Courier

by Terry Irving

  Rick smiled. "Love you too, Gor–"

  "That is not my name!" the mechanic shouted.

  "Whatever you say." Rick and Eve walked to the small door next to the roll-up garage entrance.

  As soon as Eve opened the door, she seemed to disappear, as she was yanked off her feet and a large pistol appeared in her place.

  "Freeze!"

  Rick froze.

  "OK, here’s how this is going to work," said the quiet, solid man holding the gun. "I want the film and anything else you got from the bookkeeper. Do you have it?"

  "Not anymore."

  "No problem. You’re going to stand here quietly until your girl and I get into that car over there and leave. Then you’ve got two hours to go and gather up every frame of that film and every page of evidence from wherever you put it or whoever you gave it to and bring it up to the vacant building on the northwest corner of 14th and Irving."

  Eve suddenly jerked as she tried to pull away from his hand on her arm. The man tightened his grip and rested the gun against the back of her head.

  "Young lady, this is a forty-five-caliber automatic. It will leave pieces of your pretty face two blocks away and still have plenty of power to kill your boyfriend. Please don’t do that again."

  Rick looked into her eyes, seeing anger but no fear. "Please, just do what he says."

  The man pushed the gun under his coat but still pointed it at Eve. He began to walk backward toward his car. "Very sensible. Remember, two hours."

  Rick didn’t take his eyes off Eve. "No problem."

  He watched, motionless, as the man shoved Eve into the passenger seat and the Impala pulled away.

  Behind Rick, there was the sound of the breech cracking as Hector safetied his shotgun. "Sorry, man, I didn’t have a shot."

  "I know." Rick watched until the Impala turned the corner and disappeared. "It’s not your fight, man."

  "I know." The mechanic propped the shotgun by the door and turned back to his tool chest.

  Rick pulled out a cigarette and paused to look at his lighter before scraping it up and down his jeans. It lit.

  "Still works, huh?" Hector looked over. "Light one for me. I think I’ll need all the good luck I can find tonight."

  The newsroom was as it always was.

  Somehow, Rick thought something should be different since so many things had happened to him in the past few days. However, the purposeful chaos of the newsroom hadn’t changed at all.

  As he walked in, the senior producer was on the phone to New York. He raised his eyebrows in mute question. Rick shrugged. Don Moretti dashed by with a red plastic can of film, and Rick followed him into the tiny edit room.

  Moretti immediately started putting the processed film on the edit blocks, his hands moving with precise speed even as he looked at Rick. "What’s been going on, fella?" he asked. "You weren’t here the past few days. They brought some Neanderthal with a speed-freak death wish in to replace you. We couldn’t even get him into the White House. I think the problem was that he couldn’t spell his name."

  "I’ve been busy." Rick lit a cigarette. "Personal stuff."

  "Hell, you know that’s not allowed in this business." Moretti began to screen the film on the tiny viewer, spinning the reels as he searched for a shot. "Give me that cigarette and tell me what I can do you for."

  Rick put the Winston between the editor’s lips and lit another. "I need to make a phone call, and then I need a can of ‘B-Roll’."

  "‘B"‘B-Roll’?" Moretti looked up sharply. "You mean like tight shots of a line of pencils writing on pads, or shots of the Capitol? You starting your own news business?"

  "Hardly. I just need a can of blank film – small size, silver color with the tape still on it."

  "What for?"

  "It would really be hard to explain. Can we just consider it a favor?"

  Moretti spotted the segment he was looking for, whipped the viewer up, and pulled the film off the synch block and onto the splicer. He pulled another strip of film from the bin at his side and laid in a tape splice. Then he racked up a smaller reel and began furiously winding the film on it.

  "OK, you get this into Telecine in the next" – he looked at the clock – "thirty-two seconds, and I’ll make a fake can for you."

  The film ran out and spun on the reel, the end snapping on the table. Moretti popped the reel off the hand crank and shoved it at Rick, who fast-walked down the hall and through the double doors.

  A bored-looking engineer looked up from the game of solitaire on his desk. "That Moretti’s?"

  "Yep."

  "Good, the director is starting to have kittens." The engineer seemed to remember something. "Hey, Lee said thanks for getting the crap off his line."

  "Always happy to help out the engineering side."

  By the time Rick returned to the edit room, Moretti was spinning some junk film on a small plastic core. Rick turned to the phone, dialed a number, and asked for Edna Ponds-Simons.

  "He’s got Eve," he said without preamble, "and I’ve got to go and get her. Any ideas?" He listened and then asked, "You carry that around with you? Wait, of course you do. Can you meet me outside in about five minutes?" He hung up the phone.

  Moretti had a silver can filled and taped. "What should I mark it?"

  "Hadley B-roll."

  There was a pause. "Hadley? You’re bullshitting me. You know he’s dead, right?"

  "Him and a lot of other people." Rick took a deep breath. "Don, I can’t tell you what’s going on, but please believe me, I really need what you’ve got in your hand."

  After a second, the editor scratched the title on the label and held out the can. "Here you go. Hope you know what you’re doing."

  "You and me both." Rick took the can and walked quickly down the hall to the door that led to the courtyard where he’d left the Kawasaki. Just as he pulled open the door, Paul Smithson, the bureau chief, stepped into the small alley from the door on the other side.

  Without even thinking, Rick grabbed the older man by the elbow and pushed him hard to the right, spun him around the corner, and pinned him against the brick wall with his right forearm hard across the older man’s throat.

  Smithson put his hand up to the back of his head. "What the hell do you–"

  "Shut the fuck up." Rick spoke in a cold, almost emotionless voice – straining to keep the rage from taking over. "You took the Hadley film, didn’t you? You took it and you had that girl fired. Right?"

  Smithson paused for a second and then nodded – all the bluster had gone out of him.

  "Well, you fucked up." Rick pushed again and Smithson’s head bounced off the brick wall.

  "See this? This is what they wanted." Rick held the silver film can inches from Smithson’s face.

  He wanted to scream at the old bastard, but with considerable effort, he kept his voice low so no one passing between the buildings could hear.

  "That son of a bitch in the White House. You know, the guy you used to work for?"

  Rick gently tapped the film can against Smithson’s temple.

  "What’s in here is going to take him down. All those bastards in the West Wing are going to be arrested, and then the fucking criminals in the Committee are going to be walked out in handcuffs…"

  Rick’s right arm was shaking from the effort it took not to crush the older man’s throat.

  "And finally, when he’s lost every friend and ally he’s ever had, the President is going to pay for what he did. Americans – soldiers and marines and pilots and sailors – real Americans who believed your bullshit have been dying. Dying because that greedy fuck made a political deal with the South Vietnamese and took fucking money for your fucking campaign."

  Rick thrust the older man away and Smithson stumbled a couple of steps down the alley. He turned and began to speak.

  "Son, you’ve got it–"

  "Old man" – Rick’s voice was just above a whisper but it cut through like a knife – "just shut the fuck up and pra
y. Because I’m going to meet right now with a very quiet guy with a very large gun. He’s got a friend of mine and…"

  Rick’s voice didn’t break.

  It simply stopped.

  He forced the next words out through clenched teeth. "If I come back alone…"

  Another pause.

  "Don’t. Be. Here."

  Rick stepped back and went to get his bike. Smithson walked quickly the other way and lost himself in the evening crowds on Connecticut Avenue.

  CHAPTER 35

  As he drove to the rendezvous, Rick noticed how both sides of 14th Street still showed the marks of the ’68 riots – scorched exteriors, rubble-filled lots, and an eerie emptiness. He remembered watching the television as the 82nd Airborne locked down the city to enforce an absolute curfew. There had been machine guns deployed right in the middle of these intersections. In some ways, the people had never come back. The streets that had been the centers of black life had been the worst damaged. Even the desperate spray-painting of "Soul Brother" on stores and small businesses hadn’t saved them.

  Sam had said that during those rage-filled days, even when he didn’t wear a helmet so everyone could see he was black, he still had to blast through here at top speed, hanging over the side of his bike. He claimed he came under sniper fire, but Rick thought it was far more likely that he was just embellishing the story a little.

  Today, the sound of the Kawasaki’s engine bounced back off the empty row houses as Rick cruised well below the speed limit. For a moment, he saw the humor in it. After all the crazed driving he’d done in this city, now he was terrified he’d be stopped and miss this meeting.

  For the hundredth time, he checked that he had the can of film. Yes, it was right there in his inside jacket pocket.

  The building on the northwest corner of the intersection with Irving looked like it had been a car dealership before the riots. Now it was two stories of flaking paint, scarred cinder-block walls, and shattered glass in an expanse of rubble-strewn asphalt with weeds growing through the cracks. A ribbon of blue paint that once had been a cheerful decoration ran around the walls at the level of the second floor, looking black under the streetlights.

  It looked as if someone still held out hope for renewal. There was a flimsy construction fence around the lot – chain-link strung between poles held upright by cinder blocks filled with concrete. On the other hand, the fence was old and rusted. Any chance of rebuilding had probably been destroyed by the ruthless economics of inner-city mortgages.

  The fence wasn’t buried in the ground, so Rick shoved it aside, pulled the bike in, parked it, and closed the fence behind him. The Kawasaki had a built-in lock that kept the front forks from turning, and he considered whether he should leave it unlocked in case he wanted a fast getaway. Then he decided that if everything went wrong, he wasn’t likely to be coming out at all, and if it went right, he wouldn’t be in a hurry. He locked the forks.

  He walked slowly toward the smashed dealership, trying and failing to make out any details in the deep shadows inside. It looked as if the new cars had been parked on both the first and second floors – there must be a vehicle ramp to the second floor somewhere. There were enormous gaping holes facing 14th Street on both floors where once shining new cars had been showcased behind plate glass.

  He stepped through one of the windows, careful to avoid the remaining shards of glass and the twisted metal left by scavengers. Inside, he stood for a few minutes, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light coming in from the streetlights outside.

  "Up here."

  The voice came from high in the back of the dark building. That’s where the car ramp must be, he thought.

  Walking carefully, shuffling his feet to brush aside the wire snares, glass knives, and jagged steel daggers that covered the floor, and moving slowly enough to pick out and avoid the smashed metal desks strewn about, he made his way to the rear. As expected, a car ramp swept in a wide curve to the second floor, taking up the entire width of the building. It began on his right and ended in the shadows above him to the left.

  He slowly walked up the ramp. Just as his feet felt where the floor leveled out on the second level, he heard, "Stop right there."

  It was the quiet man who had taken Eve. He was standing against the wall to his left – completely hidden in deep shadow, and it wasn’t until he stepped forward and was outlined by the light coming in through the broken windows that Rick could pick him out.

  With a smooth motion, the agent drew Eve from darkness behind him. She seemed to have her hands tied behind her back, and the man was holding her casually by the upper arm. In his right hand, the .45 was in a relaxed grip, pointing somewhere between both of them. Rick thought he was making it clear that he could shoot either of them in an instant.

  Rick found it oddly difficult to talk. His throat felt dry and tight. He coughed and then asked Eve, "You OK?"

  "I’ve been better," she replied.

  "Please stop talking. We have business to conduct," her captor said without much emotion in his voice. He waved the pistol at Rick. "Have you got the film? Give it to me and you two can leave."

  Rick walked a few steps, moving off the ramp and toward the front of the building, but carefully not getting any closer to the agent. Then he stopped, turned, and put his back against the right wall. He still couldn’t clearly see Eve and her captor in the dim light but knew he was also invisible in the deep shadow. In his head, he knew exactly where they were standing – for once, his memory was useful instead of merely painful.

  Rick took a deep breath and blew it out in a tired sigh. "No, I really don’t think I can do that. I think that you’ll have to kill both of us whether we give you the film or not. You can’t afford to leave us alive with what we might know."

  Then he slowly pivoted until he faced the front of the building with his right side toward where he knew the agent must be – this presented the smallest target to his opponent. As quietly as he could, he reached into his jacket and pulled out the film. Transferring it to his left hand, he reached into his pocket again.

  "The fact is that we actually don’t know anything except that a bunch of assholes have been trying to kill us, but I don’t think you can afford to take my word on that." He held the film up with his left arm straight so it was far from his body. He twisted it in his hand so it glinted in the dim light.

  "Now, here is the damned film. It’s never even been developed. I’ve got no idea what’s on it and don’t care."

  He was sure he could feel the man’s trigger finger tighten.

  "Before you do something stupid, consider the chance that I might be lying. Imagine how dumb you’ll feel if you kill us both and that’s not the right film and you have no idea where the real one is."

  There was a pause, and then the voice came from the shadows. "I could simply take the chance."

  "You could."

  There was another pause. Then the man spoke again. "OK, we’ll make a deal. You throw that film over to me, and she’ll walk to you."

  Rick tossed the can high and edge-on to the floor so that it clattered and rolled noisily before settling near to where he knew the man and Eve were standing. Eve walked carefully until she stood next to Rick against the wall.

  The voice came again from the deep shadows. "It looks right."

  "Now you’re about to make a big mistake," Rick said calmly. "You’re about to shoot us."

  "Where’s the mistake?"

  "You can’t see me, but I’ve got a pistol aimed right between your eyes. I can’t see you either, but I have a perfect memory. Usually it’s just a curse because it keeps replaying the damn war, but right now, I know exactly where you are."

  There was a pause. "The question is whether I believe you."

  "Yes, it is."

  He pulled his right hand out of his jeans. The down-up motion was almost too fast to see, and without stopping the upward motion, he underhanded the Zippo in a high arc toward the opposite wall. At th
e same time, he shouted, "Now!" squeezed his eyes shut, and drove sideways into Eve, knocking her to the floor and thrusting his hand over her eyes.

  Orange flame blossomed into a painfully bright blaze of brilliant white as the magnesium shavings Eps had packed into the lighter’s wind guard ignited. Even with his eyes closed, it hurt, but Rick knew the other man would be blinded completely. He heard a gunshot, and a big bullet thwacked into the concrete just over his head.

  He opened his eyes to see a jet of flame reaching out from the ramp to the agent, followed instantly by a second as the double thundercrack of a shotgun reverberated in the concrete room. The magnesium burned out at that instant and darkness returned, but Rick still had an image on his retinas – the agent arched backward with his head pinned to the wall and his face transformed into a scarlet mask.

  The silence that followed was broken by the sound of a shotgun’s breech breaking, shells ejecting, new shells going in, and the weapon being readied again.

  Hector walked slowly up the dark ramp with the shotgun locked against his shoulder and aimed into the darkness of the opposite wall. Rick could just make him out as he carefully walked closer, poked with his toe, and then crouched down over the body.

  In a calm voice, Hector said, "This thing does make a mess. Damn near blew his head off."

  He picked something up off the floor, stood up, and walked over to where Rick and Eve were lying. "Good thing you told me to look away. That wasn’t no ordinary lighter, Zip."

  "I’ve been telling you that for years."

  Hector held up small silver square. The Zippo. "Do you want it back?"

  "I guess not." Rick stayed where he was. "You can keep it. It’s got to be damn near empty by now."

  Hector went to the wall over their heads and put his finger in the large hole. "Man, those forty-fives really do some damage."

  He turned toward them, and in the light from the front window, Rick could see him toss the lighter up and down in his palm.