“The law does that sometimes,” Parker said. “They always say it was an accident."”
“That’s right,” Mackey agreed. "Took down a whole neighborhood in Philly a few years ago." To Henry he said, “So all kinds of things could happen, if Darlene tells the law we’re in here, and you’re in here with us, but the one thing that will definitely happen is that you’ll be dead. My guarantee, Henry. You won’t have to worry about ruin any more.”
Darlene, sounding desperate, said, “I want to do it, I know yon two are capable of anything, but I don’t know if I can do it. I think they’ll look at me, and they’ll know, and then the police will come here and everything will happen just the way you say it will, even though I tried, and we’ll all be destroyed, every one of us.”
Parker said, “The meeting this morning. Is this with the detectives?”
“No, it’s an assistant district attorney,” Darlene said, “in her office. She’s Elise something, I don’t remember what.”
Parker nodded. “We heard about her,” he said. “Let me tell you the exact words we were told about her, by somebody who’s seen her and knows her. He said, ‘She’s a young woman with little experience and no feel for the job.’ Is that the way Elise strikes you, Darlene?”
Darlene, wide-eyed, said, “How do you people know all these things?”
Parker said, “Is that a good description of Elise?”
Darlene thought, then nodded. “Yes. You can tell, she’s really mostly bluffing.”
“You can outbluff Elise,” Parker told her.
Mackey said, “Henry? Do you think she can do it?”
Henry looked at the table, deliberately meeting no one’s eye. “Honestly,” he said, “I pray she can do it.”
Mackey grinned at Darlene. “So it’s gonna work out. It isn’t gonna be a piece of cake, we all know that, but you can deal with Elise.”
“I’ll try,” Darlene said. She looked at Henry. “I really will do my best.”
“I know you will,” he said.
Leaning back, a pleased smile on his face, Mackey said, “So now we got plenty of time for a nice breakfast, and we could even rehearse if you want, up to you. I wouldn’t want you to be overtrained. And when you leave, your car’s in the driveway.”
Henry sat up. “You mean, that man took my car?”
“He’s a local boy,” Mackey explained. “He’s too well known around here, it seemed a good idea to leave while he could. Don’t worry, he’ll treat your car well, he won’t be going over any speed limits, you can be sure of that. And once Brenda’s out of that Fifth Street station, you can call in a stolen car report, no problem. He’ll be into some other transportation by then." Getting to his feet, he said, "Darlene, I’m no sexist. Lemme help you make breakfast.”
8
At eight-thirty she left, with a rueful look at the ruined front door on the way by. Parker had found hammer and nails in a kitchen drawer, and ripped a piece of jamb from an interior door. With the front door lock in place and the splintered pieces of the old jamb back in position, he’d nailed the new length of wood over the old. From the inside, it looked like hell, but nothing showed on the outside, and the door would lock.
Parker watched her cross to her car, parked now where Henry’s had been last night. Her step was firm. She had herself under control.
This was the unknown, starting now. Any time you put somebody on the send, off with the instructions but on their own, you could never be completely certain the glue would hold. She could doublethink herself in the car, on the way to the meeting. She could be blindsided by an unexpected question from somebody there. She could lose her nerve at any step along the way. Or she could hold together and this thing would finally be over.
Darlene got behind the wheel. Carefully she fixed her seat belt. She backed to the street and drove away, not looking toward her house.
Parker turned away from the window. Henry sat slumped on the sofa; he, too, didn’t know if she’d hold up. Mackey stood in the doorway, looking at Parker. “Time to make the call?”
He meant to Li. It wouldn’t be good to mention that name in front of Henry, just in case things fell apart somewhere down the line. They might still need Li in the near future, and they would need him thinking about them and not thinking about saving his license. Parker said, “Henry, I’ll have to lock you in a closet now.”
Startled, frightened all over again after a long time of calm, Henry said, “No, you don’t! I’ll just sit here, I won’t make any trouble.”
“We have to phone somebody,” Parker explained, being slow and patient because it would be better to keep Henry dialed down. “We can’t have you listen to it, but I’m not gonna just ask you to wait in the kitchen, right next to that back door.”
“It won’t be long, Henry,” Mackey said, and then he said, “I tell you what. You just go back into the bedroom and close the door. If you open the door, we can see you from here, so don’t open the door.”
“I won’t,” Henry promised.
“It’ll just be a few minutes, like my friend told you,” Mackey assured him. “And then we’ll call oley oley in-free, and you come back to the living room. Go now, Henry.”
Henry got to his feet. “I won’t make any trouble,” he said, and went away down the hall.
They watched until the bedroom door closed, and then Mackey said, “I believe him. Henry will not make us trouble.”
“Make the call,” Parker said.
Mackey went over to sit on the sofa, next to the phone. He pulled Li’s card from his shirt pocket and dialed, while Parker stood where he could hear Mackey and watch the hall.
“Mr. Li, please. I’m calling on the Brenda Fawcett matter.” Mackey nodded at Parker, and said, “They’re patching him through again. I don’t think he’s ever in his office.”
“He doesn’t need to be,” Parker said.
“No.” Mackey looked at Li’s card. “He’s got all these partners to watch the office.” Then, into the phone, he said, “Mr. Li. This is Brenda’s friend. No, I know that, you don’t have any news yet, but within the hour I think maybe you will. You might even have good news. Yeah, it would be. The thing is, if the news is as good as I think it’s gonna be, Brenda’s gonna be out from under before we know it. Yeah, that would be very nice. Now, if it works out like that, maybe you could give her some change to make a phone call, let me know what’s happening. Yeah, I think she should use change to make that phone call. The number’s—” and he read off the number from the phone he was using. “I’ll be here, hoping for the best. Thank you, Mr. Li.”
Mackey hung up, and grinned at Parker. “Tell the stud he can come out now,” he said.
Parker did, and when Henry got back to the living room he said, “Is it all right if I use the phone?”
Mackey said, “You gotta cover your tracks.”
“Muriel believes,” Henry said, “I’m spending the night at my father’s place. But she’ll expect me back some time this morning. So I’ll have to call her, tell her I’ll stay with my father while they assess the damage at the company, and then I’ll have to call my father and say we have to pretend we’re still together because I have problems I have to work out even more than before.”
Mackey said, “Problems? Doesn’t he know what’s going on?”
Sheepish, Henry said, “He doesn’t know about Darlene. I had to tell him there was somebody I was seeing, which was bad enough, but I said it was somebody he didn’t know. He doesn’t really like Darlene, and he might not do it if he knew it was her.”
“That’s a tangled web you’re weaving there,” Mackey told him, and gestured at the phone. “Go ahead and call. You won’t mind if we listen in.”
9
At twenty to ten, Mackey was by the living room window, looking out at the street, when he said, “Well, she’s telling the story.”
Parker, in a chair near the hall, got to his feet. Henry, on the sofa, looked from one to the other, watchful, apprehens
ive. Looking past Mackey, Parker saw the white sedan just stopping at the curb out front, red block letters RPD on its door. “Rosetown Police Department,” he said, and two uniforms came out of the front seat, one on either side.
So Darlene was going through with it. As Mackey had said, she was telling the story, and as they had both known, that meant the law would check her house, just to be sure everything was on the up and up.
As the cops started toward the front porch, Parker said, “Up, Henry.”
Rising, Henry said, “Where are we going?”
“Bathroom,” Parker told him, as Mackey passed them and went down the hall. “Just till they leave.”
Parker shooed him, and Henry followed Mackey, Parker coming third. They went into the bedroom and Mackey said, “Go on in, Henry, we’ll be along.”
Henry was no trouble. He was like a horse who’s learned that obedience is followed by sugar lumps; he went on into the bathroom while Parker and Mackey dragged the dresser away from the window, back to its original position. Then they followed Henry into the bathroom, leaving the door open.
This was the one room in the house that couldn’t be looked into from outside. The only window was high and small, its lower half of frosted glass. It was a fairly small room, and they had to stand close to one another, as though in an elevator. Henry stood with his arms folded across his chest. He looked at the wall, and took short audible breaths through his nose.
After a minute, Mackey said, “Henry, take some deep breaths. You’re gonna make yourself pass out, you breathe like that.”
“Sorry,” Henry said. He swallowed and said, “Could I get myself a glass of water?”
“After they leave,” Parker said, and from the front of the house came the two-tone call of the doorbell.
They became very silent, even Henry, and after a minute the bell rang again. Another silence, and the rattle of the doorknob, testing the lock.
Quietly, Mackey said, “Now they split, one down either side of the house, look in the windows. Meet at the back, try the door. Go back to the car, call in: Nobody home, no sign of a problem.”
The wait seemed long, but probably wasn’t, and then they heard another doorknob being tested, at the rear of the house. They’d be looking into the kitchen now, which had been made neat, no evidence left of even one breakfast, let alone four.
Whispering, Henry said, “Do you think they’re gone?”
“Let’s give them another minute,” Mackey said.
They waited another minute, and then Mackey stepped slowly through the doorway, looking to his right, where the bedroom window was. “Looks good,” he said, and went on across the bedroom to the hall.
“You can have your water now,” Parker said, and Henry drank a glass of water, spilling a little. Then Parker followed him out the door.
No one was looking into the window. They walked down the hall and when they got to the living room and looked out, being careful to stay deep in the room, not too close to the glass, the white RFD car was still there, both cops now inside it. The one in the passenger seat was on the radio.
Henry said, “What are they doing?”
Mackey told him, “The case is in the city. These guys report to their station, their station passes the word to the DA’s office in the city, these guys wait here until the word comes back, okay, you’re done. Another minute or two. We’ll all sit down, and the next time we stand up, they’ll be gone.”
They were.
10
At twenty-five minutes after eleven, the phone rang. Parker said, “Henry, bedroom. Door closed.”
“Go with him,” Mackey said, and the phone rang again. “We moved the dresser.”
Which meant Henry might be able to get out the window. “Right,” Parker said, and followed Henry down the hall. In the bedroom, he said, “Sit around on the other side of the bed,” farther away from the doorway. Then he left the door partway open and leaned against the jamb, so he could look at the window and still hear the living room.
If this was Brenda, then they were probably in endgame. If it was some friend of Darlene’s, or anybody else, Mackey would say, “Wrong number,” hang up, and not answer when they called back. Darlene’s answering machine could handle it.
Parker could hear Mackey’s voice, but not make out the words. It didn’t seem to him that Mackey was talking to Brenda, it didn’t have that style to it, but he was having a conversation, not cutting it short, so what was this?
Li. It had to be. Another delay? Another kind of trouble?
Mackey appeared at the end of the hall. “Okay,” he said, and walked back into the living room.
“Come on, Henry.”
They went back to the living room and Mackey said, “They’re stonewalling.”
“That was who you talked to before.”
“Sure. Darlene’s in with this ADA, it’s going on and on, and nothing’s happening. It should be over by now.”
“They’re trying to break her down,” Parker said. “Get her to switch the story back again.”
“She won’t,” Henry said. “If they put pressure on Darlene, I know her, she’ll just get more and more determined.”
“That’s good to hear,” Mackey said. To Parker he said, “The thing is, before, I only told him there should be news, I didn’t say what the news was, and now everything’s on hold, so he wants to know what’s happening. She’s in there, and her lawyer is in there with her, and he needs information.” He frowned at Henry and said, “Speaking of which, how much of this is Henry supposed to hear?”
Henry said, “Oh, come on. I’m not stupid. I’m afraid of you two, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. Who could you be talking to, this time or last time, except your friend’s lawyer? Can I prove that? No. Do I hope nobody ever has any reason to ask me what I was doing today? Yes.”
“Well, what the hell,” Mackey said. “Sit down, Henry, we got a little longer to wait.”
Henry sat on the sofa, and Mackey said to Parker, “So he needed to know what was happening, because nothing’s coming out of the ADA’s office, and I told him, the story is, she flipped, won’t sign a complaint, won’t identify Brenda. So he’s mad, he says once she’s flipped it over, they gotta let Darlene go, they gotta let Brenda go, they gotta take a time-out break with coffee and danish. So what he’s going to do, he’s going to the judge, talk to the judge in chambers, say what’s with the delay with this witness, I need to know what’s going on here. He’ll try to get the judge to raise the question to find out what’s going on with the alleged witness, and of course once he does find out the cat’s out of the bag and Brenda’s out of the Fifth Street station. The judge is not gonna let them browbeat Darlene forever just because she flipped.” Mackey shrugged. “Anyway, that’s the theory,” he said. “I mean, some time today they’re gonna have to give up, we know that. It’s just we’d rather it was sooner.”
“Poor Darlene,” Henry said.
Mackey looked at him. “Brenda isn’t having that good a day, either, pal,” he said.
11
This was a variant on the Stockholm Syndrome. They hadn’t planned to hold Henry captive, hadn’t planned an encounter with Henry at all. But here he was, and once he was here he couldn’t be permitted to just wander off. And his presence would put extra pressure on Darlene to do things right, and not have some sort of mess break out at home.
So they had to spend time together, some hours together, not knowing when or how it would end. Parker kept aloof, but didn’t do anything to increase Henry’s nervousness; he was tame, let him alone. Mackey was aggressively chummy with him, because that was Mackey’s style, to be a pal with a hint of threat inside there. And Henry played his Stockholm part, too, which was to befriend his captors as much as possible, keep them feeling relaxed about him, prove himself useful when and where he could.
Like lunch. At twelve-thirty, still no phone call from Brenda, no follow-up from Li, Henry broke a long silence to say, “I know this house, I co
uld—If you want, I could make sandwiches. Darlene usually has cold cuts, cheese, things like that.”
“That’s a very good suggestion, Henry,” Mackey said. “We all want to keep our strength up, and you want to keep yourself occupied.”
So all three transferred to the kitchen, where Parker and Mackey sat at the table while Henry made sandwiches and a pot of coffee. Henry hesitated for a second before sitting with them, then went ahead, pretending he felt natural about it, and Mackey grinned at him, saying, “You make a good sandwich, Henry.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not so sure about this coffee, though.”
Apologetic, Henry said, "Darlene and I like it strong. It’s espresso mix."
“Huh. I thought I liked it strong, too.” He sipped, thought about it, said, “Okay, maybe.” Turning to Parker, he said, “What do you think of it? “
“It’s good coffee,” Parker said.
“Okay, then.” Mackey grinned some more at Henry. “It’s good coffee,” he told him, and they finished their lunch in silence.
It was while Henry was doing the cleanup that the phone rang again. Parker said, “Henry, turn off the water,” as Mackey moved to the kitchen wall-phone. Henry turned off the water and faced the room, back against the sink, hands folded at his crotch.
Mackey got to the phone as it started its second ring: “Yeah?” A big smile creased his face, this one without the usual hint of menace. “So there you are! Where are you? He got nice offices? Yeah, I thought he would. You’re not calling from his phone, are you? Across the street, outdoors, that’s even better. So you’re loose now?” Mackey was looking at the clock on the wall, which read almost one-thirty. He said, “So what I think you oughta do, you oughta go back to the hotel and check out, maybe check out at two-thirty, and take a cab to the airport. Okay? Check out at two-thirty, and take a cab to the airport. See you soon, baby.” He hung up, and said to Parker, “Li finally levered her out of there.”
Breakout Page 17