Dead Letter

by Jonathan Valin

  Something about my face or about the way I was standing made her rock back on her feet and stare anxiously into my eyes. “What is it?” she said. “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to O’Hara.”

  She glanced over her shoulder and said, “He’s in a bad way now. Couldn’t this wait, Mr. Stoner? Couldn’t this wait until his son is buried?”

  I shook my head.

  “Who is it Beth?” O’Hara called from the living room.

  “It’s Mr. Stoner,” she said.

  There was a dead silence. “Show him in,” O’Hara said after a moment.

  It was a dreary little flat. Sad enough under any circumstances, but made especially sad by the grief that filled the room. O’Hara was sitting in a baize armchair beside a coiled radiator. There was a bottle of bourbon on the table beside him. The room smelled of bourbon and of heat.

  “Mr. Stoner,” he said without looking up at me. “I wondered how long it would take you to make this little call. I can’t say I approve of your timing. But then you’re not a subtle man, are you?”

  I didn’t know whether it was the grief talking or whether it was something else. A premonition, perhaps, that his past was finally catching up with him. I took the envelope out of my pocket and O’Hara stared at it curiously, as if it were something he recognized but couldn’t quite place.

  “What is it?” he said. “A letter?”

  I nodded. “From you to Charles McPhail.”

  “Ah!” he said quietly. “I should have guessed.”

  Miss Hemann stared nervously at me, then at O’Hara. “What is this, Michael? What’s this about?”

  O’Hara looked up quickly. I could see from the pained expression on his face that the girl didn’t know about McPhail or about the other McPhails who had probably replaced him. She didn’t know about the blackmail, either. And it mattered to him. After all of the years of lying to himself and to the rest of the world, it still mattered greatly to him that no one knew. I suppose, finally, that it mattered to me, too. But not for his sake. For hers.

  “I’ll meet with you tomorrow morning,” O’Hara said to me in his frigid departmental voice. “At my office. We can discuss this matter then.”

  It was a peculiar bargain, seeing that I might not be around the next morning to fulfill it—at least, if Grimes had his way I wouldn’t. “I’m not sure that will do,” I said to him.

  He nodded gravely. “I understand. Regardless of what happens, I’ll go to the police. I give you my word on that. I would have done so anyway.” He glanced quickly at Beth Hemann and said, “Please. One more day won’t make a difference to anyone.”

  “All right,” I said. “Tomorrow morning. But understand that the girl is my only concern in this. And that I will go to the police no matter what is said.”

  “I understand,” O’Hara replied.

  ******

  I didn’t like the bargain I’d struck. I’d wanted to hear it all before I risked my life against Grimes. But then I’d never championed the truth. In my spavined version of knighthood I was not a Galahad. I was one of that lesser, more impulsive clan—killed early in tournaments or in petty quarrels, over a woman’s honor or dishonor. That didn’t matter either. Just over a woman, I thought and laughed at myself. Because it wasn’t O’Hara I was protecting. His vanity was too corrupt to survive Daryl Lovingwell’s furious brand of realism. It was Beth Hemann I’d been thinking of, the loyal Miss Hemann, who loved Michael O’Hara in spite of his lacerating, self-disgusted manhood. I had seen too many sad-eyed sufferers for love’s sake in the past week to want to add another to the count.

  So I walked out the door and down to the street, where Lurman was waiting in the Pinto, and drove back to the Delores, telling myself as I drove that I’d done the right thing.

  25

  LURMAN AND I got back to the Delores at six on the dot. An hour later, Chico Robinson called.

  “That you, Stoner?” he said.

  I said it was.

  “Well listen tight, man. He was staying on the Hill, but he split. Dude he was staying with say he might be in your neighborhood tonight. Maybe pay you a visit, you dig?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s gone to see a lady friend first. Chick by the name of Linda Green. She lives on Euclid Street.”

  He gave me an address in Corryville, and I wrote it down and handed it to Ted.

  “You be quick and you might catch him there,” Robinson said. “But you best be on your toes, dude. ‘Cause he’s got him a machine pistol and a sawed-off.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You hear?”

  “I heard.”

  Robinson hung up.

  I told Lurman what Chico had said.

  “We’ll get over there right away,” he said excitedly.

  Lurman called down to the lot and assembled the rest of his crew in my apartment. We didn’t have time to make elaborate plans. He and I were to cover the front of the building. The other six agents the rear and side doors. And that was it. Everyone seemed comfortable with the set-up. Everyone but me.

  “This guy’s armed to the teeth, Ted. And he knows how to kill. Wouldn’t it be smarter to call in a SWAT team?”

  It would have been smarter, all right. But it wouldn’t have been politic. And I guess I knew that as soon as I’d asked the question. The FBI doesn’t like to share their glories or their mistakes with other agencies; it was really that simple, although Lurman tried to make it seem more complicated.

  “Euclid Street is right on the border of the University community, Harry,” he said testily. “We call in an army and a lot of innocent kids might get hurt. Especially if Grimes is as heavily armed as Robinson said he was. Anyway I don’t want to have to bargain for any hostages. I don’t want any action inside the building at all. We’ll take him when he comes out. And we’ll take him clean. No more fuck-ups. No more traps. No more Sturdevants and Lionellis. As soon as any of you makes a positive I.D. and he’s out of the building, kill him.”

  ******

  At half-past six we piled into three black Chevies and drove down Taft to Auburn and then north to Euclid Avenue. It was a perfect evening. No snow this time. Nothing to obscure our vision. A night just as cold and clear as glass. We pulled over across from Linda Green’s brownstone apartment house at seven; and while the six other agents took their positions around the building, Lurman and I sat silently in the car. For the second time in three days I had the eerie feeling that Ted had become someone else. Someone almost as cool and dangerous as Grimes himself. His face was flushed and when he spoke, it was with a sharp, conspiratorial inflection, as if we were two kids playing games outside an abandoned house. He made me nervous, and so did the old building, which was dotted with tall windows that would make make ideal fire lanes if Grimes decided to make a fight of it.

  “Here’s the way it’s going to be,” he said. “Take a look at the building.”

  It was a three-story brownstone with a huge stone stoop in front, fire escapes on either side, and those tall windows arranged in ranks on each wall. A glass door above the stoop led to an alcove lined with mailboxes and buzzers. Behind the alcove another glass door led to a stairwell and to a hallway that extended to the rear of the building. Looking through both doors I could almost see to the end of the hall. Which meant that anyone coming down the stairs would be fully visible from where we were sitting.

  “I’ve got two men on the north side, two on the south, and two behind the building. We’ve got the front. We’ve also got the only view of the lobby. If he doesn’t come out the front door, we’ll have to let the others know which way he’s headed. And quickly.” Lurman looked me over as if I were standing in front of him on parade. “You’re in on this because you wanted to be and because you deserve to be. But for chrissake, don’t go being a hero. Just do what I say and we’ll both stand a chance of getting out of this thing alive.”

  He pointed to a tall maple tree on the east side of the
stoop and said, “That’s your position. I’ll find a spot on the west side. I’ll have a walkie-talkie with me to alert the other men in case he doesn’t come out the front. Now all I want you to do is stay put until you see him coming out the door. When you’ve made him, take that cannon of yours and shoot him with it. No questions. No warning. Just shoot. And be careful of the crossfire, because I’ll be shooting, too. Just aim carefully and make each shot count. And if he does go down, keep on firing until you’re sure he’s dead. Until you see his brains on the sidewalk. And don’t touch his damn body. He may have booby-trapped his clothes and his weapons. With this guy we just don’t know.”

  “What if one of us gets hit?” I said.

  “Won’t happen, Harry. This time we got the drop on him.”

  Lurman smiled icily and held out his hand. “Well, old man, this is it. Just think about what he did to Sarah and pull the trigger.”

  I shook his hand and we got out of the car and crossed Euclid. Lurman wrapped a scarf around his neck and trotted off toward a telephone pole on the north side of the building. I headed south to the maple tree. By the time I made it there, I was sweating. The tree was set at a slightly oblique angle to the front door, cutting off my view of the hall and the north side fire escape. From where I was posted I wouldn’t be able to see Grimes until he came through the inner door into the alcove.

  I bothered myself about the angle of vision for five minutes, then leaned against the tree, my right hand on the pistol in my coat pocket, and waited.

  ******

  An hour passed and there was no action anywhere around the building. I began to wonder if Grimes was inside after all. The thought that he could be somewhere on the loose should have been more disturbing than it was. It probably would have been, if I hadn’t been so damn scared already. After leaning against that tree for over an hour and jumping at every sound that came from the sidewalk behind me or from the apartment building in front of me, I would have settled for any resolution. I could see that Lurman was getting antsy, too. From time to time he’d pop out from behind the lamppost where he’d stationed himself and take a long look into the hall.

  After another half hour’s wait, I was convinced Grimes wasn’t in the building. Which suddenly didn’t seem so comforting. There was a lot of dark street behind me. A lot of shooting room. And I found myself glancing back over my shoulder more and more regularly. Euclid was lined with parked cars on either side; but there wasn’t much traffic, much life, until it intersected with Taft, two blocks to the south. The street lights made a warm, bright cluster at Taft, and I found myself looking toward them, from time to time, with a silly kind of fondness, as if I’d been born and raised on that lonesome streetcorner.

  At half-past nine I got tired of pretending I was part of the maple tree and walked over to the sidewalk. A couple of black teenagers, who were passing by, eyed me as if I was Dad’s wallet left out on the dresser. They thought better of it after a moment and kept on moving down the street toward Lurman, where they were probably tempted again.

  Then an automatic rifle went off somewhere behind the apartment house with a sound like a string of firecrackers exploding in an alley.

  The black kids bolted across Euclid. A blue Ford jerked to a stop behind me. Lurman started running down the northside alley to the rear of the apartment. The shooting intensified—first a string of firecrackers, then the garbled popping of handguns and, once, the muted roar of a shotgun.

  I started down the alley after Lurman when I happened to look back at the front of the building. He was just coming out the door—long-legged, hatless, wrapped in a shearling coat. His long, docile face looking the slightest bit perplexed, as if he were trying to make up his mind which way to turn.

  “Ted!” I shouted. “He’s up here!”

  He couldn’t hear me. The gunfire was too loud and he was too far down the alleyway. Which meant that Lester O. Grimes had become my problem—alone.

  Grimes looked right and left, then stepped off the porch as coolly as if he were off for an evening stroll. I guess he couldn’t believe how well his plan had worked. I guess he couldn’t believe there was no one out there to greet him. He cinched his coat at the waist, smiled gamely, and started up Euclid toward Taft at a brisk pace.

  The whole block seemed to be coming to life. Lights were popping on up and down the street. Faces were plastered against windows. Thrill-seekers were already edging down the block toward the source of all that gunfire. Within a minute or so, a fleet of police cars came thudding through the icy street, their sirens screaming and their blue bubble-tops sprinkling an almost festive light on the snow-draped porches and the cars parked along Euclid. It was pure chaos. And Lester Grimes was walking calmly through its center—secure in the knowledge that in the midst of all that light and sound no one would be paying him a second look.

  In a way I was lucky. The confusion would work in my favor, too. And then Lester was playing it so coolly that he might not think to look behind him. And even if he did, he’d have a hell of a time picking me out among all the cops and thrill-seekers streaming down the sidewalk. Just to be safe, I waited until he had about twenty yards on me, then stepped from behind the lamppost, gun in hand, and started up Euclid after him.

  Pale, excited faces brushed past me in a blur. But I was concentrating on that tall target sixty feet in front of me. I was going to need to make up some ground, because once he got past Taft and McMillan there would be a lot of dark street in front of him. And then the magnum wouldn’t be worth a damn at more than ten or fifteen feet. With a short barrel, it’s nowhere near as accurate as a smaller caliber pistol—it can’t be fired at all without kicking your arms up ninety degrees. And on the ice, I might well end up on my butt. That meant I was going to get one shot, at best, before Lester returned fire. That meant I had to get as close to him as possible to make that one shot count. Right on top of him if I could manage it, like they teach you at the police academies. Close enough to stick the barrel in his ribs and squeeze the trigger and blow a hole the size of a pie plate in Lester Grimes’s belly.

  I started to trot.

  A half-dozen more people rushed by me, heading up the street to Linda Green’s apartment. I didn’t see their faces, just that rangy figure bobbing in the distance. The adrenalin was starting up. It made my skin tingle and itch. It brought a cold sweat out on my face and arms and made my heart pound painfully in my chest. My knees felt as if they weren’t locking right, as if they might buckle at the very next step.

  Easy, Harry, I told myself. Easy.

  Another fleet of patrol cars thudded and shrieked down Euclid. I could still hear the roar of gunfire coming from the brownstone, and the air had begun to smell of cordite smoke. It drifted like a fog through the cold air. I could taste it, burning, in my throat.

  By the time he got close to Taft, I’d made up twenty feet on him. Not nearly enough. Across the intersection, Euclid became Auburn Avenue—a long, flat residential street, lined on either side with tall brownstones and lit dimly by gas lights. Once he got across that intersection, he’d be home-free. Then it would be like following a wounded lion into the bush. Auburn was a grid of dark alleys and asphalt drives that led between buildings to the old-fashioned slat garages and carriage houses set behind them in unlighted backyards. He could disappear down any one of those alleyways and I would lose him. Unless he’d spotted me, in which case I could suddenly end up very dead. He was heavily armed, I was sure of that. He’d probably left the machine pistol with Linda Green or whoever it was who was creating the noisy diversion that allowed him to escape. But there was still that sawed-off shotgun that Chico Robinson had mentioned. It was probably tucked like a derringer in one huge sleeve of his shearling coat or under the breast where he could jerk it free. And he was a dead-shot, as that school superintendent had learned. He was also slightly crazy, which increased the chances of an ambush if he had spotted me. He wanted to kill me. He’d almost succeeded in the Coney Lot. He wasn’t
going to miss this time—not at close range, with a sawed-off.

  I thought of taking a wild shot at him from where I stood. But there were too many people on the sidewalk. And there were cars on Taft. It would be a ten-to-one shot anyway, from thirty or forty feet.

  No, he has to stop, Harry, I told myself. For a minute at least. Either that or you have to follow him into that dark patch of ground on the other side of Taft. I stared at the stoplight, swinging in the breeze at the corner of Taft and Euclid and prayed that it would turn red.

  He made it to the corner and the light didn’t flicker.

  “Change, damn it!” I almost shouted.

  He’d just stepped off the curb when it went yellow.

  Grimes hesitated a moment, and I thought of how I might die. Vaporized like Sturdevant or locked like the girl in a coma. Then Grimes stepped back up onto the curb. And I cocked the magnum and began to run. All out. Arms chugging. Breath coming in throat-scalding bursts. My heart pounding like someone’s fist knocking inside my chest.

  There were three people and about thirty-five feet of ground between Lester Grimes and me when that light changed. I made up twenty of those feet and shoved two of those people out of my way in about five seconds. But the third person—a woman in a plaid scarf and heavy wool overcoat who was standing midway and at an oblique angle between me and Grimes—caught sight of the pistol in my right hand and began to scream.

  Before I could even raise the revolver, Grimes whirled to his left, tore the shotgun from beneath his coat and fired a single blast of buckshot. The load caught the woman full in the back, lifted her off the sidewalk and sent her flying, head first, through the windshield of a Chevy parked at the top of the street.

  Grimes pulled the pump a second time. But I had the magnum braced by then. Arms extended, both hands wrapped on the checked handle, I fired before he could squeeze off a second burst. The magnum roared, sending out a tongue of flame and throwing my arms back so violently that I actually did go down on the icy sidewalk. Hard.