“We’re taking you to talk to somebody, mister,” he said.
He was maybe twenty-three. The skinny one, no older, was going over to the couch where several loops of rope were waiting, also some duct tape. Becky was standing at the open doorway to her bedroom, looking like she might cry, hugging herself like it was cold in here.
“Taking me where?” I asked, sitting up. “For what?”
He lifted the blackjack and waggled it like a finger. “Just stay put. We’re gonna tie you up. You might could live through this.”
He had that same faint Southern twang as Becky.
I said, “That’s might encouraging.”
He frowned, smart enough to know I was mocking him. But I had a hunch that was the extent of his smarts.
“Just you cooperate,” he said. “Somebody wants to talk to you.”
“You said that before. Becky! Honey. This your way of paying me back for sticking up for you last night?”
She said nothing, looked away.
“Becky is with us,” the linebacker said, like I didn’t know that. “She told us how you roughed up them creeps last night, and she’s grateful. But we got to be careful. If you’re who you might be, you’ll understand.”
Only I didn’t understand.
The skinny one had collected the rope and was coming over to me.
That was enough. I whipped out the nine millimeter, now that they were close enough together to get them both without half-trying.
They froze, goggling at me. The linebacker dropped the blackjack and I hadn’t even asked him to. The skinny one, his jaw dangling, let go of the coils of rope and they hit the carpet like dead snakes.
Becky turned to bolt through the bedroom and to her back I said, “You can give that a try, honey. I might not shoot you.”
And in truth I might not—a gunshot would put an end to this job before it began, and I was still somewhat enamored with the idea of making twenty-five grand.
In any case, she froze, and turned toward me, putting her hands up like a cashier in a convenience store robbery.
My reluctance to shoot at all in these circumstances was the reason these two clean-cut assholes were still breathing. It would really piss me off to come all the way to St. Louis and take out two or three people and not get anything out of it but a minimal kill fee from the Broker.
I was on my feet now. Like Becky, these two had their hands up, unbidden. The skinny one was shaking like Jerry Lewis in Scared Stiff.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “Becky, sweetie—over here….That’s right. Don’t be nervous. Just come over. That’s fine, right there. Now, take those coils of rope, one at a time, and tie your friends’ hands behind their backs.”
She squinted at me like I was speaking Latvian.
“You heard me,” I said, not nasty. “I need really good strong knots, tight enough that your boyfriends can’t slip out of them. I’ll be checking now.”
She swallowed, nodding.
I waited while she followed orders.
“Good,” I said. “Now, give them each a duct-tape gag. Just a decent strip to cover the mouth.”
She did that, too.
“Fellas,” I said, “sit on the couch. Leave some space between you.”
They went over and did that. Those ropes had been intended to tie both my hands and feet, but I’d had to settle just for their hands.
Becky was standing four or five feet from me, by now looking more embarrassed than afraid. I directed her to an easy chair near the couch. Then I stomped on the floor three times, hard. My seated company reacted with popping eyes, and the ungagged Becky made a kind of yelp. Nothing that would attract attention.
I went over to the door and opened it. I could hear footsteps pounding up the carpeted stairs. My curly-headed, mustached partner and his long-barreled S & W .38 rolled in. He was in a paisley sportshirt and brown trousers and nicely shined shoes—he’d known he might have to come visiting, and he wasn’t about to do that in his underwear or jammies, despite the hour.
“You rang?” he said, shutting the door behind him. Three foot stomps had been the signal.
“She sold me out,” I said, nodding to Becky, whose expression turned hurt, and then gestured with my nine mil to the duct-tape twins and said, “Those two grabbed me and were going to take me somewhere.”
“Where?”
“We haven’t got to that.”
“Then why gag the fuckers?”
“Because my sweetie here will be more talkative. And she’s coming with me.”
Her eyebrows went up.
Then, at my direction, all us went out to go down the stairs to the apartment below, the two denim-clad dopes in front with me (and the nine mil); next, Boyd squeezing down side by side with Becky, holding her by an arm while he shoved the .38 in her tummy.
The guy in the lead, the road company Kirk Douglas, tried to make a break for it, thinking his buddy would take any bullet. Might have worked if he’d have waited till we got to the landing of our apartment below, but he panicked and tried it halfway there, and as soon as he made his move, I kicked his pal in the ass and sent him tumbling to knock into the linebacker and they got tangled up in each other rolling down, winding up in a comical pile on the landing.
Boyd handed the girl off to me—she had a deer-in-headlights expression—and stepped around the two interwoven idiots who were moaning through their duct-tape, and pushed open the door he’d left ajar. He dragged them inside by the ankles, one at a time, and we followed, Becky first.
I shut us in.
The two boys weren’t unconscious from the fall—it was only a half a floor’s worth of carpeted stairs—but both were moaning and whimpering, in their muffled way, on their backs now like upturned bugs. Boyd patted each man down, came up with nothing much—no I.D. or gun or knife, and of course the blackjack had been left behind—though some car keys turned up in the skinny one’s pants.
I took those, and said to Becky, whose arm I was still holding onto, “They wanted to take me to see somebody. Do you know who?”
She nodded.
“Do you know where?”
She nodded.
“Can you drive me there?”
That she had to think about.
“Becky. Can you drive me there?”
She swallowed. Tears were welling. But she nodded.
Our living room was set up the same as theirs—I’d instructed Boyd to disassemble his lookout perch, anticipating this company—so soon the blond linebacker and his skinny friend were both seated on the couch, tied hands behind them, with Becky in the nearby easy chair.
I stood before them like we were playing charades and it was my turn. Boyd and his .38 were behind me, a little to my right, where he had a straight-on shot at the duct-tape duo.
I said to all three, “Like somebody said earlier, cooperate and you ‘might could live through this.’ My friend here is going to keep you company. Assuming you don’t get stupid—that is more stupid, or in dipshit-ese, ‘stupider’—he won’t do anything but keep an eye on you until I get back….What happens then, you’re wondering?”
Both of the duct-taped clowns nodded. It was so much in tandem that I had to laugh.
“Assuming I come back in good shape—and judging by your boss sending you fools to get me, that should be no problem—I’ll let you fellas go back to whatever hayloft or outhouse you crawled out of. After that, I won’t kill you unless I see you. Fair enough?”
They actually nodded. Not quite in tandem, though, so it fell short of chuckle-worthy.
Boyd went over and turned on his radio to that easy listening station, where Buddy Greco was singing “The Lady is a Tramp,” and turned it up fairly loud. Not loud enough to cover a gunshot, maybe, but helpful if that came up; besides, the bar below was empty and so, obviously, was the apartment above. He pulled a chair around and sat facing them, crossing his legs, wiggling his right foot to the rhythm.
I nodded to Bec
ky to get up and she did, then walked her through the boxcar room layout.
In the kitchen, I dangled the keys and said, “You know what wheels these go to?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Can you drive me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you believe I’ll shoot you if you try anything smart?”
“…Uh-huh.”
“Even try anything dumb, Becky, I’ll shoot you. I’ll be sorry. I’ll feel terrible about it in the morning. But you’ll be fucking dead, understood?”
“Uh-huh.”
“No tears! I like you. I know our relationship will probably not recover from this hiccup, but I do not want to hurt your pretty ass, even if I’ve lost access to it. Ready?”
“Uh-huh.”
SIX
We went out the back onto the shallow wooden deck with stairs down to where several cars were parked on the gravel inset. One was my cobalt Chevy Impala, and we could have taken that, but I preferred arriving in a vehicle that was expected.
What Becky led me to was a piece of shit tan mid-’60s Ford Falcon. The best you could say for it was that it was recently washed and not beat up. I unlocked it, opened the driver’s door and she climbed in, then I got in on the other side and handed her the keys. The gun was in my front waistband now, windbreaker unzipped.
“Take me where we’re going,” I said.
She tried nothing smart or dumb on the half-hour ride. For fifteen minutes, we didn’t speak.
Finally I asked her, “Why did you call your friends in? Besides seeing me go in the apartment downstairs from you.”
“You know why,” she said, poutily, driving carefully. Traffic was light but it was a drunk time of night.
“Maybe I do. Give me a hint, though.”
“…Way you handled them numbnuts last night.”
“Yeah?”
“I mean,” she said, shrugging behind the wheel, “you really hurt ’em. Bigger than you, and you left ’em there…bleedin’ and shit.”
“I didn’t like the way they put their hands on you.”
“Thanks for that much.” She gave me a little smile, though her expression remained hurt, like she hadn’t forgiven me yet for not trusting her.
I said, “You figured I wasn’t just anybody.”
“Right. It took somebody to handle them two like that.”
“So who did you report it to?”
“You’ll see.”
No need to try to pry it out of her. She was right—I soon would see.
In a suburb called Ferguson, on a four-lane main drag mixing residential and commercial, she stopped at a light as we approached a little chapel-like church on the corner.
Out front was an old-fashioned black-with-white-letters message board:
SUNDAY SCRIPTURE:
“The Lord Defeated the Ethiopians.”
2: Chronicles 14:12.
Catercorner was a used-car lot and directly across an all-night Deep Rock station, then residential, houses built in the twenties and thirties that had seen better days. The light changed and then we were pulling into a little paved drive between the church and a slumbering Dairy Queen.
Behind the church she slowed to a stop in a gravel lot. Only one other car was parked back here, a white recent-model Lincoln with a Confederate flag decal in the back window and a WALLACE FOR PRESIDENT bumper sticker.
I said to her, “A fucking church?”
She nodded. “You shouldn’t say it that way. It’s sacrilegious.”
“Sorry. I meant to say goddamn church. This explains the two choir boys you brought to see me.”
She glared at me. “You said bring you here. And he is a Christian leader.”
The only thing remotely Christian about this girl was that I’d screwed her in the missionary position.
I came around and opened her door, collected the keys from her, and walked her by the arm to the church’s back door, which was unlocked. Then we were in a little entry area lighted by a small bare bulb with a pull chain. A few uncarpeted stairs led up into a dark sanctuary, some street light entering through stained-glass windows, revealing empty pews. Down to our right were more uncarpeted stairs, a flight of them. She nodded that way.
Hell, not heaven, then.
We went down together, squeezed a bit as we shared the steps, which emptied into a linoleum-floored basement with folding banquet tables that had no doubt seen more than its share of potluck suppers. The fluorescent-light panels in the drop ceiling were off, but small rectangular windows let in enough street-level light to make things out.
At the far end, a wood-paneled wall had various framed Sunday school-type prints and also two doors; under the one at right, light seeped out.
She pointed to that door.
Someone behind it was waiting for me to be brought to him. But no other bully boys in tan work shirts and chinos were waiting here for me, unless they were back there with my would-be host. Or were a bunch of them sitting in the dark upstairs, crouched down in the pews where I hadn’t seen them?
I led her down the central aisle between banquet tables and when we stood at the light-seeping door, I whispered, “Knock.”
She gave it three short raps. “Mr. Starkweather? It’s Becky. I have him right here, sir.”
“Bring him!” came a radio announcer baritone. “Bring him right in.”
She reached for the knob, her eyes querying me and I nodded for her to go ahead. She did and we went in.
It was a decent-sized office, with more rec-room-type paneling and the same drop ceiling and fluorescent panels, though the latter were dark. The only illumination came from a steel flying-saucer-shade lamp with a grooved steel base on the wood-topped, military-green metal desk it rested upon. Many neat stacks of papers were on the desktop as well, beside a blotter and two phones.
Behind the oversize desk sat a medium-sized man in his craggy forties smoking a General MacArthur-style corncob pipe, harsh tobacco smoke hanging in the air like a filthy curtain. As had his minions, he wore a tan shirt but also a black tie, his black hair short-cropped, his complexion pale. A rectangular face bore carved features—cheekbones, slash of black eyebrows, sockets with lamb-dropping eyes, hawk nose, thin wide mouth, prominent jaw—an Indian-chief courtesy of a mediocre wood-carver.
In two seconds, I took it all in. On the wall behind him was an enormous sideways red flag with a swastika in a white circle—doesn’t every good church need a cross?—and left of that a framed print of the famous Sunday school Caucasian Jesus; at right was a framed original portrait in a smeary paint-by-numbers style of Adolph Hitler. A bookcase on the left side wall displayed German war souvenirs, helmets, knives, Lugers next to snazzy holsters; above was a display on blue velvet of Nazi medals.
Consuming the right side wall was an enormous framed black-and-white Korea-era photograph of the man at the desk in a Marine colonel’s dress uniform with a number of medals. A great American soldier who just happened to be president of the Hitler fan club.
His chin came up, and so did his pipe, as he said, “Rebecca—where are Sam and Dave?”
I felt like telling him “Muscle Shoals,” but doubted he’d get it.
“A friend of mine is babysitting them,” I said, answering for her. With the nine millimeter, I gestured to the two metal folding chairs opposite him. “Do you mind?”
His head bobbed curtly, pipe in his teeth. “Not at all.”
I directed Becky to sit, which she did. She was as nervous as on a trip to the principal’s office.
“My friend will kill both Sam and Dave,” I said, “and dump them, on a dusty road…” Another gag lost on him. “…if I’m not back safe and sound in about ninety minutes.”
“Understood,” he said.
Her eyes white all around, Becky leaned forward and said, “I’m so sorry, sir. Dave and Sam did their best, but he…he had a gun.”
“So I see,” our host said with a nod to my nine-millimeter-in-hand.
Pleasantly, I
asked, “What was it you wanted to see me about?”
“I would like to know your intentions.”
“Well, Rebecca and I’ve only been out on one date, but I think it’s going really well, so you can rest assured my intentions are honorable.”
Becky winced at that. My host didn’t react at all. Humor was either something he did not understand or at most something had learned to tolerate.
“Earlier today,” he said, “Rebecca saw you enter an apartment below hers.”
She turned to me and said, “I was coming down the stairs. You didn’t see me.”
“And this was after,” the man with the corncob pipe said, “you had gone out of your way to make her acquaintance the night before. More than that, to impress her with your manhood.”
Was he referring to me pistol-whipping those creeps, or to my impressive Rebecca-banging manhood? I didn’t seek clarification.
Instead I asked, “What are you looking for me to say?”
He removed the pipe and looked at it, confirmed it had gone out and re-lit it with a kitchen match.
Puffing it, getting it going, he said, “I have stayed alive, Mr. Blake…that is your name, isn’t it, or at least the name you’re using? I have stayed alive lo these many years—where others with a similar courage of their beliefs have gone down in a hail of bullets—by exerting what may seem to some an excess of caution. Are you an interloper, sir? Or did you innocently stumble into something of which you knew nothing?”
I thought about killing him, but that meant killing Becky and Sam and Dave, too, for chump change.
“You know my name,” I said. “Who are you?”
That surprised him. “You don’t recognize me?”
“I don’t get out that much.”
“Or perhaps you have survived through caution, as well. The name is Starkweather—Commander Zachary Taylor Starkweather. You’ve heard of the White Christian Freedom Party? I’m its proud founder, as well as the Grand Dragon of the Missouri Ku Klux Klan.”
I hadn’t heard of him, but I knew about these screwball American Nazis. And I was fairly sure I had this thing figured out. Since I was the one with a gun, why not take a flier?
Quarry in the Black Page 6