Sight Unseen

by Brad Latham

  Greg said, “I’ve got a car and driver out front.”

  “Let’s go,” Manners said, rising. “Have you got your gun, Greg?”

  The younger agent flashed his shoulder holster and Lockwood reached under his coat for his .38. He drew it and checked it. Five shells. The gun felt lumpy and heavy in his palm, and he shivered. There was something pointless and stupid about situations where he or the other guy might wind up killing or being killed, and yet several times a year the .38 Special became the most important part of his job.

  Lockwood sighed and said to the others, “My valise is in my car. I’ve only got five shells.”

  “What’s that?” Greg asked.

  “.38 Special.”

  “We got plenty. Let’s not stop.”

  And they didn’t. They rushed down the stairs and into the waiting car, and the driver raced every car on Eighth Avenue up to 86th Street.

  “What about the FBI?” Lockwood asked as they passed 34th Street. “Didn’t we agree to let them know what we found?”

  “I left the special agent in charge a note,” Manners said.

  “But he might not see it for an hour or so,” Lockwood said.

  Manners grinned wickedly. “Aw, Jesus, Hook, you know you’re right!” He made a gesture of mock despair. “That’s too bad. I guess we’ll just have to make the collar without him.”

  Lockwood grinned wryly and shook his head at Manners. He didn’t like this way of returning the FBI man’s favor.

  Manners’ driver pulled right into the nest of black and white police cars.

  “Hey, move it along, mister,” a young cop said as he came up to the T-man’s car.

  The driver flashed a gold badge, and the young cop became obsequious.

  Lockwood hopped out of the back seat. “Where’s Brannigan?”

  A voice boomed behind Lockwood, “I am peeved, to say the least, to find that you aren’t swifter to get to the scene of the hideout.”

  Lockwood turned and there stood his old friend, Lt. Jimbo Brannigan of the Midtown Precinct. What he saw was an Irish cop’s Irish cop, the huge man who was a legend throughout New York City, described in editorials as either a maniac or the best cop the town ever had, depending on who wrote the story and what stunt Brannigan had just pulled. Typical was the time Brannigan caught Legs Diamond coming out of the Stork Club with two of his armed goons. Legs Diamond didn’t belong on Brannigan’s beat—this was back when he had a beat, before he was a lieutenant of detectives —so Brannigan showed him the error of his ways by shoving him headfirst into a garbage can while his two goons waved their heaters around and protested that nobody did such things to their boss. Jimbo Brannigan regularly practiced such police work on goons’ bosses, and regularly got away with it.

  “I didn’t have the advantage of a police driver,” Lockwood said and stuck out his hand.

  The big detective in the suit that looked short by a yard of cloth took Lockwood’s hand in both his and squeezed. “Whatcha think’s the best way to smoke this rat out, Hook?”

  Manners and Peters came up and Lockwood made introductions all around.

  “I want to make the collar,” Manners said.

  Brannigan looked at Lockwood, and Lockwood nodded. “It’s fine with me, if Hook here says it’s your guy.”

  “Do we know which house the guy is in?” Manners asked Peters.

  Peters turned and waved to another young man who looked to be Greg’s twin. “Higgens will know.”

  Higgens came up. “Hi, Chief.”

  More introductions. “Okay, what’s the story, Higgens?” Manners asked.

  “Braunschweiger’s in a ground-floor apartment,” Higgens said. Lockwood saw an intense look in the young agent’s eyes, the thrill of being in on the kill of something important. “One of my men dressed up as the mailman and made the mailman’s delivery for him. Braunschweiger came out in the hallway to get his mail.”

  “What about the crate?” Lockwood asked.

  “What crate?” Brannigan asked.

  “What this is all about, Jimbo,” Lockwood explained. “This guy’s got a crate he stole from the U.S. Government. Military secrets.”

  Brannigan cracked his knuckles as he pursed his lips and nodded.

  “Naturally my guy looked, but the door to the apartment was only opened a snatch, and he didn’t see anything, just furniture and stuff.”

  “Anybody else around?” Manners asked.

  “We haven’t seen anybody else.”

  “They got guns?” Brannigan asked.

  Manners smiled and nodded. “I’m very surprised when snakes don’t have fangs. Expect the worst.”

  “You know he’s still in there, right?” Lockwood asked Higgens.

  “Yes, sir. I put a couple of guys out front.”

  “What!” exclaimed Lockwood. “Where he can see them!”

  “They took their ties and jackets off, sir. Mussed up their hair. They look like idlers.”

  Lockwood wasn’t convinced, but the damage was done.

  “And in back?” Manners asked.

  “Three guys,” Higgens replied in a confident way. “And one on an open telephone in an apartment across the way back there in touch with us through the radio cars.”

  “Sounds good,” Manners said, and he briefly placed a hand of acknowledgment on Higgens’ shoulder.

  “What about the roof?” Brannigan asked.

  “The roof?” Higgens asked, sounding somewhat shaken by Brannigan’s gruff tone.

  “The roof. This rat could leave the apartment and mount the stairs to the roof and across and down another stair and vamoose.”

  “But I didn’t want anybody going into the building because he might see them. A neighbor might say something about the strange guys going up to the roof.”

  Brannigan made a disgusted look at Lockwood. “Send boys out to do a man’s job. Tell them what to do, Hook.”

  “I’ll go with them,” Lockwood said. “Give me two guys, Manners. Guys that are in good shape physically. We’ll go in one of the buildings that’s connected to this one and up the stairs and cross over. Show us which building.”

  “You guys come down the stairs, Hook,” Brannigan said. “We’ll come in the front way, and if he tries the roof, he’ll run right into your arms.”

  When Lockwood and Tom and Drew, the two T-men Manners gave him, came out of the hatch door onto the tar roof, New York spread out around them through a gray haze. The morning air still felt chilly, and Lockwood shivered a bit to throw it off. Lockwood drew his gun, and the two younger men did the same. They both struggled to put on a calloused air, but their eagerness and excitement spilled over their faces.

  “Tom, you come with me,” Lockwood said. “Drew, you stay up here and just watch the hatchway in case he gets by us. You’ll stop him up here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They crossed the parapets of three roofs until they were standing on the roof they were pretty sure was Braunschweiger’s building. Lockwood moved to the front edge of the roof and looked down into 86th Street. Up the block he saw Brannigan’s big frame in a knot of people he figured were Manners and the other officers. He waved, and Brannigan waved back. Brannigan made an up and down gesture with his arms, which Lockwood took to mean that he was in the right building. He signaled back that he was going down the stairs. Brannigan made the gesture prize fighters do when they’ve won a fight, clenched hands over his head.

  “Over there, Drew,” Lockwood said. “Behind that chimney. Should he come up here, he’ll be ready to shoot. Stay down.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s go, Tom.”

  The other agent now looked as tense and jumpy as an unwilling puppy on a leash. Lockwood wondered if in all the excitement, he was going to get shot in the back by this young agent.

  “You been in a situation like this before, Tom?” Lockwood asked.

  “No, sir. But I’ve had weeks of practice on the firing range.”

  Lock
wood looked back at Drew, who smiled. Lockwood saw that Drew knew. A firing range was no preparation for the coolness a hot situation demanded. “What about you, Drew?”

  “I’ve been with the Department a couple years more than him, Mr. Lockwood.”

  “Any shootouts?”

  “Two or three.”

  “You come with me then, Drew,” Lockwood said. “You do what I told Tom to do, okay?”

  Tom looked relieved and nodded quickly. “Yes, sir. Stay behind the chimney.”

  “Yeah. Let’s go, Drew. I’ll go first. You back me up. Any funny business, any gun-play, I’m going to fall to the right, and you go to the left.”

  “So I don’t shoot you in the back?” Drew asked.

  “You got it, champ.”

  When Lockwood opened the hatch door to the building’s stairs a man stood there in a white dress shirt holding a gun on them. Lockwood let the door go and stepped back, but the man gave it a kick with his foot which sent it crashing back against the wall and he started shooting.

  The man came out of the doorway as the door hit Lock-wood’s gun. The gun flew away and Lockwood felt himself slammed against the tarpaper. He heard shouting and shots and the slide of feet on the gritty roof. He told himself to stay calm and moved forward for his gun, which lay in front of him on the grayish tarpaper six feet away. As in a bad dream, it seemed to take him hours to get his hand on his gun, all the while he heard and felt the pop of shots, shouts, grunts, and feet and thuds pounding against the roof. When he picked up the gun it slid out of his hand. The red slippery stuff made his hand greasy. Blood. His blood! Lockwood’s head spun. He calmed himself and saw that his right arm had been shot—but he felt no pain and his left hand and arm were okay. He picked up the .38 with his left, stood, and turned around.

  He saw white shirt jumping over the parapet two buildings away and two motionless men lying about twenty feet in front of him, both stained with ugly red blotches. He felt two tugs—one to see how Tom and Drew were, one to chase white shirt. He raised the .38 Special in his left hand, aimed, and fired twice, remembering to lower the gun before the second shot. He told himself it was no use. Even the world’s best pistol shot would have a hard time stopping jumping white shirt at 150 feet with a mere pistol.

  His right arm still didn’t hurt. If not for the blood, he wouldn’t know he was wounded. He went to the fallen T-men. Tom was either dead or soon would be from his rasping gasps and the big red bubbling hole in his chest. Lockwood fought to hang on to himself.

  Most of Drew’s head had been shattered by a shot. Bits of bone, brain, hair, and skin mingled in the bright flowing blood, which looked beautiful and frightening in the merciless glare of the sun. The light and the sight of the blood and the two terrible wounds made Lockwood dizzy. They were both dead or dying. He seemed to fall into Drew’s terrible wound, and he pulled himself upright. Then he wanted to throw up. He didn’t want them to die—he should have been more careful opening that door. It was his fault. Then anger—he would kill Braunschweiger for this!

  He looked up and saw white shirt at the farthest building, where he disappeared into the stair bulkhead. Lockwood crossed to the front edge of the roof and looked down. Just below him he saw who he thought was Brannigan, and he shot his pistol in the air.

  The man looked up. Brannigan!

  “Jimbo!” Lockwood shouted. He pointed and gestured vigorously toward the Hudson River. “Coming down the end building! Coming down the end building!”

  Brannigan’s voice floated back up faintly. “The end building?”

  “Yes! End building!”

  From this vista Lockwood saw several of the uniformed cops who were with Brannigan break away and race towards West End Avenue.

  He turned back. The sight of Tom and Drew’s hot gurgling bodies stretched out in grotesque positions struck Lockwood anew, and he was hit by wave after wave of nausea that drove him to his knees. As he rested, sweat dripped from his face, scalp, chest, and armpits.

  The world receded from him. He clutched at it, but it was no use. In some puzzling way he was falling down a long tunnel lined with tarpaper. He let go and the well became night and so did he.

  Chapter 15

  Crisp sheets. Muted clinking, clunking sounds. Whispers. A muffled laugh.

  “Where am I?” Lockwood asked.

  “The hospital,” came a soft answer, and he felt the light pressure of fingertips on his arm.

  He struggled to open his eyes, but something kept them closed.

  “Easy,” the gentle voice said. “You lost a lot of blood. You’re still weak.”

  Lockwood got his eyes open a bit. There sat Myra.

  “Myra! What are you doing here? Where am I?”

  She smiled. Her eyes glistened. “You’re going to be all right, Bill.”

  He groaned. “Drew. And Tom.”

  “Yes. He shot them.”

  “Bestwisher.”

  “Braunschweiger. Yes, he shot them. You’re very lucky he didn’t kill you. He probably thought he had.”

  “Did they get him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Brannigan?”

  “Brannigan’s men.”

  “It was my fault. We opened the door, and he was there ready to shoot.”

  “That’s what Jimbo thought.”

  “You know Brannigan?”

  Myra smiled and squeezed Lockwood’s arm. “He’s been terrific.”

  Lockwood was puzzled. “And the bombsight? Did you find it?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Empty apartment. No bombsight, no colleagues of Braunschweiger, nothing.”

  “Jesus. What day is this?”

  “Same day. Almost 5:00.”

  “God—Tom and Drew,” he said. Grief and guilt made him weak and faint. “They were so young. So green. They trusted me, I let them down.”

  “You couldn’t have known he was up there.”

  “It was my job. To know things like that.”

  She had no answer. They were together for several minutes in silence. Her fingers squeezed and caressed his left arm. He saw that she didn’t regard him as a monster, and gradually he felt a bit better. He needed to talk to Brannigan. This thing didn’t make sense. What was Braunschweiger doing up there behind that door?

  Lockwood dozed, and he awoke to the sound of clatter. He opened his eyes again. Myra was no longer here, but a nurse stood before him with a tray.

  “Ready to eat something, Mr. Lockwood?” She smiled in a bright warm fashion. Behind her came in Jimbo Brannigan.

  “Sure he’s ready to mash his molars on something solid,” Brannigan said. “A fellow has to eat if he’s going to get up and leave a hospital, right, Hook?”

  Lockwood suddenly felt glum, yet nodded. She wheeled up a little table that fit over the bed. She put the tray down and sat down beside him. She picked up the spoon.

  “Would you like me to feed you dinner, Mr. Lockwood?”

  Lockwood felt embarrassed that he was too weak to feed himself, but he was too hungry to say no.

  “Hey, I would be glad to feed my friend,” Brannigan said. His rough voice sounded gentle, surprising Lockwood.

  “You, Lieutenant?” the nurse asked.

  “Me, nurse,” Brannigan answered. “Skedaddle. Vamoose. Get out.”

  Lockwood relaxed as Jimbo spread the napkin under his chin and pulled his chair closer to the bedside.

  “Now, I’ve done this for the little ones when the missus was ill, Hook, me boy, but if I don’t do it right, you better not spit all over me. I’ll spit right back at ye.”

  Lockwood laughed. He felt his strength returning; it had something to do with being with Jimbo Brannigan’s strength.

  For a man as large and ordinarily as rough as Brannigan, he cut the food up with delicate movements. He fed Lockwood small bites of mashed potato till Lockwood nodded and asked him to stop a while.

  Brannigan sat back. “You hit that Braunschweiger character,
Hook.”

  “At 150 feet?”

  “Tore half his shoulder off, but it didn’t stop him.”

  “I saw him go down the stairs.”

  “He must have figured we were out there,” Brannigan said. “Probably somehow he knew you folks busted into his shop on 53rd. So he kept a close watch. Maybe that phony mailman that ass of a T-man sent in the hallway gave us away. Maybe he noticed the uniform didn’t fit right, wrong haircut, didn’t sort the mail right—something. Phony mailman leaves, Braunschweiger looks out the window, sees more able-bodied gents lounging around 86th than there ought to be. Maybe looks out his back window. Makes a couple of them T-men in the back courtyard—who couldn’t spot them a mile away?”

  “Sure,” Lockwood said. “Puts his Luger in his belt and goes up the stairs.”

  “Which escape route he had cased days ago in the event this happened.”

  Lockwood nodded. “Hears voices on the other side of the bulkhead door.”

  “Yep. Pulls out his pistol and waits to see what gives.”

  “And like a fool, I open the door. He kicks it into my face, starts shooting, and runs through us like a taxi down Broadway.”

  “Aw, don’t go blaming yourself, lad.”

  “Jimbo, those kids died. I feel responsible.”

  “Yeah. But you can’t blame yourself.”

  “I do.”

  Brannigan sighed. “You can’t predict everything, Hook. I might well have done the same thing.”

  “You wouldn’t have.”

  “I might have. You never know till you’re in a situation.”

  Lockwood couldn’t think of a reply. He felt better knowing that Brannigan didn’t blame him for the two young T-men’s deaths, but nothing anybody could say was going to make them come back or his pain and ache go away quickly.

  “Hey, Hook. Cheer up.”

  “Have their families been told?”

  Brannigan nodded woodenly. “That fellow you drove up with, he did it.”

  “Manners.” Lockwood pushed the supper table back a little bit to give himself more room. “Maybe I’ll get out of this business. I’ve got a law degree. Maybe it’s time to use it.”

  “Hook, Hook! You can’t blame yourself. This happened to me.”