Official Privilege

by P. T. Deutermann

  His right eyeball felt like red-hot jelly, and then there was a noise.

  He looked up the stairs and damn near fainted: Navy had his gun and was firing at him.

  The 9-mm was bucking in the guy’s bloody hands with that unmistakable Hamming sound; he could hear the bullets blasting holes in the front door and the floor and the window and the wall, just like goddamn Frankfurt again, except that that wasn’t Terry Eastman and he wasn’t Inge. He rolled once, twice, out of the line of fire, not sure he’d been hit, but scrambling to get clear, his leg and his eye screaming at him, a hot gush of nausea surging up his throat.

  He picked himself up in the sudden silence, holding on to the sofa to steady himself, his right leg dangling underneath him. Mother fucker! How the hell had he gotten loose? Go get your other goddamn gun and go back up there and waste both of them. Right now. But he knew he couldn’t: His eye felt like mush and he was afraid even to touch it. He was having trouble seeing out of the other eye now, and the pain in his leg was so intense that he was seeing stars every time he moved.

  He checked himself over but found no bullet holes.

  Five rounds, missed every damn one of them. Typical fucking amateur.

  Get out. Get out now while you can. She may have a gun stashed somewhere up there that you didn’t find.

  Get out. You can’t see for shit, and that leg is really going to slow you down. No. Do what you were going to do originally: Salt the place with gas, torch it, and then roll. He staggered back into the kitchen, where the two mason jars were waiting.

  Limping awkwardly, he brought one back out into the front hall, opened it, and slopped a quart of high-test up the carpeted stairs, smashing the bottle against the stairway wall when it was almost empty. Then he took the other one and stumbled through the living room and study, slopping gasoline on the furniture and the drapery, maintaining a trail back to the front hall and the stairs. He had to keep taking deep breaths to keep from vomiting, his leg and eye pulsing with bright spears of pain every time he moved. He smashed the second jar against the kitchen wall in a fury and then fully opened the back doors to the pantry and the garden.

  He limped back in to light it and saw the gas stove.

  Even better, he thought. He lurched over to the stove, grabbed the cook top with both hands, pulled it off the stove body, and dumped it onto the kitchen floor in a crash, exposing the corrugated natural-gas-supply pigtail.

  He grabbed a big kitchen knife from an open drawer and chopped through the thin metal, releasing a steady hiss of natural gas into the kitchen.

  Then he got out his cigarette lighter and went back to the gasoline trail in the study and lit it. There was a satisfying whoomping noise, and the fire trail streaked around the downstairs like some malevolent spirit. He watched for a few seconds and then dragged himself out the back door and down to the garden gate, propping open the back door as he went. When he got to the garden gate, he looked back. He could see the flickering patterns of the flames beginning to grow in the downstairs area of the house. He took a moment to collect himself and then lurched through the gate, closing it behind him.

  When the guy landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, Dan staggered back into the bedroom and saw the gun on the floor. He grabbed it and careened back out the bedroom door. He was wildly unsteady, his balance shot to hell, but he had done it: He had nailed the bastard—a direct hit with the rolling pin. Now he stood at the top of the steps, pointing the gun at the scrambling figure below, trying to get his eyes focused, pulling the trigger. But nothing was happening. The slide. Pull back the god damned slide. He did and then pointed again, and this time there was a satisfying explosion and a kick that raised his hand. He kept the trigger held back and emptied the gun down the stairs, only dimly aware that the guy was rolling out of the line of fire.

  When the gun stopped firing, he backed into the bedroom, slammed the door, and slid down to the floor with a jolt to his neck that made his head swim. He was having trouble seeing.

  He was pretty sure he had actually blacked out for a moment when the guy had tripped over the top of him and fallen on the floor at the top of the stairs. He’d been aiming for the man’s forehead and missed, but the underhanded shot to the eye had done the trick, even though the effort of the throw had caused Dan to collapse like a stringless puppet. But the big man had been stunned long enough for Dan to grab the rolling pin again as Ward tripped over him, and the fact that he was down on the floor had enabled him to hit the bastard a second time, this time in the shin.

  He heard a sound from the bed. Grace. He turned around and stared. Her eyes were wide with terror, her body was stretched obscenely across the bed, a glinting surgical clamp of some kind clipped to her breast like Cleopatra’s asp.

  “Oh Jesus,” he said, getting up, wanting to avert his eyes. He heard what sounded like a bottle breaking out in the stairwell. He froze in place. Bastard’s coming back. Block the door. Block the door. He turned around and tried to lift her dresser bureau in front of the door, but he lacked the strength and almost collapsed again. His neck felt like it was connected to his spine by a tube of soft, hot sand. He tried a second time. Slide it; don’t lift it. He got the damn thing to move sideways a little, and then a little more, until it partially blocked the door. Then he staggered over to the bed, telling her it was okay, it was going to be okay, removed the clamp, and used one of the scalpels to cut her loose, rolling her into the bedspread to cover her, then holding her from behind when she started into a heaving, sobbing fit. He was comforting her, cupping his hands in front of her face as she began to hyperventilate, when he felt rather than heard the compression wave of the gasoline igniting in the stairwell.

  He stopped breathing. He knew what that sound was: He’d felt that thumping pressure wave before, in Navy firefighting school, at the moment when the instructor tossed gasoline on the pool of diesel fuel and then followed it with an ignition torch.

  He rolled off the bed and looked around for the phone. No good—the phone was dead. Grace, wrapped up in the bedspread, called his name when he rolled off the bed. Then there was a crackling noise outside the bedroom door, and the house felt like it was beginning to vibrate.

  “What—” she said.

  “He’s set the house on fire. We’ve gotta get out of here. Are you hurt?”

  “N-no,” she said. “He was going to … going to—”

  “It’s okay now. I hurt him. But my neck isn’t working.

  I can barely stand up. You’re going to have to help me.

  He’s cut the phones. Which side is closest to the ground?”

  She was trying to sit up, struggling with the bedspread, disoriented, trying to understand his question.

  “I don’t … I don’t know,” she mumbled, looking uncertainly at the windows.

  He lurched over to the window on the right side of the house, looked two stories down, to some bushes and a brick wall. He thought he could see an orange glow reflecting on the brick wall from the downstairs windows, but the wall was too far away from the side of the house to get to. He went to the other side, conscious that there was smoke coming in under the bureau in front of the door.

  “Grace,” he said, “you have to get up. Get some clothes stuffed under that door.”

  She stared at the bureau and the first tendrils of smoke coiling up into the room for a moment before finally comprehending, and then she moved, rolling out of the bed covers and scrambling naked across the room to the bureau.

  He looked out the other side window. Same deal. If the wall had been only about three feet closer to the house, they could make it, but there was a good eight feet between the house wall and the brick wall. Grace was stuffing some clothes under the bureau, stopping some of the smoke, and then she was hurriedly pulling on some clothes. Good, he thought, she’s back in battery.

  He went to the back window of the bedroom, saw immediately that they could get onto the roof of the back porch.

  “Okay!” he shout
ed. “Here’s our way out.”

  He tried to open the window, but it was stuck, probably painted shut. He tried again, but the effort sent his head spinning. He slumped down for a moment to cradle his head in his hands—which is when he found out the carpet was warm, very warm.

  “Grace,” he yelled, “we gotta move—the whole downstairs is going. Help me open this window!”

  Grace ran back over to the window, barefoot, but with shorts and a sweater on. She grunted and heaved against the window, and Dan tried to help, but they couldn’t budge it. While they were trying, Grace stepped on the hardwood floor and yelled when it burned her feet. The floor was clearly vibrating now as the fire in the kitchen, amplified by an unlimited supply of natural gas and fresh air, was turning the downstairs into a combustion chamber. There was an arcing noise from the wall and the lights flickered out. The air in the room was suddenly getting very hot. He realized that they had only seconds.

  “Throw something through it!” he yelled, realizing that he was having to yell because of the rumbling noise that was filling the house. There was a loud crash from the front of the house, and the rumbling noise got heavier, really shaking the floor now. Grace picked up the bench from her makeup table and attacked the window until she had knocked most of the glass out. Dan dragged the bedspread over and padded the bottom of the window, conscious of the sounds of exploding windows downstairs and then the shouting outside. He pushed Grace through the window, helping her to turn around so that she was able to hang on to the edge of the windowsill and the bedspread for a moment before dropping down onto the porch roof and then sliding all the way off the roof into the shrubbery below. Behind him, the bedroom door began to rattle in its frame as if a banshee from hell was on the other side, howling to get in. As he looked over his shoulder, all the paint on the door suddenly bubbled up into large and viscous black blisters. The door started to warp outward, revealing a bright yellow rectangle of firelight. He could hear air being sucked out into the hallway as the drapes on either side of the window billowed in toward the disintegrating door. He had planned to tie the spread off and let himself down on it, but he knew that there was no more time. He threw the spread through the window and onto the porch roof and climbed through the window, his neck almost failing him when he turned around and tried to hang for a moment, his hands stinging from glass cuts.

  “Drop, Dan, drop,” Grace was screaming from the backyard. There was a noise like a giant jet engine intake practically under his feet, coming from the back door to the house. He let go and dropped in a heap onto the slanting roof of the back porch, landing mostly on the bedspread, skinning knees and elbows, and then tumbling off the roof into the same clump of boxwood Grace had landed in. Grace was there in an instant, dragging him and the bedspread away from the house just as a vicious gout of flame howled out through the upstairs bedroom window, as if searching for them.

  Then there were people around him and the sounds of sirens. Safe from the fire, he surrendered himself to the irresistibly cool comfort of the damp grass.

  malachi, his lungs bursting, had to stop when he reached the shadows at the top of the Exorcist steps.

  His leg was killing him, and his right eye had closed up entirely. He had grabbed a rake on the way out of Snow’s backyard, snapped off the tines in the doorjamb of the gate, and used the handle as a makeshift crutch in his escape through the back streets of the Cloisters. His leg was obviously not broken, or he would not have been able to get this far, but his shin felt like a bundle of twigs and the pain was incredible. Instinctively, he knew the eye was more serious. He no longer had stereo vision, and the socket was so puffy and swollen that every involuntary blink sent a shot of white-hot pain jabbing back into his skull. Even worse, the eye was leaking what felt like a clear fluid down his cheek; if that was what he thought it was, he would have almost preferred that it be bleeding.

  He stood at the top of the steps, catching his breath, trying to will the pain in his eye to subside. His view down the steep steps to M Street was disturbing, the lack of one eye making it look even steeper than it already was. Better down than up, he thought gamely, and forced himself to start down the steps, having to turn sideways for each one, leaning on the stick and putting his left leg down, then pivoting to drag his right leg over the next step. The real bitch was that he hadn’t gotten his question answered. But maybe he had. He’d seen the look in her eyes when he told her he knew all about Captain Vann. She had seemed to wilt a little, as if she realized what was going to happen now that he knew she’d been hired to take him out.

  But it bothered him that she had been such a pushover.

  He had found no weapons in the house or on her person. Nothing hidden in her clothes, which had been the main reason he had taken her clothes off—God knew, her naked body couldn’t do anything for him.

  The hitter woman who had frightened him several years ago had told him she carried two guns on her body and another in her purse, as well as having some razor blades sewn into the panels of her bra and a six-inch surgical-steel hatpin in her hair. Snow should have mobilized her fear into anger, screamed at him, fought back when he had her tied up on the bed, but she had been thoroughly cowed, almost in shock. That bothered him. Something not fitting together here. He stumbled on a step and very nearly lost his balance, crying out in pain when he had to land on his injured leg. He had to stop for a full minute to get his breath back and to control the nausea.

  And the hell of it was that now he didn’t know if they survived the fire. He had heard the sirens, and Navy had been upstairs, so he could have untied her and gotten her out. But Navy had been fucked up, that was clear—his rabbit punch had been expertly delivered; people tended to forget that its name came from the blow designed to kill a rabbit.

  But he nailed you, didn’t he? He got lucky, that’s all. He winced as he remembered laughing at the ridiculous rolling pin. Thank God the guy couldn’t shoot for shit.

  Reaching the bottom of the steps, he hobbled over to the closed gas station on M Street and sat down heavily on a bench outside the men’s room. Damn, he needed a drink right about now. He looked across the busy street at Key Bridge, at the steady flow of cars passing through the orange glow of the streetlights. He was going to have to get across M Street, then cross the bridge, make it up the hill to the Rosslyn Metro station before it closed for the night, and get back up to Ball ston and the Randolph Towers. No cabs. No rides.

  And hopefully, no cops. With any luck, Navy and his girlfriend would have their hands full with the fire long enough for him to get out of the neighborhood. The bridge would present the greatest exposure if the cops were out looking. So, hump time, Malachi. He took a deep breath and launched himself off the bench and back onto his feet. His eye felt as if it was going to fall out when he stood up, and he had to grit his teeth against the searing pain in his leg. Tomorrow. Concentrate on tomorrow. Time enough then to figure out what to do. But it was clearly going to involve the captain.

  dan woke up in a corner of the emergency room at Georgetown University Hospital. Blinking his eyes, he was able to recognize where he was because the fabric curtains were stenciled with the hospital’s name and the initials ER in several places. Must be popular curtains, he thought.

  His neck was in some kind of brace, his stomach hurt, and there were bandages on his cheek, fingers, and left elbow. There were some people standing right outside the curtains, talking softly. He tentatively called Grace’s name.

  Grace came around the curtain and took his left hand in hers. She was still wearing the ridiculous-looking shorts and a torn sweater, and she had grass stains on her knees. Her face was pale on one side and red on the other but the look in her eyes made him feel considerably better.

  “Welcome back,” she said as Captain Vann came into view behind her left shoulder.

  “Hey, man, what’d I tell you guys about freelancin’, hunh?” he said with a grin.

  “Damn, Officer, all I did was take the girl home
.

  Early, even. But there was this bad dream waiting for us in the house.”

  Vann’s face sobered. “Yeah, we’re figuring that was Mr. Malachi Ward, lately of Capitol Hill.”

  “Lately?”

  “Yeah, he’s booked. But Grace here, she says you dinged him pretty good.”

  Dan tried to shake his head, but the brace had him confined. “I don’t know—I threw a god damned rolling pin at him, trying to knock him out, but I got his eye instead. And I got him once in the leg, I think. Then I emptied a nine-millimeter at him.”

  “You hit him?”

  “Probably not. Mostly made a lot of noise, but it moved him along. It happened kinda fast, and I didn’t feel up to hot pursuit.”

  Vann looked at the neck brace. “He gave you a karate chop of some kind on the neck. Doc says you’re lucky he didn’t break it.”

  “Feels like he did,” Dan said with a sigh. “And the house?”

  “All gone,” Vann said. “Sucker used some gasoline, and then the city gas company got into it. Nasty, hot, quick fire. You two were extremely lucky.”

  Dan tried to massage the back of his neck. The brace felt awkward and ugly, but it definitely helped—as long as he kept very still. Grace squeezed his hand. “Severe sprain,” she announced. “They’ve x-rayed it and braced it. The doctor said it’ll heal fairly fast but hurt for a long time. They want to keep you here for the night.”

  He tried to shake his head, forgetting once again about the brace. “I can’t afford Georgetown—they need to get me to the Bethesda Naval Hospital,” he said.

  She smiled at him and told him she had already taken care of the hospital’s paperwork witch. He focused on

  her face then, especially the side that was all red. He could almost see fingerprints—and that hemostat.

  “How—” he began, but she shushed him.