Five O'Clock Lightning

by William L. DeAndrea

  When he got there, he took a deep breath and started sprinting.

  Two more shots sent him scurrying for cover. Sweat mingled with the blood that poured down his face. He lay on his back listening to the steady, relentless scraping of Kennedy’s shoes on the concrete.

  Garrett’s feet were cold.

  He wanted to cry but started laughing instead, quiet, wheezing, uncontrollable explosions of sardonic mirth.

  Here it is, Garrett, he told himself. That last workout you promised yourself. The one that was going to decide your future. It had come a little late, that was all. Now, it was going to decide if he would ever have a future.

  Garrett gave up the idea of escaping. It was only a matter of minutes before he became a cripple, unable to run, hardly able to walk. He looked up again. Kennedy had pulled the little pocket flashlight from his pants and was using it to follow Garrett’s trail of blood. Garrett still had a significant lead, but it dwindled every second he stayed where he was.

  Kennedy was talking. “Garrett, give up. You can’t get away. You’re hurt already—I’ll put you out of your misery. And don’t count on Cheryl Tilton for help,” he shouted. “I’ve already taken care of her.”

  Garrett groaned softly. Kennedy had just killed a hope he wasn’t sure he’d had. It was up to Garrett. Alone. Who had bad legs, a gash in his head, and not so much as a penknife to fight with. All he possessed, in fact, was his knowledge of the stadium. He’d instinctively headed for the nearest exit, but it looked inevitable now that Kennedy was going to catch him before he could reach it.

  The words burned his brain. Kennedy was going to catch him. All Garrett could do was help pick where.

  But that might be enough.

  Garrett thought it over. Sure, it could work. If he could make it that far. If Kennedy didn’t shoot him in the meantime.

  To hell with it. He had to try. Garrett got his body up in a crouch, supporting himself with his arms on chair backs, giving his damaged legs a break—they’d need it.

  He was hesitating. Come on, he told himself. This is only a matter of discipline. You’ve run this many steps before feeling this bad. And nobody’s life depended on it then. So come on, Rags, haul ass.

  Absurdly, defiantly, Russell Andrew Garrett summoned to his brain the three-part harmonies of Patti Page singing “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window.” Then he started up the concrete stairs again.

  Chapter Nine

  Five O’Clock Lightning

  1

  GENNARRO KENNEDY SAW HIM go. He raised the pistol but thought better of it. He only had two shots left, and he was just wasting them when he fired at this distance. Besides, Garrett wasn’t moving too quickly, anyway. Kennedy merely increased his own pace and gained on Garrett at a respectable rate.

  Kennedy was quite proud of the lie he’d told about taking care of Cheryl Tilton. He knew it couldn’t fail to demoralize his quarry. Gennarro Kennedy was still the same; still Iago in Othello’s body. He’d just had bad luck. But he’d take care of Garrett, in any case. Garrett had to die. Painfully. Then Kennedy would go into hiding, maybe leave the country. If David Laird could do it, Gennarro Kennedy certainly could. He was weary of Mrs. Klimber, anyway. He’d find something better.

  He ran a course up the stairs parallel to the flight Garrett had taken and emerged onto the dim first-level walkway only about twenty seconds after Garrett. He trained his pocket flashlight at the floor and quickly picked up the trail of blood spatters, little triangular smears on the concrete pointing like arrowheads in the direction Garrett had gone.

  The trail was childishly easy to follow. It led him toward the narrow end of the stadium, to Gates 1 and 2, the major exits behind home plate.

  Kennedy wasn’t worried that Garrett might escape. The curving hall prevented him from seeing his quarry, but Kennedy could hear Garrett’s labored breathing and his scraping steps as they echoed around him. Kennedy took pleasure in the knowledge that Garrett could hear him coming, too.

  There was another sign that Garrett’s bad legs were catching up with him. The spatters of blood were more compact and closer together. That meant less distance covered between each one and the next. Garrett was weakening.

  Suddenly the trail took a sharp left turn, up a flight of stairs. Kennedy smiled and followed. He moved cautiously, suspecting Garrett might have gotten desperate enough to have laid some feeble trap for him.

  Kennedy didn’t run into a trap, just Garrett’s suit jacket (he’d apparently ditched it) and more blood, red and fresh. He followed it to the landing of the second deck, the mezzanine deck; then out through a tunnel and back into the grandstand itself.

  Kennedy sighed. It looked like Garrett wanted to play more of that tedious hide and seek.

  Then he saw him. Down below, at the edge of the mezzanine, Kennedy saw Garrett’s white shirt like a beacon in the gathering light. It was just a glimpse, but it was enough. Garrett disappeared through a door into the press box.

  Kennedy smiled. Garrett had trapped himself. Kennedy could taste the victory. Quietly, gun ready, he strolled down the stairs to the press box.

  2

  Garrett’s legs were done for. He stumbled across the narrow broadcast booth to Mel Allen’s desk and leaned against it, breathing heavily. He looked around, touching the TV monitor with one hand and the little refrigerator used in the Ballantine beer commercials with the other. They seemed to reassure him.

  But he was wasting time. With a groan he got off the desk and staggered back to the light switch. The lights went on; there was still power, Garrett thanked God. He got down on his knees and pulled the case of Ballantine from under the desk. There were only about ten bottles left. They would have to do.

  He grabbed the little switch on the monitor and turned on the set. The electronic hum of its tubes warming up was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. Garrett disconnected the closed-circuit cable. He took a peek through the grillwork in the metal case and got a gratifying look at glowing filaments. Sweat and blood dripped down his forehead and burned his eyes.

  He was nervous. He didn’t have much time. The open part of the press box was behind him as he sat on the desk. He wasn’t afraid of falling over (though he might have been) as much as he was nervous of being watched or taken by surprise from behind, which was patently absurd. He put it from his mind and began to smash the beer bottles on the floor. A warm, yeasty smell filled the booth. The sky was light enough for Garrett to see the miniature ocean form on the floor, foamy liquid waves splashing around jagged islands of brown glass.

  “Garrett!”

  Garrett gulped. Too soon! He turned over the heavy wooden beer case and let the last two bottles smash on the floor.

  Kennedy fired a bullet through the door. Garrett jumped and dropped the case. Garrett needed that case. Painfully, he got down to retrieve it.

  “You should know better than to think you can get me by lurking behind a door with a broken bottle, Garrett. Did I hit you?”

  Garrett didn’t answer. He had put the beer case back on the desk; now he was trying to pull himself back up on it through arm power alone.

  The door boomed and shuddered as Kennedy started to kick it in. Garrett had planned to leave it open—he was glad now he’d changed his mind. Kneeling, he glanced back over his shoulder to see the wood around the lock start to give. Garrett felt tendons in his shoulders pop, but he got himself upright, then leaned his belly over the edge of the table.

  Kennedy kicked the door again. Garrett grabbed his pants leg and pulled his legs clear of the beer on the floor. He looked at the monitor. The small white dot had grown to a snowy gray square—no program on that channel at this hour of the morning.

  It didn’t matter. It was about to be canceled.

  Garrett was reaching for the beer case as the door crashed open. Gennarro Kennedy, big, dark, and menacing, filled the doorway. He smiled.

  “A nice run, Garrett. But it’s all over.” He took a step forward and invited G
arrett to guess where the bullet was going to go.

  Garrett took a tighter grip on the beer case.

  Kennedy took another step into the ocean of beer. “I don’t want to miss,” he said. He raised the gun.

  With a sudden shout of effort, Garrett reared back and smashed the corner of the wooden case into the screen of the TV monitor. Glass flew as the picture tube imploded. The set was knocked off the desk. It landed in the beer with a sizzle and a crack and a sudden cloud of ill-smelling steam.

  All of Gennarro Kennedy’s muscles contracted at once. He fired his last bullet involuntarily. His eyes rolled back; he seemed to jump suddenly up in the air and backward. He hit the wall of the booth with an audible thud, then pitched forward into the puddle of beer and glass. Garrett could hear crunching noises under Kennedy when he landed.

  Garrett let the beer case fall to the floor. He lay back on the desk and allowed himself to breathe.

  After a few moments he supported himself on his elbow and surveyed the damage.

  The monitor’s electrical cord had been long enough to reach. Garrett had been worried about that. Talks with his father had made him fairly confident the high-voltage section would still keep enough voltage to do the job even after the set had been unplugged, but Garrett was glad the juice had kept pouring in. Using the beer case, just to be sure, he knocked the plug out of the socket.

  Then he looked at Kennedy. The man was dead, whether from electric shock or from landing heavily on daggerlike shards of broken bottles, Garrett couldn’t say. And he didn’t much care. Dark pools of blood were mingling with the beer, from Kennedy’s arms, his stomach, his neck.

  Garrett was sickened at that part, but he couldn’t look away. Kennedy had landed facedown on a piece of glass, apparently, and its razor-sharp edge had peeled away the flesh of his jaw and neck right to gleaming white bone.

  Garrett kept staring, riveted by the irony. Ever since Bristow’s body had been found, Garrett had worried about someone else being killed and having his face mutilated. Now Garrett himself had brought that about.

  From outside he heard voices on the upper deck. Guards, maybe. Cops. For no special reason, Garrett looked at his watch.

  Eighteen minutes after five, Tuesday, September 8, 1953. Garrett closed his eyes. It figured. He’d won in true Yankee fashion. He’d called down his own bolt of five o’clock lightning.

  Two bolts.

  Garrett’s eyes popped open as wide as if he’d been the one who’d gotten the shock. He looked again at the obscenity that had been Gennarro Kennedy’s face and neck, and he knew.

  “Hey!” he yelled at whoever was milling around outside. “Hurry up and get me the hell out of here!”

  Because he knew. He knew what had happened to Bristow, and why. He knew how David Laird had, during hot pursuit by the New Jersey State Police, still managed to vanish like a soap bubble.

  Garrett smiled. Soap bubble. Very appropriate.

  He knew why David Laird had shadowed his wife but had made no attempt to see her.

  He even knew how to go about learning where he was now.

  3

  Garrett was at the hospital having the gash in his forehead stitched and slivers of picture tube picked from his face and hands when it finally occurred to him to call home and let his parents know he was alive.

  “I took care of it already,” Captain Murphy told him. “You put people through a lot, Garrett. Christ. I was about half-ready to tear ass up to Boston and join the search for your killer.” He growled. “Do me a favor. Don’t get involved in any more crap like this. You’re too dangerous.”

  Garrett thought of Hal Keating lying in pieces outside Fenway Park. “Yeah. How’s Martin?”

  “He’ll be fine. Too bad he’s at a different hospital; you could visit.” The captain rubbed his chin. “You know, Garrett, you actually found out a lot of stuff in this case. The bitch of it is, you found out everything about it except how we can arrest the murderer.” Murphy took off his hat and rubbed his head. “It was David Laird after all. And the bastard just vanished. I will be fried.”

  A policeman came in and called the captain aside. Garrett was glad; it meant he didn’t have to lie. He wasn’t ready to share his ideas with the captain just yet.

  Murphy returned. “Okay, the bomb squad called in. The Yankees can practice on schedule. Happy?”

  “Ecstatic,” Garrett said and grimaced.

  “Yeah, you look it. Okay, Garrett. I’ve got most of your story—this Kennedy was something else again, wasn’t he? Talk about uppity. Big mouth, too. We got his pal Nofsinger this morning, and I’ve been on the horn to K.C. telling them to take a nice long look at Klimber Industries.”

  “What will that accomplish?”

  “Nothing. I just didn’t want them to feel left out. Listen, after you’re done here, I want a statement from you, a formal one. I mean, I know you, but nobody else is going to believe your story unless you’re under oath. Take a cab over when you’re finished—I’ll be at headquarters organizing the search for David Laird.”

  “Hold it,” Garrett said. The captain stopped halfway to the door. “I thought I was in custody.”

  “For what?”

  “I killed a man.”

  Murphy made a noise with his lips. “Self-defense. The Tilton woman—she’s waiting outside for you, by the way, you lucky bastard—backs up everything you say. So does the physical evidence. So consider yourself on your own recognizance.”

  “Would it be all right if I came in tomorrow for that formal statement? I—I’m pretty beat.” That was no lie. Too bad he couldn’t rest.

  “Sure. Take care of yourself, Garrett. I’m sorry about your friend.”

  Garrett gave him a feeble wave as he left.

  Before long they were done with him, and Garrett and Cheryl left the hospital.

  It was about nine o’clock now. The sun was starting to burn off the haze. The worst of the morning rush hour traffic had passed the Bronx, but there were still quite a few cars honking along southbound.

  Cheryl had spent the morning renting a car. Garrett never found out how she’d managed to get one so early. Congressional know-how, he supposed.

  Cheryl herself was radiant, as though last night had been the time of her life. Then it struck him that it probably had been. Her evening clothes didn’t seem inappropriate. Cheryl had the air of someone who was celebrating the discovery of something. Even when she wasn’t smiling. Even when she was apologizing.

  “Russ, I’m sorry it took me so long to get help this morning. I couldn’t find my way out! And all the time I expected Kennedy to grab me from behind. And I was afraid for you; I couldn’t think straight. I must have run past the exit three times. Finally I ran into one of the guards. They came in to look for us when the ground-crew people left, just like you said they would. You must have been terrified.”

  “I was.”

  They had reached the car. A Buick LeSabre. Garrett knew that right away because it had four portholes in the side instead of just three. “Poor Russ,” Cheryl said as she slipped behind the wheel. “Anyway, it’s all over now.”

  “Practically.”

  Cheryl looked at him strangely, then shrugged. “Well, it’s all over for me. I’m through with Tad, and I’m through with his brother, and I’m especially through with his brother’s murder. I’ve got plenty of time to figure out what I’m going to do next.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  Cheryl started the motor, looked over her bare shoulders, and pulled out into traffic. “Which way are we going here?” Garrett pointed. “And no, I don’t know. You sound like you do”

  “Of course I do.” Garrett was leaning back with his eyes closed. “You’re going back to Kansas City.”

  Cheryl laughed. “Whatever for?”

  “Job opening,” Garrett said. “A certain rich widow is going to need someone to take care of her. Good pay. Fringe benefits include congenial home, with board. And the chance to wield more econ
omic and political power than practically anybody in or out of government.”

  Cheryl said nothing for a few moments. Then in a small voice she said, “The old lady does like me ...”

  Eyes still closed, Garrett grinned. Cheryl cursed him at first for putting the idea in her head, almost crying at times. She said she had wanted them to be together, at least for a while, but now—well, if she was going to do it, she’d have to do it right away. She hoped he’d understand.

  Garrett understood. He wasn’t equipped to deal with a woman like Cheryl. He couldn’t, off the top of his head, think of any man who was. Besides, Mrs. Klimber’s pattern was set; someone would be using that woman’s power; if not Cheryl, maybe somebody worse.

  And Cheryl would have such fun. She might even do some good. She wasn’t bitter and twisted, as Kennedy had been. Who could tell? Power was power, whether you used it to kill somebody or to buy a kid a hot lunch. Besides, after the current mess people would be watching the Klimber empire more closely.

  Garrett directed Cheryl back to the hotel. She would call Mrs. Klimber, then check out and catch the first available plane to Kansas City. Garrett volunteered to take care of the rented car.

  When they arrived, Cheryl leaned over and kissed him passionately. “Thank you, Russ,” she said when she had finished.

  “For what?”

  “For understanding me better than anybody ever has. And for not judging me.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridic—” Another kiss cut him off. He began to be sorry he wasn’t going to Kansas City with her. Then it was over, and Cheryl left the car. Garrett slid into the driver’s seat and drove off.

  He was tempted to go to the hotel where Jenny was staying, but he decided against it. He called instead, reassuring her he was all right, saying he’d explain everything later. She told him she loved him; this time he got to answer her. He felt good about that.

  But he was frowning as he got back behind the wheel.