City Havoc

by Jack Adler

  "Detective Ruiz insisted on accompanying me," I told the two other detectives as I sat, still feeling my wrists bruised from having them rubbed against the floor in handcuffs. I could have used a strong glass of Armagnac, which I usually found bracing.

  Conrad stood off to the side. Supported by me, he explained that he had shot the man now identified as Wayne Prescott to save my life. The detectives were scribbling notes as uniformed policemen came in and out of the room. A crime scene was set up with a stream of yellow tape, and someone was already taking fingerprints. Many photographs had also been taken, including one of me still lying on the floor. A great souvenir to show my children if I ever had any, though I doubted I'd be able to get a print.

  "Did Ruiz take his pistol out?" lead detective Ray Saskin asked.

  “No, he never had a chance,” I said.

  "Where did the shot that got Prescott come from?" a younger detective asked. I had gotten his name as Ed Hague. Determining the angle of this shot, I knew, would substantiate our dual version of what took place.

  "The hallway,” I said, pointing. “In the shadow there."

  "Did you see the shooter?" Saskin asked. He didn't indicate Conrad, who listened to this exchange without any signs of emotion.

  "After he came out of the hallway," I said. "He was holding the gun."

  "And you say Prescott forced you to shoot Ruiz, too?" Hague asked. They were taking turns questioning me, but at least I was off the floor.

  The detectives didn't seem to doubt my word. I felt horrible, but I had told the truth. I had never shot anyone before under any circumstances, and the image of the bullet ripping through Ruiz at such close range that flashed through my mind was all too vivid. Ruiz hadn’t been wearing any protective shield, correct? they asked me. "Yes," I said, feeling as flat and depleted as my answer.

  "OK," Saskin said to wrap up, "we'll have to get the autopsy report. You're not planning to leave L.A., are you?"

  If it weren't for the circumstances, I probably could have issued an ironic laugh tinged with considerable bitterness. I had tried so hard to convince Wolcott to let me stay around longer, which had only led to a near-death experience and a dubious record of shooting someone who had already let out his last breath.

  "I have to go back to New York soon, but I'll be available."

  "Good." Saskin said, turning his attention to Conrad. "Hey, Conrad, you still have a license for your piece?"

  Conrad smiled and nodded. He had already turned his pistol over to the detectives.

  "So you say the woman escaped and we still don't know where Holly Baxter is?" Hague asked.

  "I don't know," Conrad said. "Couldn't get anything out of him before he checked out."

  The detectives both looked at me for corroboration. With more reluctance than they could have possibly imagined, I nodded in ignorance, too.

  Rona opened the door to Holly's room with her gun drawn and stood at the threshold.

  "Holly, come on; we're leaving."

  "Just a second," Holly said.

  "Where are you?" Rona said, peering inside the room. She took a tentative step inside, trying to remember where the light switch was. One moment later Holly plunged the nail file, retrieved earlier from the checkerboard while Luke had been getting them soft drinks, into Rona's neck. Rona cried out in shock and pain, but Holly didn't let go. She pulled down hard on the file, widening the wound. She heard something drop—it sounded solid, like a gun—and she kicked it aside. Rona tried to turn toward her and force her with a final shove to let go of the file, but Holly was able to maintain the pressure and felt Rona weakening. She pushed Rona's face against the door with a violent shove. She pounded Rona's head against the door again and again. Finally, sensing Rona could no longer resist, she released her hold. Rona sank to the floor. Holly turned the light on. Blood oozed in a thin trickle from Rona’s neck, threading down along the right side of her head. A huge purplish bump had sprouted on the right side of her forehead. Holly spotted the pistol and picked it up. She held it against Rona's forehead, but when she looked into her lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling, Holly knew her nemesis was dead.

  Leaving the light on, Holly walked into the living room with the pistol, ready to shoot. Had BB returned? And where was Luke? He was the only one who had ever treated her with any kindness. But he wasn't in sight. She held the gun steady, looking around for the phone. But before she could call 911, she heard someone coming in the front door.

  Luke stepped in. Their eyes locked. Her finger started to press the trigger, but stopped for an instant of uncertainty. Overcoming his initial surprise, Luke ran back outside. Holly stood there for a moment, still unsure what to do as she heard a car roar away. Then she called 911.

  "Val, I trusted you!"

  I stared hard at Val as she stood framed in her doorway. The police had released me after asking if I wanted medical attention, which I didn't.

  "Are you all right?" she said, her eyes wide with surprise and concern as she waved me into her apartment. "I was so worried about you. I knew something had happened."

  "Yes, but did you tip off the police?"

  With a calmness I didn't share, Val said, "Sit down and tell me what happened."

  "I'll sit, but tell me what happened."

  Our eyes met, and I could see in her soft, warm blue eyes how troubled she was. She was wearing a blouse open at the neck, and when she leaned forward, I couldn't help seeing some of her breasts. Perturbed as I was, I still felt a stirring in my loins.

  "I was worried about you, and I called Detective Ruiz," she said. "That's it." She didn’t show the slightest sign of guilt, which was understandable, as she had done the right thing.

  "Detective Ruiz is dead."

  "What?!" Her face turned ashen.

  "But you were right," I had to admit, finally sitting down. "It was a trap, and they almost got me, too. They shot Ruiz and tried to make it seem as if I had shot him. He wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest, not that it made any difference. They got him as soon as we walked in. There was no chance to react."

  “He was in a rush when I got a hold of him,” Val explained. “I guess he didn’t have time to get a bulletproof vest.”

  “He was killed by a shot to his head, so the vest wouldn’t have made a difference,” I said, picturing the whole bloody sequence, which was still vivid in my mind. “And then they made me shoot him when he was already dead! Unbelievable!”

  Val shook her head, trying to digest it all. Then she rushed over to my side and stared at the bruises on my wrists.

  "Handcuffs, and not put on by the police," I said, looking at my wrists, which showed barely visible ribbons of bruised flesh.

  "Oh." To my amazement, she caressed my wrists. Her hands felt like soft feathers.

  "Val," I stroked her hair.

  She started to stand, but I wouldn't let her. I reached over and kissed her lips. It was a long, soft and wet kiss, and her hands slipped around my shoulders.

  "Derry . . . "

  There was no holding back now. We kissed again, standing with our bodies pressed together. As if we were of one mind, we moved like one body toward her bed. We undressed each other as if we were in a race, and seconds later we were blessedly nude under the sheets.

  We made love with a fury I hadn't felt in years. Perhaps I was still reacting to almost being killed hours earlier, but I had never felt more alive, loving life and incredibly infatuated—if that was the right emotion—with Val.

  Afterward we lay next to each other; we were spent but knew we would soon make love again, maybe all night and into the morning, too. But I had time to provide a complete rundown of what had happened, admit my recklessness and explain that I had to go to the police in the morning and help the police artist sketch Drue Henry, or whatever her real name was. Naturally, I’d also have to answer any other questions they came up with. But before that interrogation session in person, I faced another one over the phone with Wolcott, which promised to be even m
ore difficult. I had a lot of explaining to do, and I planned to be candid in admitting my mistakes. How Wolcott and DeCosta would react was another matter.

  "If Conrad didn't follow you, they would have shot you," Val said as she caressed my chest.

  “I wondered what he was up to,” I said with sangfroid to mask my real feelings. “But I’m glad he was keeping tabs on me. I guess he realized I was setting myself up as a sort of magnet. I was the one in harm’s way, but he’d reap the benefit.”

  If that sounded sour, it was. Val gave me a reproving glance as if she saw right through me, which she probably did. She had gotten used to my bravado by this time.

  It was all true enough, I thought, feeling safe and content that thoughts of Holly were momentarily not on my mind. Then it hit me that I was a failure as a magnet; it had only served to get Detective Ruiz killed. The magnet who messed up! Prescott was dead, but the woman had gotten away, and Holly’s location and condition were still unknown. I wanted with a surprising desperation to be free of these troubling thoughts now. I’d figure out my report to Wolcott later. I brought Val's hand up to my lips and kissed each fingertip.

  "So thorough," she said with a laugh. "Do you really forgive me?"

  "How many ways can I show you?" I said, tugging her toward me so that she straddled me.

  "And how many times?" she said, giggling as I entered her.

  Thirteen

  THURSDAY

  I was in the office when Corinne was arrested. I already knew Holly was safe and that my old pal, Drue Henry, with aliases Fern Borkmeister and Rona Feswick, was dead, saving me the trouble of going to the police and helping their artist do the composite drawing. The lethal lady, it turned out, came from a military family and had grown up in Germany, where she had had a love affair with a member of the infamous Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang.

  But I didn't know when the police, whom I had alerted about my suspicions about the speech and the leak, would come after Corinne. It surely wasn't Wolcott who had been working with or for the HAP, and I couldn't believe it was Stacy. The police, however, weren't so sure about Stacy but refused to disclose why.

  As it turned out, that wasn't all I didn't know. Corinne took her arrest surprisingly well, almost as if she expected the police to break into the office, put handcuffs on her, read her her Miranda rights and march her out before the gawking eyes of other office workers. I figured no one from the remaining members of the HAP had warned her.

  Stacy stood as her jaw dropped and her eyes widened in surprise, as if she were unable to comprehend or digest what was happening. I hadn’t had time to warn her before Saskin, Hague and a uniformed policeman barged in. Corinne, though, had time for a parting message.

  "You know, eventually we're going to win," she said, flashing her white teeth. "A few of us go down; more crop up. You'll see. We have friends, even here in L.A., you’d never suspect."

  Perhaps we will have ongoing problems with the discontents and malcontents among us, I thought, given all the uncertainties of the world and our culture. People sought solutions without defining or fully understanding the problems; the less they knew about the problems, the more radical their so-called solutions were. Finite solutions with assorted nuances that defied simple closures were sought for complex matters. The more elusive a clean-cut solution was, the more frustration people felt; and the more frustration people felt, the more they lashed out with irrational acts. It was a horrible and repetitive chain, foreseeable but, evidently, not preventable.

  And then there were mercenaries like Prescott and Feswick, who were willing to do any sort of dirty work for lucre. Corinne, on the other hand, sounded more like a true believer. How could such opposites get together? I wondered.

  Saskin and Hague shifted their attention to Stacy, and it time for me to be left open-mouthed and wide-eyed with surprise. In the midst of such rapid developments, Stacy had lacked the time to alert me.

  "Miss Graham, we may have to talk to you again," Saskin said. "You’re not going on any trips, are you?"

  "No," Stacy said, crestfallen. Her face fell as it might bounce off the floor. She was as deflated as I’d ever seen the once ebullient lady.

  I was mystified as Hague advised her, "We confiscated the stuff we found in your apartment. Are you sure that was your only contact with the HAP?"

  "Absolutely," Stacy swore, avoiding my agonized stare. Her eyes were riveted on the wall in front of her as if she were going through some sort of military drill.

  Unconvinced, Saskin said, "It's a good thing you called us."

  Stacy nodded. "I had no idea he . . . "

  “So you thought this terrorist was just a salesman?” Hague asked more as a criticism than a question.

  As her face flushed with shame, Stacy nodded. She still avoided my stare, gazing out the window now as if there were an escape route for her there.

  The detectives nodded, still looking like they didn't or couldn't fully believe Stacy. From my expression of bewilderment, I'm sure the detectives weren't all that sure of what I knew or didn't know. It just seemed clear that Tramerica had unwittingly become more involved than I had realized. Stacy had been foolhardy, too. We were charter members of a dubious club.

  The detectives left, and as soon as Stacy and I were alone, she said, "Derry, I wish you had gone to dinner with me the other night."

  "Stacy, what happened?"

  "I'm an idiot; that's what happened," she said, sitting down at Corinne's now absent desk. "I got picked up at the supermarket by Wayne Prescott . . . I didn't know who he was . . . and I . . . well, we went to bed."

  I was aghast as Stacy’s expression drooped to the floor. Why would the HAP go after Stacy? And me? What did they expect to accomplish?

  "And he left me a little present, except I didn't know about it . . . some of their damn manifestos."

  "What?!"

  "Yes, they were hidden in my bedroom closet. Then he or someone else tipped the police off."

  I shook my head in consternation. What fools we were!

  "Fortunately, I happened to see his picture on TV, and I called the police before they showed up. My apartment is a crime scene and a mess. My life is a mess."

  "You didn't know," I said, trying to comfort Stacy, who seemed near tears. She was a tough woman, but at the moment she looked like it had all been too much for her.

  "I didn't! But I'm not sure the police believe me. I'm sure they're checking my whole life out. Derry, how could they believe I am a member of the HAP?"

  “No way,” I said. But then which of us had thought it possible that Corinne was a HAP and leaking everything I was doing? The HAP had known all along a great deal about my plans and probably Stacy's habits and whereabouts. We had both been played.

  "Does Wolcott know?" I asked.

  Stacy nodded. "I called him around six this morning. I was up all night. He wants you to call him right away. I offered my resignation."

  "What did he say?"

  "He said he was putting me on paid leave of absence until the matter was straightened out. So I came in to get some of my things, and . . . they were arresting Corinne. I had no idea."

  "I didn't, either, until they thought they had me," I said to comfort Stacy. I wondered how much she knew of my misadventure. By this time, Wolcott probably had a pretty clear picture.

  "What a deceitful bitch!" Stacy cried out as some of her trademark toughness returned to her voice. She stood like a wounded tigress ready to pounce on an invisible target.

  "Stacy, Corinne also helped set me up. I guess they wanted to implicate Tramerica."

  "And Conrad saved you?"

  I nodded.

  "The men in my life," she muttered, summarizing her wayward dating pattern. “You must think I’m a slut.”

  “No, I think you’re a mature, sensual woman who isn’t a hypocrite about showing her desires.”

  Stacy let out a bitter laugh. “That’s a nice way of putting it.”

  “It’s true,”
I said, shrugging.

  “Well,” Stacy said, “at least Holly Baxter is alive. I hope she can tell the police I was just horny and not a criminal."

  "Don't take it so hard, Stacy; they had a lot of people going."

  And I was referring to myself.

  "Wolcott, Stacy had no idea of who she was with," I said.

  "Derry, her behavior of . . . socializing first with Baxter's detective and then an actual member of the HAP isn't acceptable. She has to show better judgment. I have to discuss this further with DeCosta. We're going to send someone out to take temporary charge of the office, and I want you to stay until he or she gets there, which will probably be Monday. We have to move quickly. Consumer and press releases are being prepared."

  “No reward is needed now,” I said, stating the obvious. But I was curious what had happened to the putative reward.

  “We decided to hold off because we thought, as you did, that things were coming to some conclusion,” Wolcott said.

  It would have been nice if he had clued me in on this, but at least I had more time with Val now. I was sorry, though, that this was partially at Stacy’s expense. It was ironic that this time Wolcott was asking me to stay, not the reverse. But then Wolcott got to my behavior.

  "And, Derry, we're not pleased with your role, either. You took unacceptable risks."

  "The risks, even if I was set up by Stacy's secretary, still led to the HAP taking even greater risks and thus getting caught."

  I had to defend myself. My strategy, with all its flaws, still had a positive outcome. I hadn’t figured on Conrad rescuing me, but no plan was perfect. As irrational as this thought was, I still latched onto it.