by Jack Batten
“Ray Fenk’s hotel room . . .” Trevor said, and stopped.
I said, “It wasn’t empty, Trev, if that’s what you were going to say.”
“Have you skipped a couple steps or what?” Gant asked me. “How could you be in the hotel room when Ray was getting killed and nobody saw you?”
“I was hiding in the closet.”
“Oh, man,” Gant said. “That’s too ridiculous not to be true.”
“In the closet?” Dale said.
“While somebody was strangling Fenk,” I said.
“How horrible for you,” Dale said, big green eyes all round.
“And it wasn’t just any old somebody who was doing the strangling,” I said. I knew I was on the right track. At last. “It had to be Trev. He must have come back to the room with Fenk to haggle some more over the four kilos. But Fenk probably wouldn’t go along with the raised price Trevor was offering, nine grand a kilo instead of the original eight. Trevor saw that the cocaine had already been taken out of the lining of Dave Goddard’s case, and he must have figured it was in the briefcase. He got into a rumble with Fenk. Applied the saxophone strap a little too tightly to Fenk’s neck. And scrammed out of the hotel with the briefcase.”
Everybody stared at Trevor again.
“Preposterous,” he said. His voice had sunk so low it was on the brink of vanishing.
No one spoke for a moment.
“Bottom line, Trevor,” Big Bam said, breaking the silence, “it had to have been you that iced the man.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t much like Ray Fenk,” Gant said to Trevor. “Otherwise I might’ve had to get even.”
I said, “I think I just solved a murder.”
“It was awfully clever of you,” Dale said.
The phone on Bam’s desk rang.
33
WHOEVER was on the other end of Big Bam’s line did all the talking. And not much of it. Bam listened for ten seconds before he hung up. He got out of his chair and peeled back the black blind a couple of inches the way I’d done earlier.
“Aw shit,” he said.
I knew what he must have been seeing in the street.
Tran opened the door.
“Cops,” he said to Big Bam.
“Tell me about it,” Bam said.
“Police ?!” Trevor burst out. His voice was back to explosion level.
“Oh my,” Dale said.
“Damn,” Gant said. “What kind of dumb-ass timing is that?”
Bam went back to his desk.
“Take them ten minutes to get through the steel,” he said. He didn’t look rattled. He looked collected.
I took his place at the black blind. Six or seven yellow police cars jammed the perimeter of the street, and behind them, reaching as far back as I could make out from the window, there seemed to be another dozen cars and big yellow vans. Cops swarmed outside the chain-link fence, a regiment of them. The ones who caught my fancy were the four guys hoisting a long battering ram. Bam was probably right about the ten minutes. It’d take that much time for the guys swinging the battering ram to flatten the steel door with the peephole in it. Besides the ram, the cops were packing plenty of other miscellaneous hardware and martial aids. One policeman carried a buzz saw. Another was wielding a crowbar. And a third was barely restraining a dog snarling at the end of a stout leash. Good old reliable Stuffy Kernohan, a cop equipped for every form of opposition.
“What in hell’s happening down there, Crang?” Trevor asked.
“Right out of Full Metal Jacket, Trev,” I said. “Total assault.”
Bam’s two guards at the front had disappeared, but they’d locked the gate with a thick chain and padlock. A cop was working on the chain with a metal-cutter. The cop had on a black crash helmet with a yellow visor. So did the other cops pressing up to the gate behind him. And all of them were bearing weapons. Automatic pistols. Rifles. Long billy clubs. One guy had a loud hailer in his hand. Probably in charge of the play-by-play.
In the office, Big Bam was talking calmly to Tran in Vietnamese. What he was saying had the ring of instructions, but there was no rush to it, no panic. Trevor, standing and rubbing his hands, had changed colours. Flushed red to milk white. And Darnell Gant was holding green-eyed Dale’s hand.
“What happens,” Gant asked Dale, “if I say goodbye to the coke, leave it right there on Mr. Bam’s desk, and get myself arrested like all the other ordinary citizens out on the dance floor?”
“Why ask Dale?” I asked Gant.
“Woman’s a lawyer.”
“She is ?” I said to Gant.
“You are ?” I said to Dale.
“I only do commercial work, leasebacks mostly,” Dale said, apologetic. “I’ve forgotten everything I was ever taught about criminal law.”
“Leasebacks?” I said. “Who’re you with?”
“McIntosh, Brown & Crabtree.”
“I didn’t mean to sound skeptical,” I said. “But you don’t look like a lawyer.”
“Watch it, man,” Gant said.
“I think I just sounded sexist,” I said to Dale.
“Will you people get off that subject,” Trevor said. “That’s the police outside. We have an emergency on our hands.”
“Your hands gonna carry most of the weight, Trevor,” Gant said.
Dale was on her feet.
“Darnell,” she said. “Maybe you better do something.”
Gant stayed in his chair, giving a very good impersonation of a man with all the time in the world. He was still holding Dale’s hand, but he was speaking to me.
“So what’s the answer, Crang?” he said. “The question I asked Dale.”
“Found-ins,” I said. “That’s what the civilians caught in the booze can are going to be charged as.”
“Found-ins,” Dale said. “Now I remember.”
“Found in what?” Gant asked.
“Premises not licensed to sell alcohol,” I said. “Hundred-dollar fine.”
“No jail time?”
“You’ll be on American Airlines tomorrow.”
Gant got up and put his arm around Dale’s waist. They made a handsome couple.
“Coke’s all yours, Mr. Bam,” Gant said.
“Bottom line, Mr. Gant,” Bam said. “I like the way you cut your losses.”
Gant ushered Dale to the door.
“Let’s boogie, baby,” he said to her.
Dale leaned around Gant’s shoulder and gave a little wave to the rest of us in the room.
“Nice to have met you all,” she said.
Gant opened the door, and the sound of rock ’n’ roll and people partying blasted into the room. Under the happy blare there was another, more ominous noise. It was the faint bong of the battering ram smacking the steel door. The guests in the booze can hadn’t cottoned on to the raid yet, but in a few minutes they were going to be joined by the guys in the black visors. Gant shut the door behind him.
I said, “Well, Bam, maybe I’ll just truck on out of here too.”
“You stick around, my man,” Bam said. He was wearing his non-menacing smile, but there was a snap in his voice.
“You really want me getting under foot?” I said. “I know you’ve got things to do.”
“Stay,” Bam said, and motioned to Tran, who moved up beside me. I couldn’t help noticing that Tran had a gun in his hand. It was a tiny gun, almost a toy, but I imagined it fired real bullets.
Bam got down on his knees in front of the old iron safe and spun the combination dials.
“Is there another way out of here?” Trevor asked Bam’s back.
“I’m a businessman, Trevor,” Bam said. “You think I don’t know about contingency planning?”
Bam kept on spinning, and the other three of us, me, Trevor, and Tran, watched him. The atmosphere in the room had tensed right up.
“Can you believe where Dale works, Trev?” I said, making chatter to fill in the unsettling quiet. “McIntosh, Brown & Crabtree’s gotta be t
he stuffiest law firm in the city.”
“You expect me to gossip at a time like this?” Trevor said.
“I’m amazed they’d hire a woman,” I said. “Never mind someone like Dale. Drop-dead beautiful.”
“Shut up,” Trevor said.
Bam pulled open the safe door. He lifted out an armful of money belts, and dumped them on his desk.
“Hold on,” he said. “Supposed to be eleven.”
“Two belts missing,” I said. “Right?”
“Right.”
“I think Truong’s treating them as his very own pension plan.”
Bam shook his head. It was an admiring shake.
“That fox,” Bam said. “The man’s a born survivor.”
He handed three of the belts to Tran. Tran lifted his shirt and began buckling the belts around his waist. Three were as many belts as his waist could accommodate.
“World War III happens,” Bam said, “Truong’ll come out laughing, the kind of survivor he is.”
Bam tossed three more belts to me.
“Get into these, Crang,” he said.
“I’m honoured, Bam, but, look, I’m just an observer here.”
“Do like I ask,” Bam said, the snap back in his voice. “How else you think I’m gonna get the money out of here?”
Trevor stepped forward.
“Not you, Trevor,” Bam said. “You’re travelling light.”
The belts fit snugly under my shirt and sweater. Bam unzipped his jumpsuit from the top and strapped on the last three money belts. He zipped up again. Darnell Gant’s cocaine was still on Bam’s desk. He picked it up and tucked it into one of the myriad of pockets. Bam wasn’t through packing. He reached into the safe, and took out a pistol. It didn’t look like a toy. It was black and had a long barrel. Bam dropped it in another zippered pocket.
“’Kay,” he said. “All systems are go.”
“Lead on, Bam,” I said.
Lead on? Was I nuts? The cops were a few yards and fewer minutes away. Rescue was at hand. I’d got done what I came to do. Uncover Fenk’s murderer. It was Trevor. Maybe the case against him was short on hard evidence, but I had plenty to hand the police. And I could let Stuffy and his troops take care of Big Bam and his cocaine corporation. No reason for me to linger in Bam’s company. That was the message from my brain. But the two guns, Tran’s toy and Bam’s howitzer, said otherwise. At least for the moment.
Tran opened the office door. At the same instant the cops’ battering ram burst open the steel door across the room. Some of the dancers kept on shaking and shimmying, and some of the drinkers kept on bending their elbows. They were too absorbed or too drunk or too stoned to take note of the cops and the helmets and guns and clubs, the buzz saw, the crowbar, and the snarling dog that were in their midst. The other patrons, the people who were caught in the vanguard of the police rush, sent up a hullabaloo of screams and cries and hollers. And, over the top of the din, the cop on the loud hailer had a repeated announcement:
“This is a raid!” he kept on broadcasting. “This is a raid!”
“No kidding,” I said to myself.
Outside Bam’s office, the four of us were temporarily secure in the darkness along the wall. Bam poked me in the back and pointed to the right. It was too noisy in the huge room, too thick with clamour, for communication of the verbal sort. Bam was sticking to sign language. His sign said to follow Tran along the wall.
I did as I was told, and after a dozen steps in the gloom, I bumped against Tran. He’d stopped. He was stretching in the air to his full height, which wasn’t much, and pulling at a set of metal stairs. They were bolted to the wall, a kind of narrow indoor fire escape. The stairs were movable at the bottom, and Tran heaved them down to chest level. He swung himself on to the first step and scrambled into the darkness above. His move was so adroit that I got the feeling he had rehearsed the trip up the metal steps many times before.
Bam gave me another poke. I grabbed the bottom step and made a fluttery upwards leap. Not deft, but not bad for a guy who hadn’t rehearsed. I scampered after Tran. Under my feet, the iron steps swayed and quivered. Were the damn things going to hold? No time for foolish questions. I kept moving, one foot in front of the other. To the rear, the steps developed a ferocious shiver. Must have been Trevor and his bulk climbing aboard. Feet, I begged, do your stuff.
Up ahead, six or seven steps ahead, a door opened. Tran, his back to me, was climbing through it. I could see his body outlined against the sky and stars. Tran disappeared. The door must open on to the roof. Brilliant conclusion, Crang. I took a fast look down below. Not one of my better ideas. The floor of the booze can was a long drop away, four storeys, and my stomach went instantly queasy. I stumbled up the last steps and through the door. Big Bam was on my heels, and a couple of seconds after him, Trevor crashed on to the roof. Tran slammed shut the door.
“More fun than a scavenger hunt, Bam,” I said. I seemed to be short on breath.
We were at the back of the building and on the west side. The police raid was concentrated at the front and the east side, and it reached our ears as the sound of distant tumult. But it wouldn’t be more than five minutes before the raiders wised up to the metal stairs and investigated the roof.
“What’s our next step?” Trevor asked Bam. Trevor was in full supply of breath. For all his heft, he kept in sound aerobic shape.
“Basically it’s not a step,” Bam said. “More like a running broad jump.”
Bam was pointing at the roof of the building next door, the warehouse to the west that was separated from the booze can by an alley.
“Always loved that roof-to-roof trick in Arabian Nights, Bam,” I said. “But it’s got to be ten feet across there. Not my best distance.”
“Eleven feet,” Bam said. “And you’ll have help.”
“What? A catapult?”
“You won’t fail me, Crang,” Bam said. “I got an investment in you.”
“The money belts?”
“Hundred grand in each belt.”
I patted my waist.
“Never been so intimate with such large numbers.”
Tran stood at the edge of our roof. He looked across the alley, turned himself one hundred and eighty degrees, and walked back ten precise paces. He stopped and faced around to the building next door. He started to run. He had immaculate form. Graceful and muscular. He ran to the roof ’s edge and took off. Sailed up and over the alley. When he came down, he was a safe three feet beyond the edge of the other roof.
“Bravo,” Bam said.
“Kid’s got style like Baryshnikov,” I said. “But that’s the catch. My style’s more like Curly, Larry, and Moe.”
“Watch,” Bam said. “We practised this a hundred times. Trust me, it’s fail-safe.”
He lined himself on the running path Tran had followed, ten exact steps from the edge of the building. Across the alley, Tran and his muscles were crouched at the side of the other roof. His arms were reaching out in front of him, and his feet were propped behind a small, tin-covered elevation that ran along the roof ’s edge. Bam and Tran looked like they were prepping for a tryout with the Flying Wallendas.
Bam ran down the line toward the alley. His form wasn’t in Tran’s league, but he was getting the job done. He hit the end of the roof and flew through the air. Both of his arms and both legs were stretched forward. The legs landed on the tin, and as they touched down, Tran grabbed him by the arms. Tran gave a backwards yank, and the two of them, Bam and Tran, were locked together in a dancing embrace on the building’s roof.
Bam pulled out of the waltz, and called back to Trevor and me.
“See?” he said. “No sweat.”
“Easy for you to say, Bam,” I answered. “But Trevor and I haven’t practised a hundred times.”
“Shake it up, Crang,” Bam said.
“Not even one time.”
“Are you a coward as well as stupid?” Trevor said to me. He was practically spitting conte
mpt.
“You know what, Trev?” I said. “I can hardly wait to see you in chains.”
Trevor stepped past me to the launching path.
“Uh-uh, Trevor,” Bam shouted. “Crang comes next.”
“I don’t mind bringing up the rear,” I said.
“I mind,” Bam said.
He unzipped one of his pockets and produced the black gun with the long barrel.
“See what you mean,” I said.
So much for that possibility. If Trevor had jumped the roofs first, I could have beat it back down the metal stairs and alerted Stuffy Kernohan to Big Bam’s great escape.
“Hold your fire,” I called to Bam.
“Something else I practise,” Bam said. “Target shooting.”
“I’m coming. I’m coming.”
I stood at the point ten feet from the roof ’s edge. No sense delaying. It was like plunging into cold water. Get the pain over in a hurry. Except in this case there wouldn’t be time for pain. It was either a safe leap into Tran’s brawny arms or a quick drop into the alley.
I sucked in my breath and took off on the run. It was marvellous how fear concentrated the brain. I wasn’t conscious of anything around me, not Trevor at the side, not the stars above, not the alley below. All I saw were Tran’s arms ahead. I hurtled through the open space, willing myself to clear the distance. Whatever I looked like didn’t count. Probably I looked frantic and absurd. No matter. It was getting there that counted.
And I got there. In fact, I got too far. I slammed through Tran’s waiting arms, and the two of us hit the roof. The fall didn’t hurt either of us—Tran because his layers of muscle protected him, and me because my landing was broken by those same layers of muscle.
Tran pushed me off and took up position to receive Trevor.
“How many points for my technique?” I asked Bam. The blood was pumping through me at a ferocious rate.
“Only two scores for this event,” Bam said. “Perfect ten or a dive in the alley.”
On the other building, Trevor was into his takeoff sprint. He rumbled down the track, reached the roof ’s edge, and got airborne. He was up and aloft, halfway between the roof of the booze can and the roof of the building that might represent a getaway. He looked, in that instant, splendidly confident. His jump was athletic—his feet tucked together, his body in the shape of a compact question mark, his arms reaching forward, and his hands ready to lock with Tran’s.