77th Street Requiem

by Wendy Hornsby

  The front door stood open. There was enough light from the street to see that the dead bolt had been cut right out. It lay on the floor, peppered with sawdust. Bowser sniffed the bolt, put his nose to the floor near the threshold, and, like a vacuum cleaner hosing up dust, followed the trail of foreign scent across the entry all the way to the door of my workroom.

  The workroom door was closed, and I had left it open. A sliver of light showed underneath. I dialed 911.

  “Someone came into my house,” I told the person on the other end, a woman. “They might still be here. I’m all alone, I’m holding a gun, and I’m scared. Could you hurry?”

  “Stay on the line. Do you see anyone?”

  “No.” I told her what I could see—the broken lock, the sliver of light. Bowser stood at the workroom door and barked.

  She asked me to confirm the address and she asked for my name.

  When I said my name, she came back with, “That Maggie MacGowen?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “How’s your sister, honey?”

  “She’s okay. Thanks for asking. Can you hurry?”

  “They’re on the way. Just stay on the line with me.”

  In the workroom there was a low whoomp. A flash of bright orange outlined the door and lit the yard outside. I immediately smelled smoke and gasoline. Bowser went insane, barking and scratching at the door.

  “There’s a fire,” I yelled at the sweet voice in the phone. I dropped the quilt and ran toward the kitchen to get the extinguisher out of the pantry, carrying the gun and the phone in the same hand.

  The operator was still calm. “You said the door’s closed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t open the door,” she implored. “I’ve alerted the fire department, they’re on the way. Go outside and wait for them.”

  “This is an old house. It could go in two minutes. I have an extinguisher.”

  “If you open that door, you’ll feed the flames. Can you hear sirens?”

  I held the phone away from my ear and listened. “I hear them.”

  “Go outside and flag them down.”

  Fire or not, I wasn’t going to flag down the police in my underwear. I grabbed the quilt from the floor on my way out.

  I could see the flashing red lights in the treetops on the next street.

  “Maggie!”

  I put the phone back to my ear. “What?”

  “Hold the dog. Don’t let him get in the way.”

  Bowser was still inside the house. I screamed at him. “Bowser, come here old man!”

  He started for me, but wouldn’t leave that door. I went in to get him. The entry was thick with smoke billowing under the workroom door. It was hard to see, harder still to breathe, and getting worse. My hands were full, so I tried to herd Bowser by nudging him with my bare foot. He wouldn’t come with me. I would not leave the gun to perhaps explode in the fire, so I told the operator my dilemma and dropped the phone, grabbed Bowser’s collar, and dragged him out.

  I was backing out the door when I felt arms around my middle, pulling me, then lifting me. I thought it was the police or the firemen rescuing me, or thinking they were, so I cooperated. Very quickly, the quilt was pulled down over my face and rolled tight around me like a shroud. I tried to get free, but the quilt was so tight I couldn’t move my arms. My lungs already burned from inhaling smoke, and I could not get enough air. I couldn’t see the flashing lights, but I knew the police and the fire department had to be right there. I felt safe long after I should have.

  Like an old rolled-up parlor rug, I was slung over someone’s shoulder and carted off at a run. I felt Bowser leap against me and whoever was holding me. Then I heard the dog yelp in pain.

  Shock turned to anger, and I began to struggle in earnest. It isn’t easy to carry a full-grown woman over a distance, especially if she doesn’t want to go. I had worked some space free to move my arms when I was dumped over a narrow ledge into some kind of box. I was on my back with the quilt edge pinned under me.

  My abductor tried to fold my legs in with the rest of me, but I kicked at him, bucked against his efforts, and managed to get my left hand out and free to scratch at him. Because he was too much in control of the situation, I kept the gun in my right hand tight at my side when I started to scream. I didn’t want him to turn the gun on me. The quilt still covered my face, so the sound I made was probably too muffled to carry.

  I hoped that my captor would give up and run away, and I wouldn’t have to use the gun. There was a lot of confusion around the front of my house and I knew the neighbors, being suburban neighbors, would be out in the street gawking. But he kept up the fight and no one came to help me.

  I got my face free and saw I was in the trunk of a small car parked on the side street about halfway to our alley. As long as he didn’t have my legs tucked in, we weren’t going anywhere, so I kicked. I hurt him once in the head hard enough for him to cry out. But then he grabbed me around the knees and pinned my legs between the car and his body. It hurt like hell.

  My captor loomed over me, a dark, featureless shadow, like the outline of a man on a shooting range target.

  He was too strong for me. He had my legs pinned in his grip. Before he could fold them into the trunk, I slipped the quilt away from my right hand. Lying on my back with the creep directly in front of me, I brought up the revolver, aimed at his ten ring, and fired.

  The sound of that big Magnum exploding inside the trunk of a car stunned me, deafened me. The flash dazzled my eyes. I sat right up, struggled out, and got ready to fire a second round, but the man was gone by the time I had my feet on the pavement and found my equilibrium. I knew I had hit him. I had blood spattered all over my front. But I couldn’t find him. Bowser, instead of giving chase, was all over me, making it difficult to move.

  I heard the police running toward me, saw some of the gawking neighbors point me out. The first officer to spot me saw the Magnum and drew his weapon. I set the gun on the pavement and backed away from it. In my underwear and blood-spattered and torn T-shirt, I sat down on the curb to wait.

  CHAPTER

  21

  “Why did you have a loaded firearm in your possession, Miss MacGowen?” The South Pasadena police sergeant, Avery Wong, was a very soft-spoken, genteel-looking man. He had already informed me that the events at my house that night—burglary, arson, assault, attempted kidnapping, a shooting—constituted 83 percent of the violent crime reported in the peaceful city of South Pasadena so far that year. He never raised his voice, and he never let up.

  I knew Wong was only doing his job, but his calm was getting to me. I was tired, I was scared. I had no idea where Mike and Michael were, and, after what had happened to me, I was beginning to feel panicky about not knowing.

  For the third time, I said, “I loaded the gun and took it downstairs with me because I was alone in the house, and I heard something.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “My dog bark.”

  “Dogs bark all the time. Is it your habit to walk around the house with a loaded weapon?”

  “My dog does not bark all the time, not with as much agitation as he exhibited. And, no, I don’t walk around with a loaded weapon.”

  “Why did you carry the weapon outside the residence?”

  “I had it in my hand when the fire started. My only thought was that if I dropped the gun, it might get hot and shoot one of the firefighters. So, I just didn’t put it down.”

  Sergeant Wong laid a computer printout on the desk between us. “This is not the first shooting you have been involved in.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I said. “Sometimes the work I do gets me into trouble. The other shooting was declared justifiable, self-defense. May I have some water?”

  “Certainly.” Wong gestured to the officer sitting by the door, who then left, I hoped, to get me a drink. My nose and my throat burned from breathing smoke. It was nearly three, and the adrenaline letdown had left me exhausted. While
Wong was polite and patient, I got the sense that he wasn’t convinced I had been a victim, rather than a gun-toting arsonist.

  Wong asked, “You’re sure you shot someone?”

  “Well, Sergeant.” I leaned my elbows on his desk and leveled my gaze on him. “I fired the weapon—your people heard it. My shirt is covered with blood—your investigators took it from me. Except for some bumps and bruises on my backside, I am not injured. I’ll leave the conclusions to you.”

  He almost smiled. “It would be more convenient if we had a shooting victim. We don’t doubt you shot someone, or some animal. He left a bloody trail that was easy enough to follow. We just can’t find him.”

  I sat up. “Where did the trail go?”

  “Dead-ends at your driveway.”

  “He didn’t climb into my car, did he? He seems to like trunks.”

  He froze his expression. “Was there a car in the drive?”

  “My car.” I had a whole new set of bad feelings. “Did he steal my car?”

  “There is no car there now.”

  “Oh, great.” I dropped my head to my hands and studied the backs of my eyelids.

  “We need DMV information. License, registered owner, make, model, year.”

  I gave him what he asked for. Then he asked, “Are you alone a great deal?”

  “Not very often.”

  “Are there problems at home?”

  “Sergeant Wong,” I said, “later with the psychoanalysis, all right? I’ve had a rough day, and I really can’t take any more. I want to go see what shape my house is in. I need to find my significant other. I need a place to sleep. If you want character references, I can give you plenty. Tonight, please, just take my word for this: I didn’t set my house on fire and I didn’t fake a kidnapping to get attention.”

  “Why would anyone kidnap you?”

  I was about to say, Have you ever heard of Patty Hearst? when I heard the door behind me open. I turned around, hoping it was a cop with a cup of water.

  Mike, black circles around his eyes, jaw set in hard knots, walked in. He snapped, “Where the hell have you been?”

  I was so relieved to see him that I started to tear up, but I bit it back, thinking, Damn him. I snapped back at him. “What happened to, Hi honey, have a nice day? And where the hell have you been? How am I supposed to make contact with you if you’re never around and you don’t leave phone numbers and your pager is at home in the bedroom, from which, by the way, you have been markedly absent? I was set on fire and kidnapped, and where the hell were you?”

  He came over and put his arms around me. “Hi honey, how was your day?”

  I nestled my sooty face into the hollow of his neck that I like so much and said, “Fuck you,” while he patted my back.

  “Did you see a doctor?”

  “I don’t need one. Have you seen the house?”

  “Unfortunately. Your workroom is a total loss, and the fire department wasn’t real conservative about where they aimed the hoses. But it could be worse and we can fix it.”

  “Where’s Michael?”

  “He’s at home.” Mike held me away to get a better look at me. “You need a bath, cupcake. You smell like the bottom of a barbecue after a neighborhood picnic.”

  “Where were you, Mike?”

  “Following you around.” He smiled sheepishly. “Michael told me how you invited him to go up to San Francisco with you. He felt bad that he didn’t cancel everything and go. We talked about catching the UCLA game tonight. Then I said, ‘Why don’t we fly up and get Maggie, have dinner with your parents, spend Sunday in the wine country?’ So we did. Or we tried to. We never connected with you. Talked into a lot of machines, but no one ever got back to us.”

  “How could anyone get back to you? No one knew where you were.”

  “I think we were flying up about the same time you were flying down. No one was at home in Berkeley, so I thought you’d all probably gone out. Didn’t think to call home because I didn’t expect you to be there. Michael and I went to dinner in Chinatown, hung out. Went over and saw Lyle, but he didn’t know where you were. We took the BART over to Berkeley, and finally, your folks showed up around midnight. You’d been home for hours by then.”

  “Don’t surprise me any more,” I said. “And don’t forget your pager again.”

  Sergeant Wong had been taking notes through all this. He looked at Mike. “What is your relationship to Miss MacGowen?”

  Mike looked at me significantly. “What am I?”

  “Absentee landlord?”

  He held me tight again. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too,” I said into his chest. “Pay the waiter and take me home.”

  Mike fished out his police ID and one of his business cards and handed them to Sergeant Wong.

  Wong looked from the photo on the ID to Mike. “LAPD?”

  “Yes. Look, Sergeant, I know you have to take care of business. But I wouldn’t mind a little professional courtesy. I promise you’ll have access to Miss MacGowen. But right now, I don’t think she can be very useful to you.”

  Wong gave him back the the ID. “I need to know where to reach Miss MacGowen.”

  Mike asked, “Maggie, where are we going?”

  “A hotel.”

  Mike promised Wong, “As soon as we get settled, I’ll call you.”

  We stopped at the house to pack a few essentials and to look at the damage. Firemen were still there, watching for embers in the blackened hole that had been my workroom. While we were upstairs, a team of arson investigators arrived.

  I’d had so much input during the day that I could hardly react to the apparent loss of a good portion of my life’s work. The only issue that raised any sort of feeling was whether Michael could spend the rest of the night in his cottage, alone except for the investigators in the main house and a very sleepy dog.

  “Bowser won’t make it in a hotel,” Michael said. “He stinks. And I can’t leave a hero alone.”

  “Then we’ll all bunk with you,” Mike said. But Michael’s cottage was a single room with a daybed.

  “No one will get any sleep,” I said. “Let’s go to Guido’s.”

  Mike shook his head. “He’ll keep us up all night rehashing everything.”

  Michael had a brainstorm. “I’ll take Bowser over to my mom’s and stay with him. She has a big yard. It’ll be okay.”

  “Your mom will take in my dog?” I asked, skeptical.

  He looked askance, and then he started to chuckle. He put an arm around me. “She’ll take in your dog, Maggie. But I think you’d better go to the hotel.”

  There was no need to ask the county Scientific Investigation team and the arson squad to lock up when they left. Anyone could drive a truck through the hole in the wall. The South Pasadena police promised that when everyone had finished we would be put on a regular patrol watch. My thought was, Why bother? Anything of real value was either ashes already, or was driving the two cars backing out of the drive, namely, Mike and Michael.

  Mike and I checked into the Biltmore downtown. Mike had a pristine change of clothes in the carry-on he had taken to San Francisco. But when I opened my bag, everything that had come from the house smelled like smoke. I called the desk and explained my problem, and a valet came and took my things, promising to have them washed first thing in the morning, even though it was Sunday.

  I didn’t need clothes to take a hot bath and, finally, slide between clean sheets with Mike.

  As he reached over me to turn off the light, I said, “By the way, he stole my car.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  Room service brought the Sunday papers with breakfast.

  Mike handed me the front page of the Times. “New record for you, kid. Three features on the front page, and a background article, Who Is This Troublemaker? on page two.”

  With a sense of dread, I unfolded the paper. There were articles on Emily and on the murder of Michelle Tarbett, and a late news brief on the fire at
our house the night before. There was, indeed, a short biographical article about a woman with my name, but she bore little resemblance to the person I saw in the mirror every morning. This other woman had probably had more adventures than she needed.

  Guido was quoted about some caper we had been involved in during an assignment in El Salvador years ago. Almost everything in the article was ancient history distorted by the waterfall of retelling. All of this blather was innocuous until the reporter brought up the previous shooting I had been involved in. By the end of the piece, I sounded like a gun moll.

  I tossed the paper onto the floor, stretched out alongside Mike, and wrapped my arm around him. “Tell me what you did all day yesterday.”

  “I arrested my torture killer.”

  “Good boy.” I kissed his belly. “How?”

  “He was tired of being on the street. I knew he was hanging out by the shelters down on skid row, but those people down there don’t talk to cops. So I put the word out that he was killing homeless people, and they started calling in, telling me where they’d seen him. He went into the Weingart Center for lunch, and I got a call, ‘Come on down.’ Went over there, parked outside, and waited for him. Sure enough, out he came, looking like a beaten stepchild. So, I asked him, ‘You ready to come in?’ He hopped into the backseat and that was it.”

  “Did you make that up?”

  “Nope. Didn’t have to. You call that good police work. Took about two hours of talking to him downtown, and we got our confession.”

  “No rubber hose?”

  “I was kind of hoping he’d get froggy with me so I could give him a little medicine. But he rolled over for me. Gave me chapter and verse. At that point, he’d do anything for a shower and a place to sleep.”

  “You’re a genius. But did you get the warrant to search Anthony Louis’s room?”

  “Huh-uh.” He yawned. “Judge says I don’t have probable cause. I didn’t push it. I declined to file charges, and Anthony kicked yesterday.”

  “That beast is out of jail?” I was not happily surprised. I raised up to see his face. “But Mike, he cut you.”