Dead Letter Drop

by Peter James

  He turned and faced away from me. Using the thick carpeting to maximum advantage, I got right up behind him. ‘Excuse me, is this the forty-first floor?’ I asked.

  He spun round and laid his chin down, straight on top of my fast rising fist. I didn’t hit him too hard in case he was a cop, but just hard enough so he wouldn’t be a nuisance to me for the next few minutes. As he crumpled I whipped his gun out. One look at the shoddily made weapon was enough to tell me he was no cop. There was a door right behind him appropriately labelled ‘Garbage’ and I shoved him through it.

  I put my ear against Sumpy’s door. I heard the sound of the shower but nothing else. I wanted to surprise the garbage collector’s friends and I didn’t think walking in through Sumpy’s front door would be the best way of doing it. I slid open the lock of the next-door apartment and marched straight in, my gun out in front of me; but there wasn’t anyone to point it at. There rarely seemed to be anyone in this apartment – I reckoned it was a knocking shop for some well-off businessman. I knew my way around it pretty well.

  High-rise apartments can be nasty traps – they often have walk-out balconies but rarely actual fire escapes, so there is only one way out: via the door. When I had found myself visiting Sumpy on a pretty regular basis – since she preferred her place to mine, mostly – I decided to build myself a second exit, never knowing when it might come in handy.

  There was one wall panel that I had fixed, unknown even to Sumpy. It was in the wall between the shower in Sumpy’s apartment and the shower in her neighbour’s apartment. I pulled out my knife and inserted the blade between two elegant tiles, which depicted a motley assortment of Etruscans enjoying a gang bang. These tiles, together with several more, came away easily and I was then able to lift out the 3-foot high section of panel. Before Sumpy knew what was happening I was inside that shower beside her, hand over her mouth, getting drenched to the skin with water that was a damn sight too hot for my liking.

  6

  I hoisted Sumpy out into the next-door apartment, then went back for her bag. Her eyelids pulsated open and shut, her eyes were wide with shock. I put her down on a sofa and draped some thick velour towels, from lover-boy’s closet, around her.

  ‘How many are in there?’

  ‘How many in there? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about the policemen you said were coming round.’

  ‘I didn’t let anybody in. I did what you said. I got straight in the shower – I’ve never been cleaner in my life. I heard the door ring but I didn’t answer it. What the hell’s going on, Max?’

  ‘I’ll explain it to you later, not right now. Just do exactly as I say. Whoever rang your doorbell was no policeman.’ I replaced the panel and the tiles, then started rummaging in more of the closets. I found a smart Calvin Klein dress and a pile of silk Cornelia James headsquares. Either he kept them for his mistress or he liked dressing up himself. Either way he had damn good taste.

  I got Sumpy into the dress and tied a scarf around her soaking hair, then got her over to the door. I looked out. The corridor was empty. We walked smartly out and I pressed the button for the elevator. My eyes were riveted to her apartment door. My right hand was inside my jacket clamped firmly round my gun, with the safety catch off and the rate of fire control switched to the notch with three white dots – indicating that one squeeze of the trigger would unleash three short, round-nosed chunks of very hot lead to be delivered at 375 metres per second in the direction of my choice. I was certain someone had gone in there whilst she was in the shower and was waiting for her to come out. It wasn’t going to take too long before whoever it was discovered that Sumpy had vanished down the plug hole.

  The lift arrived and the doors opened. As we stepped in, her door flew open and two hefty goons almost tripped over themselves in their rush to get out. The one in front, toting an automatic, saw us. ‘Hey you, stop!’ He levelled the gun at us at the exact moment the elevator doors closed on us, sparing us from any dialogue. I hit the button for the basement and we started, mercifully, to descend.

  ‘I think we should have stopped, Max.’

  ‘Sure we should – and had our heads blown off. Believe me, Sumpy, just believe me. Those guys are not cops. I’ll explain it all to you but not right now. Right now we’ve got to try and get out of here in one piece.’

  I wondered whether the goons were running down the stairs or waiting for the next elevator. The lift wasn’t quick but however fast they ran, with the head start we had I reckoned we should get down and out of the lift a short way ahead of them.

  The doors opened at the basement onto a gaggle of people waiting to go up, and no sign of the goons. I ushered Sumpy out into the underground parking lot. Her conspicuous red Jensen was parked about four aisles down but I didn’t want her to take that – she’d never get past the posse outside.

  Apartment building parking lots are always spooky places and this was no exception: dim lighting, smell of warm oil, clicking sounds from warm radiators, faint heavy breathing of extractors. I had my gun out now and was watching the door behind me carefully. Sumpy still seemed very shocked but there was no way I could explain anything to her right now. She was alive, with a fair chance of remaining so if she followed my instructions, and for the time being she would have to be content with that.

  There was a green Buick right beside us. I tugged a key off my ring, shoved it in the door lock, and the catch popped up first try. I jumped into the driver’s seat and pushed the key into the ignition. It took some fiddling and jiggling with the steering wheel; then the wheel movement came free, the ignition light came on, the gas needle moved up around its dial. I floored the pedal and pushed the key hard over. The engine fired first time. I jumped out and shovelled Sumpy in. ‘Drive out, right now. Don’t stop for anyone or anything. Drive fifteen blocks, dump the car, get a cab straight to the Travelodge at Kennedy Airport, take a double room in the name of Mr and Mrs John Webb, and I’ll join you as soon as I can.’

  She looked at me and opened her mouth to speak.

  ‘Go!’ I said.

  She went.

  I stood watching the doorway as she drove around, hit the electric door beam, and the corrugated metal door clanked up; she drove up, out and off. I pulled another silk headsquare from my pocket and tied it around my head. Seated in her car, at a distance I might just fool someone, I hoped.

  I ran over to the Jensen, put the key in the lock, and was about to open the door when there was a cracking sound that reverberated round the whole parking lot, closely followed by a volley of whining noises as a bullet scorched itself down the side of a metal girder by my head, then ricochetted off a succession of parked cars. I flattened myself as another bullet followed closely in its wake. I eased myself along on my stomach and poked my head around the massive fender of a Lincoln. Standing crouched in the doorway was one of the goons who had come out of Sumpy’s apartment. He was holding his pistol out in front of him with just one arm, which explained why his aim hadn’t been any better – since I was within accurate shooting range of him. He was looking anxiously around for me, pointing the gun here, there. I decided to indicate my whereabouts to him. Placing both elbows firmly on the ground, I gripped my Beretta with both hands, flicked down the front grip, switched to single fire, aimed at the centre of his body, and pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession. Once would have been enough; by the time the second bullet had travelled the 15-odd feet to where he had been standing it must have found itself spinning through empty space, since the first one had caught him full square in the centre of his chest and carried him out backwards through the door into the corridor to the elevators.

  There was a sudden clattering sound from the other end of the lot. It was the electric gate shutting again. I lifted myself up onto my knees and carefully looked around. I couldn’t see anyone. I closed the front grip on the Beretta and switched back to automatic fire. Crouching low, I dived into the Jensen, rammed the ignition key in, and pra
yed it would start. Its hefty V8 turned slowly and lazily over, once, twice – come on – three times – come on, come on – then on the fifth turnover all eight cylinders burbled into life, the rev counter whipped up to 1,500, the exhaust gave off an even powerful throbbing. I pulled the gearshift into drive and the car surged forward several inches; I released the handbrake and gently eased out into the aisle.

  The car felt deliciously powerful – the slatted hood rising out ahead of me; the precise, firm, leather-bound wheel; the rich smell of Connelly hide rising up all around me from the seats and the panelling. She exuded a sensation of pent-up power waiting to be unleashed.

  I was scanning every shape, every shadow; there were two more aisles to go before the gate. Suddenly a beam of light flooded in through the pedestrian entrance by the gate and two figures darted through. They stopped as they saw me and levelled pistols at me in unison. I dived below the dash just as darts of flame shot out of both the barrels. One bullet scored noisily along the roof, the other bored a neat hole in the passenger side of the windshield then bounced around inside the car, striking me on the ear like a wasp sting on about the sixth bounce.

  Switching back to automatic fire, I opened the door, stuck my arm out and loosed off three shots in their general direction. I had little chance of hitting them but I wanted to gain myself a few seconds’ breathing space. Another bullet whanged into the body of the car just behind me; there was a third gunman. He must have come in the same door by the elevator that his punctured friend had used. The only option open to me was to get the hell out of there.

  Still crouched below the dash level, I yanked the gear shift into low and booted the gas pedal down onto the floorboards. I stuck my head up above the dash just long enough to get the hang of the general directions. The engine gave a massive growl, the tyres screeched down the concrete for 50 feet as they clawed away at it for a grip. I wrenched at the wheel as the tail snaked this way then that, trying to keep her pointing in a straight line; then the rubber took, the car flattened its rear springs, the nose lifted up, my stomach was thrust into the seat back, and we catapulted forward. I stamped on the brakes as we howled round the right-hander to the exit ramp. Bullets cracked and clanged and blew out chunks of glass. Then I booted the car for all she was worth, bracing myself against the shock of hitting the ramp. The front wheels passed over the rubber bar for the automatic gate but the gate scarcely had time to lift more than a few inches before we smashed into it and through it with a terrible racket of tearing metal, the nose of the car tossing it aside as though it were cardboard; we came up to the top of the ramp doing close on 70 miles an hour. I stamped on the brakes as hard as I possibly could but we parted company with the ground, travelled several feet through the air, and came down with a thumping crash to find the goons’ Chrysler, which I’d seen earlier parked outside the main entrance to the block, had been backed up and was now broadside across my exit path. There was one luckless goon sitting in it and he had a full tenth of a second to realise his luck was out before we slammed straight into the passenger section of the car.

  It caved in, like a tin hit with a karate chop, almost certainly killing him instantly; then, in a continuous movement on from this, the car was lifted a few feet up in the air, came down on its side, and started rolling over and over across to the other side of the road, where it flattened a mail box, slammed up against a wall and burst into flames. I was still heading towards it at a good 50 miles an hour. I spun the steering wheel as hard as I could round to the right and pulled on the handbrake with all my strength. The tail of the car came howling round; a car coming down the road swerved onto the pavement to avoid me. and I just clipped his wing. I threw the handbrake off and flattened the gas pedal again; the rev counter whipped into the red as we rocketed down the road. I flicked the gear shift out of low and we surged forward even more. We crossed the first intersection at 80, the second at over 100, then I slammed the brakes on and power-slid us into a quieter street.

  I slowed down, not wanting to attract too much attention to myself, particularly not any passing cop car since bullet holes would require more than a cursory explanation. Sumpy was not going to be too happy with me when she saw the car – she was madly in love with it – but I couldn’t think about that now. I came out down the other end of the side street into 2nd Avenue and turned into the maze of lights of Manhattan’s fast-building Sunday traffic. I passed two or three blocks, then saw a very dark street and turned into it.

  The street was deserted. I slid the Jensen in between two parked cars, got out and walked away from it as quickly as I could. I walked on down the street and emerged into the bright of 3rd Avenue. All the time I walked I looked carefully behind me. I didn’t think I was being tailed but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

  I hailed a cab and climbed in. ‘Plaza Hotel.’ The driver cranked his meter lever, scribbled down the destination and we tramp-tramped off. The cab was filthy even by New York standards and the interior gave the impression that when it wasn’t being used to ferry passengers it was loaned out to Central Park Zoo as a monkey house.

  After five blocks I spoke. ‘I’ll get out here.’

  ‘Nowhere near the Plaza, buddy.’ Then the driver turned to look at me and the expression on his face told me that, in spite of the fact that the interior needed a good hosing down, he was only too glad that the dripping wet wreck of humanity in the back was getting out. ‘Dollar forty.’

  I shoved two sopping dollar bills into his hand. ‘Keep the change.’

  ‘Hey, what I meant to do with this – put ’em on the washing line?’

  ‘No. Buy a new cab with them.’

  He drove off angrily, muttering a string of expletives peculiar to the idiom of the New York cab-driving fraternity.

  I walked a block and hailed another cab going the opposite direction. I took another careful look around me and got in. ‘Travelodge, Kennedy.’ I relaxed deep into the seat, and in half an hour was standing inside the room of Mr and Mrs Webb.

  Sumpy was angry, really angry. I’d never seen her angry before. ‘You’re crazy, that’s what you are. Fucking crazy. Or you’re a criminal on the run. Personally I think you’re just fucking crazy.’

  I decided that now was probably not the best time to break the news to her about the car. ‘Calm down,’ I said.

  ‘Calm down? Calm down? You expect me to fucking calm down?’

  There was a thick and very heavy telephone directory near where she was standing. It was neatly bound in simulated leather and had ‘Travelodge’ printed in gold letters on the outside. Sumpy flung it at me. There were also two glass ashtrays with ‘Travelodge’ printed on them. She flung those at me. ‘Fucking madman.’ There was a waste bin. It was in white plastic. It didn’t have ‘Travelodge’ on it. She flung that at me. Then she flung her handbag at me. I’d managed to duck everything else but the handbag got me in the stomach and a shower of keys, loose tampax, a diary, address book, lipstick, mirror, powder, roll-on deodorant, a clutch of parking tickets, and a mousetrap flew out.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s a fucking mousetrap.’

  ‘What’s it for?’

  ‘What’s it for? It’s for trapping mice – you know, little things, long tails, eeeek, eeeek – they come out of holes in the wall, run around, eat cheese.’

  I picked up the bag, rummaged in it, found a pack of Marlboro and her Zippo lighter in its engraved platinum case. I took out a cigarette, flared the lighter and gratefully inhaled a long deep lungful of sweet smoke and petrol fumes. I sat down on the bed. I must have looked pretty damn frightful.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She came over, put an arm around me and sat down. ‘You’re all wet. You’re going to catch a chill like that. You don’t want to catch a chill.’

  No. She was right. I didn’t want to catch a chill. I didn’t want to catch anything. She helped me pull my wet clothes off, and I crawled in between the snug clean sheets and shut my eyes. I was going
to have a long, long sleep.

  ‘Pickpockets,’ she said.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Pickpockets. That’s what the mousetrap is for. Pickpockets.’

  ‘What do pickpockets want mousetraps for?’

  ‘Dummy. I set the mousetrap, put it in my purse, pickpocket puts his hand in, and snap – got his fingers.’

  ‘Who gave you that bright idea?’

  ‘Friend of mine. She’s been doing it for years.’

  ‘What happens if you forget – catch your own fingers?’

  There was a long silence. I drifted off towards sleep. I never heard her reply.

  7

  It all started one morning in Paris a little over six years ago. It was the first really hot day of the year. Spring had been turning to summer for some weeks and that day it had finally turned. That day the whole of Paris felt good, you could sense it in the air. Cars moved a little slower, windows that had been closed for months were now flung open, beautifully fresh summer clothes appeared on their first outings. The cafes once more spilled out onto the sidewalks, with their Pernod ashtrays and shirt-sleeved waiters in black waistcoats.

  I sat basking in it all at a table on the Champs Elysées. The coffee tasted good, the Marlboro tasted good, and of the girls walking down the street nine out of ten looked pretty damn good. A bit further down, in the parking lane between the sidewalk and the road, sat my car. She was an elderly but very fit Jaguar XK120. She was looking somewhat dusty but even so, crouched by the kerb with her roof open, more passing eyes stared down her 14½ feet of midnight blue bodywork than at either the 308 GTB Ferrari in front or the Turbo Porsche two cars behind.

  She needed a lot of work on her to restore her to the full glory of her youth. She needed a complete respray and her bumpers and radiator grille needed rechroming. She looked smarter with her roof off, as the roof itself was a tatty patchwork of taped holes and rips. The engine needed a decoke, the tyres would have to be changed before next winter, and the interior needed a great deal of elbow grease. One day I hoped I would have enough money to afford it; for the time being she was going to have to stay as she was. Money was tight at the moment but I was confident something would turn up. It usually did, in odd shapes and places – but at least it usually did.