Death Bed

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “Did you see anyone else at the place?”

  “No. I don’t peep in windows. I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere, right?”

  “Right. How long did you stick around over there?”

  “Not long. That area of town gives me the creeps. I get real nervous every time I go south of Market, you know?”

  “They probably get just as nervous when they see you coming. Thanks for the dope.”

  “Just come down hard on Rosie. She needs straightening out. You talk real tough. Maybe you’re the man that can do it.”

  I waved good-bye and got in my Buick and drove into Sausalito and downed a plate of calamari at the Flying Fish, then called my answering service. No messages. I got back in the Buick and drove across the bridge and across the city and wound my way to the top of Potrero Hill.

  I parked just around the corner from the bookstore and waited. When nothing moved but my watch, I started the car and drove past the store and past the burned-out house. It was black as walnuts. I went back around to the place I’d started from and parked again.

  The house was so suited to aspiring terrorists it was almost a cliché. I was going to have to find out who and what was in there, no question about it, and I was nervous. Not because of the people, but because of the explosives that come with them. If a little band of saviors was in there, already on edge because their ransom try had gone sour, and they got spooked by something I did, the whole place might go. I’d seen a building like that once, an arms storehouse for a group called the Ethiopian Defense League. It had blown up on the troops one night during a cell meeting, and three seconds later there wasn’t enough left of the building or the troops to fill a shot glass.

  It was time to think. I thought. I thought some more. The more I thought the more nervous I got. When I heard someone walking up to my car I drew my gun. When the car door opened I was ready to fire.

  THIRTY-ONE

  “Hey,” she yelled. “Put that thing away. Who do you think you are, Eliot Ness? Every time I see you you’re pulling a gun.”

  I exhaled and did what she said and watched as she clambered into the car, head first, looking like a kid entering a culvert. The dome light made her hair seem metallic and brittle, as though it would break if I touched it. Curiously, I felt glad to see her.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

  She closed the door and pressed the lock button, then turned to face me. “You didn’t think when you told me to go home last night that I actually was going to do it, did you?”

  “You followed her over here.”

  “That’s exactly what I did.”

  “Pamela Brown. Girl Reporter.”

  “In the flesh.”

  “Been here all night?”

  “Yep.”

  “All day, too?”

  “Yep.”

  “The girl you followed from Covington’s. You know who she is?”

  Pamela Brown shook her head.

  “Rosemary Withers,” I said. “The place in Sausalito belongs to her mother.”

  “Money.”

  “Binsful. Her mother is Shelley Withers. Writes women’s books. Rape. Incest. Handsome strangers. Helpless virgins.”

  “Never read them. What’s the daughter got to do with Mark Covington?”

  “That’s what I came over here to find out. Has anything happened since you got here?”

  She shook her head again. “Nothing. The girl went into that dump down the block and since then, nothing. No lights. Nothing. I don’t even think there’s any electricity in there anymore, I couldn’t see any lines.”

  “Did you look inside?”

  “I checked it out as well as I could, but it’s all boarded up. I couldn’t see anything but my breath.” She pulled her hands out of her coat pockets and rubbed them together. “What’s going on in there, anyway?”

  “Skulduggery.”

  “No, really.”

  “I’m not sure. Did you watch the place all night?”

  She started to say something and then didn’t. For an instant the light from the streetlamp struck her face, creating complex and pleasing contours of light and shadow. Then she moved into the blackness.

  I asked her if she was cold and she nodded so I started the car. The air from the heater smelled of age and dirt and fossil fuels.

  “Did you?” I repeated.

  “Did I what?”

  “Watch the place all night.”

  “No, dammit. I fell asleep.”

  “When?”

  “About two. Woke up about five. Real dumb, I know.”

  “Happens all the time,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “What if they’re not there?”

  “Then we’ll go home and get some sleep and try again tomorrow.”

  Actually it was what I hoped she would say. It meant that someone could have gone in and out at the time of the kidnapping drop, and that Karl Kottle could just possibly be inside the building. “Did you see any cars around?”

  “No. Not any that seemed out of place.”

  “Motorcycles?”

  “No.”

  “Is there a garage in the house?”

  “In the back. Underneath.”

  “Anything in it?”

  “I didn’t look.”

  “Okay. I’m going over and check the place out. You stay here. When I get back we’ll decide what to do.”

  “What to do about what?”

  “What to do about rescuing Karl Kottle.”

  “Who?”

  “Tell you later,” I said, and got out of the car and closed the door on her next question, feeling stupidly optimistic about what the rest of the night would bring.

  The street was dark and empty, the streetlight dull and inadequate. Most of the houses were dark. Those that weren’t seemed to hide secrets.

  I glanced in the window of the bookstore. A single bulb glowed in the back by the cash register. Volumes were piled all over the floor. The book on top of the stack nearest me was Ethan Frome. Overhead, the moon lurked like a landlord behind a screen of gray-black clouds. The air was heavy and cold.

  In the distance, far below the hilltop on which I stood, the lights of the city spread northward, golden sequins spilled carelessly over a black shag rug. It seemed impossible that anything wretched could occur amid all that glitter but, like all glitter, it was merely a mask, a diversion from the real; lovely, if at all, only at first glance.

  Walking slowly, I moved toward the abandoned house down on the corner. It was lifeless, its windows boarded shut, its front steps broken, its roof crushed in places, missing in others. On the side nearest me someone had painted the words “Free Puerto Rico” with a can of spray paint. Red. Above the words were the dark scars of the fire that had gutted the house.

  I crossed the street and kept walking. At a point directly across from the house the street began to drop toward the bay. I walked on, casual, unhurried, an insomniac from the next block. Nothing moved, nothing sounded. I looked at my watch. It was eleven thirty.

  I rubbed my hands and took a deep breath and crossed the street and inched my way down the driveway to the garage. There was a small window in either side of the garage door. I looked in one, then wiped it off with my elbow and looked in it again, at a lot of worthless junk and one thing that wasn’t: a brown BMW. Secretariat had returned to his stall.

  Hunching my shoulders against the cold, I backed away from the garage and looked up. There was a door up there, just above and to the right of the garage, some ten feet off the ground. It was a door with a knob and two hinges and everything else a door should have except one—some steps leading to it. I looked at the door for quite some time. It seemed an artifact, a Dadaist comment on the real and the imagined and the relationship between the two.

  There was nothing in the yard to help me get up there, no ladder, no box, no barrel, no rope: the house had been gutted by more than fire. But it was different in the neighbor’s ya
rd. At the rear of his lot, right along the back fence, some concrete blocks lay piled one atop the other. They rested patiently beneath a clear plastic sheet, ready for their owner to begin some home improvement project or other, a patio or a porch or a porte cochère. The only thing between me and the blocks was a Cyclone fence.

  I thought it over. It was the type of neighborhood where the people own dogs and guns, the type of neighborhood where a man who sees something in his backyard after midnight may shoot first and ask questions later. But what the hell. I walked over to the fence.

  No dog barked, no gun fired. Somewhere nearby Johnny Carson was running through his monologue in someone’s bedroom. The fence creaked and groaned and rattled under me, as loud as a steel band it seemed, but not loud enough to interest anyone that I could see. I went over to the pile of blocks and picked up one in each hand and walked back to the fence and lowered them to the other side. They were heavy as water, and they got heavier as I worked.

  Back and forth. Back and forth. If anyone caught me I would just pretend I was stealing, needed a new foundation for my mobile home, can’t afford blocks what with prices these days, no hard feelings, I’ll put it all back. Sure.

  Fifteen trips, then back over the fence. Pile the blocks beneath the door. Rest. Twenty after twelve. Neighbor’s lights go out. Silence. Apprehension. Sweat. Time. I climbed to the door.

  More by feel than by sight I discovered a slight crack between the door and the jamb. I pressed, and when nothing broke I pressed a little harder. Light came through the crack, faint yellow light like the yolk of a store-bought egg. I took out my knife and cut a notch into the edge of the door, sawing away silently, hoping the rotting wood wouldn’t give way with a crash.

  With my eye against the notch I could see most of the room inside. In a far corner was a kerosene lamp, an old one, its wick orange with flame, a dandelion in a tar pit. As far as I could tell there was only one other thing in the room besides grit: a mattress with a man on it.

  He was lying on his back, eyes closed, wrists crossed on his chest. The wrists were bound. His ankles were bound, too. A white rag gagged his mouth. I pulled away and blinked to clear my vision, then put my eye back to the notch.

  It was Karl Kottle, for sure, dressed exactly as he had been in the snapshot of him taken in Amber’s room at the Encounter with Magic. I climbed off my blocks and walked back to my car and got in.

  Pamela Brown was half asleep. “I need some help,” I said. “There’s someone in that house. The man named Kottle I told you about. He’s been bound and gagged, probably drugged as well. He’s a kidnap victim. If I’m going to have a chance to get him out of there I need a diversion.”

  She yawned sleepily. “And I’m the diversion.”

  “Right.”

  “How many people are in there?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I can find out without getting discovered.”

  “Guns?”

  “Guns.”

  “What’s the plan? I’m not agreeing to anything, you understand, but what’s the plan?”

  “Have you got your car here?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “What kind?”

  “Toyota.”

  “New?”

  “A junker. Why?”

  I reached into the glove compartment and took out the pint of bourbon. “Swill a little of this around in your mouth. Spill the rest of it over your clothes. Get in your car and drive down Carolina Street at about fifteen miles an hour and run right into the light pole across from the house. Then make the horn honk continuously, like it’s stuck. Scream. Carry on. Act drunk and hurt and angry. Get people outside.”

  “Anything else? How about reciting the mad scene from Macbeth?”

  “That’ll do it,” I grinned.

  She shook her head in disbelief. “I’ll probably get arrested, you know.”

  “Probably. But if you don’t drink the bourbon you’ll pass the blood test. Reckless driving at most. Plus damage to the light pole. I’ll take care of that.”

  “Plus damage to my car, you bastard.”

  “I’ll take care of that, too.”

  “That’s real big of you,” she said heavily. “It pains me to mention it, but why not just bring in the cops?”

  “I think it’s more likely to work this way.”

  “You think. Anything more solid than that?”

  “Nope. Well? What do you say?”

  She looked me over, blatantly estimating the chance of success. From the expression on her face I judged her estimate to be fifty-fifty at best. That’s about where I put it, too.

  “If it comes off, I get the story,” Pamela Brown demanded. “Exclusive!”

  “Exclusive.”

  “And you tell me the whole damned thing, beginning, middle and end.”

  “If the client agrees, sure.”

  “Fuck the client. Who is it?”

  “No comment.”

  “Shit. I should tell you to go fly a kite.”

  I shrugged and stayed silent.

  “Kottle,” she mused. “There’s a Kottle who just died. Big man. Any relation?”

  “Father.”

  “Okay. Now tell me this. How does Karl Kottle connect up with Mark Covington? He’s why I’m over here, after all.”

  “We won’t know till we ask him, will we?”

  Pamela Brown thought it over, more than once. A car went by, wearing its exhaust fumes like a plume. “Okay,” she said finally. “Here goes nothing. Is what we’re doing illegal, by the way?”

  “Not if it works.”

  She opened the car door. “Check your watch,” I told her. “It’s twelve thirty-seven. Time it so you hit the pole at twelve fifty-five exactly. That’ll give me time to get ready.”

  “Got it.”

  “Hey. Pamela Brown. Thanks.”

  “Hey. Tanner. You’ll get a bill. Believe me.”

  She got out of my car and walked back toward hers. I gave her a minute, then drove off, circling to a place just below the burned-out house, a place that was all downhill from the room where Karl Kottle was being held. If necessary I could roll him all the way to the car.

  At twelve fifty I opened the trunk and took out a tire iron, a screwdriver and some gloves, then checked to be sure my gun was still in my coat. As I hiked back to to the house, the tire iron swung heavily against my thigh, the jawbone of a twenty-first-century ass. When I caught my breath I climbed the concrete stairway, teetering clumsily, and checked the boards over the door, feeling for the best place to pry. By twelve fifty-five the tire iron was slipped in behind the upper edge of the plywood and I was ready to apply some force. Thirty seconds later I heard the crash.

  It sounded like Spike Jones Meets the Who, a cacophony of glass tinkling, horn honking, metal tearing, woman screaming. Moving as quickly as I could I pried at the plywood and a big hunk came away in my hands. I eased the wood down to the ground and worked away at the second sheet. It came away easily as well, and within two minutes I stepped up off the blocks and into the house. Out front, bedlam still bellowed. I paid silent homage to Pamela Brown.

  The room I entered had once been the kitchen. Sometime or other, before the fire or after, it had been stripped of everything remotely culinary, leaving only dangling electrical conduits and decayed linoleum spots and brown-stained ceilings in the wake of the destruction. The odor of wet wood and ashes tickled my nose. I squeezed it so I wouldn’t sneeze. Over in the corner the lamp flickered like a hyped-up firefly.

  Karl Kottle was where I had seen him last, unchanged. I walked past him and put my ear against the sliding door that led to the front of the house and listened. A deep voice murmured something and a higher voice answered softly, leery of being overheard. From outside I thought I could hear the garbled voice of a police dispatcher coming over a squad car radio. I looked back out the door I’d just come through. The night air shimmered periodically with flashes of blue light. The cops had arrived.
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br />   I went back over to Karl and pressed my finger to his throat. Strong pulse. The airway seemed clear as well, despite the gag. I started to remove the gag, then reconsidered. I put a hand on his shoulder and jostled him, my other hand ready to clamp over his mouth if he began to cry out, but there was no danger. It would take more than a shake to bring him back from wherever they had sent him.

  There was only one thing to do, to move and move fast, so I maneuvered Karl onto his side, then squatted in front of him and hoisted him into the fireman’s carry. As I struggled to my feet I came close to dropping him, but I hunched him higher and got a firm grip under one arm and one leg and headed for the door. Dirt and glass shards crumbled noisily beneath my shoes, sound effects for a cereal commercial. If anyone came through the door behind me I wouldn’t have a chance.

  His head bumped on the way out, hard. He moaned once, but the horn was still blaring and the moan was soft, more like a lover’s sigh. It scared me anyway. Adrenaline squirted into my system, making me faster and stronger. I squeezed through the door and tottered my way down the makeshift steps with the man who was at once my burden and my prize.

  My lower back began to ache. From the feel, it could go out any minute. I wanted to look back but I didn’t. From over the roof of the house I could hear voices arguing, voices cajoling, voices pleading, but over them all was the voice of Pamela Brown—belligerent, intoxicated, profane and wonderful.

  My luck was running and I ran with it, down the hill, faster and faster, until I was afraid my momentum would drive me right into the ground. I got back in control, somehow, just before reaching the car. With less care than I should have used, I deposited Karl on the sidewalk and opened the car door, then took his feet and dragged him over to the car and stuck the feet inside, as far in as I could get them. Then I went around behind and took his shoulders and folded the rest of him into the front seat. As I started to close the door he slipped to the floor. I just left him there.

  Sweat emerged hot and then turned cold. I was making enough noise to wake the dead or make myself join them. I slammed the door and ran to the other side and got in and unfastened Karl’s gag and then drove off. My passenger sat slumped over his knees, wedged beneath the dash, looking more dead than alive.