Five O'Clock Lightning

by William L. DeAndrea

  Martin fired another shot. “I’m working on it. You think I—” Another bullet whipped through the doorway. “You think I want to die like this? Listen, Garrett—”

  Garrett shook his head; the crackling was too loud for him to hear. Sweat poured off both men now. Garrett could almost feel his own face starting to blister.

  He leaned close to Martin. The detective took a deep breath, coughed, cursed, and yelled. “I’ve only got one bullet left, so you better think of something almighty fast!”

  Sure, Garrett thought, just like that. What he had to do was give his playmates something to think about. Anything. Garrett couldn’t get his brain to work. This goddamn fire. He coughed—he couldn’t take much more than another minute or so of it. He was getting to the point where he’d just as soon face the bullets as let the fire eat its way down the slaughter chute of this office and get him. He had to get away.

  Finally it came to him. Screw it, let their mothers worry. Garrett leaned close to Martin. “Give me your jacket!”

  The detective looked at him. “Come on, goddammit!” Garrett demanded. Martin gave it to him. Garrett shed his own jacket and proceeded to wad the two garments into tight balls. He took a deep breath from the air as near the doorway as he dared, broke a piece of molding off the wall, and walked back toward the fire. He tried to stay out of line of the doorway—the thugs were still shooting at them—but it was difficult because the room itself was so narrow.

  Luckily Garrett didn’t have to go far to reach the flames.

  As soon as he did, he forced the piece of molding into the wad that was the detective’s jacket and held it in the fire like a pyromaniac toasting a giant marshmallow. When the jacket was blazing, he sprinted toward the door of the office, holding his homemade torch like a lacrosse stick. Trying not to worry about bullets, he whipped the stick forward, shooting the blazing cloth into the slaughterhouse.

  Garrett didn’t wait to see where it landed; he was back to the flames with his own jacket, repeating the whole business.

  Garrett risked a peek around the door frame. He saw that his plan had begun to work—at least one of the jackets had landed on bare wood or sawdust, and the new flames were beginning to spread. Chicago Ned’s boys had to find new positions if they wanted to keep shooting at all.

  “Let’s go!” Garrett shouted, and the two men sprinted for freedom between two walls of flame.

  16

  Lindy was supposed to return to Barney’s Tavern, get a cab, and go straight home, where Gennarro would meet her later. She decided it would be nice, though, to wait outside. Then they could go home together after Gennarro finished talking to Mr. Garrett. She was sure Gennarro wouldn’t mind. It was a nice night, all the stars were out, and it was kind of peaceful here, despite the smell. Lindy’d grown up on a dairy farm, and ten thousand cows didn’t smell a thousand times worse than ten cows. Besides, she liked the noise they made. It was kind of musical. Lindy laughed.

  Then, suddenly, it wasn’t musical. The cows went quiet for a second, then started to make nervous, crying noises. And there were sounds from inside. Sharp cracks, like balloons popping, only louder, and something that smelled like ...

  Lindy sniffed the air with her little nose. Fire! And Gennarro was inside! Lindy didn’t even want to think what the popping noises might be; she ran back to the door of the slaughterhouse to see what had happened to her man.

  17

  Gennarro Kennedy sat quietly in one of Mrs. Klimber’s limousines up the road from the slaughterhouse, deciding exactly how he was going to punish Lindy for disobeying orders. It was obvious now that little blond idiot was not going to leave the premises until he, Kennedy, did. And since he, Kennedy, was not in the building, she would stand there for a long time.

  He would have to go to her and take her away; there was no way around it. That displeased him. Kennedy did not want to be seen in propria persona in the vicinity of the slaughterhouse tonight by anybody, Lindy included. He would have been content to drive up when Garrett was inside and Lindy gone and wait for Chicago Ned to come out to collect the remainder of that night’s money, secure in the knowledge that by then the inquisitive Mr. Garrett, or, rather, pieces of him, would be turning into sludge and soap along with parts of various substandard cows in the lye vat.

  He had been angry when he’d arrived to see Lindy standing at the entrance. He was coldly furious now to see her still there. How to punish her was the question.

  He didn’t like the idea of hitting her; the bruises would mar her esthetically. He would simply, he decided, make it clear to her how disappointed he was and withhold approval or affection from her until he could be sure she’d learned her lesson.

  Gennarro Kennedy closed his eyes and nodded his head, sealing the decision, when he first heard the gunshots. Even at this distance they were unmistakable. The cattle had heard them, too, and seemed to be on the edge of panic. He’d better drive up now and get Lindy out of there before they decided to stampede.

  Then, just as he put the Cadillac in gear, he saw Lindy run back inside, and for the first time since his childhood, Gennarro Kennedy didn’t know what to do.

  18

  Garrett’s plan had worked too damned well. His spreading the fire had scattered the hoodlums all right—they’d all run out through the doorway he’d entered the building by. They’d been held up momentarily by the girl who’d led Garrett into the trap in the first place. Then they threw her roughly to the bloody floor. One of them said, “Out of my way, bitch,” before he trampled her. She lay there, stunned.

  Garrett watched this all happen while he and Martin made for that exit themselves. Then he watched as the fire he’d started circled around behind her and closed the exit off.

  Martin had him by the arm. “This way!” he said, pointing back over his shoulder. “We’ll go down the ramp!”

  “The what?”

  “The ramp! The way the cows get in!”

  It sounded good to Garrett—that ramp had cost a few thousand or a few million animal lives—now let it save a few human ones. “We’ve got to get the girl first!”

  He didn’t wait to see if Martin agreed; he just went. Garrett got an arm under her shoulders and led her as fast as he could to the ramp. Martin had already climbed it and was waiting for Garrett to hand the girl up to him.

  She didn’t want to go.

  “Where is he?” she screamed. “I can’t leave him here! Help me find him!”

  “Who?” Garrett demanded.

  “Where is he! You were talking to him!”

  The place was an inferno now. Huge hunks of flaming wood were crashing loose from walls and ceilings. Lindy continued to struggle.

  Martin’s voice cut in, rasping above the roar of the flames. “Garrett, for Christ’s SAKE!”

  Garrett looked where the detective was pointing. The ramp had started to char.

  “Stop it!” Garrett ordered the girl. “We’ve got no more time for this, goddammit, stop!”

  She didn’t; for the second time in two nights, Garrett found himself hitting a woman across the face. Lindy didn’t fall, but she stopped struggling and looked at him. Her eyes were wide with shock, and unless Garrett was mistaken, hurt. Of all things.

  Garrett didn’t take time to figure it out. He grabbed the girl before she could recover and handed her up to Martin. Then he scrambled up the woodwork himself. His legs trembled just a little. No real trouble, so far.

  The ramp was foul with droppings and blood. Footing was practically impossible. They half-ran, half-slid down the ramp to the holding pen. There was a crash behind them as the part of the ramp inside the building collapsed.

  Cornelius Martin had complained about the air of the stockyards, but now he took huge, grateful lungfuls of it. Paroled from hell. All they had to do now was get clear of the building before it collapsed, too. He ran to the gate of the holding pen and tried to figure, in the dark, how the latch opened. He didn’t have to open the latch. A mass of terrified, s
tampeding cattle broke down the wall.

  19

  It was a living picture of panic: cattle running desperately in any direction there was room to run. They were a deadly, mindless force, an avalanche of living flesh, set off by the noise of the guns and the flashing of the flames that licked the roof and walls of the slaughterhouse.

  Garrett knew he had to stay on his feet; he heard someone screaming it again and again over the thunder (there was no other word) of hoofbeats. He was amazed to realize he was the one doing the screaming.

  He was equally amazed to realize he had the girl. She was no trouble now because she was, quite literally, too scared to move. They stood together in the midst of the stampede like two sticks in a river, with shoulders or rumps bumping them from side to side. Garrett thanked God for whoever had removed the horns.

  Suddenly there was a gap in the rush. Pulling the girl behind him, Garrett sprinted past the “CRIPS” pen to take shelter among the dead. He pushed Lindy down between two carcasses and looked up over the rim of the pit.

  He was looking for Martin. He hadn’t seen him since the wall had caved in on him and he’d disappeared in a forest of hoofed legs. Garrett cursed.

  It was maddening to look out over the backs of the cattle and see safety on the other side of a fence less than twenty-five yards away; a fence that before long rubberneckers would line up to look over. Garrett saw cars stopping on the street beyond the fence. Garrett saw flashing red lights, too. Someone had called the fire department. Now if they could only get to the building.

  The girl was standing beside him now, her eyes as wide as one of the cows’. Suddenly Garrett heard his name called in a horrible voice. He looked.

  It was Martin. The detective was badly hurt. He was dragging himself along with one arm along the rim of the “CRIPS” pen. His lips were red with blood, and a good portion of his forehead had been scraped aside by a sharp hoof.

  “Don’t move!” Garrett ordered the girl. Then he forced himself to leave the safety of the “DEAD” pit and help Martin. He got there just in time to pull Martin out of the way of more charging cattle. He dragged him in among the dead and tried to make him comfortable.

  All this time the girl had been looking over the rim, frightened but fascinated, the way a child watches a thunderstorm from the safety of a house.

  Then she screamed something, one or two words, and clambered out of the pit. She tried to run for the fence and safety. She didn’t get five yards. She went down before a wave of cattle like a stalk of wheat before a scythe. Somehow she seemed to get under and among their legs and was rolled over and over, like a snowball. Then they left her behind, and she lay on the dirt, pathetic in her red dress, her platinum hair falling down to cover her face.

  There were no more waves of cattle, just a few angry stragglers. Garrett learned later the fire department had kept them at bay with hoses. They put the fire out, too.

  Garrett left the pit and made his way to where the firemen were working on the building itself. He told a rescue-squad driver there was a man hurt and took him to Martin. Then he slipped away.

  There was nothing more he could do. And Garrett had something to think about. Lots of things. Like what was the meaning of this whole evening. Why should the girl be part of a setup where five Negroes tried to kill him with sledgehammers? Why try to kill him at all?

  And the girl, Lindy. What the hell had it been she was trying to say as she ran to her death? “Tomorrow?” “Too narrow?” It was an irritating little question. The kind that would bother him for a long time.

  20

  Garrett coughed up blackness. It was hard to believe just two lungs could hold all that soot. He took another sip of scalding-hot tea and pulled the blanket closer around him.

  The blanket was thin and light, but very warm. He took a look at the label to see what it was made of. Acrilan. One of those new miracle fibers. It figured.

  Garrett was back at Mrs. Klimber’s Tomorrowland mansion in Mission Hills with Cheryl Tilton. Cheryl was making phone calls; Garrett listened and threw in suggestions as they occurred to him.

  “... So Mr. Martin is in serious but stable condition—is that what I should tell the congressman?”

  Garrett smiled at the smooth way Cheryl slipped in a reminder of her employer’s title. That had been on his mind from the minute he’d staggered away from the carnage at the slaughterhouse. He’d needed a safe place to stay; he needed food, a bath, new clothes. But most of all he needed some facts. Cheryl was the one to get them.

  He’d been astonished at how easily Cheryl had agreed to help him; she hadn’t asked a single question. Garrett reflected ruefully that his caveman act from the night before still carried some magic in this woman’s eyes. She was scary.

  But efficient. Cheryl got further details from the hospital. Detective Martin had a broken arm, three broken ribs, a punctured lung, a dislocated hip, and assorted burns, bruises, and lacerations. Garrett had gotten away with just the last three and considered himself lucky.

  “Find out when he can be moved,” Garrett told Cheryl.

  “Just a second, please.” Cheryl covered the mouthpiece. “What did you say?”

  “When can I get Martin back to New York?”

  Cheryl uncovered the phone and asked. “Thank you. Yes, thank you very much. Yes, I’ll tell him.” She hung up. “Not for at least a week, they say,” she told Garrett.

  “Damn,” the young man said. He got off the sofa and walked to the phone, which was kept in an aluminum box, and called Hal Keating.

  “Russ!” Keating said when he heard Garrett’s voice. “Are you all right? Goddamnit, I’ve been worried sick about you. You were supposed to call me as soon as you were through, remember? What the hell did you do, stop to watch the fire at the slaughterhouse?”

  Garrett made a noise that started as a laugh and ended with a cough. “You might say that, Hal.”

  “Well, how’d it go?”

  “Badly. Hal, I need help, fast. Martin’s hurt; in the hospital. He should be watched. You use security men at your plant?”

  “Sure. The best. Picked them and checked them out myself.”

  “Can you spare some? Twenty-four-hour guard on Martin’s room until he’s well enough to get back to New York?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess I could. But what’s wrong with the police?”

  “I don’t trust the police.”

  “Come on, Russ. I know this town. The cops aren’t perfect here, but they aren’t anywhere. Kansas City’s force is pretty damn good.”

  “I don’t care. It only takes one. Martin tried to get them in on this; they wouldn’t come. And the whole thing was a setup. So I don’t trust them. I trust you. Will you take care of it right away?”

  “All right, Russ, take it easy. I said you should get more aggressive, but don’t go overboard. Yeah, I’ll do it right now.”

  “Thanks. Call me back as soon as you do, all right?” Garrett gave him the number. Keating said he would and hung up.

  Garrett looked at Cheryl. “If your boss was in on this, I’ll have his head. I don’t care what it takes, I’m going to pin this on him. If he did it. If Martin dies ...”

  “What about me?” Cheryl asked. She led Garrett back to the sofa.

  “What about you? It goes for you, too, Cheryl. You play the power games, too. I’ll be watching you.”

  She put her hand on his chest under the blanket.

  “You’re upset,” Cheryl said.

  Garrett looked at her. “I’ve been lied to, sledgehammered, burned, stampeded. I’ve seen a friend hurt and a young girl smashed to applesauce. I’m hiding from cops and killers, naked, having crossed a state line, in the company of a woman who pulled a razor on me the night before. Yes, I am upset. Fucking good and.”

  “I’ll make you feel better,” Cheryl said. She kissed him on the cheek.

  “No time,” Garrett told her. “As soon as Hal Keating calls back, I’m going to tell him to check me out of the hotel
and bring me my clothes. I’m getting out of Kansas City. I’ve got to get back to New York. I’ve got friends in New York.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Garrett smiled at her. It would be an interesting experiment to tell her—he would return to New York, go about his business, and if nobody killed him or the people he wanted to talk to, then Cheryl was just a lovely girl who happened to like power and slightly offbeat sex.

  And who brought out the same things in him, Garrett realized, half-ashamed. He was seriously tempted to tell her, but good sense won out. He just kept smiling until she gave up.

  Garrett was going back on the trail of David Laird. Nothing had started to happen in this case until Garrett had started tossing Laird’s name around. Garrett had to keep pushing it. It all meant too much to somebody. He had to keep pushing it until it broke.

  Or he did.

  21

  Gennarro Kennedy sat in the dark in Lindy’s apartment, smoking cigarettes and thinking.

  She was dead. His little, empty-headed Lindy, who had loved him so much, was dead. And dead for those very reasons—because she was stupid, and because she loved him.

  If she had followed orders she would be alive now. Somehow Kennedy could find no comfort in the fact. She had waited for him because she wanted to be with him; she had gone back inside the burning building because she thought he was in there, in danger.

  And she died because she saw him in the crowd of spectators, safe on the other side of the fence, and had called his name in relief and had, unthinkingly, run to him. To her death.

  Poor, foolish, devoted, gentle, loving Lindy.

  Kennedy decided he would wait a while before he looked for a new woman. A good long while.

  He lit another cigarette, and his thoughts turned to Mr. Russell Andrew Garrett of New York City.

  Kennedy reminded himself that the object of the exercise tonight had been to kill Garrett. It was the right move. Garrett was onto Laird; that road could have led back to Kennedy himself. So it was a good idea for Garrett to disappear. It had been prudent.