by Graham Marks
“You ready?”
“Yup.”
“Remember everything I told you?”
Dewey nodded. “It’s just this hat…”
“The cap’s fine, Dewey, what’s important is that you remember what I told you.”
“I gotta not say anything, unless you talk to me; I always have to say ‘Yes, sir!’ to you, when you do say something, ah…” Dewey looked down at his boots, then up again, “…and my job is to remain on guard by the door while you’re getting the film and the pictures. Right?”
“You do all that, everything’ll be copacetic.” Joe looked at his watch. “Time we went.”
The headlights in the rear-view mirror alerted Mahey to an approaching car. He watched it go past him, slow as it crossed the intersection and then, instead of carrying straight on, he saw the driver do a neat U-turn and pull up outside the Tavistock.
Mahey blinked and sat up, frowning: was this what they’d been waiting for, the start of some trouble? He watched a man get out of the driver’s side and straighten his suit jacket, and was about to shake Sergeant Lynott awake when he saw the person in the front passenger seat get out. It was a uniform, the street lights reflecting off his badge. Mahey relaxed. They must both be cops.
The two men walked up to the building; getting something out of his jacket, the plain-clothes cop tapped on the glass a couple of times and then held up what Mahey assumed must be his ID. He saw someone come up to the door and let the two cops in. Whoever lived here must, he reckoned, be very important; or possibly very bad. One or the other had to be the case.
“What’s the problem, officer?” Nestor smiled at the taller plain-clothes cop and then the shorter uniformed guy.
“Not sure there is one.”
“Oh, really, then…” Nestor looked puzzled.
“We have to check the building.”
“At one o’clock in the morning, officer?”
“Crime doesn’t work to a schedule.” Joe put his Detective’s badge folder back in his jacket. “The desk at the local precinct got a call, we got sent out.”
“A call about what?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out.”
“I’m not sure I—”
“You wouldn’t be attempting to stop an officer of the law in the pursuance of his duty, would you…” Joe glanced at the name embroidered on the doorman’s jacket, “…Nestor?”
“Me? No!”
“Good.” Joe smiled. “We won’t be long, I’m sure it’s probably nothing, but these days you can’t be too careful. McGuigan?”
Dewey, who had been following the conversation like the ball in a tennis match, stiffened. “Yes, sir!”
“Follow me.”
“Yes, sir!”
“We’ll take the stairs, so we don’t alert anyone that we’re coming.” Joe straightened his tie. “Nestor, you carry on, business as usual.”
Without waiting for a reply, Joe strode off across the lobby, Dewey right behind him, and went through the door with the sign above that said “Stairs”.
“Was I okay, Joe?”
“You were fine, just fine…”
“I think he believed us.”
“What’s not to believe?”
Five minutes later, Joe more than a little out of breath, they were in the tenth-floor hallway. There was just the one door. Joe rubbed his hands together and blew on his fingers; he had checked the building as best he could from street level and no lights were showing from the windows he could see. It was, after all, gone 1.00 a.m. and everybody, especially the kid, should be asleep.
This was going to be the only chance he’d have of taking a look around the place unhindered, getting his hands on the film and getting the heck out again. His plan was to be in the apartment no more than five minutes. Any longer than that and he was going to bail, as he saw no point in tempting fate.
Joe fished his set of lock picks out of his trouser pocket. He was a mite rusty, but the lock on this door didn’t appear to be anything too sophisticated; thirty seconds later and a soft, oiled click proved him right. They were in.
“Right, Dewey, here we go – ready?”
“Sure, Joe, what can go wrong?”
Joe didn’t want to think of all the many, many ways Dewey could foul up. “Tell me one more time.”
“I stay by the front door, all official, and tell anyone that comes that we got called and found the place open.”
“Good…”
Joe pushed the door open very slowly; like the lock, the hinges were well-oiled and did not squeak. He ushered Dewey past him, went in and shut the door. The darkened hallway was wide with a deep, soft pile carpet, and opposite where they were standing was a chair next to a table with a silver tray on it. Joe pointed, indicating that Dewey should go sit on the chair, which he did; then Joe stood for a moment, listening.
The apartment was quiet, illuminated only by moonlight coming from a tall window at the end of the hallway, where a staircase led to the next floor. Aware that he was now on the clock, Joe left Dewey “on guard” and set off towards the stairs; if the boy did have the film and the pictures, they were probably up in his bedroom. Hopefully.
The carpet deadening his footsteps, Joe was up on the next floor in seconds, looking down a corridor with three doors off it. He went to the first one and tested the handle. No noise. He started opening the door and saw pale yellow light and his heart skipped a beat – was someone awake? He waited for evidence they were, but none came so he moved the door just enough to get his head through and take a look.
A woman was lying in a large double bed, hair spread out on the pillow like it’d been arranged by someone, her eyes covered with a pink silk sleep mask; she looked as beautiful as a painting in the low light cast by a bedside lamp that hadn’t been turned off. Joe closed the door and went to the next one, which opened to reveal an empty room; the third, at the end of the corridor, had to be it, then…
Downstairs, Dewey was, as he’d been firmly instructed, still sitting in the chair in the dark hallway. He had, though, taken the pistol out of its holster and was imagining that he was a real cop and had just walked in on a robbery, surprising the guys doing the hold-up. Peering down towards the staircase – no sign of Joe yet – he stood up, as that seemed more realistic, stuck the gun out and whispered “Hands up!”, grinning to himself. His daydream was interrupted by an aroma that hauled him straight back to his childhood, like he was attached to it by elastic: the sweet smell of baking.
Dewey’s saliva glands almost erupted as he recalled his mother in the kitchen, weighing and mixing, greasing pans and sliding them into the oven; he always got given the bowls before they were washed, scraping them with his fingers and licking them clean. Dewey sighed, his right hand falling, and he nearly lost his hold on the pistol.
Unfortunately, as he gripped it tight to stop himself from dropping it, Dewey pulled the trigger.
19 ... BOOM!
Dewey McGuigan stood in the hall, his ears ringing, the acrid smell of burned cordite pricking his nose. For the longest moment he wondered what the heck had just happened.
Upstairs, his hand on the door handle he was about to turn, Joe Cullen froze, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that what he’d just heard was a gunshot, but unable to figure out who might be responsible.
The other side of the door from Joe, Trey, who had minutes before fallen fast asleep as his head hit the pillow, woke right back up with a start and leaped out of bed.
In the kitchen, busy clearing up so the place was ready for breakfast, Mrs. Cooke, whose daddy had shot enough rats for her to know what a .22 sounded like, dropped her damp cloth and reached for the nearest sharp implement.
Down in the unmarked car, Detective Mahey rolled the window open a little further and listened, puzzled as to whether or not the sharp krak! a moment earlier had been gunfire. Hearing no cries for help, he decided not to bother Sergeant Lynott.
The only person who was totally unaware anyth
ing had occurred – and would remain so until she woke up some nine hours later, refreshed and headache-free – was Trey’s mother. Earplugs and a sleeping draught saw to that.
As soon as the long moment was over, Dewey panicked, knowing that he was truly now in the very deepest of doo-doo. But if he thought Joe’s reaction was going to be cataclysmic, he was completely unprepared for Mrs. Cooke. She appeared round the corner looking like someone you might come across in only the worst of nightmares.
She came barrelling out of the kitchen, her lace cap askew, nightdress billowing, sleeves rolled up and a large twelve-inch meat cleaver held aloft. She was liberally sprinkled with flour, giving her dark umber skin a mottled effect. A large woman, originally from Charleston, North Carolina, she was protective in the same way a lioness was protective and people did not go round firing guns in any house she lived in! She stormed into the hallway – her eyes wide, showing white all the way round – bellowing like a beast. Dewey took one look at this devil-ghost, pulled open the front door and went on the lam.
Joe made it to the bottom of the stairs in time to see Dewey disappearing out the door – with the reason why now bearing down on him at speed. Behind him, up on the next floor, Joe heard a door open and a boy’s voice yelling something like “Are you okay, Cook?” Whichever way he looked at it, Joe knew he was in trouble: he’d be brisket ready for roasting if he let the crazed lady with the meat axe anywhere near him, but there wouldn’t be any way out if he went back upstairs.
Strangely, even though he was trapped and had no time to work out what to do next, a thought occurred to him. Somewhere in the back of his mind he recalled the Math he’d done with Mr. Haskins, all those years ago at high school. Newton’s Second Law – “Force equals mass times acceleration” – came to mind, leading him to believe that, if he was quick enough, this big, lumbering old broad might be going too fast to slow down and take a swing at him. So Joe upped and ran.
Thankfully, it turned out that Newton knew what he was talking about.
Making it past the woman unscathed, Joe bolted through the open door, slamming it behind him. He pelted for the stairs, thinking it best he make himself as scarce as pork at a bar mitzvah, because there was no telling how many other people had heard the gun being fired. Even though he couldn’t figure how he’d done it, he knew in his bones it had to be down to Dewey.
Taking the stairs two at a time, wondering how far ahead the idiot boy could be, Joe promised himself, the moment he got back to Topeka, he was resigning.
Trey came down the last flight of stairs just in time to see Cook whirl round and lose her balance as she attempted to cut a slice off the shadowy outline of a man running past her. She missed, the cleaver cutting only thin air, and then landing flat on the carpet, at about the same time as the front door slammed shut.
“Cook!” Trey dropped his Louisville Slugger baseball bat, which he’d picked up as he exited his bedroom; switching on the lights, he ran up to Mrs. Cooke’s prone figure. “What happened – you okay? Did you get shot?”
“Oh my Lord!” Mrs. Cooke pushed herself into an upright position. “Me? Shot? No, child, don’t know who got shot, but it sure wasn’t me… I heard it, came running and saw someone, looked like the po-leece, in the hallway. He had a gun, but took a powder! Ran off instead of staying to help, seeing as how we were the ones being burglarized. Then I saw the other one, the burglar himself.”
“The police were here?” Trey helped get Mrs. Cooke to her feet. “You sure?”
“One thing I ain’t is blind, young man.”
“What do we do, Cook? No point in calling the cops if they’re already here, right?”
“I believe I need a couple of fingers of something medicinal before I can think straight.” Mrs. Cooke made a face as she picked up her cleaver, rubbed her bruised hip and then set off down the hall at a somewhat slower pace than she’d come up it.
Trey, feeling more awake now than he usually did after a good night’s sleep, hurtled back upstairs, threw on a shirt and trousers over his pyjamas, and stuffed his feet in the nearest couple of shoes. On his way back down he picked up his baseball bat and made for the front door. He stopped when he saw the black powder burns around the hole in the carpet, wondering for a moment why anyone would want to shoot the floor.
Dismissing the thought as a waste of precious time, Trey made for the door, thinking that that particular mystery would have to wait to be solved – whatever was happening now, it was most likely happening downstairs, and he was not going to miss it!
Detective Mahey saw Car 135 coming by again, only this time it didn’t go by. This time it stopped right behind the auto he’d seen the other two cops park up outside the Tavistock. Two patrolmen got out and seemed to be examining the parked car’s registration plate. One of them checked something in his notepad; whatever he had written down, it obviously tallied with the car as the two men were nodding at each other and seemed quite excited. As Mahey watched he saw the doorman come out of the building, pointing back inside, and he reckoned that it was now about time to join the action, whatever it might be.
“Sarge?” Mahey nudged his sleeping partner.
“What?”
“Something’s up.”
Sergeant Lynott roused himself, yawning and rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Better be good, Mahey, I was in the middle of one helluva dream.”
Mahey nodded out of the car, in the direction of the Tavistock. “We got company.”
“What’s going on?”
“I thought you might want to find out.”
Sergeant Lynott peered out of the front windscreen, frowning as he saw two patrolmen follow the Tavistock’s doorman into the foyer.
“Damn right I do…whyn’t you wake me before?”
“Just happened, Sarge.”
The two men got out of the sedan, shook the kinks out of themselves and began walking over to the Tavistock. As they went, Mahey explained what he’d seen, deciding, under the circumstances, against mentioning anything about possibly hearing a gunshot. Sergeant Lynott, who would’ve probably given him hell if he’d woken him at the time, would no doubt now give him worse for not waking him.
The two men crossed the road and walked up to the Tavistock’s wide double doors, strolling in the foyer shoulder to shoulder. As they approached the two patrolmen, who had turned to look their way as they’d come in, Mahey saw someone hurtle into the rear of the lobby; it looked like another patrolman, and he presumed it was the one he’d previously seen with the plain-clothes guy. Closer up he seemed almost too young to be a cop. This newcomer skidded to a halt, like they did in the funny movies, a puzzled expression on his face. Mahey thought he looked like a scared boy, then he noticed he had a gun in his hand.
“That’s the guy!” the doorman shouted, excitedly jabbing his finger. “He’s one of ’em, like I told you!”
Instinctively everyone drew their pistols, someone shouting “Drop your weapon!”; Mahey could see that the kid was confused, his eyes flicking about all over the place like the steel ball in a game of bagatelle. But there was something odd about the picture, something not quite right, and it took Mahey a second to work out what it was.
“Sarge, he ain’t a cop, lookit the—” Mahey was about to say that the pistol was some .22 pop-gun, not a regulation issue Colt, and that this cop’s cap was too big, but he didn’t get the chance. The guy, whoever he was, made the very serious mistake of raising his gun, instead of dropping it like he’d been told.
The two patrolmen opened fire.
Out of habit, Trey had gone straight to the elevator and pressed the call button; cursing his own stupidity, he was about to go for the quicker option of the stairs when the doors opened. The car had been there all the time. He got in and thumbed the illuminated “L” button. The burglar must’ve taken the stairs, he reasoned, as this was likely not only to be the fastest but also the safest way down.
The elevator started its ten-floor descent. Trey
stood in the middle of the car, baseball bat gripped in his right hand, unconsciously tapping it on the palm of his left hand as he tried to figure out what the heck was going on. They’d been burgled, that much was obvious; he had seen the intruder with his own eyes. But who had fired the shot at the carpet? And while he could see that Mrs. Cooke charging at you swinging a meat cleaver was a pretty frightening sight, what was a policeman doing running from the apartment like a total scaredy-cat?
The elevator slowed, steel hawsers squealing on pulleys and counterweights being brought to a halt. There was a couple of seconds’ silence, during which Trey thought he heard people shouting, then the doors clunked opened to reveal the scene in the foyer.
It was a tableau, five people caught in various poses and all looking right at him. They were circled round a figure sprawled on the ground in a growing pool of deep, velvety-red liquid. The place smelled just like the hallway up in his apartment had, only more so, as if a lot of fireworks had gone off. It was a moment before Trey figured out there’d been a gun fight, his eye drawn to the bullet-riddled mirrors on the wall, smashed glass like ice all over the floor.
Confused, Trey stepped out of the elevator. The doors automatically closed behind him. The only person he recognized was Nestor, the night doorman, and he noticed that two of the men looking at him were in uniform, just like the person on the floor. The other two were in suits.
The spell cast by seeing the lift deliver a boy, dressed in crumpled clothes and mismatched shoes and carrying a baseball bat, broke.
“Get him out of here, Mahey.” Sergeant Lynott tapped his partner on the shoulder. “He shouldn’t see this.”
“Sure, boss…” Mahey, who had a couple of nephews about this boy’s age, put his pistol away as he stepped round the body on the marble floor. “Shooting must’ve woken him up.”
“You tell anyone else you see that everything’s under control down here,” Sergeant Lynott called after him. “Say we’ll be by in the morning to take statements, and there’s nothing to worry about, right?”
