3 Great Thrillers

by Churton, Alex; Churton, Toby; Locke, John; Lustbader, Eric van; van Lustbader, Eric

  “Ron Kray, ma’am.” Nina stepped up.

  “Oh, him.” The woman expelled a phlegmy cough. “He used to live here. Moved out about, oh, six months ago.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “Nah.” The dog’s barking had become hysterical. The woman ducked her head back inside. “For God’s sake, Mickey, shut the fuck up!” She turned back. “Sorry about that. People make him nervous. He’s probably gonna leave a deposit on the kitchen linoleum.” She grunted. “At least the carpet’ll be spared.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to still get any of Kray’s mail,” Jack said.

  “Not a one.” The woman took a mighty drag on her cigarette, let out a plume of smoke like Mount Saint Helens. “Sorry I can’t be of more help.”

  “You did fine,” Jack said. “Can you tell me the address of the local post office?”

  “I’ll do better than that.” The woman pointed the way, giving him detailed directions.

  Jack thanked her, and they picked their way back down the flagstone walk.

  “The post office?” Nina said as they climbed back into the car.

  Jack glanced at his watch. “We just have time to get there.” He pulled out, drove down the street. “Tolkan said that Kray was a private man. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone else getting his mail. I’m betting he filed a change-of-address form before he left.”

  They headed east on Tyler, while Nina finished her cigarette, turned right onto Graham Road, right again on Arlington Boulevard, then a left onto Chain Bridge Road. The post office occupied a one-story pale brick building. It looked like every other post office Jack had been to, outside and in.

  He walked up to the counter, asked to see the postmistress. Ten minutes later, a hefty woman in her mid-fifties appeared, walking none too quickly. It seemed to Jack that all postal employees were constitutionally incapable of moving at anything but a sluggish pace. Then again, maybe they learned it at some secret government academy.

  Jack and Nina showed their credentials, asked for a forwarding address for Ron Kray. The postmistress, who had a face like a boxing glove, told them to wait. She disappeared into the mysterious bowels of the building. Time passed, people walked in, got on line, waited, inched forward. Forms were filled out, packages were rubber-stamped, more forms were filled out, letters and more packages were rubber-stamped. People who failed to fill out the proper forms were sent to the corner stand to correct their mistakes. Jack was at the point of risking a federal offense by hurdling the counter to go after the postmistress, when she reappeared, inching snail-like toward them.

  “No Ron Kray,” she said in her laconic manner. She spoke like a character straight out of a Raymond Chandler novel.

  Jack took a pad and a pen, laboriously wrote down Kray’s last known address, the house they’d just come from. Tearing off the top sheet, he handed it to the postmistress, who looked as if her recent labors had tired her out. “How about a forwarding from this address?”

  The postmistress peered down at the slip of paper as if it might possibly do her harm. “I don’t th

  ink I can—”

  “From six months ago, give or take a week.”

  The postmistress looked at him bleakly. “Gonna take some time, this.”

  Jack smiled. “We’ll be waiting.”

  “I get off work in twelve minutes,” she pointed out.

  “Not today, you don’t,” Nina said.

  The postmistress glared at her, as if to say, Et tu, Brute? Then, in a huff, she shuffled off.

  More time passed. The line gradually dwindled down, the last customer finally dealt with. A collective sigh of relief could be felt as the postal workers totaled up, locked their drawers, and followed their leader into the rear of the building.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was having a cup of tea back there,” Jack said. “She looks the vindictive type.”

  “Jack, about Emma—I was just trying to help.”

  He looked away, said nothing.

  She bit her lip. “You’re a hard man.”

  She waited a moment. They were alone in the front of the post office, the entry doors having been locked.

  She peered into his face. “Could we start over?”

  Jack returned slowly from the black mood of last night. “Sure. Why not?”

  She caught the tone of his voice. “You’re not very trusting, are you?”

  “Trust has nothing to do with it,” he said, a wave of leftover anger washing over the wall of his normal reserve. “Life has taught me how not to love.”

  At that moment, shuffling footsteps forestalled further discussion. The postmistress had reappeared and was heading straight toward them. She was holding a handful of forms. Nina snatched them out of her hand just as she was saying, “There are six—well, I never!”

  Nina was scrutinizing them, for which Jack was grateful. Considering the tense circumstances and the watchful eyes of the postmistress, he’d have had a difficult time focusing.

  Nina went through the forms one by one, shook her head. “We’re going to have to run all of these people down.” Suddenly, her eyes lit up. “Wait a minute!” She flipped back to the fifth form. “Charles Whitman. Now that’s odd. Charles Whitman was the name of the sniper who climbed the University of Texas tower in August of 1966 and in an hour and a half killed fourteen people and injured a whole lot more. Someone at the scene, I forget who, said, ‘He was our initiation into a terrible time.’”

  “I remember, that was a local shopowner. I saw him interviewed.” Then Jack snapped his fingers.“That’s why Ron Kray sounded familiar to me. Ronnie Kray and his twin brother, Reggie, were a pair of notorious psycho killers in the East End of London during the fifties and sixties.”

  “We’ve got him!” Nina said. “Our man’s using both Kray and Whitman as aliases.”

  Jack took Kray/Whitman’s change-of-address form from her. Concentrating hard, he began to read the new address. It was in Anacostia; that much he got right away. But the street and the number eluded him, swimming away on a sea of anxiety. Of course, the street name was simplicity itself, and part of his brain had recognized it at once. The problem was, it had shied away from recognition.

  “He’s at T Street SE,” Nina said.

  Then she read off the number, and Jack’s hand began to shake. Their target, Ron Kray, Charles Whitman, whatever his real name was, the man who might very well have abducted Alli Carson, was living in the Marmoset’s house.

  35

  Few people know where Gus and Jack live; even fewer come to visit. So when Detective Stanz shows up one evening at the Maryland end of Westmoreland Avenue, Jack has cause for a certain degree of alarm. For a time, Stanz and Gus stand out on the porch, jawing away. Stanz lights a Camel, and smoke comes out his nostrils. He looks like a bull in one of those Warner Bros. cartoons, except there’s nothing funny about him. He seems to carry death around with him under his left armpit, where his service revolver is holstered.

  Jack, lurking inside, hears the words “McMillan Reservoir,” so he’s reasonably certain that after the Marmoset’s murder, whoever Gus put on the double murders hasn’t come up with enough to satisfy Stanz. But apparently he’s come up with something, because Jack hears Stanz say, “I say let’s go now. There’re questions I want to ask him.”

  Gus nods. He walks into the house, uses the phone out of Jack’s hearing. He returns to tell Jack that he’s going off with Stanz, that he’ll be back in a couple of hours. As he watches the two men step off the porch, Jack hurries to the desk where Gus keeps an extra set of car keys. Slipping out of the house, he just has time enough to start the white Lincoln Continental, put it in gear as he’s seen Gus do, roll out after Stanz’s dark-colored Chevy. Jack deliberately keeps the headlights off until there’s enough traffic so that neither man will pick up the Continental. He’s only ever driven around the near-deserted streets of the house, with Gus beside him talking softly, correcting his errors or overcompensations. The sw
eat rolls into his eyes, pours from his armpits. His mouth is dry. If a cop stopped him right this moment, he wouldn’t be able to say a word.

  With a desperate effort, he finds his equilibrium. Thankfully, he only has to concentrate on the Chevy and the colors of the traffic lights. If he needed to read street signs, he’d be completely lost. He pushes a button on the dashboard, and James Brown starts shouting “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” Singing along, he thinks fleetingly of how far he’s come since “California Dreamin’” sent ugly shivers up his spine.

  He notices that the Chevy is heading more or less toward the reservoir area and wonders who it is that Gus recruited to take the Marmoset’s place. It’s an unenviable position, one that almost certainly requires a higher degree of compensation than Gus is used to paying. But then, that expense will no doubt be borne by Stanz and the Metro Police.

  They are traveling north on Georgia Avenue NW, overshooting the reservoir. When Stanz’s Chevy turns right on Rock Creek Church Road, Jack switches off his lights, feeling he knows where the rendezvous with Gus’s snitch is going to take place. His hunch is confirmed when he follows the Chevy onto Marshall, and then Pershing Drive. They are now skirting the west side of the flat black expanse of the U.S. Soldiers’ & Airmen’s Golf Course. Bare trees loom up in groups that no doubt vexed the duffers making their slow rounds during daylight hours. Now, however, the trees have the course to themselves.

  After flicking its headlights twice, the Chevy rolls to a stop on a section of road hemmed in on both sides by trees. Immediately, Jack sees Stanz and Gus emerge from the Chevy. Stanz has kept the headlights on, and the two men follow the twin beams that cut through eerie shadows, straight down the road. Pale moths flutter, spending themselves in the glare.

  Cautiously, Jack emerges from the Continental, making sure the door swings shut noiselessly but doesn’t latch. Keeping to the side of the road, he creeps from tree to tree, stepping from shadow to shadow to make sure he won’t be seen.

  He’s close enough now to see that Stanz and Gus have been joined by a male figure. He stands just outside the beams of light, and Jack moves forward to try to get a look at his face. He still isn’t sure why he felt compelled to follow Gus. He knows he’s worried. Someone murdered the Marmoset because he got too close to whoever killed those two men at the McMillan Reservoir. Jack read the news story, was mildly surprised to find that there was no information about who the victims were. The article said that the identities were being withheld pending notification of the respective next of kin. But in the increasingly smaller follow-ups, no mention was ever made of the victims’ names.

  As he inches closer, Jack can see that the three men are in animated discussion. Stanz’s hands are hewing the air like axes. His mouth is going a mile a minute.

  “—you mean, you can’t get a name? I need a goddamned name!”

  “I haven’t got one,” Gus’s snitch replies.

  “Then I’ll damn well find someone who—”

  “I guarantee you’ll never get the name of the murderer,” the snitch says, “either from me or anyone else.”

  Jack starts as he sees Stanz pull his service revolver. If it isn’t for Gus’s intervention, Jack feels certain Stanz would have shot the snitch. As it is, Stanz leaps at him, gets in a roundhouse right before Gus grabs him around the waist, holds him bodily in check.

  “Get outta here,” Gus growls. “Go on now!”

  “That’s right,” Stanz howls in fury, “run away with your tail between your legs, you good-for-nothing nigger!”

  Gus hurls Stanz to the ground, stands over him with the detective’s gun in his huge hand. “I’ll take alotta shit from you, but not this.” He empties Stanz’s service revolver, throws away the bullets. Then he drops the gun. “Don’t come round my place no more, heah?”

  As he stalks away, Stanz yells, “Don’t expect to be paid for this!” And then as Gus squeezes behind the wheel of the Chevy and drives off, “Hey, are you leaving me here? What the fuck!”

  Gus is waiting for Jack in the side yard under the shadows of the big oak. Jack, rolling in with the lights off, doesn’t see him until he steps out. Jack brakes and Gus looms up to the driver’s window, which Jack rolls down.

  “Since you got yo’self used t’drivin’ the boat, you can follow me t’ the precinct so I can drop off this piece-o’-shit Chevy.”

  Gus lets Jack drive on the way home, as well. He says, “Whut you ’spect t’do, out there onna golf course?”

  His voice isn’t pissed off; it isn’t even querulous. If Jack didn’t know better, he’d think there was a note of tenderness.

  “I was worried.”

  “Huh, ’bout me?” Gus pulls out his Magnum.357.

  Jack says nothing, concentrates on making it home without getting lost. He supposes this to be a lesson, what’s behind Gus’s decision to let him stay behind the wheel.

  “You bring a weapon, kid?”

  Jack is startled out of his thoughts. “Uh, no.”

  “Why the hell not?” Gus puts away the enormous gun. “Whut you think you could do out there if things got ugly?”

  “They almost did,” Jack says, happy now to speak up.

  “Huh, don’ take no chances like that again, heah?”

  Jack nods.

  “They’s a key behin’ the kitchen door.”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Bottom right-hand drawer of my desk. They’s a snub-nosed .38. Jus’ right for a young feller like you. It’s loaded, but there’s a coupla boxes of ammo inna back.”

  “I don’t like guns,” Jack says.

  “Huh, who the fuck does?” Gus shifts in his seat. “But sometimes there jes’ ain’t no substitute.”

  Jack wants to stay awake. In fact, with all the excitement, he’s certain he will. But Gus turns on the stereo. Music, familiar, earthy, shuffling, comes from his room, wraps Jack in a cocoon of melancholy history, and soon he’s in a deep sleep.

  He opens his eyes to see a bird on the branch of the oak outside his window. It’s perched near the empty nest. Its head swivels as it looks in, peers around. It’s morning. A thin, milky light stretches across the bare plank floor. Jack throws the covers off, stumbles to the bathroom to empty his bladder and splash cold water on his face.

  He wonders what Gus is going to make for breakfast this morning. He hopes it’s wild-blueberry pancakes. Since he doesn’t smell anything cooking from downstairs, he knows there’s time enough to put in his request with the chef.

  Padding out into the hallway in just his underwear, he yawns hugely, scratches his stomach. He knocks on the partly open door of Gus’s bedroom, calls his name, and walks in. The curtains are drawn and it’s dim, still night here.

  Gus is lying on the bed, the sheets and blanket rucked beneath his huge frame. He’s facedown, his arms splayed wide. Jack assumes he’s in a drunken stupor, calls his name more loudly. Getting no response, he pulls the curtains. Morning steps into the room, floods the scene.

  Jack sees the bedclothes are black and shiny. He sees Gus’s mouth half-open, as if he’s about to yell at someone. He’s staring right at Jack.

  “Gus?”

  Then Jack sees a knife with an odd-looking hilt jammed into Gus’s back.

  Much later, after the police have come and gone, after he’s given his statement, after Reverend Taske has come, prepared food for Jack, after the house empties of light and life, Jack goes to the stereo, puts on Out of Our Heads. As Mick Jagger begins his aural strut, Jack stands fixed, staring at nothing at all. He knows he’ll spend the night down here—maybe many nights to come. He can’t bring himself to go upstairs, either to his room or to Gus’s. But he wonders if that bird is still in the oak. He wonders what he was looking for.

  Nearly a month after that, Detective Stanz comes to see him at the Hi-Line, the running of which Jack has taken over. Stanz walks slowly along the length of the glass cases, as if he’s in the market to buy one of the odds and ends displayed
there. But Jack knows why he’s here. The only mystery is what took him so long to show up.

  At last, he gets to where Jack is standing behind the register. He clears his throat. “You have some, uh, documents that Gus was keeping for me. I’d, uh, I’d like to have them back.”

  Jack considers for a moment. “I know what documents you mean. They belonged to Gus; now they belong to me.”

  Stanz’s face looks like a fist. “Why, you little—!”

  Jack reaches under the counter, pulls out a plain manila envelope. “I have one of them here.”

  He opens it, so Stanz can see the photocopies of the paperwork Stanz signed when he got his safe-deposit box at the Riggs National Bank.

  Stanz snorts. “So what? Most everybody has a safety deposit box.”

  Jack slides a photocopy of another document from under the paperwork. “Not when two million dollars of Luis Arroyo Ochoa’s money goes from the box to this offshore account in the Caymans.”

  Stanz goes white. He grips the display case so as not to lose his balance. “But this is impossible! Those accounts are sealed.”

  Jack nods. “So I understand, but that tax lawyer you went to who set up the account? He works for Gus.”

  Stanz wipes his sweating face. He moves to gather in the damning evidence against him, but Jack is quicker. He spirits the folder away.

  “There’s a price for everything,” he says.

  Shooting him a bleak stare, Stanz says, “What’s yours?”

  “I want to know who murdered Gus.”

  Stanz breathes a sigh of relief, and Jack knows why. He was terrified that Jack would demand half of the two million he stole. But Jack wants no part of Ochoa’s blood money, and he’s quite certain neither would Reverend Taske. Besides, Gus provided generously for Renaissance Mission Church in his will, just as he provided for Jack.

  The detective licks his lips. “What about the other one?”

  “The receipt for the gun you used to kill Manny Echebarra is safe with me, Detective Stanz. No one needs to see it.”