Private Heat

by Robert E. Bailey

  The foot disappeared into the pale ether and the tire exploded. The ambulance heaved down, tilting left. Paulie thudded into the side of the vehicle and cursed all the way to the ground. He came to rest with his head behind the rim of the flattened tire. I scrambled to my feet and ran wide of the corner of the ambulance. Paulie’s hands and knees shuffled the gravel as he crawled to the front of the ambulance. I laid the long barrel of the big Smith at about the middle of Paulie’s profile. At just that spot two diffuse round flashes exploded. A whine and whir passed high and wide to my left, but lurching to duck caused me to muff the shot into the gravel behind Paulie. A rush of retreating steps, crisp on the gravel, gave way to muffled but fast footfalls on the grass.

  I ran to take a covered position around the driver’s side of the ambulance at the front bumper. In the fog the outhouse was a dark and two-dimensional apparition. I put a round low and left at the side of the outhouse. At the right edge and just about mid-height a ball of light barked. The sideview mirror above and behind me exploded in a shower of glass.

  Paulie ran, in muddled steps, toward the sound of the Escort’s running engine. He yelled, “Fuckin’ bitch is alive and she has a gun!”

  I pointed the K-frame toward the sound of Paulie’s escaping shuffle, raised the aim a little, thumbed the hammer, and squeezed the trigger. The hammer snapped down with a click. Misfire. I double-actioned the cylinder around as long as the target was available but no joy.

  Two dim flashes barked from well up in the fog. The radiator hissed and the headlight exploded. A car door opened and shut. I retreated to the driver’s door of the ambulance and climbed in. I threw the pistol on the passenger seat, started the engine, and pulled the shift lever into drive. The ambulance lurched to the left because of the flat tire, so I had to lean right and haul hard on the steering wheel. The windshield made a loud tick and turned into a web of a million cracks.

  I ran over something metallic. It scraped the gravel, hanging up here and there on the frame as it worked its way down the length of the vehicle. Something slapped the back wall of the cab and a fist-sized hole opened up in the windshield just where my head would have been if I were sitting straight up.

  A loud wumph, the kind you get when you light a gas oven, rocked the ambulance from the rear. A blur of red formed in the fog in front of me. Far to my left front came three quick and loud flashes. A car door slammed. The red blur, the Escort, mixed dust with fog running south down Shady Lane.

  Flames licked up around my driver’s window. I looked to my right. Flames lapped up on the passenger window as well. I floored the gas pedal and tried to drive out of the fire. No luck. The ambulance was the fire.

  Trees loomed up and I nailed the brakes. I was in the middle of the road. I put the shift lever in park and scampered over the console that divided the driver’s seat from the passenger seat—real hot on that side, too.

  I raised my feet and put my boots to the windshield. The already-shattered safety glass made a pile of angular glass pebbles that slid off the dash and onto the floor. I kicked until the way was clear, picked up the pistol, and crawled out onto the hood of the ambulance.

  A tide of flames rose around the front of the ambulance and washed up from the wheel wells, licking at the driver’s window. I climbed onto the flat roof of the square rear compartment, stepped over the light bar—the rollers were on, I must have hit the switch climbing over the console—and ran to the back. To my right I could now see the top half of Wendy’s Cadillac. She had the driver’s door open and crouched behind it with her .380 in both hands extended through the open window and resting on the sill. A trail of fire extended behind the ambulance. I swung myself down and into the back of the ambulance.

  Smoke drifted in through the side door that Paulie had left open in his haste to find cover. The sides of the vehicle were just warm to the touch. I lifted the shelf. Karen seemed not much the worse for wear. “Time to go,” I told her. She mumbled. I stood her up, draped her over my shoulder, and lurched out of the ambulance.

  Wendy stayed crouched behind the heavy door of her car and covered the ambulance. I made a fast, stiff-legged walk. Karen was heavier than she looked, and it seemed Wendy had stopped an awful long way up the road. I had to adjust the hospital gown to cover the disposable diaper the hospital had installed on Karen’s backside and thought that it was an odd thing to worry about when I half expected to catch a bullet in the back of the head.

  I approached the car. Wendy dove across the front seat and pushed the passenger door open. I flipped the back of the seat out of the way with my knee, ducked, and flopped Karen across the rear seat. Wendy sat up and banged her door shut. “I told you that I didn’t like the plan,” she said.

  “To quote my old drill sergeant,” I said, “you got to lead, follow, or get the hell out da way.” I pulled the door shut. “So let’s get the hell out of here before our pals get tired of laying up to ambush us. This is a short road with no outlet.”

  “Dead end?”

  “Not if we hurry.”

  Wendy pulled the shift lever into reverse and threw her right arm over the seat. “What’s the matter with Karen’s face? She looks like she has the measles.”

  I picked the .380 up off the seat. Wendy had already thumbed up the safety. “They pulled a plastic bag over her head and taped it tight around her neck.” We climbed up out of the fog. Below us you could make out only the top half of the ambulance. Flames rolled through the cab. The red stripes and gold leaf lettering on the box were already scorched off.

  “Hang on,” said Wendy. She cranked hard on the wheel. The car changed ends on the gravel. Karen rolled up against the seat back with the force of the spin and then flopped back down. Wendy pulled the shift lever into drive.

  Ron sat parked in his van, just off the blacktop on the shoulder at the top of the hill. He showed me a large shrug with spread arms and open palms. I flashed him an “okay” sign.

  Wendy turned right. When she had the rear wheels on the pavement she nailed the gas. Ron pulled out after us. A loud pang followed by a karump came from behind us. I turned to look. An orange fireball rose from the ambulance.

  “What was that?” asked Wendy.

  “My guess would be the oxygen bottle followed by the fuel tank.” I let down the window, fished the ignition keys to the ambulance out of my pocket, and gave them a heave into the passing greenery.

  “Art, this has gotten completely out of hand,” said Wendy.

  “Glad to see you, too,” I said. “I had this nasty suspicion I was alone.”

  “We followed them up to the restaurant. We pulled up next to the phones, but they went around back. So we started out across the parking lot on foot just as they roared out the exit. Ron said that they might be trying to clean themselves, and we should hang back a little. That’s when we switched keys.”

  “Man, you guys must have hung back a decade.”

  “We went by you the first time, got down to the cross street—you know, by that stone house—but we didn’t see anything so we started back. From the road all I could see was the top of that red car and that guy you called Chuck leaning across the roof shooting. When I turned down I could see the top of the ambulance surfacing through the fog as it came up the hill.”

  “You got here just in time,” I said. “I was afraid that I was going to have to plow them down with the ambulance.”

  “Why didn’t you shoot back?”

  “I did, but I ran dry. You know Ron and how he loves that damn six shooter—and one of the six was a misfire. I shot Paulie point blank, he should have been a pile of meat.”

  “You didn’t miss completely. I saw Paulie limp up to the car. His face was covered with blood. So were his coveralls.”

  “He wasn’t hurt too bad,” I said. “He did a good job of shooting back and scrambling out of there.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “If we’re lucky they’ll think Karen was in the ambulance when it went up.”
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br />   “They’ve got to be wondering who was doing the shooting I did,” said Wendy.

  “They’ll figure me for that,” I said. “Paulie yelled something about Karen shooting at him from the ambulance.”

  “Maybe they think she’s wandering around out there in the woods by the boat launch.”

  “No way they could hang around and look for her. By now the boat launch is crawling with cops and firemen. Smart money would hole up, wait for the news reports, and hope that her remains are found in the ambulance.”

  “How long?” said Wendy.

  “Depends on how bad Paulie is hurt.”

  “You think they know where to look?”

  “Our address was on my booking sheet. In any case the State Police Private Detective Licensing Board would give my address to a police officer in a heartbeat.”

  “Maybe they’ll just back off,” said Wendy. “We know who they are and what they tried to do.”

  “What can we prove? They are sure to have an alibi, and any physical proof went up with the ambulance. Karen was out of it. It’s a PI’s word against the cops.”

  “They framed Randy for the accountant. What’s left?”

  “Karen,” I said. “And we don’t know all the players. The buzzards are circling an eleven-million-dollar carcass. Maybe some of the buzzards think their pals would rather die than go hungry.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “Find Chuck and Paulie and watch ’em. They can lead us to the other people, and if they start for our place, we’ll know.”

  We rode in silence until Wendy pulled around the drive at the house and stopped by the front door. She made me wait by the car while she went inside to get a robe for Karen. Ron passed the end of the drive and continued east down the road.

  “Where’s Ron?” asked Wendy when she appeared with her giant fluffy white robe.

  “He took a tour through the neighborhood,” I said. I opened the door of the car and wrestled Karen out. Wendy got Karen’s arms in the sleeves while I held her up. I had to steady her but I wasn’t supporting her full weight.

  “You’d better not be looking at anything, mister,” said Wendy.

  I closed my eyes.

  “That’s better, now turn her around.”

  I had to open one eye. Wendy wrapped the robe and tied it in place with the cloth belt. “You want her in the bedroom?”

  “Put her on the sofa,” said Wendy. “I want her where I can watch her and the windows at the same time.”

  Ben snatched the front door open. “What’s going on?”

  “Our house guest has returned.”

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  “She’s still kind of out of it,” I said.

  “What’s the matter with her face?”

  “Somebody tried to choke and suffocate her.”

  “Shouldn’t she be in the hospital? Aren’t you going to call the police?”

  “That’s a little complicated. Right now I need you to hold the screen door open, and then go down to the gun safe and bring up that short Smith Riot Pump and a box of four shot. I want my glow-in-the-dark Commander, too.”

  Ben shoved the door open, I carried Karen in, and Wendy was a step behind me. “Ron’s here,” said Ben as he let the screen door fall shut and hustled down the stairs.

  I put Karen on the recliner and adjusted it to about halfway down because of the way they had her propped up at the hospital. Wendy got the telephone and pecked out a number.

  “Walt,” she said, “this is Wendy. I want you to call off the plastic injection job tonight. … I know, I saw that in your report, but I think it will keep for a day. … We have a situation, I need you to bring your Remington and your cell phone. … I’ll explain when you get here … it’s a federal witness … and call Denny and tell him to come with you and bring his sidearm.” Wendy hung up.

  Ron breezed in the door and said, “What the hell happened?”

  I recapped for him and added, “Wendy just called in Walt and Denny from her crew.” Ben returned with the hardware in time to catch the story, and his eyes got huge.

  “We got to give Chuck and Paulie to the heat,” said Ron.

  “What’s the complicated part?” asked Ben.

  “If we give up Chuck and Paulie right now, we also give up Karen. They’ll put her somewhere where the players we don’t know can get to her and we can’t protect her.”

  I gave Ron back his sidearm. “Thanks,” I said. “I shot it dry and you have a misfire in there.”

  “How many did you get?”

  “Five.”

  “That’s all there was,” said Ron. “I carry it with the hammer down on an empty cylinder.”

  “Silly me,” I said. “I was glad to have the five.”

  Wendy started thumbing bunny shot into the Smith.

  “We got slugs and buckshot downstairs,” said Ben. “Maybe I should get some of that for Mom.”

  I took the satin nickel Colt from Ben, slammed a magazine home, and put it in my holster. “Nope,” I said. “Close in, you get a better spread with small shot and the holes in the sheet rock are easier to spackle. I got to change my shirt.”

  “You’ve got mud on your pants and jacket,” said Ben.

  In the bedroom I found that I needed a complete change of clothing; muddy river water had seeped through to my underwear. I pulled on clean whites and selected a blue serge suit and a pale blue shirt. The only tie I had that matched my suit was a clip-on, but it came with a neat pocket square. Ben came at the door with concern wizened into his young face.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “Be eyes for your mother.”

  “Good,” he said. “I was afraid that you were going to tell me to go somewhere.”

  “If you went somewhere, your mother and I would be worried about you and the people you were with.”

  “You mean, like, chop-socky movie script number one.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You know, like they want the guy to throw the fight, so they kidnap his kid, or his sister, or something like that.”

  “If ’throwing the fight’ covers betraying our friends, I’d say that was an astute observation.”

  “What should I tell Daniel?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said and twisted my head. “You like to tell Daniel what to do.”

  Ben made one pulse of his eyebrows and smiled.

  “Tell him the same thing that I told you,” I said and put a hand on his shoulder, “and tell him I said it. Also tell him that I said to park his car on the grass just off the gravel and pointed out of the driveway. Tell him to keep his keys in his right-hand pants pocket. I want you to get the spare keys for Daniel’s car off the key rack and put them in your right-hand pants pocket. If you hear a shot fired, you are both to lie on the floor wherever you are. If you start running around, you’ll just run into trouble. Last of all, do whatever your mother tells you. This is not a ‘gee, Mom, but’ situation.”

  “This should be way cool, you know, but it’s, well, kinda weird,” said Ben, his face flushed.

  “Nothing wrong with knowing when things are weird,” I said and shook Ben’s shoulder. “A good sense of weird is what keeps you from taking a nap on the railroad tracks. I wish that my weird antenna had been up a little higher when I took this case.”

  “But Mom’s tough,” said Ben, “and you trust her.”

  “All of that,” I said, “and one more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Now she’s mad at these guys. You can bet that I’m going to knock before I open the door.” We laughed. I let go of Ben’s shoulder and shrugged into my jacket.

  In the living room Karen’s eyes were closed. I watched her breathe. She moved her head from side to side.

  “I’m not real sure about this,” said Wendy.

  “Rent’s only paid until noon,” I said. “Pack her a lunch and show her the highway.”

  Wendy hammered me lig
htly on the chest with her fist. “I’m serious,” she said. “I’m not a doctor; I don’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t put a bag over her head,” I said and shrugged. “She survived that once today so I don’t think she’s all that fragile. Don’t let anyone come in and shoot her.”

  “Same old stuff.” said Wendy. “You leave me here with the smelly diapers while you go out and have all the fun.”

  “I’m going to stay until Walt and Denny show up,” I said and pulled her sweater together. “Maybe you ought to go put the rest of your clothes on. I find this all very distracting.”

  “Yeah, you like it,” said Wendy.

  “Yes, I do.”

  14

  “That Walker guy. What’s his name—Walt? He didn’t look too convinced,” said Ron as he turned out of the drive and headed up toward the blacktop.

  “It’s the glass eye,” I said. “He never really seems to look straight at you. The eye is the reason he’s retired. He’s worked for Wendy for four years. Doesn’t need the money, just wants to stay active.”

  “Hard to be a SWAT sniper with a glass eye?”

  “Not really. It wasn’t his master eye. Walt’s left-handed. He travels all over the state to compete in the high-power matches—has a house full of trophies.”

  “It’s his ’sense of duty’ that I’m worried about,” said Ron.

  “He was in uniform for seventeen years. He’ll wait until he has all the facts before he feels the need to unburden himself. Until then, lying up in the weeds with his Remington is going to seem like more fun than trying to catch Joe Shit stealing rolls of toilet paper in his lunch bucket. The one I’m worried about is Denny Parker.”

  “He seemed enthusiastic,” said Ron. “Anybody who wants to get to Wendy is definitely gonna have to go through him.”