The night was dark, and he felt the invisible motion; he was aware of the comings and goings, the messages alive in the air.
Climbing a fence, he dropped into a yard. He went up a driveway, hunched over and running, looking back to see if Mr. Brown had followed.
Nobody had seen him. He sneaked over fences; he ran by houses, across lawns, in and out of yards, creeping and hurrying and climbing and gradually making his way across town toward the flat industrial section. Pausing for breath, he looked back; he studied the darkness behind him. Then he went on, his black coat billowing and his boots slapping the pavement. A car rolled by, its headlights blinding him, and he hid behind a parked truck. Was it them? Had they seen him? He ran on, down a driveway and over a fence.
When he reached the corrugated iron shack, the motor of the Horch was already on. Noise and fumes filled the shack as he slid the door open. Joe Mantila stepped out and said, “All ready.”
“You have the transmission disconnected from the relay?” Grimmelman said, snorting.
“It’s all finished. Ferde’s out in the Plymouth. Who goes with you in the Horch?”
Grimmelman said, “Take the Plymouth and go on back.” He got into the Horch, behind the wheel. “This is a negative situation. If I manage to break through the police apparatus, I’ll contact you. Otherwise assume that the Organization has ceased to exist.”
Joe Mantila stared at him.
“Did you think we had a chance?” Grimmelman said.
“Sure,” Mantila said, nodding.
Shifting into gear, he drove the Horch from the shed and out onto the street. Joe Mantila raced past him and across to the Plymouth. The Horch turned right, and he was going in the direction of the freeway leading out of San Francisco.
Wind rushed at him as he drove. From his coat pocket he took out his goggles and fitted them over his eyes.
On Van Ness Avenue he made a right turn.
Two blocks later a San Francisco police car fell in behind him.
Grimmelman saw the police car, and he realized that he was not going to get away. But he had realized that already. He put his foot down on the gas, and the Horch moved ahead; he got down in the seat as low as possible and gave the engine more and more gas. The police car continued to follow.
The siren, softly at first, began to wail. The red light behind him blinked on; he saw it blinking, blinking. The light peered at him. Along Van Ness the other cars pulled to a stop, and he was the only object in motion. He drove faster.
How cold the night air was. He tugged his coat around him and held onto the wheel with one hand. Wind whipped at him and for a moment he could not see; he put his hand up to straighten his goggles. Ahead of him a second police car appeared from a side street, and Grimmelman drove across the double line to avoid hitting it. The police car disappeared behind him, and he drove back into his own lane.
In that instant the Horch sideswiped a car that had halted for the siren. A fender tore away, and Grimmelman spun the wheel. Again the Horch veered to the left. A shape, its headlights white and immense, grew directly in the path of the Horch. Grimmelman threw up his hands and the massive Horch crashed into the lights.
Behind him the police sirens whined to silence. The two police cars appeared to his right.
Grimmelman clambered from the wrecked Horch. His coat was torn, and a gash across his neck dripped blood. He ran a few steps and stumbled on the curb. Then he was up on the sidewalk, and one of the police cars had started after him. Still he ran. He did not slow down or stop.
The signs along Van Ness Avenue were off, and he hid in the darkness of a used car lot. Before him was a tower, and he crept past it; he slid behind a car as two policemen hurried by with flashlights. As soon as they were gone, he crawled to the front of the car. From his coat he took a jumble of wires and keys; he fiddled with the lock of the car door. The door opened, and he crept inside the car. Closing the door after him, he lay on the scat with his head down beneath the dashboard; he opened a knife and sawed through the insulation of the ignition cable.
Down the street at Hermann’s Garage, Nat Emmanual and Hermann were working together, pulling the head off a 1947 Dodge that belonged to Nat’s Auto Sales.
“Hey,” Nat said, “what’s the racket?”
He walked to the entrance of the garage, peering to see.
At first he saw only the two police cars, and then he saw one of them move on farther along the street. He saw the wrecked cars, the Horch and the car it had struck.
“Jesus,” he said.
“What’s going on?” Hermann said, coming out beside him.
Peering, Nat saw the two policemen hurrying along the sidewalk with flashlights. The policemen passed Looney Luke’s lot, and Nat, still watching, saw the shape creep from behind the tower, to the row of cars, and then into one of the cars. He saw the door open and shut. He saw Grimmelman inside Looney Luke’s car, fiddling with the ignition.
“He’s stealing one of Luke’s cars,” Nat said.
“Yeah?” Hermann said. “Where?”
“See?” Nat said, “he’s in the car; look at him, he’s trying to jump the ignition cable.”
“He sure is,” Hermann said.
Nat said, “I’m going to call the cops.”
“Why?” Hermann said.
“He’s stealing one of Luke’s cars.”
Hermann said, “Don’t call the cops.”
“Why not?” Nat ran back toward the phone.
“So he steals one of Luke’s cars,” Hermann said. “You damn fool, Luke’s the biggest thief in San Francisco. Every car in that lot he stole in the first place, you know that.”
“It’s against the law,” Nat said. He disappeared into the garage and Hermann heard him dialing excitedly.
“What’s one car,” Hermann said, “to Luke?” He watched the figure within the car trying to get the engine started. What kind of a man, he wondered, was Nat Emmanual? What a strange idea he had of what was right. How little Nat had learned. “Let him steal it,” he said, but he was talking to himself.
Parked off Van Ness Avenue in the Plymouth, Joe Mantila and Ferde Heinke witnessed the wrecking of the Horch and the capture of Grimmelman by the police.
“It’s gone,” Ferde said.
They drove with their headlights off, away from Van Ness Avenue. When they were safely on a side street, they switched on the lights and speeded up.
“He sure didn’t have a chance,” Joe Mantila said. “He never even got that car off the lot.”
For a half hour they parked at Dodo’s, trying to decide what to do. If they stopped by the loft, they ran a risk. Neither of them said it, but the Organization had ceased to exist. Now they hoped only to stay out of the hands of the police.
“We better tell Art,” Ferde Heinke said.
“The hell with it,” Joe Mantila said. “I’m going home. We better not be seen together for a while.”
“Suppose he goes over to the loft?”
“He stopped going there,” Joe Mantila said. “He’s gone back home.” But he backed the Plymouth onto Fillmore and made a left-hand turn. “I’ll keep the motor going while you run and tell him.”
In front of the house, Ferde leaped from the car and ran up the walk to the basement steps. The lights in the living room were on, and be knocked on the door.
Art opened the door. “What’s going on?” he said, surprised to see Ferde Heinke.
“They got Grimmelman,” Ferde said. “Don’t go near the loft.”
“How about the Horch?”
“They got that too. Better lie low for a while.” He started back toward the Plymouth. “There’s nothing we can do.”
Art waited until the Plymouth shot off, and then he went back inside the apartment.
At the kitchen table Rachael was writing a letter. “What was it?” she asked, putting down her pen.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Did they get Grimmelman? I knew they would.” She continued wri
ting. “It’s too bad. But you knew it was going to happen. I think it’s a good thing as far as we’re concerned, but I’m sorry for him.”
He seated himself across from her and leaned back until his chair was resting against the wall. “That’s the finish,” he said, “of the Organization.”
“Good,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because it was a mistake. What was Grimmelman trying to do? Fight them the way they fight. So naturally they won. If you fight them that way, they have to win; they have all the power. The thing we have to do is keep quiet and not let them notice us.”
“It’s too late,” he said. “I’m already down on the draft list.”
Rachael said, “But maybe they’ll get tired and give up. They may decide it isn’t worth it. If every time you’re called we go down there and argue with them and keep stringing it out…”
“Sometimes I feel like giving up,” Art said. “And just saying, w-w-what the hell. Go ahead and draft me.”
“If they draft you, we won’t make it.”
“Will we anyhow?” he said.
“If we want to.”
“I sure want to,” he said vigorously.
Rachael said, “Did she buy you the clothes you were wearing when you came back? I never saw them before, and you didn’t have any money.”
“She bought them for me,” he said.
“Even the suit?” She put down her pen. “Did she pick them out?”
“Yes,” he said.
“It’s a nice suit. I was looking at it. I guess she really liked you, and she wanted you to look nice.” She beckoned him toward her. “See if there’s anything you want me to change.”
Going over he found that she was writing to Patricia. In the letter she was wishing them luck in their marriage and saying that she hoped the four of them could get together some day soon.
He read the letter, and it seemed okay to him. Below his wife’s signature he signed his own name. Rachael folded the letter and put it in an envelope.
“How do you feel?” she asked. Since his return, both of them had been under the weather; they were still hesitant in each other’s presence.
“Better,” he said.
“How would you feel,” Rachael said, “if I worked full time for a while? So we’d have more money.”
“I don’t think you have to.”
“It might be a good idea. Then there wouldn’t be any chance that we’d have to ask somebody for help.” She picked up her coat and put it over her shoulders. “You want to come with me?”
“I’ll mail it,” he said, taking the letter.
“Do you want to see them again?”
“Sure,” he said, “I don’t care.”
“But we have to be careful,” Rachael said. “Anything from outside could hurt us. Isn’t that so? Anything that might come in and get between as again. There’s so much danger that something that isn’t real might come along, and they’d convince us it was important. You know? Something they made up, a bunch of words. They never stop. There’s always something they’re saying.”
Her face showed worry, a tight little face, lined with concern. He kissed her, and then he walked to the door. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “Anything you want?”
“Maybe you could pick up something,” she said. “Maybe at Dodo’s. Some ice cream.” Following him, she said, “You know what I’d like? One of those pizzas.”
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll bring one back.”
He walked up the steps to the path, and then, his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, he turned in the direction of Dodo’s. Against the pavement his heels scuffed and clacked. In the cold evening wind, his black leather jacket flapped back, lifted up, and held.
At the corner he mailed the letter. Then he went on toward Dodo’s. The drive-in was several blocks away, and he walked slowly, gazing at the bars, the closed-up shops, studying the cars that passed. He nodded to a couple of friends. At a corner four guys he knew were lounging at the side of a drugstore, and he stopped to say a few words to them.
Going on, he crossed the street and continued past a closed-up clothing store. Ahead of him was a group of people, and now that he looked, he noticed a parked police car. A police ambulance drew up to the curb, and he realized that something had happened.
The group of people had collected at the entrance of the old Pleasanton Hotel. Bits of debris were littered across the sidewalk: egg shells, pools of liquid, lettuce leaves and stalks of vegetables and trash and broken dishes and crumpled paper. The ambulance attendants were carrying the stretcher onto the sidewalk and the group of people were being moved back by a San Francisco cop.
“What happened?” he said to a couple of kids standing at the edge of the group.
“Some joker dropped a lot of crap off the roof,” the taller of the kids said.
“Yeah?” he said. They all watched, hands in their back pockets.
“Every damn kind of thing.” The kid bent down and picked up a fragment of glass. “Some sort of plastic.”
“Anybody get hurt?” Art asked.
“This lady, she was walking along. It must of landed on her. I don’t know; I just heard the noise.”
Art pushed up closer until he could see. The junk was heaped up on the sidewalk, and the remains of some globe-shaped transparent shell rested in the center of the debris and rubbish. A policeman was taking down information from an elderly gentleman with a cane.
Stepping from the pavement, Art walked on past the ambulance and away from the group. As he reached the corner, a police car slid in front of him and a light was flashed in his eyes.
While he was searching through his wallet, two cops stepped from the car and up to him. “How come you’re out after eleven o’clock? Don’t you know there’s a curfew?”
“I was mailing a letter,” he said.
“Where’s the letter?”
“I mailed it.” He was still fumbling in his wallet; he started to reach inside his jacket to see if his packet of ID cards was there. Suddenly one of the cops grabbed his hand. The other cop shoved him back against the wall.
“What do you know about that stuff off the roof?” the first cop said.
“What stuff?”
“Off the hotel roof. Were you up there?”
“No,” he said, and his voice was thin, weak. “I was just coming by—” He pointed back in the direction he had come. “I was out mailing this letter—”
“There’s a mailbox back there.”
“I know,” he said, “I mailed it.”
Another cop appeared with three more kids. Each of the kids was trembling and scared. “These were back of the hotel.” He gave them a shove, and they stumbled forward.
“They must have run out the back,” a cop said.
“Take them down,” another cop said, already starting off. At the curb the radio in the police car bellowed out calls and numbers. “They’re out after the curfew; book them on that until we get some kind of story from them.”
He was yanked away from the wall and shoved, with the other kids, into the police car. As the car pulled away and into traffic, he saw that the police were picking up more kids. More police cars were entering the block, and he thought to himself: If I hadn’t come out to mail the letter…
“Honest,” one of the kids was saying, “we don’t know nothing about it; we were just walking along.” He was a Negro. “We were just going up to the drive-in, you know?”
None of the cops answered.
Art, looking through the window, held onto his wallet and identification cards. The cops had not examined them; they had loaded him into the police car in too much of a hurry. He wondered if they would still want to see the cards. He wondered if they were going to ask him his name, or if they really cared.
21
During the weekend the paint was scrubbed from the furniture and walls of Jim Briskin’s apartment. The apartment, cleaned up, looked as it had before. Patricia put the
easel and brushes and paints away in the closet, and neither of them said anything more about it. He let her do most of the cleaning and washing and scrubbing; in jeans and cotton shirt, her hair tied up in a turban, she sat on the floor, working with soap and water, a bucket, a heavy brush. She did not seem to mind. All day Saturday and Sunday they kept at it. On Sunday evening they invited Frank Hubble over. The three of them drank wine and talked.
“What happened to your hand?” Hubble said.
“I cut it,” she said, hiding her hand away.
“Can you type like that?” Hubble said.
“I’ll do as well as I can,” she said.
Hubble said, “Are you two married again?”
“Not quite,” Jim said. “We have the blood tests. We’ll pick up the license in a couple of days and then get married. There’s no rush.”
“You’re coming back to work tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Pat said. “On Monday.”
“How about you?” he said to Jim.
“I’ll be back,” Jim said. “At the end of the month.”
“What happens when they give you a Looney Luke plug to read?”
“I’ll read it,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I want to stay on the air.”
Beside him Pat shifted about; she drew her legs up and tucked them under her. “Jim is going to expand ‘Club 17,’” she said, “so it runs in the evening. He’s going to bring it back at eight and keep it going until sign-off.”
“If I can,” Jim said. “If Haynes can see it.”
“You going to spin a lot of rock-and-roll?” Hubble said. “The networks are starting to clamp down…you seen the latest list of banned discs? Mostly the small labels, the race and blues labels. Somebody showed me a BBC statement; they say they don’t have a list of banned records, just a list of music they don’t play.”
“Restricted,” Jim said.
“Yes, It’s their restricted list. You better be careful on that stuff. You’ll get the old ladies writing in. Better stick to the regular bands and tunes.”
The Broken Bubble Page 26
