Scissors in hand, I examined my cage. Like the outer, larger room of the garage, the john was not the pigsty you might be led to expect, judging from the exterior of the seedy-looking building. That doesn’t mean you’d eat off the floor, but there were worse toilets in the world to have to make a home in. Seemed to be relatively clean, if not lavish: just bare facilities, standard stool and sink. Cramped it wasn’t, and spaciously empty enough to suggest it had been designed with mechanics in mind, back in whatever era the place was used as a service garage; plenty of room to move around, not that I wouldn’t have liked a dozen closets, two attic entries, and one trapdoor to a basement to hide in. Or at least a shower stall. But no, it was nothing more than a somewhat oversize naked can, with no place to hide unless you were very small and could tread water. No place at all.
Except maybe one.
A large cardboard box, big enough for a small stove, had been stuck in here to serve as an oversize wastebasket. Evidently, enough labor was still done in the garage to make necessary the frequent washing of hands: on the wall was a PULL DOWN, TEAR UP brown-paper towel dispenser, and the soap was strong, mechanic-strength powder in a dispenser over the sink, with the big carton apparently a spare liberated from warehouse duty to catch refuse.
Now I didn’t want to make much noise, but figured the search for the intruder was going to lead here pretty soon, so I waited until I could hear a conversation going on out there, which I hoped would cover any sounds I’d make, and crawled into the box of wadded-up brown paper. Trying not to cause too much of a racket, and imagining every crinkle of paper to be a thunderclap, I squirmed and wriggled and swam in the sea of paper wads, getting a layer of the stuff over me.
It was not comfortable. Like I said before, the box was big enough for a small stove; but I am not shaped like a small stove. Also, most small stoves do not have two cracked ribs. Still, there I was, on my back in the box, my knees touching my chest, my arms around my legs, hugging, and my concentration going toward ignoring the pain, holding onto the scissors, and not breathing heavily.
I was like that for maybe two minutes, a bunched-up, awkward fetus clutching scissors in a box of crumpled towels, and then the john door burst open, like a fat man letting out air, and the light switched on and somebody came clumping in. I felt the box quiver as somebody gripped the side of it to peer in. I gripped the handle of the scissors. Tight.
“Nothing in here,” the voice said. And it didn’t sound like a voice with a wink in it, so I assumed I’d properly fooled the guy.
The door shut, and I was alone in the can again. And thankfully alone in my box. I wouldn’t have liked any company; those used-up towels were obnoxious enough as it was.
Then I did something you will probably think is stupid, but I ask you to remember that everything I’d done for the past hour or so was pretty stupid, so as least I was consistent. What I did was carefully, as soundlessly as possible, get back out of the box so that I could approach the door and lay my ear to the wood and listen to the talk going on out there.
But the thing I heard was not talk. It was the sound of a door slamming. For a moment I wondered if those two guys had left, and then I got my answer. A new voice—an apparent third party who’d just entered—said, “I just talked to Frank, and I don’t like it.”
There was silence for a moment, then: “Me neither.” My buddy Hulk talking. “I think Frank’s going out on a limb on this one.”
“Frank’s going out on a limb? Bull,” the new voice said. “We are the ones going out on the goddamn limb, not him.”
The remaining voice, the authoritative voice belonging to the guy who spotted the broken window, said, “Take it easy. We’ll be out of here by dawn, for Christ’s sake. And Frank’s right; we should cash in on some of our work at least, before we split. We laid the damn groundwork, and it’d be a pity to throw it away without making it pay off a little, anyway. I say go ahead.”
“But in daylight?” This was the new voice again, the whiner.
“Why not? We done it in daylight before.”
“But things weren’t as hot before. That SOB Mallory wasn’t sticking his puss into everything then.”
“That’s right,” Hulk agreed, “and he came around here snooping this afternoon.”
“What? Goddamn!” the whiner shouted.
“Forget Mallory,” said the authoritative one, who’d evidently already been filled in by Hulk about my visit, whereas it seemed to be news to the whiner. “We can handle him. We got him covered.”
Covered? What the hell did they mean by that?
“Well, even without Mallory, it’s still hotter,” the whiner said. “There’s a murder in it now, and things are going to be hot and stay that way.”
The authoritative voice was edged with anger this time. “I know that. Why do you think we’re moving out tonight if I didn’t know that?”
“I tell you, it bothers me,” the whiner continued, trying a new tack. “I don’t feel right about that old dead lady.”
“For Christ’s sake. Forget that old bitch.”
“It’s not that I give a damn about her, exactly; it’s I do give a damn about getting stuck with a murder rap just because the old bag up and died on us.”
“I’m getting sick of your goddamn complaining.”
“Yeah? Well I’m getting sick of your goddamn orders. You’re not running this show. Frank is.”
“Well, Frank says we’re going ahead with it. Right now.”
“Well, the hell with Frank and the hell with you,” the whiner said, a new toughness in his voice. “You and P. J. here can go ahead, but me, I’m going in the house and have a beer and see if I can cop a feel off P. J.’s woman. Let me know what happens.”
I heard a door slam, and the other two guys started in grumbling. I strained to make it out, finally caught a piece of what the authoritative guy was saying—“Let’s go talk to the stupid bastard”—and heard the door slam again.
I cracked the door of the can. Peeked out.
They were gone.
Gone back inside the house, I guessed.
I put the lid down on the toilet and sat, tried to get my heart working again, ran my fingers across my scalp to see if my hair was standing on end. Then I rose, ran some water in the sink, and splashed some on my face. It was good to be alive. It was good not to have any more cracked ribs than I already had; it was good not being kicked in the nuts.
I opened the lavatory door and walked back like a ballerina into the garage. My top priority was now to get the hell out of here and call Brennan. Obviously, going by what these guys had been saying, there was something on for tonight. Actually, a couple of somethings. It plainly sounded like they planned to get out of Port City by next morning, pack up and clear out.
But something else was up, too.
One last job, maybe? Groundwork was laid, the one guy had said, a pity to waste it. That had to be it, then: one last job, tonight.
On my way back over to the window, I stopped at the van. Out of almost idle curiosity, I tried the back doors of the van. Unlocked. I swung them open and looked in.
Empty.
That cinched it. Since they were planning to clear out of town by dawn, you would think the van would be loaded full of goodies. But no. Totally empty. Which meant one thing: there was one final farewell job planned for tonight. This van would be filled, but at some victim’s house. By nightfall this vehicle would be crammed full of possessions and valuables earned and collected by somebody in a life of hard and probably honest work, only to be ripped off by some punks with a collective IQ in the neighborhood of Lee Trevino’s average golf score.
I started closing the van doors, then stopped short.
Voices.
Voices outside the building, right outside the building, and the door was opening.
Damn! They were back already.
I ducked inside the van and closed the rear doors. Not all the way, but gently, so I could eventually nudge them open and
hop out again when all was clear.
Sure.
“Well,” the authoritative voice was saying, “screw him then. The two of us can do it.”
“Hell, yes,” Hulk said, uncertain.
And I heard a sound that had to be the garage door going up.
And another sound that had to be the rear doors of the van being pushed tight-shut.
And another that had to be the van’s motor starting up.
We were moving.
20
It was dark in there. Not a trace of light was coming in around the edges of the double doors. No air, either. A hot, stuffy box; not an oven, but a damn close second; not a coffin, but just as disquieting. It was almost enough to make me homesick for that john back at the garage.
One thing kept me from tumbling into depression’s abyss, and that thing was the pair of scissors. I sat clutching them as if they were a crucifix and I was expecting vampires.
Because it seemed inevitable that before long I’d be confronting those two guys driving the van, and if it hadn’t been for those scissors, even my money would be on the van drivers. But having a weapon of sorts, and having the element of surprise on my side, gave me decent odds... though stabbing somebody with a pair of scissors wasn’t something I was looking forward to. After all, stabbing people with scissors was for psychos, and I was supposed to be one of the good guys.
However, at times one can’t be too choosy about one’s options, and I was lucky to have any option at all, and damn lucky to have something sharp and lethal with which to do battle against those dull and lethal boys up front in the van.
The shocks on the vehicle were all but nonexistent, and I’ve had smoother rides falling down a flight of stairs. But that too was a lucky break—and to hell with comfort—as since the ride was jostling and the vehicle naturally noisy, I didn’t have to worry much about keeping down my own level of sound. Although when we went over those railroad tracks just three blocks from Tony’s, I bounced around like a sack of grain and must’ve come within a hair of alerting my unknowing captors of my presence.
I examined the interior of the van and found nothing, not one thing, except some loose dirt on the slightly rusted-out floor. I went over the walls slowly, carefully, like a blind man reading braille—but not getting nearly as much out of it. A close check of the doors proved equally futile. The one on the right did have a square maintenance port near the latching mechanism, but feeling my fingers around in the hole told me nothing; perhaps if I had some slight mechanical know-how, it would’ve been different, but all I could get out of it was grease on my fingers. I considered prying the blades of the scissors around in there, but decided not to risk breaking them. I waited till we were going over a particularly bumpy stretch of road and, under cover of vehicle noise, laid my shoulder into the twin doors, hard. Nothing gave, except my shoulder. Some vans have doors that can be sprung open from within if you give ’em a shot right in the middle where they join; it’s a very weak spot, from a structural point of view. But these doors—even though the van wasn’t a recent model—were rugged and didn’t budge. So I gave up.
I sat and let the rough-riding van knock my butt around, let it jounce me till my ribs hurt past pain. I deserved it for being idiotic enough to hide in a van in the first place. This is not to say that I was going to capitulate. I had given up on beating the van, but not on beating the van drivers. Those scissors were so tight in my fist, they could’ve been some strange, deadly deformity. I was tense with the knowledge of what was ahead of me. I was resolved to violence in a detached way like nothing I’d felt since Vietnam.
At first it was no trouble keeping track of where we were going. Even when my attention was focused on exploring my cell, I could perceive from the sounds of traffic that we were headed out of South End and into town. I felt the sway of the right turn past the pump factory and knew we’d be rolling down Mississippi Drive, and after maybe half a mile we turned again, left, into the downtown.
Then I got lost. Traffic sounds petered out, and several consecutive turns conspired to make me lose all sense of direction. We were, I supposed, winding through some residential area, God knew where. All I knew for sure was we weren’t driving around on the bottom of the river.
And then we veered sharp to the right, and I could hear rocks spitting up against the underside of the vehicle, tickling the van’s belly, and we came to a stop.
An alley, then. We’d stopped in an alley, probably in a residential area.
I heard the front van doors open, slam shut. No pretense at stealth. Had my presence been detected? I held the scissors ready, bayonetlike.
“What’s going on up there?” I heard the authoritative voice say.
“Don’t know,” Hulk said. “Hell. Something.”
“Something is right. I thought Frank said the college kids were gone on weekends.”
“He did. He did say that.”
“Well, they sure as hell aren’t gone this weekend.”
Silence.
Somebody put his hand on the handle that would open the rear van doors. From the positioning of the voices, I figured it was Hulk. I was ready. The scissors and I, we were ready.
He pushed down the handle with a click and began to pull open the doors.
“Wait,” the authoritative voice said. “Hold it; somebody’s coming.”
I placed my foot against the right rear door along the bottom and put my hand inside the square opening. When Hulk pushed the doors shut, I kept the one door from latching by stopping it with my foot and bracing with my hand.
“How’s it going, man?” A new voice. A young voice. And, I thought, a drunken voice. Or maybe stoned. You don’t call two men “man” when your head is totally right.
“Fine,” they said together.
“Going to do some gardening, man?”
“Yeah,” they said.
“Well, uh... don’t cut the grass too short, you know what I mean?” Laughter. His, not theirs. Silly laughter at that.
“Say,” Authoritative Voice said, “what’s going on anyway?”
“Party, man. Bash. Midsummer bash. Not many of us stuck around here for summer school, but whoever is around is upstairs, man. Hey, you want some beer or something?”
“No thanks,” they said.
“Well, listen, if people start roamin’ around outside while you’re doing your work, man, don’t mind ’em. Things aren’t too hairy yet, but they’re gettin’ there. Party just got started last night. By tonight it really oughta be goin’ good. Well, I gotta split.”
“Good-bye,” they said.
I heard his footsteps paddle away. A door yawned open, and I heard the sound of rock music blare out. Then it slammed and cut the music off.
“Damn,” Hulk said.
“Goddamn,” the other one said.
“What we going to do?”
“Scratch it.”
“But....”
“No way we’re going to get it done with all those kids wandering around, drunk on their butts, stoned out of their skulls. We were counting on it being the way Frank laid it out.”
“Those goddamn college kids aren’t supposed to be here on the weekend.”
“Yeah. But they are. Let’s go.”
I heard their footsteps stirring up gravel and then the twin slams of the front van doors. The motor started up and, as they got moving again, I rolled out of the back of the van.
I hit hard, rolling off the alleyway into some bushes to my left. They hadn’t seen or heard me.
They coasted away in the van, turning right at the mouth of the alley, and were gone.
I got to my feet, brushed myself off, and looked around.
Across the alley from where I stood was a two-story yellow clapboard house. It was set up a slight incline to a basement garage. Upstairs was where the party was going on. In the second-story windows I could see the young bodies moving around; and now the sound of rock music, inaudible in the van except when that door had ope
ned, was easy to hear. And strangely out of place in this sleepy residential area full of sedate old two-story houses like this one.
Which was, by the way, a house I recognized.
It was where the Cooper sisters lived.
21
As quietly as possible, I brushed aside the questions of the Cooper sisters, and got their permission to use the phone, and dialed the sheriff’s office. Lou Brown answered.
“How’s it going, Mal? Can I help?”
“It’s gone past that point, Lou. I’m ready to bring Brennan in.”
“You been moving fast, then. I thought you were going to keep me up on what you were doing.”
“Well, I hadn’t done a damn thing till this afternoon, and now it’s broken loose all at once. Is Brennan around?”
“He’s sacked out upstairs. He was out till all hours on an accident call last night.”
“Bother him.”
“That important, huh?”
“That important.”
“Okay.”
I heard the click of the extension button being punched in, and it took ten rings to get Brennan to answer. Good thing he wasn’t a fireman.
“What is it?” he said, very groggy.
“It’s Mallory. Wake up.”
“Oh, Jesus. I was out late, Mallory, have a heart. Trying to catch some sleep, damn it; can’t you talk to Lou or somebody about whatever it is—”
“Brennan, wake up. I got your break-ins solved for you.”
“You what?”
“Know a place called Tony’s Used Auto Parts?”
He sighed. “Down in South End, sure.”
“Well, the garage part of Tony’s is a warehouse for the hot goods these guys rip off. It’s where they keep the stuff till they can get it fenced.”
“Mallory, I don’t know how to tell you this, but we’ve heard the same rumors about Tony’s that you have, and on my say-so the cops used two John Does on that place in the last five weeks, and they never found a damn thing. We’ve pushed our luck on that one about as far as we can. So no matter what you heard about Tony’s, forget it.”
The Baby Blue Rip-Off (A Mallory Mystery) Page 11