by Ed Gorman
He came at me but I’d been able to run around to the front of the couch.
I had half-ass good luck.
I wasn’t quick enough to avoid the kicks he leveled at me as my hand scrabbled under the coffee table. He had to be wearing steel-toed boots. But I was quick enough to fill my hand with the gun so that when he grabbed me again—to hurl me across the room again?—I turned and shot him in the right shoulder. His hand shot out for the gun. He had the strength to wrench it out of my hand and it went off again. This time a bullet blasted his right thigh.
His first response was disorientation. He didn’t cry out at the pain. He didn’t try to shield himself from another shot. He just stood there staring at me in disbelief.
This wasn’t the way his world was supposed to run. He was attacker, not victim. The other guy was supposed to be in pain.
Then he tried to reach me with his other arm.
I walked over to a brown leather armchair and sat down.
“Where’s the heroin?” The trips to Mexico, packing the shipments privately. And heroin being the most profitable. I just took a guess.
He was starting to cry now. But as I soon found out, it wasn’t because of pain. Not physical pain anyway. He careened around to the front of the couch and just let himself fall down on it. His eyes were closed for a second. No tears though. The crying I’d heard was in his throat.
“I go up again I won’t be with my mom when she dies.”
So easy to mock him. But I didn’t. He was fading fast. His head wobbled and his breath came in gasps. He tried to reach up with the hand of the wounded shoulder and he sobbed.
“I always promised her.” But that was all he muttered.
“Where’s the heroin you and Anders ship?”
Drifting off: “Shoulda killed you.”
Then: Sirens. Nearby. On the wooded trail.
A single siren now, coming this way.
It was enough to rouse Byrnes, but not for long. He was bleeding badly from both wounds. He mumbled something angry that I didn’t understand.
I ran to the door and threw it open.
Chief Foster’s car slid across the grass, stopping about ten feet from the house.
Then he was running with his own gun ready.
Then somebody else was exiting the car.
Mary; Mary Lindstrom; my Mary.
22
MORE SIRENS, THIS TIME INCLUDING AN AMBULANCE. BUT ALSO three more cars from the police station, including Sheila Kelly, the forensic expert Foster had brought with him from his last job. Within five minutes of striding through the door with a large black bag, she had found the subbasement where all the shipping equipment was placed on a Formica work table along with two sizable bags of heroin to be shipped to Anders’s buyers.
Mary had called Foster and explained where I’d gone and why. He had picked her up immediately and brought her here.
Now Mary, Foster, and I talked on the front porch.
Foster wore a short-sleeved yellow shirt and brown trousers. “The drugs explains how Anders could live so well.”
“And why he had to force Al Carmichael out. Carmichael would never have put up with using the company as a ruse for shipping drugs.”
“I don’t understand why a man like Steve Donovan would have, either.”
“I don’t think he did. Not at first. I think he probably found it out after Anders had been at it for some time. Donovan had political aspirations for one thing. And for another he loved that company. He and Carmichael had turned it into a going operation. I’m pretty sure he confronted Anders and Anders made a promise to stop but then never did. And that’s why the two were always arguing all the time. And that’s why Anders killed Donovan.”
He smiled at Mary. “Mary and I had a little talk while we were racing out here.”
“All I told him, Sam, was that I was at least willing to consider the possibility that Will was guilty.”
The night went on. Bird racket in the trees; rain wind slamming against the windows and chilling us on the porch; animals scurrying for shelter before the rain itself began.
I sat there briefly comforted by nature because there would be no comfort coming from Foster.
“So even after all this you still don’t think Anders killed him?”
“As I said to Mary, Sam, why would he? He didn’t know how to run the company. With Donovan gone it would become obvious that the whole operation was getting a fair share of its profits from an unknown source. The IRS would have a lot of questions and pretty soon after that they’d get real suspicious and kick it over to the FBI. And then Anders would be all over.”
“Maybe Anders didn’t have any choice except to kill him.”
Mary looked pained that I’d rushed past Foster’s take on Anders to go right back into mine.
I said, “Maybe Anders was afraid that Donovan had finally had enough. That he was going to go to the authorities and tell them everything.”
“He’d be willing to sacrifice his political career?”
“Donovan had a terrible temper and he could be a bully when he got sanctimonious but generally he was an honorable man. He had to be miserable every day of his life knowing what Anders was up to. So I could see him snapping, saying that he’d had enough. Figuring out the best case he could for himself so maybe—just possibly—he could tell the law everything and avoid prison. Put everything on Anders, where it belonged anyway.”
“It seemed to me that Senator O’Shay had gotten Donovan pretty fired up about becoming a congressman.”
From the front doorway, Sheila Kelly said, “Think I could borrow you for a little while, Chief?”
“Be right with you,” Foster said, standing up. “We’re pretty much done here with you folks, Sam, if you’d like to go home.”
“I asked Mrs. Nelson to watch the girls. She’s usually in bed by nine thirty and it’s almost that time.”
“You know where to reach us, Chief.”
After a clumsy handshake, I said, “I’m still going to prove that Anders killed Donovan.”
His smile went to Mary, not me. “And I’m still going to prove he didn’t kill Donovan.”
The rain came as soon as we reached the highway. I kept the radio off so we could hear it play on the roof. Mary had her head back, eyes closed. Headlights were all we could see of the oncoming cars till they passed us.
“I was afraid you’d be mad at me, Sam.”
“You love me. You were afraid for me. You wanted to protect me.”
“If I ever need a lawyer I’ll hire you. You made a very nice defense of me.” Then, “So now will you tell me what happened with Byrnes back there?”
Foster had apologized to Mary but said he wanted to question me alone. He started by saying that even though I’d technically broken the law by entering the cabin without any kind of permission or warrant, he was grateful for what I’d done and no charges would be filed against me. I thanked him.
I hadn’t had time to tell Mary about the confrontation with Teddy Byrnes. But now that I repeated what I’d told Foster I realized how easily the situation could have turned out the other way around. Byrnes was not only a psychopath but also a skilled thug. The two things that saved me were his blind hatred of me, which had led him to make bad decisions in his attempt to kill me, and my ability to stay cool enough to think through how to outplay him.
“I can’t believe you’re still alive. Aren’t you in pain?”
“Yeah. My right side hurts quite a bit.”
“And you don’t have a headache?”
“Just now starting to. But it’s not bad.”
“A big drink and right to bed for you.”
“I need to unwind.”
“All right. A big drink and then you unwind.”
“This’ll all be on the news. I wonder what the girls’ll make of it.”
“They’ll be proud. They’ll make you tell them all about tonight. The cleaned-up version, of course.”
“That should be an interest
ing version. I don’t even get to mention the hookers?”
“What hookers?”
“See how fast that got your attention? Any kind of story you’re telling, you can never go wrong with hookers.”
“Didn’t we learn that in seventh grade?”
“No,” I said, “I think it was eighth.”
Since it was a workday I went to the office.
I did not stop anywhere along the way. Half of the front page of the morning paper dealt with the arrest of Lon Anders and the hospitalization of Teddy Byrnes. Valerie Donovan said that she would have no comment on the relationship between her husband and Anders. Chief Foster thanked me for my help with the case and called me “courageous.” There was a photo of me looking like a sixteen-year-old. I’d never seen it before.
TV and radio people had shown up at the house around eight o’clock. The girls watched them from the front window. Kate kept asking me if she would get to be on TV.
Mary did a fine job as my public-relations representative. In her blue skirt with the blue buttons running down the right side and her smart white collarless blouse, her makeup modest and perfect, she cordially explained that I would be making a statement very soon but that I had other matters to deal with and right now just couldn’t afford the distraction.
The word “hero” must have been used twenty times in the eight or nine minutes Mary was on the front porch. I was obviously no hero.
I hadn’t expected to find Teddy Byrnes at Anders’s house so you couldn’t say I’d sought him out. And as much as I hated him, I hadn’t been fighting him to rid humanity of a scourge; I’d just been trying to save my own sorry ass. But you couldn’t say that to the press. To them you were a good guy or a bad guy, and if you were a good guy you just had to be heroic in some way.
When Mary came back inside, she said, “You now have a fan club.”
“I don’t want a fan club.”
Kate said, “What’s a fan club?”
Nicole said, “That’s when people have posters of famous people on their walls and buy their records and stuff.”
Kate said, “Have you made a record, Sam?”
So now I sat at my desk smoking more Luckies than I should have and popping aspirins every hour on the hour. My left arm hurt when I extended it and my right side ribs hurt when I so much as took a deep breath.
Jamie said, “Everybody’s talking about you, Sam. I’m really proud.”
“This’ll last about two days and then my fifteen minutes’ll be up.”
“Look at that stack of phone messages and it’s not even ten thirty.”
“I looked at them. And they make me mad.”
“Why would they make you mad?” Today Jamie wore a blue-and-white polkadot dress and a blue barrette that accented the appeal of her fetching Midwestern face and body.
“Because half these people wouldn’t ever have returned my calls if last night hadn’t happened.”
“They just want to congratulate you.”
“The only ones I’m returning are the ones that might mean a little business for us. I’ve been thinking of adding a security service for businesses. We don’t have a local one. Some of the people who called probably need help that way.”
“Boy, you never mentioned that before.”
“I need to make more money. I …” I hesitated. I wanted to hear myself say it. “I hope I’m getting married.”
She had a great kid-sister grin. “That is so cool. Mary is the best woman you’ve ever been with.”
“It took me a long time to realize that.”
“I love her girls, too. I see them whenever I take my daughter to things for kids. Kate is hilarious.”
I’d missed one of the phone slips. Now I sat staring at it. “This one I just saw.”
“Whose is it?”
“Senator O’Shay.”
“I didn’t like him at all. He made me repeat his name and number three times and then he said, ‘This is urgent government business, young woman.’”
“The hell it is. He heard my name on the radio and now he wants me to travel around with him while he’s campaigning.”
“I didn’t like him before anyway. It really burns me up that his two sons don’t have to serve when he’s so big on the war.”
“He’s not going to win.”
“You really think so?”
Her phone rang and by the face she made it had to be O’Shay. I shook my head.
“I’m sorry, Senator, he hasn’t come in yet.”
She held the receiver out while he ranted. He went through his “official government business” and then he wanted to know where he could find me and then he said, “A secretary in Washington would have done everything she could to find him. She’d have him on the phone by now. But that’s a level of competence you’re clearly not capable of.”
I grabbed my receiver and said, “Look, you clown. You have no right to talk to her that way and I want you to apologize to her right now.”
“Just who the hell are you to call me a clown?”
“I’m nobody, but I’m calling you a clown anyway.”
“I’ll be damned if I apologize to some stupid little—”
“You’re going to lose, Senator. Big time. And Jamie and I are going to celebrate your defeat.”
I slammed the phone down.
Jamie gave me a round of applause.
“You defended my honor, Sam. That was very sweet. Thank you.”
“Just call me Sir Galahad.”
“See—you can’t take a compliment.”
One of our five or six friendly running arguments.
I spent the next thirty-five minutes on the phone. The last call I made was to the hospital psych ward. The extremely friendly nurse I talked to—I’d said my name right at the top and she responded the way most people do to real live heroes—said that she’d talk with Dr. Rattigan about me visiting Will. And that, by the way, Will was now speaking haltingly but rationally and that Dr. Rattigan was very happy about this. She would call me back as soon as she could reach him. I used my best heroic voice to thank her. This hero stuff came in handy.
Karen called just before noon. “I spent an hour with Will this morning. He’s almost Will again. I’ll let him tell you what happened the other night. He absolutely didn’t kill Donovan. He’s worried now that he might have given Foster the idea that he was confessing or something. He’ll want to talk to you about that.”
“I hope to be up there this afternoon. The nurse I spoke with said she’d check with Rattigan. If Rattigan says no, I’ll call Lindsey Shepard.”
After a pause she said, “I’m going to forgive him, Sam. I love him. I’d planned on forgiving him but last night I got bitter all over again. I want to make our marriage work.” And then she started talking about where I’d been last night. And what I’d done. And how she was so proud of me.
The nurse called me twenty minutes later. I was slotted in at four o’clock to see Will.
Greg Egan was waiting for me, his wheelchair pulled up to the table he favored in “Mike’s,” a sandwich shop three blocks from my office. Waiting with him was Ted Franks. Their bitter joke was that if they put together the legs Greg had lost in Nam and the right arm Ted had lost there, they’d have a pretty tough guy.
Greg had contacted me about a call he’d gotten from Senator O’Shay. He wanted to know if he should go to the press about it. He’d also talked to Will on the phone this morning. That made two reasons I’d been eager for this lunch.
“Hell,” Ted said, “expose the bastard. You’d be doing all of us a favor.”
Ted had a long, intense face sitting atop a lanky body. These days his empty right sleeve—he always wore long sleeves—was pinned to his shirt. As a Jew he’d always felt like an outsider in Black River Falls, he’d confessed over too many bottles of Bud one night, but oddly enough he felt that his wound had given him the kind of friendship and acceptance he’d never had before.
Mike’s was small,
the air conditioning kept it at freezer level, and the clamorous crowd loved to shout appreciation to Mike Feldman for the quality of his numerous deli sandwiches. The shouts (and Mike’s return shouts) were part of the ritual.
It got a lot worse if a Cubs game was on the radio. Mike Feldman was one of their messianic fans.
“So this asshole O’Shay calls me and says he’ll be giving a speech at the steel plant in Cedar Rapids. He wants to have a vet onstage with him. What he means is he needs a cripple. There’re plenty of vets we know who like O’Shay and would be glad to do it for him. But they’re not gimps.”
Greg liked that word. The self-contempt seemed to give him pleasure. I’d given him one of my lectures one day but he’d told me to fuck off and I had.
“Think I should call the paper about it? Expose him?”
Ted said, “I think he should, but then I know how Denise feels about it so I should keep my big mouth to myself.”
“Denise is against it?”
“You know her, Sam. She’s had kind of a tough time with the way I am.” In war times vets’ wives are always portrayed as the relentlessly optimistic vessels of support and good cheer for their husbands. But there are of course wives who have many of the same adjustment problems as their husbands. Denise Egan was one of them.
“I’m with Denise.”
My words surprised him. “Really? I know how much you hate O’Shay. This could really make trouble for him.”
“First of all, Greg, all he did was ask you if you’d appear with him. The thing about ‘gimps,’ as you like to call yourself, is in your mind as far as proving anything. He didn’t even hint at it. I doubt anybody in the press would even be interested in it. And second of all, think about Denise. Like Ted said, it’s easy for us to tell you what to do. And it’d be great if you could do some damage to O’Shay, but it wouldn’t be great for Denise. You know how much she hates talking to reporters. Now let’s talk about Will. How did he sound when you talked to him?”
“Believe it or not, he sounded like Will. He’s a little slower than usual—you know how he likes jokes—but he’s definitely Will again.” Then, “But he’s a little weird about Karen.” He glanced at Ted as he said this.