every moment closer to the truck, to his escape. He had to stop him! To avenge so many…

  Once, Angie had told him he was obsessed with Klaw, that he was too personally involved, too emotional about the man, and that he couldn’t see past his need for revenge. He had tried to deny it, but had she been right?

  His hatred had swathed him like a heavy mist, coating and blurring everything around him. Suddenly, that mist seemed to shift, then lift. For the first time since this madness began with the phone number in the dead man’s mouth, he saw all that was going on with clear eyes.

  “Put it down, Reverend,” Angie cried, tears of worry but also admiration filling her eyes. “You’re not supposed to be a brave man! Come back here. There’s not enough time!”

  But Reverend Hodge tottered slowly toward the Dumpster, carrying the big angel alone.

  Suddenly a figure sped toward him. Paavo grabbed the angelina from Hodge’s hands. Hodge spun around, faced her, and winked.

  “No!” she screamed as she took in the full horror of the scene. “Paavo! No! It’s too late. Get away from it!”

  She hobbled up on one foot, scarcely feeling the pain as she watched in horrified silence. From the corner of her eye she noticed Klaw reach the service lot, racing toward his van.

  Paavo eased the angelina into the Dumpster and lifted the heavy lid shut. He doubled over, holding his ribs, his face etched in pain.

  “Run, please!” she cried. “Paavo!”

  He got up and reeled, swaying, in her direction. “Go on!” he called.

  Doing as ordered, she stumbled, hopped, and crawled in her panicky effort to get as far from the bomb as possible.

  Paavo would help her. He’d reach her soon and they’d be safe. Her tears fell from the pain and worry, her heart pounding. Where was Paavo? She wasn’t moving that fast. Where—

  Just then, the bomb exploded.

  When the roaring sound died down, Angie was lying facedown in the dirt, not even sure how she had gotten there. Her whole body ached and she had the feeling she was not where she’d stood a moment ago. Silence met her. She lifted her head and looked at the debris around her, the burned-out metal from the Dumpster.

  Paavo!

  She turned quickly, and relief washed over her. Only a c
ouple of feet away, he was struggling to sit up, holding his sore ribs, but otherwise he seemed to be all right. Thank God, she whispered.

  She glanced over at Klaw.

  He lay on the ground, his eyes open, his head twisted at an unnatural angle. Beside him lay the Dumpster’s heavy metal lid.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Angie and Paavo sat on a bench along the walkway that ran to the service area where Axel Klaw had come to his eternal reward.

  Blobs of melted and incinerated chocolate, ash, grass stains, mud, and bits of garbage that Angie didn’t even want to think about were splattered all over her. One shoe was in her lap, and her face was streaked with mud and chocolate. She had Paavo’s jacket over her shoulders and sat huddled in it, trying not to think about the ugly scene that had just played out before her, or the horror that might have been. She shivered.

  Paavo sat beside her. He too was sprinkled with chocolate, food remnants, ash, and mud. His hair stood straight up and was a little singed on the ends from the blast, and his face was covered with dirt. He put his arm around her and she laid her head on his shoulder.

  Policemen, firemen, and paramedics covered the grounds. A paramedic came by to check on Angie’s ankle, but she shooed him away. It was already a little better, but more important, she didn’t want to do anything but sit beside Paavo and enjoy the fact that he was with her and he was safe.

  Yosh came by and stood in front of the two of them. “Hey there, Angie,” he said. “Boy, when you throw a party, it’s a real blast.”

  “Send him home, Paavo,” she said.

  “Do you need me down there?” Paavo asked, gesturing to the area where Klaw’s body was being examined by someone from the coroner’s office.

  “Heck, no. You shouldn’t be anywhere but in the hospital. You’re a mess, partner.”