The Assassins Gallery - [Dr Mikhal Lammeck 01]

by David L. Robbins

  Two cars running south were coming his way, barreling in the open, wrong lanes. Lammeck saw one green Packard, chasing a burgundy Nash.

  He glanced back to his car. There wasn’t time to move it into their path.

  He stepped in the middle of the northbound lanes to shut off the rest of the traffic. More horns blared at him. Then he turned to the fast-approaching Nash and held up his palm.

  Both engines could be heard howling from two blocks away, even over the angry honks from the blockaded cars. The Nash was going too fast to take any turn off New Hampshire. It would come through where Lammeck stood. Or it would stop.

  He flexed his knees. He would not die for Roosevelt.

  The Nash showed no signs of slowing. Drivers on both sides of Lammeck altered their shouts from curses to warnings. “Hey, buddy! Get out of the way!” “Hey!”

  The Nash tore into the block where Lammeck stood. Dag’s car was hot on its tail. A man drove the Nash. Through its windshield, Lammeck could see eight white knuckles on the steering wheel. Beside him sat a dark-haired woman.

  Lammeck held his ground.

  The Nash hit its brakes, tires screaming. Smoke boiled from the wheel wells. But its momentum was too great. The car skidded past, as Lammeck leaped right, out of the roadway. Landing heavily on his side, he smelled burning rubber.

  Dag’s Packard skidded past. The green car screeched into the cloud of the Nash’s straining brakes. Twenty feet past Lammeck, both cars jumped the curbside and crashed through a row of hedges. The sound of wrecked metal and crunching glass jolted Lammeck off the ground and got him running with others to the tangled, mashed cars.

  By the time he reached where they’d come to rest in the middle of a lawn, Dag was already on his feet and handling his sidearm. Blood trickled from a gash in his forehead as he waved everyone away, cursing.

  “Stay back, dammit! Lammeck, keep ‘em back!”

  All the bystanders and Samaritans came to a stop; Dag’s demeanor, his handgun, and the blood on him made him commanding. Lammeck approached the Nash ten steps behind Dag. Steam hissed from both cars, shrouding the scene. Lammeck looked about for something that had been broken off, a tree limb or shard of metal, something he could use as a weapon. He found nothing, so he undid his belt. He knew a dozen ways to defend himself, or kill, with a strap. He’d taught Dag all of them.

  Dag halted several feet from the smashed driver’s window of the Nash. The man behind the wheel was slumped forward, his face twisted away. The passenger beside him whimpered; she was hurt. Dag screamed, “Get your hands where I can see them. Now!” Only the crying woman obeyed. The driver didn’t move.

  Approaching the stove-in door, Dag kept his pistol trained. He yanked the door open to the screech of bent metal.

  The driver fell out, limp as a fish. Dag followed him with the nose of the pistol. The man wore a Georgetown University sweater.

  Dag muttered, “What the fuck?”

  Lammeck edged closer. Lying on the cold grass, with a lump on his forehead that would take a while to go down, was a boy. Eighteen, maybe, nineteen at most.

  Blood oozed between the fingers of the simpering woman, from her busted nose. Dag aimed his gun straight at her shining eyes. Lammeck leaned into the open car door, his hands ready with the belt.

  She wore a sweater from a local high school, Western. She shook her head, pleading with Dag not to shoot.

  Dag stiffened, then lowered his gun, disgusted. Lammeck stood there with his belt dangling in his hands, as if he might spank these two children.

  Dag toed the cold-cocked kid on the grass.

  “Wake up, asshole,” he said, prodding the boy in the ribs until he heard a moan. Lammeck threaded his belt through the loops of his trousers. He walked around the passenger side of the car. With a finger he made a spinning motion to get the terrified girl to lower her window.

  “Shut up,” he said before she could whine through her dripping fingers. Blood dotted her Western sweater.

  “One thing,” Lammeck said curtly, leaning on the windowsill. “Where did you get this car?”

  The girl looked away, to where the boy struggled to sit up. Dag kneeled to put an arm under his back. The boy set a hand to the growing bump on his forehead, then fell back into the grass. Lammeck was certain Dag was asking the same question, in an even more vexed tone of voice.

  “Where?” Lammeck insisted.

  The girl sniveled into her palm. She squeezed shut her bleeding nostrils.

  “We... We found the keys in it.”

  On the other side of the car, Dag cursed so loud it echoed. Lammeck almost laughed.

  * * * *

  Washington, D.C.

  JUDITH HAD NO TROUBLE finding him. Because he was a bully, he did not like to be defied. And because he thought his target was weak, he followed through on his threat.

  When she left the Tench home, she spotted him. A parked Ford only a block away issued a wisp of smoke from a window cracked an inch. From the back of the bus riding east into the District, he was easy to keep an eye on in traffic. Once she was in her apartment, she waited to let him get into position, to freeze a bit in the falling temperatures. She put her hair up under a black watch cap, donned a dark jacket and pants and black leather gloves, then slipped out a window on the unlit side of her apartment. She found him leaning on a porch rail one block away from her front door. The dot of a cigarette betrayed him in the inky alley.

  She ducked into the shadowy space below an outdoor flight of wooden steps and for three hours watched him watch her dimly lit apartment. He ran through two packs of cigarettes and stomped his feet, blowing into his thick mitts. She heard him curse to himself. When a citizen of the alley, an older black man, walked up to inquire what he was doing there, he flashed a badge and said, “Buzz off. Police business.”

  Four hours after nightfall, he ground out a last cigarette and turned away. Judith moved out behind him. She stayed in the shadows, closing the gap to him while he walked down the center of the alley. He was a large blunt thing among the smaller people and humble homes here. He took no precautions, never looked around him. Judith knew this sort of man, arrogant because of his strength.

  She trailed him out to New York Avenue. She would not take him in the alley; the landlord’s boy had already fallen there, and she was careful never to shed blood in any single location more than once. The big man strolled west, his long coat billowing at his knees, into the block between Fifth and Sixth. He headed toward the parking lot of Precinct No. 2. Judith quickened her pace, but not so much that he might hear her footfalls. The tarmac was empty and the police parking lot, with its scattering of police and private vehicles, badly lit.

  He moved into the lot. She wended behind him, careful of silence and confident he was not vigilant. She closed in, four hushed steps behind. He stopped at a sedan. When he dug his right hand into his pants pocket for his keys, she struck.

  The first knife she drove into the flesh beneath his right shoulder blade. She left her feet to punch the six-inch Filipino Kriss blade deep, to freeze this arm away from the pistol harnessed under his left armpit. The cop grunted and staggered, the knife in his back like a dart. He spun, awkward with the right hand trapped in his pocket. Judith dodged a wild blow from his left arm, then in the same instant popped up in front of him, her chest against his, pressing the point of another six-inch dagger into his chin.

  She hissed, “Make one sound and this goes into your brain.”

  He attempted to lower his chin to look straight into her eyes, but found the knife preventing it. Gazing down at her past his cheeks curled in pain, he clamped his mouth shut and inhaled shakily through his nostrils, shocked and afraid.

  He stumbled backward to lean against the driver’s side of his car. She laid close on him, sticking the curvy Kriss blade into the stubble below his jaw, just short of drawing blood. With her left hand she dug under his armpit for the pistol, an S&W revolver. She tucked the gun into her own waistband.

>   He grimaced. The knife in his shoulder blade was against the car roof. He opened his lips slowly, quaking, to speak.

  “T... take my wallet. Take what you want.”

  Judith said nothing.

  “Look, I’m a cop. You won’t get away with this.”

  Judith answered, “Do you know who I am?”

  The man’s face constricted; his breathing spurted while he tried to identify his assailant. She relaxed the knife under his chin an inch so he could lower his eyes to see her. There was no sign of recognition in his eyes. She pulled off the watch cap and let her hair tumble down.

  “What the fuck?” He blinked, incredulous. “You’re the fucking maid.”

  This was all Judith needed to hear. She was just the maid.

  She stepped back to straighten her arm, to speed the stroke. She did it forehand, palm up, with a follow-through so powerful she turned her back and had to look at him over her dipped right shoulder. His mouth worked but he did not make a sound. Blood gurgled out of the long incision across his throat, bubbling on air leaking from his severed windpipe to resemble a necklace of scarlet pearls. He could only clutch at his throat with the one hand, blood dripping between his fingers. Sinking to his knees, the cop did not take his terrified eyes off her. Judith ignored his wide final stare and moved behind him to pluck the blade from his shoulder blade. She took his wallet before he fell over.

  She would throw the pistol into the Potomac later. She removed the cash from the billfold and left the emptied wallet in a garbage can where it could be found.

  * * * *

  I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made

  —FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

  * * * *

  * * * *

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  March 1

  Aurora Heights

  Arlington, Virginia

  MRS. P. ENJOYED THE ride to the Tench home. The entire trip from the Chevrolet dealership in Falls Church, the old woman giggled and slapped her own big knees and Judith’s.

  “You paid de man cash,” she declared, shaking her head as though she’d witnessed a marvel. “He ‘bout soiled hisself when you did that. Mm-mm-mm. Five hundred dollar.”

  Judith pulled to the curb beneath the great bare oak in front of the house. She set the parking brake and reached for the ignition.

  “No, no, honey, not yet. Let it run one mo’ minute. I can’t get enough of that sound. A colored girl paid de man cash.”

  Judith sat back and let the car idle. She tapped the gas pedal once to race the engine for Mrs. P., who whooped as though she’d been tickled.

  “You ‘member de way he kep’ callin’ everything ‘baby’?” Mrs. P. did an impersonation of the salesman, thickening her already husky voice: “ ‘This baby over here, she do this, and this baby over here, she do that. This baby really go, that baby only got ten thousand miles on her.’ Baby everything.”

  Judith nodded.

  Mrs. P. smacked Judith’s knee one more time. “I’d sho’ like to see the pee-pee that can make a baby dis big!” The old woman gaped her mouth wide in shock at her own vulgarity, hacking up a cackle that sounded like she was gagging. Judith laughed along. It felt good to have ridden that public bus into Virginia for the last time.

  She cut the engine. Mrs. P. sighed. They got out of the seven-year-old used car, deep blue with cloth seats, a big motor, a radio, and a heater. Feet on the ground, they were maids again. The old woman’s demeanor cooled with the first step across the lawn.

  “Desiree.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “That aunt of yours died up in Boston. You say she sent you de money jus’ befo’ she passed?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How come you ain’t gone to no funeral?”

  Judith grinned privately. This old woman was canny and watchful as any detective.

  “She died last summer, Mrs. P. The money got held up by lawyers. I just got it last Friday when I went to the post office.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  They reached the front steps. Mrs. P. dug in her purse for the key. Mr. Tench was traveling in the South this week, inspecting naval bases in Norfolk, Charleston, and Jacksonville. His wife had left yesterday to join him, to stop in on relatives in South Carolina, then the pair would go on to Florida for another week of sun.

  The old woman unlocked the door and pushed inside. She did not glance at Judith while she hung her coat on the hall tree.

  “Sent you cash, did them lawyers?”

  Judith moved in front of Mrs. P. to face her. She paused while the old woman hoisted a skeptical eyebrow. Judith squared her shoulders and looked down at her inquisitive American friend.

  “Money order.”

  Mrs. P. breathed deeply, as though smelling a pie to test if it was done.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  She walked away, patting Judith’s shoulder as she departed. She mumbled, “Girl, girl, girl,” and went to the kitchen. Judith suspected that the old woman believed the car was bought for her by Mr. Tench. She did nothing to dispel that notion.

  Judith worked the rest of the morning dusting and sweeping. Mrs. P. scrubbed the kitchen floor and appliances. They labored in different parts of the house, but Mrs. P. made lunch and they ate together, as they always did. The old woman made no more mention of the car, chattering instead about a new movie she’d seen, House of Dracula, where all three of the great monsters—Dracula, Wolf Man, and Frankenstein—show up at the same time.

  After lunch, Judith did the last of her chores distractedly. The mail was expected by one o’clock. Today, for an unknown reason, the postman came late, just as the several clocks in the house began their quiet grindings that foretold the chiming for two o’clock. As the bells tolled, the mail slot creaked open and closed. A handful of letters tumbled to the hall floor.

  Judith put down her dust rag. She walked into the kitchen to find Mrs. P., to tell her good-bye, and found her at the sink. She kissed the old lady on the cheek. Mrs. P. pretended to snub the buss at first, but let it land.

  “You know what you doin’,” the woman huffed and went back to wringing a dishcloth. During their first days of working together in this household, Mrs. P. had never asked why Judith left promptly each day at two. At the beginning of February she had not inquired why Judith stopped that practice, and did not ask yesterday why it had resumed. Judith assumed Mrs. P. came up with her own reasons, the way the old lady did for everything about Desiree that did not fit. Today, Mrs. P. clucked her tongue, wagged her old head, and disapproved quietly of one more immoral and exciting thing Desiree must be doing.

  Judith went to the hall. Snatching her coat and handbag off the tree, she bent for the day’s mail. Rifling through it, she found what she was looking for. She stuffed one envelope in her pocket. The rest of the Tench mail she stacked neatly on the hall table. Then she left.

  * * * *

  Washington, D.C.

  MRS. BEACH PEERED OVER her glasses at Lammeck. “Good afternoon, Hardy. Where’s Laurel?”

  Lammeck eased the door shut. He pointed a finger like a little pistol. “Nice, Mrs. Beach. Very funny.”

  She blinked at him, expressionless. “I’m sorry you think so. It was intended as withering sarcasm.”

  “I’ve fallen out of favor that fast, have I?”

  “We’re result-based around here, Doctor. Yesterday’s results dictate today’s opinion. The chief is expecting you.”

  She looked away and Lammeck was dismissed inward. He opened the door to Reilly’s office. The chief stood when Lammeck stepped inside.

  “Professor.”

  “Chief. Look, about yesterday—”

  Reilly waved a hand and smiled. “She give it to you bad?”

  “Let’s just say she was waiting for me.”

  “I apologize. Mrs. Beach is a luxury for me. I get to be the good cop. Anyway, what happened? Sit.”

  Lammeck took a leather chair and Reilly settled his thick frame behind his desk.

/>   “She set us up. She knew we were watching for her. Those kids found the car at Thirty-fifth and R with the keys in the ignition and a window down. They took a joyride. The boy’s a sophomore at Georgetown. The girl’s a senior at Western High. That’s it.”