by Larry Crane
“Oh, thank God,” Maggie said to herself. “It’s not Patty Buck.”
“What’s Grandpa doing on the TV, grandma?” Jory asked, standing just behind her.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The plastic lid flew through the air in a clean arc, collided with the cruiser’s side window, and spun off like a penny pitched into the gutter. The cops in the car initially froze in their seats in disbelief, and then turned to look out the side window at him. The cop on the far side opened the door and slowly emerged with his pistol drawn. He crouched behind the car and pointed the weapon directly at Lou’s face.
“Don’t wiggle, buddy, or you’re a dead man.”
His leg was on fire and twitching. Lou wanted desperately to turn around to see if Stanfield was behind him, but he didn’t dare move. He felt embarrassed, like a little boy caught in the act of throwing tomatoes against the barn wall. His face was hot and flushed. Tension in his neck and shoulders rushed out of him like air from a balloon. He felt relief for the first time since he’d left home to start the operation. He was caught. They could identify him to the world. He would be tried and convicted. It was clear. He hadn’t wanted this. But he realized now that it was better than death.
“Step up to the car with your hands in the air, slowly. Now lean up against the door there,” the cop said, shoving Lou from behind. It was the frisking routine he’d seen a hundred times on TV.
“All right, let’s break it up now and continue on your way. The show’s over. Move along,” the other cop said. The dialogue sounded like something they might have learned from The Commish.
Lou ducked into the cruiser’s back seat. A steel screen spanned the front-seat backrest, sealing him off from the officer behind the wheel. The other officer sat beside him.
“Why the fuck did you do that?” It was the older, heavier one in the back with him. His hat was off and his gray, speckled hair stood up on his head like a million corkscrews. His breath was stale.
“What difference does it make?” Lou asked, letting a long sigh escape. “I just felt like it.”
“You just felt like it. What’re you on, buddy?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m not on anything.”
“What do you say, Sal. Think we ought to haul him in or what?”
“You feel like writing it up?”
“Hell, no!”
“Then tell him to get the fuck out of the car.”
“Call it in. Tell ’em to check on a Louis B. Christopher, Glen Rock, New Jersey,” the old one said, going through Lou’s wallet.
“They’re not going to have any record of me. I can tell you that,” Lou said.
“You just keep your fucking gob shut.”
“Go on and call it in. This guy might have escaped from Bellevue or something.”
“Fuck it. Let’s just run him in and let them talk about it.”
At the 17th Precinct on 53rd Street, they confiscated his belongings and bagged them in a manila envelope, and then shut him in a room without locking the door. It was bare except for a chair on either side of a plain oak table that sat in the center beneath a single, long, fluorescent light on the ceiling. He’d never been in a big-city police station before, but this one looked exactly as he expected it would. Outside the room, he could hear telephones ringing and feet shuffling. Obviously, the cops didn’t know what to do with him. They’d just let him cool his heels for a while until someone could sit down and talk to him. Meanwhile, they’d do some routine checks on him.
Lou wasn’t going to volunteer any information. He was sure that it was just a matter of time until they found out about him and the bridge.
The door opened after he’d been sitting there alone for about forty-five minutes. It was another old cop, about sixty, with pure white hair. He wore a wrinkled, civilian suit. His shoes were scuffed and dirty around the soles. His tie was loose around his neck and deeply and colorfully stained—apparently with everything from coffee to salsa—creating a disgusting, burnt umber blotch in the bed of flowers.
“Hello, Mr. Christopher. I’m Strachan”—he pronounced it Strawn—“That’s spelled with a ‘ch’ in there even if it doesn’t sound like it. How’re you doing in here?”
“I’m all right, officer,” Lou said, with his chin in his hand and elbow resting on the table.
“What’re you doing in town today, Mr. Christopher?”
“I’m just looking around in the stores.”
“Did you drive in or what?”
“No, I came in on the train.”
“You stop in at one of the bars around here, maybe in the station?”
“No.”
“My men say you were acting sort of strange.”
“I wanted to get their attention real fast, and I did.”
“What did you want to do that for?”
“I was being chased. I was about to get robbed in a Grand Central men’s room, so I ran out onto the street.”
“And you threw something at the cruiser.”
“Yeah. That’s all I could think to do.”
“Why didn’t you say something about this to the men at the scene?”
“I was out of breath. And they weren’t in any mood to accept an explanation like that. Besides, I was afraid I was going to get shot, right there.”
“It was a long ride down to the station here.”
“I guess I was so relieved to get away and to be safe that I thought I’d wait until things quieted down a little.”
“What’s wrong with your leg, Mr. Christopher?”
“I pulled a hamstring in a touch football game yesterday.”
“Uh-huh. It would be the first hamstring injury that bled. I can’t force you to show me the injury, but would you like to show it to me?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Lou said.
“How come you decided to come in to the city on Election Day, of all days?”
“I can’t give you a good answer for that. All I know is I’m sorry I did come in. That’s for sure.”
“You’re married, Mr. Christopher.”
“Yes, I sure am.”
“You got a couple of kids.”
“Yeah. They’re not kids anymore.”
“But you thought you’d spend your day off cruising around the city.”
“I wasn’t exactly cruising around.”
“I thought that’s what you said.”
“No, I didn’t say I was cruising around. I said I was looking around in the stores.”
“I have to tell you that I don’t believe you when you tell me shit like that. I think I’m going to have to keep you here for a while until I can check into this a little further. Now, you’ve got the right to call your lawyer, you know that.”
Lou didn’t say anything. He knew that he should be protesting and carrying on about it being true, everything he’d said, but it just wasn’t in him. The cumulative effects of two days without sleep were creeping into his body.
He was having a difficult time holding his eyes open now that he was in a warm place, out of the air. The tension had escaped his body. Now he was apathetic and vulnerable. He wasn’t going to say anything.
“You been up around Bear Mountain?” It came out fast and clean.
“Bear Mountain?”
“You heard me. You in that crowd that was fooling around up on the bridge?” Strachan was fishing.
Lou kept looking straight at him. If he diverted his eyes, he was dead.
“State Police up there are looking around for some people.”
“You know I didn’t do anything like that,” Lou said, his hand against the side of his face and the elbow still on the table.
“I don’t know shit,” Strachan said, pacing around behind him.
“Look, I’m tired. It’s nothing more than that. A guy tried to mug me. That’s it.”
The door opened. Another cop stuck his head in and asked Strachan to come out.
Lou was alone in the room again. They were getting close now. All they had to do was check around at a few other precincts to find out that Titus had called in with something that very morning. For sure, there would be some kind of personal description making the rounds of all the police units in the area. Maybe they were just playing games with him. Maybe they already had a composite of his face. Maybe they were running witnesses in to look at him through a two-way mirror. There was nothing that looked like a two-way mirror.
But who had seen his face besides Copeland, Stanfield, and Sydney? No one. The weariness of the last two, sleepless nights was dulling all his normal alertness.
“You’re going in the tank for a while, Mr. Christopher. There’s no charge, but we need to do some checking of facts.”
It was the cop who had stuck his head in to get Strachan. He came over, grasped Lou’s upper arm and held him in custody like that until Lou stepped into the small cell. It was dimly lit. There were no others in any of the cells, not even the big drunk tank across the corridor. Lou sank down onto the bare mattress and lay still.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Grandpa’s just giving a speech, darling. Are you hungry? How about some animal crackers?”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Well, you can do it by yourself. Go ahead.”
Jory bounded away to the downstairs bathroom.
Maggie didn’t bother to rewind. She ejected the tape and clutched it to her chest as she peered out the window at the van. She walked quickly to the basement door, descended the stairs. She stood in the middle of the dark space for a full minute before she walked quickly to the water heater and bent down to open the little door at the bottom. The light from the gas pilot flickered against a steel support post, and she quickly closed the door. She marched to Lou’s workbench, opened his toolbox, dropped in the tape, and closed the lid again. She started for the stairs, stopped, and retrieved the tape.
She turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees, scanning the space up and down. She balanced the tape against a cross piece in the floor joists above her head, but it dropped into her hand as soon as she let go of it. Then she pushed it into a dark space above the doorway to the stairs but immediately took it out.
She heard the doorbell. Not just one ring—several rapid, insistent rings. Both Jory and Kirk ran for the door, Trude on their heels yapping like thunder. Mag eyed two pairs of panties, some panty hose, and a bra dangling from the wooden drying rack in the corner. The tape nestled securely into the left cup of the bra, nicely hidden from view.
She started up the stairs. Turned and went back. Snatched the tape from the bra. Up the stairs. To the cupboard. Ripped open a box of dry soup mix; onion broth. Flipped the contents into the garbage. Slid the tape neatly in. Sealed it with scotch tape.
The doorbell.
Maggie ripped the tape from the soup box and tucked it into a re-sealable plastic bag from the pantry. Then she snatched the Grasshopper Pie ice cream container from the freezer and pried a huge chunk from the middle with her flat ice cream scoop (snagged at last Tuesday’s auction at the Elks). She dunked the tape in, covered it over, and smoothed the fracture on the surface like a master cake froster.
“Mrs. Christopher, my name is Ross Kilmartin. I’m from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” He was a rotund man with a deep, commanding voice. His forehead rose in two peaks separated by a tuft of red hair. He carried a thick legal-type briefcase and held his identification in front of his chest.
“I have a search warrant here that basically says that I’m authorized to search your residence. May I come in, please?”
“You boys go on upstairs,” she said to Jory and Kirk. “The Federal Bureau... Of course. Come in. By all means, Mr. Kilmartin. What’s this all about?”
“May I call you Margaret?”
“Call me Mrs. Christopher. What are you searching for?” Mag asked, leading him into the living room.
“Where is your husband today? At work?”
“He’s in the city attending a training conference on global securities something or other.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Quite sure.”
“Well, Mrs. Christopher, we don’t have a lot of time for discussion but we’re convinced that your husband has violated some federal statutes restricting interstate transportation of explosive devices.”
“Oh, come now!”
“We also believe that he is not alone in this. That others are involved. And that’s the purpose of the search; to try to find anything that might lead us to these others.”
“This is absolute nonsense. Why would Lou get involved in anything like that?”
Kilmartin snapped open his briefcase, reached in, and produced a dark green, waist-length jacket. “Is this your husband’s jacket, missus?”
“Well, he has one like that. Where did you get it?”
“We’d rather not disclose that right now, but we did check out the laundry mark. It’s his, all right.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Your lawyer would probably advise saying nothing, but he’s not here right now.”
Maggie dropped her forehead into the palm of her hand and rested it there.
“I’m not your enemy, Margaret. I’m your friend, believe it or not. Your husband is in the custody of the NYPD in Manhattan. We’re gathering evidence and tracking leads as fast as we can. A little cooperation on both his part and yours could go a long way.”
“I can’t help you with that. If you’re going to search, get on with it,” Mag said, turning and striding out of the room.
* * *
Kilmartin let in two other FBI men, and the three of them began to search. They started upstairs. Mag could hear them as they opened every drawer, every door. She waited in the living room with the boys playing at her feet. She wanted to run to the freezer, to the Grasshopper Pie, but she didn’t.
What exactly did she know so far? All the stuff on the tape. Buck. Stanfield. Copeland. The election connection. She knew that Lou didn’t want her involved. That he was wise enough to have provided an escape hatch in the form of the tape. Who knew about the tape? Where had he produced it? Who had a copy? Who would send it to Severence? Under what conditions?
He didn’t want her involved; had lied to her to that end. But he had called. Twice. Well, the first call was different, wasn’t it? More apologetic? More… what? The second was longer. He’d seemed drained. He’d rambled. His lies were sticking out like neon signs all over the place; rental cars; movement to the city from Arden House without any real explanation. The second call came long after the bridge operation. After what must have been an exhausting escape. How did he get to the city? Was he really there? Of course he was. She could hear the train station noise in the background.
To have called her, he must have been reaching out for help. Oh, come now, girl. Get real. He never asked for help. That’s wishful thinking, Nurse Margaret. Well, if it wasn’t a plea for help, what was it? Information? Who’s giving it? Who’s getting it? She gave nothing to him in the way of news, did she? Everything new was on his side.
What news did he give? That he was in the city now. He’d be home soon. That they’d move away from here someday. That he needed a suit. What would he use it for? To simply present a more legitimate presence on the street? Possibly. No. Assume you’re a fugitive. In hiding. Why would you pin yourself down to a time and a place for contact… unless it benefitted you?
She heard the men in the kitchen and in the basement. Doors opening and closing. Contents rattling as they searched. She went upstairs, saw that they’d been up in the attic. Clothes streamed out of drawers. Shoes littered the floor. Every door ajar.
Downstairs, the couch was pulled away from the wall. Same with the china cabinet, the TV console. Closets open. Shoes piled into the center hallway. The kitchen: freezer door ajar, cold contents from the refrigerator on the countertops. Silverware drawer open. Oven,
cabinets, garbage can—askew. A stack of dry soup mix boxes on the oven burner, onion broth from the garbage can up on the counter.
