Secondhand Stiff

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

  “Doesn’t matter. My mother-in-law is in trouble. You’d do the same for my mother.”

  When I continued my protest, he fixed his eyes on me. “Try to stop me, Odelia.”

  Without another word, I got out of the van and crossed the street. In no time Greg had retrieved his wheelchair and caught up with me.

  “They’re arguing about a deal that didn’t happen,” Mom reported.

  A deal. Maybe like Linda, Roberto was supposed to buy units and turn the drugs over to the gangs or whoever ordered them.

  “Help’s on the way, Mom.”

  I edged closer to the store. It stood alone in its own building located on a corner. The building next to it appeared to be an empty storefront. Between the two was a narrow alley. Greg might make it through, but it would be rough going. The only other way to reach the back would be to go all the way around the front of the building to the other side that bordered the side street and down that sidewalk. Traffic on the street was light, since there appeared to be more empty stores than open ones in the neighborhood. Overhead the afternoon sky grew dark with the incoming storm.

  “I’ll go through here to the back,” I told Greg. “Why don’t you watch the front door and flag down the police?”

  He nodded. “Sounds good, but I wish we had weapons of some sort.”

  I looked around on the ground and spotted some loose bricks. I picked one up and handed it to Greg. “Here, take this. I’ll take one too. It’s better than nothing.”

  “Not much,” he groused. “Maybe we should buy a gun when this is all over.”

  I shot Greg a nasty look that conveyed my feelings on the subject loud and clear.

  Clutching my phone in one hand and the heavy brick in the other, I scooted down the narrow alley and poked out the other end. Behind the store was a wider service alley and parking for about a half dozen cars. There were two cars parked there already. I also saw two back doors into the store. One was glass and had an Open sign on it, and a roll-up door similar to the one at the back of Buck’s store but smaller. I looked for the small window Mom had mentioned but didn’t see it.

  “Mom,” I whispered into the phone, “you still there?”

  “Yes,” came a whisper back.

  “Where’s that window you talked about? I’m in back of the store and can’t see it.”

  “I think it’s on the side. It looks out on another building.”

  That meant it had to be on the alley side, not the side facing the small side street. I had passed right by it. Turning back to the alley, I scanned the wall. Sure enough, not far from the back corner there was a small window, and across it was a metal grid. The room on the other side was dark, and the narrow space and gloomy sky allowed little light into the alley. The window wasn’t too high, and it looked wide enough for a person to squeeze through, providing that person wasn’t too bulky. Mom could certainly fit, but could she reach it? And even if she could, she was in her eighties. Would she be able to contort herself through it? I pulled on the security bars and found them to be rusty and loose. If I weren’t afraid of making too much noise, I’d try yanking them off.

  “Mom, I’m under the window now,” I said into the phone.

  In answer, Mom quietly scooted the sliding window aside and presented her face in the window. I reached through the bars and touched her face through the screen.

  “Thank goodness, Odelia,” she said through the open window in a voice barely above a whisper. “Where are the police?”

  “They’re coming, Mom.” I ended my phone connection and called Greg.

  “Found Mom,” I told him in a whisper. “I think I can get her out the side window.”

  “Be careful.”

  After pocketing my cell phone and putting down the brick, my fingers got to work on the loose screws holding the metal grid in place. “If enough of these screws are loose,” I said to Mom, “I might be able to work the grid off without too much noise.” One corner screw started coming undone, but it was taking forever and destroying my manicure. “Can you remove the screen from the inside?”

  Mom tugged on the screen, and it popped out without too much effort.

  “Right about now I’d trade my car for a screwdriver,” I said under my breath.

  A moment later, a thin hand poked through the bars. Clasped between two fingers was a small Swiss Army knife. “Will this help?” Mom asked.

  I took the knife. “Did you find this?”

  “No, I always carry it,” she whispered. “Clark’s dad insisted we all have one. Can’t tell you how often it’s come in handy.”

  Using the screwdriver attachment, I worked the second lower screw. It turned without much trouble. Reaching up, I started on the higher screws. They were tougher and the angle awkward, but the screws were moving.

  From the open window I heard muffled shouting and what sounded like a struggle. I had to get my mother out of there now.

  “Mom, is there something for you to step on to get to the window?”

  “Yes, it’s directly over the commode. If I put the seat down, I might be able to get a leg through it. I just wish I hadn’t worn a dress today.”

  Geez, it was bad enough my aged mother was going to squeeze herself through a window, but now she was going to try it in a dress? My mind was about to explode with worry, but I shoved it aside and got down to business.

  “Instead of going leg-first,” I told her in a hurried voice, “come though it arms- and head-first.”

  “And land on my head on the pavement? Really, Odelia.”

  “Mom, don’t worry. I’ll have a hold on you and help you through. If you fall, you’ll fall on me. I have enough padding to break the impact.”

  After a few seconds of consideration, Mom said, “Guess I’ll have to go head-first after all. I can’t seem to get a leg up that high without going off-balance, not even with my dress hiked up. It’s a bitch getting old. Time was I could lift my legs high with no problem.”

  I didn’t even want to think about what Mom looked like from behind at this moment. “Come on, Mom, hurry—before he realizes someone is in the bathroom.”

  The voices from inside the store rose and ebbed in argument as Mom readied to shimmy out of the window. She handed her purse out to me. I took it and placed it on the ground. Next came her arms and her head. When they appeared, I grasped her shoulders and eased her out inch by careful inch like I was easing a baby pushed from a womb.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, “my jacket’s caught.” I stopped pulling. She reached a hand back in and freed up her jacket, then we started again.

  Mom was halfway out. I had my arms wound tightly around the top of her torso. She had her arms wrapped around my neck and her face was cupped between my shoulder and ear. I could hear her holding back groans and grunts as I pulled. Working together, we eased her out as quickly and carefully as possible. As her body inched out, I supported it with mine, like we were lovers dancing cheek to cheek to a slow, sultry tune but only with the top half of our bodies. The last thing we needed was for her to fall and break brittle bones.

  Her hips had just passed the window ledge when I heard a sound that nearly sent urine down my leg. It was a gunshot—loud and clear—that halted the argument inside the store.

  “That was a gunshot, Mom. We gotta move.”

  “Let me get both my feet on top of the tank. Then I think I can just pop out.” She stopped moving to adjust her feet. “Oh!” She slid back a few inches.

  “What’s the matter, Mom?”

  “My foot slipped. Let me try again.”

  I waited until Mom gave me the signal she was ready. “Okay, here goes. One. Two.” Before I could get to three, the sound of another shot filled the air. I leaned back and pulled Mom the rest of the way out in one big yank, using my own body as a ledge for her body’s support. She cried out. As soon as she
was free, I fell backward and would have landed on my back if the alley had not been so narrow. Instead, I landed hard against the brick wall of the vacant store. My legs wanted to buckle but I held on, clutching my mother to me like a new babe, using the wall as support for the two of us.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked her.

  “My legs scraped on the windowsill on that last pull, but other than that I’m okay.” She tried to stand on her own but was wobbly. I looked down and saw the scrape on one leg was oozing blood.

  “We have to get out of here.” I put an arm around her waist and her arm around my shoulder and started for the street at the far end of the alley, toward the safety of our van. It was slow going.

  “Halt,” said a man’s voice behind us.

  We froze where we stood. As a single unit, Mom and I pivoted slowly around to face a man holding a gun.

  It was Detective Leon Whitman. I breathed deeply and relaxed, thankful to see him.

  “It’s us, Detective, Odelia Grey and Grace Littlejohn. We’re so glad to see you.”

  “I didn’t hear any sirens,” Mom noted.

  “We don’t use them when we’re trying to sneak up on the bad guys.” He smiled but continued to hold his gun. “What were you two doing?”

  “Mom was in the store,” I explained, “and when the gunman came in, she hid in the bathroom.”

  “Did you see anything, Mrs. Littlejohn?”

  “Not a thing,” Mom answered in a halting voice.

  “You sure? It could be helpful,” Whitman prodded.

  “She saw a man in a blue hoodie,” I answered. “He was holding a gun on Roberto Vasquez and arguing with him.”

  “Don’t worry, ladies,” Whitman told us. “The guy with the hoodie is dead. He shot Vasquez just as I got here. I took down the gunman.”

  “Is Mr. Vasquez dead too?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Something was bothering me, a harsh itching in the back of my brain like poison ivy, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Mom’s foot was tapping on mine, which wasn’t helping my concentration. Thinking she was wobbling again, I tightened my grip to support her better. “My mother has been through a lot, Detective. I need to get her where she can sit down.”

  “Of course.” Whitman backed out of the alley. “My car’s back here. She can sit there until we sort this all out.”

  Mom’s foot continued to step on mine, but now with more urgency. She wasn’t wobbling, she was trying to tell me something, just as my brain was also trying to send me a message. Something wasn’t right.

  “Where’s your husband, Odelia?” Whitman asked. “Did he come with you?”

  I’m not sure why, but my gut told me to lie. “No, he didn’t.” Had Whitman not seen Greg in the front when he first arrived?

  Mom continued to tap-dance on my foot as my brain multitasked, thinking about the puzzle pieces that weren’t fitting while I worried about getting Mom to safety and comfortable. Mom was slightly taller than me and leaned her head down as if she was fading fast into a collapse.

  “He was in the store,” she whispered in a voice barely louder than breathing. “I heard him.”

  Then I knew what she was trying to say with her foot. She might have seen a hooded gunman, but she’d heard Whitman’s voice. I quickly wound my memory back a few minutes, trying to isolate the voices arguing in the background while I’d been pulling Mom from the window. Then it hit me: the cops weren’t here yet or Greg would have found me or at least called. And the gunshots were too far apart to have been a quick exchange.

  Greg had to have heard the shots. I didn’t know where he was but prayed he wouldn’t wheel into the alley and get mixed up in this mess. What I hoped is that he was on his phone to Fehring, demanding to know where the cops were and letting her know things had taken a turn for the worse.

  “I really need to get some medical help for my mother,” I told Whitman. “She’s got a bad scrape on her leg.” On cue, Mom’s injured leg started to buckle and she let out a little cry of pain.

  “I’m a diabetic,” she said to Whitman. “It’s important that I get bad injuries like this attended to immediately.”

  As far as I knew, Mom wasn’t a diabetic, but I played along. “Let me take her to urgent care. As soon as she’s patched up, we’ll come back and answer all the questions the police want.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Whitman waved the gun back toward the parking lot. “I have a first-aid kit in my car. We can have her fixed up in a jiffy.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, looking down at Mom’s leg. “She’s probably going to need a tetanus shot.” I got a good grip on Mom and started for the street again.

  “You’re not going anywhere, ladies.”

  Ignoring him, I kept us moving. Cradled next to me, Mom was shaking but moving forward like a good soldier. The building wasn’t deep. If Whitman wasn’t the gunman, he’d let us continue; if he was the killer, our lives could be measured in seconds.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot.” It was Whitman, letting me know for sure he wasn’t wearing a white hat.

  Mom and I turned slowly around but didn’t move toward him. I wanted to tell him the police were on their way but was afraid it might expedite his plans for us. I only hoped Mom kept mum about it.

  Again, he waved the gun toward the back. “Come on, you two. I haven’t got all day.”

  “What are you going to do with us?” Mom asked.

  “You’re my insurance. If I have you and run into trouble, you could be useful. Or I could just shoot you and leave you here. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  “You’re the reason Ina and Linda McIntyre won’t talk, aren’t you?” I said. “They both know you were involved with the drugs and are afraid. It’s kind of tough to get help when the police are the bad guys.”

  “Ina’s a good girl and smart. When she saw me handling the investigation, she knew to keep her mouth shut or other people close to her might die.” As he said the words, he raised his gun at us. “She seems particularly fond of that husband of yours.”

  I wanted to vomit. Please, Greg, do not come around that corner.

  “It was you who went to Busy Boxes this morning and scraped off the mark on the unit up for auction, wasn’t it?”

  “You know entirely too much, Odelia, but not everything. The kid in the hoodie you saw is the same one dead on the floor in there.” He waved his gun at the building. “Young van den Akker.”

  “So it was Paul who was working for you, not Eric. Was it Paul who bombed Buck’s store?”

  In answer, Whitman smiled the slick smile of a snake. “Fehring told me not to underestimate you, but I didn’t believe her. Seems I should have.”

  My eyes popped open. “Andrea Fehring is involved in this?”

  “Of course not.” Whitman laughed. “Fehring’s totally by the book—one of those career cops who bleeds public service and believes in fighting evil for low wages. She told me you were smart and could be useful to our investigation if you didn’t get in the way. I simply thought you were a harmless busybody.” He laughed again. “Busybody you are; harmless—not so much.”

  I wanted to know more, and I wanted to stall him until the police arrived. “So you killed Tom Bruce and Redmond Stokes.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Tom got greedy,” Whitman explained. “He wasn’t happy with his part. He had big plans—plans me and my partners had no interest in. We had to send a message in case others also had grand ideas of moving up. As for Linda, she’s an old mule who follows orders. If she had any ideas of going big-time like Tom, his death put her back in harness. She’s smart enough to understand she’s better off in jail than crossing us. Ina understands that, too.”

  “And did Red have big plans?”

  “No. Red was one of the good guys, just like Ina’s pal Buck. O
nce he learned what was going on and how his company was being used to facilitate things, he went to the police.” He grinned. “As it so happens, because of the location of Elite, he called the Long Beach PD, and I took his call.”

  “Poor guy,” Mom piped up. “He stumbled right into the snake’s nest, and you killed him.”

  “I didn’t kill Redmond Stokes. We contracted that job out.”

  Feeling Mom’s strength fading, I tightened my grip on her. “Red didn’t know you were involved, but he’d figured out Kim was up to something.”

  “Kim’s an ambitious girl. Convincing Red to sell her half of Acme only made it easier. He totally trusted her until it was too late. Kim’s doing damage control right now with Fehring. Hopefully that innocent, boyish face of hers will convince them Red was the drug contact.”

  “What about Tiffany?” Mom asked. “Did Kim play her for a fool?”

  “Tiffany’s an innocent—a cute, young innocent who thinks she’s a tough girl. She was also insurance to use against Buck in case the bomb didn’t send a big enough message. She might still be useful.”

  The filthy smirk on Whitman’s face made me want to spit nails. I was so glad Tiffany was safe and out of their clutches. Whitman obviously did not know that yet.

  The more he told us, the more I knew he wasn’t going to let Mom and me go. Knowledge is usually power; in this case, it was a death sentence. Where were the damn police Fehring sent?

  Whitman continued to stand near the back end of the narrow alley and motioned for us to move forward. Urging Mom along, we took a tenuous step in his direction. He must still be thinking about using us as hostages or he would have shot and left us in the alley by now. I had no doubt ultimately killing us was still on his mind, but stalling that action could buy us precious time.

  “Come on, Mom,” I said, tightening my grip on her waist. “Let’s do as he says.”

  Mom nodded, keeping quiet and letting me handle the situation. Together we took a few more steps. Whitman backed up a little more as we got closer. Beside me Mom was stiff, catching her breath with each step. I looked down and saw that her leg was looking nasty.