by Robert Upton
“I made a mistake. I should have reported it to the FBI right at the beginning,” McGuffin lamented.
“McGuffin!” Goody shouted.
“What?”
“It’s Marilyn!”
“Marilyn? Marilyn!” McGuffin shouted, stumbling from the stool and rushing to the phone. He snatched the receiver from Goody’s hand and babbled excitedly, “Marilyn, is that you? Where are you, are you all right?”
“Amos, please, you don’t have to shout,” his former wife replied calmly.
“Hilly - how’s Hilly?” he stammered.
“Hilly is fine.”
“Thank God, oh, thank God,” McGuffin gasped.
“Amos, are you all right?” she inquired.
“Never mind me. Did he hurt you - did he hurt either of you?”
“Did who hurt me?” she asked.
“Otto Kruger, the man who abducted you.”
“My God, you’re drunk,” she said. “It must be what - about ten o’clock in San Francisco, and you’re drunk already?”
“I’m not drunk. I haven’t had a drink since you and Hillary disappeared. And what do you mean, ‘about ten o’clock in San Francisco’? Where are you calling from?”
“New York.”
“New York! He took you to New York?”
“Who?”
“Otto Kruger!”
“Who the hell is Otto Kruger?” she shouted across the continent. “And if you say the man who abducted me, so help me, Amos, I’ll hang up!”
“No, don’t hang up!” McGuffin pleaded. “Please, don’t hang up. Just tell me what you’re doing in New York.”
“Auditioning.”
“Auditioning?”
“Congratulate me, Amos, I’ve been accepted in the Actors Company!”
“The Actors Company.”
“Amos, why do you keep repeating everything I say?”
“I’m sorry, just bear with me a moment. You’re telling me that you went to New York of your own free will, that no one abducted you?”
“Amos -,” she warned.
“Marilyn, if you weren’t abducted, who the hell was the old man who came to the apartment and took you and Hillary away in the car?”
“Otto Kruger?”
“Yes!” McGuffin exclaimed.
“I’m kidding,” she said. “How would I know who he is? He was just some guy the airport limousine service sent.”
“But Mrs. Delia told me he forced Hillary into the car! What kind of chauffeur is that?” McGuffin demanded.
“That’s ridiculous!” she protested. Then in a softer voice, “I’ll admit that she might not have been all that excited about the idea, but -”
“Then what about the newspaper clipping of the Dwindling murder trial?” McGuffin interrupted, while Goody and Sullivan stared raptly. “How did it get on top of your chest of drawers?”
“Oh, that,” she said, followed by a pause which, McGuffin knew, meant she was drinking coffee. “I found it in the bottom of that old leather suitcase of yours when I was packing. It must have been there for twenty years.”
“Eighteen,” McGuffin corrected. “Then you weren’t abducted.”
“Amos -”
“You went to New York to audition for the Actors Company.”
“And I’ve been accepted! I’ve got a part in The Cherry Orchard!” she said excitedly. “Of course it’s not a very big part, but it’s a part just the same, and I’m told that new members don’t often get -”
“Let me talk to Hillary,” McGuffin interrupted.
“She just left for school.”
“School?”
“P.S. forty-one.”
McGuffin breathed deeply to ward off hyperventilation, then inquired in a calm voice, “You enrolled her in school in New York - with numbers?”
“Um-hmm,” she answered, drinking coffee. “Right near where we live. We got this darling little sublet in Greenwich Village, kind of scroungy but very bohemian.”
“For how long?” McGuffin asked, straining for control.
“A year.”
“You intend to remain in New York for one year?”
“Or longer. Amos, my career has finally taken off. I can feel it!”
“Marilyn, are you aware that we have a custody agreement?”
“Well, yes, but -”
“And that custody agreement provides that you cannot remove Hillary from the state without my consent?”
“But this came up suddenly, I couldn’t find you.”
“Well, now you have, and I want Hillary out of P.S. whatever number and on the next plane back to San Francisco, do you understand?”
“Amos, we were suffocating in San Francisco,” she complained.
“You were suffocating. Hillary was thriving!”
“Amos, if you don’t stop shouting -”
“And don’t you threaten me, Marilyn, not you! You have no idea what you put me through. I killed three people, I got shot in the head, and I stole an egg worth millions of dollars!”
“You are drunk,” she said.
“Why couldn’t you have left a note?”
“We were in a hurry.”
“Or phoned?”
“You wouldn’t accept the charges.”
“That wasn’t me. That was -! Never mind, that’s not the point! The point is I want Hillary back, or I’m going to court, and don’t think I won’t, because I have to go to court anyway for killing those three guys!”
“Amos, you’re being preposterous,” she interrupted impatiently.
“I’m being preposterous? I’m not the one who abducted our child!”
“Very well, if you’re going to take that attitude -,” she said, and the phone went dead.
“Don’t you hang up!” McGuffin shouted at the useless instrument. Then, slamming the receiver on the hook, he hollered, “Shit!”
Goody and Sullivan watched wordlessly as McGuffin, uttering vile expletives and dire threats, lunged across the room to the bar. “They weren’t kidnapped?” Sullivan asked. “They’re okay?” Goody asked at the same time.
“They’re fine,” McGuffin said, plopping his rain hat on his head.
“Where you goin’?” Sully asked.
“To New York,” McGuffin answered, glancing at his reflection in the mirror.
“Whattaya, nuts? You think you can kill three people and go to New York without at least stoppin’ by the DA’s office?” he asked, sliding off the barstool.
“I’ll be back in twenty-four hours,” McGuffin promised. He would shave at the airport.
“Sorry, Amos, you’re comin’ with me,” the big man said, advancing on McGuffin.
“Hey, what is this?” McGuffin asked, backing away. “Just a minute ago, we were going to take San Francisco apart brick by brick, remember?”
“That was before we knew where they were. This is now, and I gotta take you in,” he said, motioning McGuffin toward him.
When McGuffin spun for the door, Sullivan lunged, missing his arm, but managing to come away with a handful of damp sleeve.
“Let go!” McGuffin shouted, straining to reach the door, while Sullivan, heels dug in, grunted, “Stop pullin’!” When, a split second later, the sleeve came away from the shoulder with a loud rip, both men were propelled forward with unexpected speed, McGuffin through the front door, Sullivan to and along the floor, striking his head finally on the brass rail at the foot of the bar.
“Sully!” Goody shouted, reaching for the cop’s drink.
Sullivan was awakened by the taste of whiskey and the sight of the barkeep on his knees beside him, holding the glass to his lips. “What are you doin’?”
“Giving you a drink.”
“Some service,” he grunted, struggling to one elbow. He took the glass from Goody’s hand and finished the drink in a gulp. “Where is he?”
“On his way to New York.”
“Dumb bastard. Help me up.”
Goody climbed to his feet, pulled the much
larger man up after, then watched while the cop probed at his head. “You okay?” he asked.
Sullivan nodded. “How long’s he been gone?”
“A few minutes,” he answered, watching as Sullivan walked unsteadily to the phone. “What are you gonna do?”
“Whattaya think I’m gonna do?”
“Let him go, Sully.”
“You’re as nutty as he is,” Sullivan said, reaching for the phone. “He’s resisted arrest. There’s nothin’ I can do.”
“Nobody has to know that,” Goody pointed out.
“You’re askin’ too much,” the cop said, fumbling in his pocket for a quarter.
“McGuffin’s a fuck-up, but he ain’t stupid,” Goody said, following Sullivan to the phone. “He ain’t gonna go to New York, I guarantee you that. He’ll be back just as soon as he cools down - I bet you five hundred dollars.”
“Can’t take the chance,” Sullivan said, coming up with a quarter. He dropped it in the slot and began to dial as Goody continued to plead for McGuffin.
“Just give him an hour.”
Sullivan finished dialing, turned to Goody, and shook his head. “Yeah, it’s Sullivan,” he spoke into the phone. “Let me talk to the old man.”
“Think what you’re doin’, Sully. He’ll lose his license. He’ll be ruined.”
“And I’ll lose my pension,” the cop said over a covered mouthpiece.
“Just an hour,” Goody pleaded.
“Yes, sir,” Sullivan replied smartly as he lifted his hand from the mouthpiece.
“Fascist,” Goody muttered.
“No, I haven’t found him yet, sir, but I think I should, very soon.” Goody smiled as much as he ever does. “How soon? Within the hour, sir.”
Goody had a second drink standing on the bar when Sullivan finished his call. The cop sat heavily on the bar-stool, lifted his glass, and pointed it at the clock. “One hour,” he said.
“One hour,” Goody replied confidently.
One hour later, Sullivan was drunk, Goody was out five hundred dollars, and a man with a bandaged head and Arafat beard, carrying an egg in his one-sleeved raincoat, was on an airplane bound for New York City. Preoccupied as he was, the detective was scarcely aware of his fastidious seatmate, who glanced up occasionally from the glossy pages of Connoisseur to regard him with a look of utter distaste. McGuffin was pondering the events (it could hardly be called a case) of the last several days. Until then, he had never killed anyone, and now six people were dead. Six people, and there hadn’t even been a crime!
When McGuffin angrily slammed the armrest, his fellow passenger fixed him with a contemptuous look that McGuffin failed to notice. His attention was focused on the open magazine on the man’s lap.
“What’s that?” McGuffin demanded.
“It happens to be a Fabergé egg,” the gentleman loftily and condescendingly informed him.
McGuffin looked at it and nodded knowingly. “It’s not as nice as mine,” he said, patting the pocket of his grubby coat.
“Indeed,” the gentleman sniffed, turning a shoulder to McGuffin.
After McGuffin had showed him the Fabergé egg, the man said nothing more during the rest of the flight.
Published by New Word City LLC, 2015
www.NewWordCity.com
© Robert Upton
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-61230-837-1
