Five O'Clock Lightning

by William L. DeAndrea

  “Just follow Martin.” The captain pointed at the car ahead, made a few noises, then adjusted his hat. “Why the hell are you stalling me, Garrett?”

  “What?” Garrett demanded, then immediately regretted it. What he really needed was automatic transmission for his mouth.

  “Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry, I was thinking about something. You want to know what Simmons was after, right?”

  “Do you want me to beg you? Come on, Garrett, you’re supposed to be helping us on this thing.”

  “And whose big idea was that?” Garrett snapped. “I’m not a cop or anything like one—I’m a catcher, for God’s sake—and all of a sudden you people come in and take over my life—”

  “You want off? It can be arranged.”

  Vicious Aloysius spoke softly, so softly that Garrett was instantly terrified. He looked at the captain and saw an expression that could have been concern. Garrett, though, read it as pure suspicion.

  Okay, wise guy, he told himself. Fix it. The last thing you want now is to be out of it.

  Garrett sighed. “I’m sorry, Captain. Bad day for me. I didn’t get much sleep last night ...”

  Murphy snorted. “Neither did I.”

  “Okay, and you’re used to murders. On top of that, Sunday is my day off. And my parents are worried about me.”

  “Why?” Murphy wanted to know. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

  “I know, I know. But they almost lost me once already.”

  “Yeah, I should have thought of that. Want me to call them or something?”

  “No, thanks. But it was nice of you to offer.”

  “Too much like a note from the teacher, huh?” Both men smiled. “Now,” Murphy went on, “tell me what Simmons wanted.”

  “I wish I knew,” Garrett lied. “I think he was just trying his new power on for size.”

  “Yeah, he pulled the same thing on me, too. I think he’s one of these clowns who believes the biggest bastard always gets the most done.” He mumbled something under his breath. “Listen, Garrett, you’ll probably hear from this guy again. If he tries to pump you, I want to hear about it, congressman or no congressman. Okay?”

  “Sure,” Garrett lied. “There’s the stadium.”

  “Good. Let’s hear what your sensitive friend has to say.”

  2

  God bless Caruso, Captain Murphy thought. He’d been the only tolerable thing about the whole afternoon.

  For one thing, the visit with Mantle had been a total waste of time. If Mantle was anything but a decent American kid from Oklahoma, Murphy was Richard Tucker, and God knew Murphy was no tenor. Hell, if Mantle knew one goddam thing about the congressman’s murder, Murphy was Victoria de los Angeles, and he’d put on a wig and sing Manon in front of the whole Bronx Homicide squad.

  It wasn’t that Mantle hadn’t tried to be helpful. When Murphy showed him a drawing the police artist had whipped up, the ball player had studied it carefully before saying it looked like one of the hot-dog vendors, only older. Murphy had sighed, thanked him, and said he hoped he’d make a lot of touchdowns that afternoon. No one had laughed. “It’s a joke, goddammit. I’m not that ignorant,” he’d protested. He got the feeling they didn’t believe him.

  Garrett hadn’t been much of a traveling companion, either. The whole trip over, Garrett had been griping about something or other—the heat, who was going to pay his expenses, stuff like that. Once he’d actually had the nerve to ask why Caruso had to sing so loud. Now they are sitting in the Samuel Tilden rest area, on the New Jersey Turnpike, talking to the manager, and Garrett was still sitting around watching cops work. The captain was beginning to think of Garrett as one of his less brilliant inspirations. He took a sip of the lemonade the waitress had brought.

  A New Jersey guy named Johnson was there to keep him company. Johnson had apparently seen the killer. Murphy said, “Let me see the stuff you found in the killer’s car.”

  “It’s all at the barracks,” the Jersey guy said. “Evidence.”

  Murphy growled. “I know it’s evidence. I wasn’t going to steal it.” He grumbled. “You got a list of the stuff, at least?”

  “That I got.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. The rest-area manager was forgotten while Captain Murphy, then Detective Martin, looked at the list.

  The captain made a face. “Same old crappy—” he began but stopped when Garrett piped up for the first time that afternoon.

  “May I see it?” he asked.

  The captain nodded; Martin handed the paper to Garrett. The young ball player looked it over for a few seconds, then handed it back to Detective Martin and was silent.

  “The toll ticket,” Garrett said at last.

  Captain Murphy made another face. “Don’t bother me with that now, Garrett. I already told you the NYPD would pick up your expenses for this trip.”

  “Not mine, Captain. His.”

  “Whose?”

  “The killer’s. Mr. Hot Dog. Look at the list. The gun, some untraceable old clothes, some junk that undoubtedly belongs to the guy he stole the car from, and a toll ticket from where he got on the turnpike, just past the George Washington Bridge.”

  “So?”

  Garrett let the captain hang while he asked a passing waitress for another Coke. She smiled at him and said, “Sure, handsome.”

  The manager, whose name was Niffin, said, “How many times I got to tell you, Natalie?” The waitress snorted and walked off.

  Garrett went on. “So a couple of things. The first is only a possibility if your man overlooked something in his plan.”

  “I’m waiting,” Murphy told him. Amateurs, he said to himself.

  “Okay. The theory is that the killer had a spare car waiting here for him; he got here (a little more rushed than he would have liked, what with the state troopers chasing him), switched cars as planned, and beat it.”

  “That’s the theory.”

  “Okay. So the killer provided himself with an extra car. I heard Martin say the New York cops have found a chain of stolen cars abandoned across the Bronx. So another one here, stolen or not, isn’t too hard to swallow. But this is a toll road. You get on, you get your toll ticket, and you don’t pay until you leave the turnpike. You hand your card to the toll taker, and he sees how far you’ve traveled, then tells you how much money to pay. And if you lose your card, you have to pay for the entire length of the turnpike.”

  Natalie arrived with the Coke. She smiled saucily at Garrett and flounced off. All the men at the table stopped and watched her flounce.

  “Amazing,” Garrett said. He sipped his Coke. “How did people ever eat before air conditioning? Where was I?”

  “Paying for the entire length of the turnpike,” the captain reminded him.

  Garrett nodded. “I don’t think that happens too often, do you? And if it happened yesterday, one of the toll takers would probably remember it. How many can there be who worked the right shift yesterday? A couple hundred? A thousand? Between New York and New Jersey authorities, you ought to be able to get to everybody within a couple of days. Hell, you could almost do it over the phone.”

  Murphy grinned. “All right, Garrett, nice thinking. Jeez, if we just know what exit he got off at, it will at least give us a place to start.”

  Detective Martin’s brown face wore a scowl. He shook his head and ran his hand over his tightly curled hair. “No good, Garrett; it won’t work.”

  “Why not?” Captain Murphy demanded. He was just starting to feel a little hopeful.

  “Because the car the killer had waiting here must have also had a toll ticket in it. He drove it onto the turnpike at one time or another—he had to get a toll ticket then, too. All he had to do was leave it in the car when he left it here.”

  Now it was Garrett’s turn to nod. “I thought of that. But then how did he get off the road that time without paying for the whole road? If he drove off, he’s got to be short one ticket, no matter how you look at
it.”

  “Maybe he walked off.”

  “Not yesterday, he didn’t,” Johnson broke in. “He shot my partner—we had this place sealed off. He didn’t get to the fence, and he didn’t hitchhike, either. We even had surveillance planes.”

  “On the day he left the car, then,” Martin said. “He walked off the turnpike or caught a ride. Then he had a car all set, with a toll ticket and everything.”

  Garrett watched his soda fizz as he twirled his glass.

  “I said it was only a possibility. I suppose you could put out word that you want to talk to anyone who picked up a hitchhiker answering our boy’s description lately.

  “But there’s another possibility. And I like this one—it means we don’t have to worry about that other toll ticket at all.”

  3

  Garrett finished his Coke quickly and picked up on his argument. He didn’t want Murphy to accuse him of being mysterious just for fun, though Garrett had to admit to himself there was a certain amount of that feeling in him.

  “Mr. Niffin,” Garrett said.

  The manager jumped. He was a stocky guy with hairy arms and not much forehead—wavy brown hair and bushy eyebrows had taken up most of the space originally allotted for it. He had a habit of working his tongue around the inside of his mouth.

  “Who, me?” the manager asked. He worked his tongue.

  “How far are we from the exit north of here?”

  “Seven, eight miles.”

  “And the one south?”

  “Twelve, thirteen. The exits are bunched up pretty tight up here near the city. Farther south they spread out.”

  “Even so, it’s kind of tough on the people who work here, isn’t it? I mean, they have to drive a stretch of twenty miles on this road and that much off it just to go to and from work. Not to mention tolls.”

  Niffin raised his eyebrows until they practically merged with his hairline. He wanted to know what the hell Garrett was talking about.

  “Seems pretty obvious to me,” Garrett said. He was getting tired of all the quizzical looks. “This restaurant is on the southbound side of a divided highway. You just can’t get to it heading north. That means if you want to get here, you have to drive on a county road to the previous exit onto the turnpike and down to where we are now. Then, when you’re through with work, you have to drive south for another twelve or thirteen miles to get off the turnpike before you have to drive on county roads again to get back to wherever you started.”

  “No, you don’t,” Niffin insisted. He worked his tongue again.

  “Why not?” Garrett wanted to know.

  “Because the restaurant here backs right up to the county road. You use the back door to come in or go out, and there you are. There’s a little path—high fence all around, of course—and you go through that, and you’re out on the county road.”

  Captain Murphy wheeled on Johnson. It looked as if Vicious Aloysius was about to live up to his nickname. “That wasn’t in the report.”

  “We checked it,” Johnson said defensively. He grabbed a copy of his report. “‘The fence and area immediately adjoining were inspected,’” he quoted. “That’s part of the fenced-in area.”

  Murphy groaned. “If Garrett’s right, he could have been through here and out before you even came into the building.”

  Johnson’s teeth were tight. “We asked the people in that goddam kitchen if they’d seen anything. That’s in the goddam report. They all said no.”

  Garrett sighed. “Officer Johnson, what would they have seen if they did see the Hot Dog man? They would have seen a man in restaurant white walking fast through the kitchen of a restaurant at the dinner hour. While shifts were changing, and people were busy with their own work.”

  Johnson looked sick. Garrett was touched to see how fast cops closed ranks; Captain Murphy slapped the Jersey trooper on the back and told him to forget it.

  “But maybe,” the captain added, “we ought to go talk to the kitchen help again.”

  After one look at the kitchen, Garrett would have to steel himself the next time he wanted a restaurant meal. There was a nauseous smell of cooking old and new, and grease, and cleanser, and sweat. Miserable-looking men stood over sinks and pots, stirring and straining. Garrett saw the corner of a bright green rectangle break the surface of water in a huge cauldron. It horrified him until he realized it was only a block of frozen broccoli being cooked.

  Utensils banged; running water screamed. The ceiling lights were frequently obscured by great gauzy clouds of steam that rose from cooking and dishwashing. People were shouting orders and shouting that they hadn’t heard the original shouting.

  And the heat was unbearable. Standing near the cake oven was enough to give someone a sunburn. Already Garrett could feel drops of sweat starting to run on his brow.

  “Jesus,” Captain Murphy said. “I’m surprised they notice anything in here. It’s like living in a headache.”

  They were into evening by now, so it was the night-shift personnel they talked to.

  The colored cook’s name was Levi Barlett. He was small, with quick gestures, and he smiled during his interview like a man who didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Nah, I didn’t see nothin’,” he said in response to a question from Detective Martin. “Least not till the police come in and raise such a ruckus. Then I saw plenty.” Barlett turned around, got a bag of salt from a cabinet, and began filling a salt shaker.

  “We know about that part,” Martin said. “What about before that?”

  “Nothin’, man. Wasn’t nothin’ to see, as far as I could tell you. Besides, I was ha vin’ a conversation with Lillian.” Barlett slyly stroked a graying hairline mustache.

  “Who’s Lillian?” Captain Murphy wanted to know. “A waitress?”

  Barlett laughed; the other cook, a grizzled old guy who reminded Garrett of Poopdeck Pappy, piped up. “It’s me, goddammit. Harry Lillian. And we didn’t have no conversation. He was talking to me. It’s bad enough I got to work with niggers; I ain’t about to go having conversations with them.”

  Vicious Aloysius pushed his hat back on his head and growled. “Is that a fact? Well get this, Lillian. When Detective Martin asks you a question, you’re gonna answer him, and you’re gonna say ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir.’ All right?”

  “You think I got no respect for the Law?” The old man was indignant. “I’m a goddam good American.” He turned to Martin. “You go ahead, sonny. You’re representing the Law; that means it don’t matter if you’re a nigger. Ask away.”

  Levi Barlett was laughing. “Lil, you are too much.” He nudged Detective Martin. “Ain’t he too much?”

  Martin conceded Lillian was too much, waited for the hilarity to die down, and asked his questions. Harry Lillian may not talk to Negroes, Garrett thought, but he sure did listen to them. The old man’s replies were the same as Barlett’s; if anything, he was even more certain than his colored colleague. “So I tell you again, sonny, I didn’t see nothing then, and I don’t see nothing now, except a dumb nigger who’s gonna set fire to himself if he don’t stop laughing and pay attention to his work.”

  Levi Barlett jumped away from the stove, where a gas flame had indeed started the cloth of his sleeve smoldering. He ran water over it and started laughing again as he wrang it out. “Thanks, Lil,” he said.

  Lillian ignored him. Instead he had a suggestion for the cops. “Why don’t you talk to the dummy?” He pointed at the dishwasher across the way.

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Levi Barlett said. “He didn’t leave the kitchen to see what the ruckus was about. He’s a very conscientious boy.”

  Lillian smiled for the first time. “Yeah, but he’s always got his head in the clouds. Steam, you know? He comes in, sticks his head over the sink, and that’s it for him until quitting time. Don’t even take time for a cigarette or nothing. I never seen him breathe nothing but steam.”

  “Maybe he got him a bad cold,” Barlett put in. “Hey
, dummy!” he shouted. “Why don’t you throw some Vapo-Rub in the water? Maybe do you some good.”

  The figure over the sink raised a rubber-gloved hand and waved. The official contingent walked over to him, leaving the two cooks laughing together.

  Garrett had already heard, from the manager Niffin, that the dishwasher’s name was Joey Hart, and that though le was a good worker, talking to him was like pulling teeth.

  When they pulled Joey out of his cloud, it struck Garrett what an unfortunate simile that was, because Joey didn’t have any teeth, and his face had collapsed on itself to become a mass of lines radiating from the small circle that was his mouth.

  Actually Garrett suspected that more than teeth were involved. He’d known a fellow in the hospital who’d looked like Joey—the guy had been separated from his outfit and had wandered around the Korean countryside in the dead of winter, not finding his way back to anything American until his hands, feet, and part of his face were frozen. He’d lost feet, fingers, and most of his lower jaw before Garrett had met him. Something like that had doubtless happened to the dishwasher.

  The questioning seemed to last forever. The dishwasher vas cooperative enough when he understood the questions, but it was hard to make much out of his answers. His voice vas a scratchy whisper that was hard to hear over the din, and his deformity made it difficult for him to shape some words.

  With a gentleness and patience that surprised Garrett, captain Murphy got it established that the dishwasher hadn’t seen anything more than any of the other employees.

  “Well, Joey,” the captain said. “Did you notice anything unusual at all?”

  “Unusual?” Joey pushed back some wet spikes of hair from his forehead and looked at Captain Murphy. He had eyes the color of cornflowers, round, bright eyes that looked incapable of guile.

  “You know, Joey. Something that doesn’t happen every day.”

  “Oh,” Joey said. “Yeah. There was something.” Garrett put Joey’s age around fifty (possibly less—his condition made it hard to tell), but Joey was acting like a kid.

  “What happened, Joey?” Captain Murphy said it carefully, as if he were afraid to break something. “What happened that was unusual?”