Private Heat

by Robert E. Bailey

  She came back wearing a giant gray sweatshirt with the arms torn off at the shoulders—had to be Randy’s. It hung so low on her body that you had to check twice to be certain that she was still wearing her shorts, such as they were. I shook my head.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing, it’s fine,” I said and laughed in spite of myself.

  Her face played the innocent, but in her eyes—mischief.

  “Turn off all the lights in the house except the light in the master bathroom,” I said, “and turn on the hot tub.” I put my sport coat back on, locked the front door, and closed the window I had opened to air the room out.

  We sat in darkened silence, her on the sofa and me on the chair. In less than an hour my eyes adjusted and familiar shapes climbed out of the gloom.

  At a quarter after eleven Ron fired up the radio. “You’re getting cruised,” he said. “Same Ford Escort, but this time I think there’s a back seat passenger.”

  I walked up to the door. The red Ford passed slowly from the north. The shotgun rider rubbernecked the house. “That’s a four on the car. I can’t make the back seat.”

  About three houses past, the Escort showed brake lights and stopped. Someone got out. “Heads up,” Ron said. “It’s showtime.” The radio went silent for what seemed like far too long, then he said, “You’re definitely getting prowled.”

  I heard someone go over the chain-link fence on the south side of the house. “Give us a nine-one-one call,” I said.

  “That’s a four,” Ron answered.

  Our prowler tried the windows and doors on the back of the house. I heard the outside garage door open and picked up the telephone in the kitchen—dead. I took Karen by the arm, led her to the master bedroom, and locked the door behind us. I covered my right eye with my hand, to save my night vision, took two pillows off the bed, threw them into the Jacuzzi, and covered them with red striped towels from the towel rack. I locked the door and pulled it shut. Light peeked under the door.

  The door from the garage to the kitchen splintered. I pushed a dresser in front of the bedroom door. Karen helped me T-bone it with the vanity. I led her to the wall next to the slider and put our backs against the wall with Karen farthest from the door. I drew my sidearm and thumbed the hammer. Karen’s body made a jolt like she was shaking off a chill. With my left hand I gave her a reassuring pat on the forearm, then reached across my body and unlocked the slider. I pushed it open about two feet, turned back to the wall, and waited. Nobody came in.

  I listened for the rustle of a nylon jacket, heavy breathing, whispered plans—all the mistakes of amateurs—but heard only the drone of crickets in the back yard. Inside the house I could hear heavy but cautious footfalls approaching the bedroom door from the hallway, and then Randal Talon was pounding and cursing at the bedroom door.

  I crouched, snapped up the safety, and dived, low, out of the sliding door with my weapon in both hands. Lying on the deck, I thumbed the safety off and rolled, covering first the south end of the house, then the north. I was alone. Two shots exploded in the hallway. Karen screamed. I scrambled to my feet, reached through the door, and hauled her out by the arm. Police Officer Randal Talon attacked the bedroom door like a tackling sled. I pulled the curtain closed and eased the slider shut.

  Karen made stiff-legged zombie steps, and I had to tug hard to hustle her along the back of the house as I walked backward toward the north end of the house with my pistol pointed at the door we’d just exited. Karen held her hand over her mouth. Her eyes gaped all whites but for little dots in the middle. She didn’t seem to be leaking, and I didn’t smell any blood.

  At the back wall of the garage I steered Karen down the wooden steps of the deck and into the yard. We cut the north corner wide so that I could cover the back of the house and still be sure that we didn’t walk into a surprise party lurking out of sight along the north wall of the residence.

  The distance to the sidewalk amounted to only about thirty or forty feet, but walking backward and Karen’s halting gait made the trip longer than I wanted it to be. We stopped and crouched next to my car while I surveyed the street for Randy’s playmates. They had left Randy to play this hand alone.

  I keyed the radio. “Come and get us, seven. We’re walking north toward your location.”

  I heard Ron’s van fire up and thought about staying covered by the car until he arrived, but Randy had left the garage door open, creating a cavern of darkness. I grabbed Karen by the hand and led her north up the sidewalk, away from the garage.

  I found Randy’s pals. At the corner of Burton and Union I could see a patrol car stopped with the rollers on and the red Escort stopped next to it. I kept the pistol in my hand, but with my arm straight and close to my side. Ron pulled on his head lights and eased his van up to us.

  A good watcher deactivates the door frame light switches in his surveillance vehicle so that he doesn’t get toasted on a nighttime surveillance. Ron was a very good watcher.

  We climbed in through the sliding back door of the van and sat in the rear seats. Behind us, in the cargo area, Ron’s video equipment was set up and strapped in place to keep it from crashing around. I pulled the door shut and slid aside the heavy curtain that concealed the rear of the van from folks who might want to look in through the windshield. “This is Karen Smith,” I said. I pointed my weapon at the floor between my knees and eased the hammer down. “Take us around the block.”

  Karen finally pulled her hand away from her face. “I’m not supposed to leave the house,” she said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “The telephone line is cut.”

  By the time we rounded the block, the scout car had arrived at the curb in front of the house. Ron drove past his old surveillance position, parked south of the house, and turned off his lights. The patrol officer stood on the porch in front of the door. Several distinct gunshots cracked from inside the house. The patrol officer fled the porch for the cover of his vehicle. Squatting, he opened the door, let the window down, and snaked out the microphone. Peeking up over the front deck, just by the door post, he—I have little doubt—called the cavalry.

  Ron still had the nine-one-one operator on the line. He informed her that the occupants were outside the residence and only the prowler was inside.

  “Tell them that the door into the house from the garage has been forced, and that the sliding door at the south end of the house is unlocked,” I said.

  Ron conveyed the information, but had to repeat it three times. The fusillade of shots from inside the house stopped. The ratty red Escort screeched up. Chuck and Paulie bailed out and dramatically covered the house with their pistols while hunkering around the corners of the vehicle in the darkness.

  “Take us around again,” I said.

  Ron hung up on the emergency operator. “Ditsy,” he said and shook his head. He pulled his lights on and eased us to the other side of the block.

  “Pull up to the white house,” I said. “Any port looks good in a storm.” From our earlier recon of the neighborhood, I knew that the white house was located directly behind Karen’s. Ron pulled up to the curb. I leaned up between the seats and pushed the front passenger door open.

  “Paulie?” a harshly whispered voice challenged from the shrubbery next to the house.

  “What the hell are you doing?” asked Karen in a shrill and panicked voice.

  I swung my left arm around Karen and clamped my hand over her mouth.

  “Friend of Paulie’s,” said Ron. “Hurry up!”

  Randy bolted from his cover and staggered a crazy-legged sprint to the truck, pulling off a black ski mask as he ran.

  “Thank God, man,” he said as he bailed into the front seat and pulled the door shut. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  I let go of Karen and she shrieked.

  “What the fuck?” Randy said, and turned to face the back seat. He found the muzzle of my .45 in his nostril and Ron’s .357 in his ear.

  “Yo
u’re under arrest, asshole,” I said. It was Randy’s line, but he reeked of high-octane alcohol and I doubt he appreciated the irony. He drew a sharp breath, closed his eyes, and pushed his torso forward. I racked my hammer. Randy froze.

  “Ron and I have a bet,” I said. “Ron says you hear the bang. I say you don’t. If you hear the bang, just blink twice while you’re checking out. You gotta concentrate. Ron’s oh and three, and looking to get even.”

  “He’ll hear this one,” said Ron as he cocked the hammer back on his K-frame.

  Karen rolled into a whimpering fetal ball and attempted to make herself small against her side of the van.

  Ron patted Randy down with his free hand, then looked at me and shrugged.

  “Where’s the gun?” I said. “You better not have dropped it in some kid’s sandbox!”

  “The bedroom,” he said. “I dropped it in the bedroom!”

  “Turn around easy,” I said.

  Ron backed off the big Smith, but only about six inches.

  “Slowly,” I said.

  Randy eased back around into the seat. Ron hit the electric door lock with his left elbow.

  “Hook up your seat belt,” I said. “It’s the law!”

  Randy hooked up.

  “Hook your hands under the lap belt,” I told him and switched my pistol to my left hand. I reached up with my right and pulled the shoulder belt down to its full extent so that it was tight across Randy’s chest and I could feel him fidget. I pushed the muzzle of the auto loader into the seat back.

  “Now, by my calculation, the entire night shift is on the way.” In fact, we could see the rollers turning off Burton and onto Paris Street. Ron switched the K-frame to his left hand and lowered it to his lap, keeping it pointed in Randy’s direction. “We’re just going to ease on down the street. If any of your mess-kit buddies stop us, we’re just going to turn you over. Then, you won’t have a chance to explain just what the fuck you thought you were doing.”

  “I don’t have to say shit,” said Randy.

  “You don’t have to say shit to the po-lease,” I said. “And here they come, so if you want, you can start not talking to them right now.”

  6

  “I came to kill you,” said Police Officer Randal Talon.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re screwing my wife.”

  Half the town was apparently screwing Randal Talon’s wife, but, allowing for how truly deafening it is to discharge a big-bore handgun inside an automobile, and given how juicy and spongy people are—you never really get it all cleaned up, and then it starts to stink—I said, “I wasn’t screwing your wife. Who told you that?”

  The rollers blew by us as if we were invisible.

  “Chuck and Paulie told me what you said to Franky.”

  “I never had a conversation with Sergeant Franklin in the presence of your pals Chuck and Paulie.”

  “Franky told them,” said Randy. “You bragged about it.”

  Karen uncoiled into her seat. “Chuck and Paulie always play you for a sucker,” she said and then leaned forward. “What makes you think I’d fuck some four-eyed geezer?”

  Ron snorted.

  “Right,” I said, “I think. Anyway. Who gave you the cold piece?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do,” I said. “Your service piece was last seen in the hands of Sergeant Franklin, and you sure as hell wouldn’t drop a registered sidearm.”

  Randy was silent.

  We had rounded the block and Ron pulled up to the curb a half-block short of the residence.

  “There they are,” I said, “the guys you’re protecting. They said they’d come and pick you up, right?”

  Randy shook his head in the negative.

  “Come on,” I said. “They slashed my tires to make sure I wouldn’t be leaving in a hurry.” I let the revelation hover and then sent the roundhouse after the jab. “Then they drove you out here and dropped you off. We know that. We saw that. We filmed that, you dipshit.” I gave the seat belt a little tug.

  Randy kept wagging his head in the negative but added a groan this time.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “When Franklin got back to the station he had a little powwow with the watch commander. Next thing you know, you’ve got the night off. Chuck and Paulie meet you in the parking lot and you end up in their car. They’ve got two bottles, a front-seat bottle and a backseat bottle.” I allowed another short pause then asked, “How am I doing, sport?”

  Randy nodded yes this time.

  “So they fired you up. Some four-eyed, low-life PI was doing your old lady and laughing about it to Franky. That’s what they told you, and ‘a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.’ Some greasy Private Dick shoots your face full of gas, and now, ‘a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.’”

  Randy was catatonic.

  “So they fish out a cold piece, and then drop you off. They say, ‘We’ll pick you up when you’re done, man,’ but they don’t. They’re over here playing cops and robbers, and you’re one block over, standing in the bushes with your dick in your hand. You can hear the sirens coming. You know they are coming for you, so you ask yourself, ‘What am I doing here, man? I’m a cop!’”

  Randy made a grunt and an affirmative bob of his head.

  “I’ll tell you what you’re doing here. Do you want to know what you’re doing here?”

  He nodded.

  “Words, man,” I said. “You want me to help? Talk!”

  He answered. One word. A word that sounded as if he’d torn it, bleeding, from some dark recess in his soul. “Yes.”

  “You’re getting fitted for a frame. The picture is this: Officer Randal Talon, ‘Murderer in the First Degree.’ You whacked a PI because you thought he was boffing your old lady—same reason you whacked the accountant. See the symmetry? See the poetry?”

  Randy nodded once and said, “Yes.”

  “The throwaway? It was a twenty-two, right?” I asked. Okay, speculation is dangerous. If you ask twenty questions, you should know the answer to nineteen. The shots I heard were more crack than bang so guessing a twenty-two wasn’t a long stretch.

  “Yes,” said Randy.

  “What was the accountant shot with?”

  “Twenty-two,” he said.

  “Are your fingerprints on it?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “Did you load the weapon? Check the magazine? Anything?”

  “No,” said Randy. “I wore gloves. It was already loaded. I just racked the slide, but I had gloves on.”

  Ron’s head swiveled with a snap. “What kind of twenty-two?”

  “I don’t know,” Randy said and shrugged like he meant to say, “What the hell difference does it make?”

  “Big one or little one?” asked Ron.

  “Little one.”

  “Some liquor-store special?”

  “No, it was a German something.”

  “Walther?”

  “It was dark in the car and dark in the house.” Randy was silent. Then he said, “It wasn’t shaped like a Walther.”

  I waited for Ron to ask another question, but he just shrugged at me, so I asked Randy, “So which one of your good friends gave you the cold piece?”

  “Paulie. He said he took it off a crack dealer and kept it for a spare. He gave it to me in an evidence bag.”

  Karen’s face was all eyes and arched eyebrows. “Paulie?”

  We had police cars like ants on a jelly bean. They covered the house with spotlights and headlights. Sergeant Franklin had arrived and was on the loudspeaker. “Inside the house … you are surrounded … put down your weapon … come out with your hands on your head … and you will not be harmed.”

  “So how about it, Karen?” I asked. “This what you and your uncle had in mind? Me and Randy faced off like a couple of pit bulls? Then you tell the U.S. attorney that Randy’s the shooter, and that he had the money. Either way it goes, you w
in. I get whacked, and Randy looks guilty. Randy gets whacked, and bingo, you keep the dough and Randy can’t tell a different story.”

  “No,” said Karen, shaking her head with her chin on her chest. “Uncle Martin said you wouldn’t kiss up to the police, so he hired you because, Randy, he”—Karen launched herself in a fury of wild swinging hands, smacking Randy as best she could around the seat—“he … he beat the shit out of me.” Angry tears and splattered sweat showered the inside of the van. “And you shot … you … you bastard … you shot.”

  Randy sat there and took it like flea bites. While Karen was venting, several unmarked police sedans arrived. Black-clad officers threw open the doors and went straight to the trunks of their vehicles. They donned their British Special Air Service wanna-be suits—the black helmet, mask, and ballistic gear made to look so dashing by the crack counterterrorist unit—and formed up behind the cordon of vehicles.

  Sergeant Franklin was back on the horn. “In the house … we know you have no hostages … this is your last chance … lay down your weapon and come out … you will not be harmed.”

  Uniformed officers started rousting the neighbors, most in nightclothes, and driving them away. Karen wouldn’t quit; I had to board check her off Randy and back to her side of the seat.

  “We have to turn this meatball over to the cops before half the city is playing musical chairs in their pj’s,” I said.

  “You said that you were going to help me!” said Randy.

  “Yeah, you never heard that line before, right?”

  “I’ll tell them you’re lying!”

  “Of course you will.”

  “I’m a cop! They’ll believe me!” He left off the nasty comments about PIs but they were implicit in his tone.

  “We have you!” said Ron. “We have the videotape, and I use a voice-activated tape recorder for surveillance notes.”

  “You didn’t read me my rights,” said Randy.

  “Sorry, pal,” I said. “The Fifth Amendment only protects you from the government, not your fellow citizens.”

  “You and your pals are gonna hate not being cops,” said Ron.