“Ford F-150, black, last year’s model,” I said. “It isn’t there. Just the trailer.”
Karyl glared at the woman. “Plate number.”
“Forget that,” I said. “I know where he’s headed.”
PART FOUR
CINEMA SLAM
TWENTY-SIX
It’s a rush whenever an entire city rears up on its hind legs.
I’d seen it only a couple of times, during the dragnet for Gross, Turkel, and Smith, accused of ambushing Detroit Police officers, and when Charlotte Sing was wanted internationally for murder, narcotics, and trafficking in stolen human organs.
But when a quiet college town goes on the alert, the sirens seem louder, the flashing lights brighter, and the radio transmissions harsher. The same energy that goes into rooting for the Michigan football team spins square around on its axis and applies itself to an arrest, and fast.
For a few minutes, everyone with a two-way radio was on the air. Calls went downtown, to Washtenaw County sheriff’s headquarters on Hogback (I’m not the one who names these streets), to the state police in Lansing, and to Detroit, ordering bomb squads and Early Response teams; that’s SWAT, to you. An aerial shot of southeastern Michigan would show hordes of toy-size squad cars zeroing in on Ann Arbor like reverse ripples in a pond.
If the pilot could get clearance to take off: Helicopter rotors from all four departments and the U of M hospital medivac walloped the air, kicking up dust from construction sites and buzzing every window in its frame for miles.
I was back in the unmarked gray Ford, digging finger holes in the upholstery between Sergeants Rogers and Bonaparte, with Karyl seated in front beside Officer Kinderly and his lead foot. Our siren joined the kiyoodling wave, and we parted traffic like Moses on a souped-up snowplow.
“All this didn’t have to happen.” Karyl’s voice was taut. “You knew Moselle was a likely target, Walker. He had too much on Marcus.”
“I warned him. It didn’t take. He was spooky about cops; he spent most of his working capital bailing his models out of jail and paying fines. He’d have spotted any detail you put on him and screamed it from the bell tower. Anyway, he said Marcus gave up his plans to blow up the theater. He was pretty convincing. And Jerry was still hot on Holly. She was ground zero then.”
“We all had him wrong.” But he didn’t sound as if he were shifting any burdens. “Marcus swindled his investors not to get rich, but to raise cash to buy explosives. He dumped that fertilizer when Moselle didn’t go along. Had to, if he was going to convince Moze not to turn him in after he had a chance to think about it.”
“Then why kill his twin brother before he gathered what he needed?” I asked. “This guy’s got the smarts to work everything out ten moves ahead. Why jump the gun so that he had to steal the stuff he needed after killing Moselle?”
“I’ve got a theory about that. You said the Marcuses’ own mother didn’t know Tom was back in the States. Maybe he dropped in on Jerry early, and that forced his hand. He tried to buy time by eliminating the only witness who could place him at the murder scene, carrying just the kind of box we’d be looking for once we worked out his M.O. When he saw you trailing cops, he realized he’d be committing murder in front of that many more, and shifted his focus. Moze was still a threat, and a guy that makes movies would know all about the chemicals his old partner worked with. Jerry already knew how to make a bomb, on account of his special-effects training; Moselle told you that much.”
I watched the blur of scenery. I had the spooky feeling it was the one doing the moving while I sat still in the middle of it.
“It fits,” I said.
“Fuckin’ A, it fits.”
“It fits so tight it stinks.”
* * *
It stank as much as a madman could make it.
It should have been simple, as simple a thing as just another fast-shovel artist pulling the wool over the eyes of a couple of overripe hippies with dollar signs spinning around their heads. It didn’t have to be about a spoiled genius unappreciated in his own time, with a running sore in his ego, a rotten spot in his brain, and an expert knowledge of demolitions.
That wasn’t enough, though. It had to throw in a twin brother.
Science-fiction buffs know a lot about science fact. DNA is unique to the individual, except in the case of identical twins. Who knew at what point Jerry Marcus remembered that, and saw the whole thing laid out in front of him like a GPS map?
“Jerry was right-handed, wasn’t he?” I asked.
Karyl kept his eyes on the street ahead. “Our grapholologist says so: Forward slanting hand in the scribbles we found in his room. What’s it got to do with anything?”
“Only that I’m an idiot. I could have tied this whole thing up that first day.”
* * *
“Entertain me.”
“I looked at the watch. If in the struggle with his killer it got smashed, we’d have time of death; unless, of course, the killer shattered it on purpose, to give himself an alibi.”
“That one’s got whiskers. We’d’ve suspected it straight off. I told you I read mysteries.”
“I overlooked the most important thing: the wrist he wore it on. Right-handers usually wear it on the left, the non-working one. Otherwise it can get in the way of a physical project, or take too much of a beating and stop. This one was on the corpse’s right wrist. It’s inconclusive, but it suggests the man wearing it was left-handed.”
“Well, when we nail Jerry, we’ll see which hand he uses to sign his confession.”
“I read somewhere that twins are reversed that way: One’s right-handed, the other left. In extreme cases, even their hearts are reversed. Anything there?”
“Seems to me the M.E. would have said something. She’s a witch, but she’s as thorough as my proctologist.”
“I guess it’s not universal. Fingerprints, being right- or left-handed; the old-fashioned boys with their hunches never ruled them out. The trouble with all this jazzy new science is we put it in front of what worked before.”
We’d bogged down at the old bugaboo at Carpenter Road; a tractor-trailer rig had come to a stop this side of the crosswalk, leaving no room for anything wider than a bicycle to thread its way through the space. Kinderly sat drumming his fingers on the wheel. Karyl leaned hard left, shoving the pedal into the block. The engine whined against the pressure of the brake.
The driver got the message. He let up, spun the wheel right, and bucked up onto the grassy berm. We took out a sign advertising a charity car wash. It plastered itself to the windshield until he kicked it loose with the wipers.
I was getting used to that stretch of expressway, although I figured it would seem tame at a leisurely ninety.
Back on Main, over the torn-up railroad tracks, and Liberty again, turning jaywalkers into law-abiding citizens in a flash. Six blocks from the theater, an officer setting up a barricade scrambled out of our way; we might have sheared a button off his uniform.
We slowed finally, coasting to a stop a block from the action. When we got out, we were spectators.
Men and women in blue, some in combat fatigues, spilled like ants through doors on both sides of the street, blasting whistles and waving batons at the crowds they were herding out into the open. Something that resembled an armored personnel carrier trundled down the exact center of the street, blaring cautionary advice through a megaphone that sounded like a saxophone with a split reed. The usual cluster of half-wits were gathered on facing sidewalks, giving the tall-fingered salute and waving misspelled signs. A flying wedge of uniforms dashed them to pieces, scattering red Solo cups right and left. The tracked military vehicle ground a rolling bong into splinters.
The carrier stopped in front of Borders. A hatch opened up top, and from it swarmed humanoid creatures in riot gear—medieval-looking helmets with smoked-glass visors, gas masks, and quilted catchers’ vests, automatic weapons slung from webbed straps across their shoulders. It was like watching clowns pour out of
a car in the circus.
Karyl flashed his gold shield, stopping a Golem in Kevlar in mid-sprint. He plucked out an earpiece to hear what the lieutenant was saying, then nodded and pointed in the direction of the Michigan Theater. Its marquee was flashing, advertising a revival showing of The Age of Innocence: Good picture. The Ford F-150 Jerry Marcus had stolen from Alec Moselle was parked in front. We sprinted that way.
The crowd gathered under the marquee was strictly official: radios buzzed, bullhorns bawled. A giant lugging an assault rifle lifted his visor, exposing pale gray eyes in a face black as a galosh. He nodded at Karyl’s shield. “Lieutenant Randolph. Detroit ERT.”
“Thanks for coming out. Situation?”
“Hostage. Suspect stuck a gun in the ticket clerk’s face and dragged her into the projection room; where they show the movies?”
“I know what a projection room is. Where are the other employees?”
“Evacuated; all except the assistant manager; she’s been a big help. She said he shouted something about a bomb.”
“What do you know about it?”
“He was wearing a vest of some kind, and he’s got a remote. I got men all over, at all the exits, but he’s got the projector on. We can’t get a clear shot against the bright light without risking hitting the hostage.”
“What about from outside?”
“I’ll let Mrs. Candlemass explain that part. She’s the assistant manager.”
He led us inside through plate-glass doors framed in chromium. From the gold-leaf lobby, mahogany staircases swept up like smoke to a carpeted mezzanine. There were frescoes in the arched ceiling panels, cherubim, lions rampant; and that was just the lobby.
It crawled with cops. They stood on the carpeted steps curving gracefully to the gilded balcony from two sides, patrolled the balcony itself, surrounded a bronze drinking fountain. Randolph called over a woman standing in a group of officers.
Mrs. Candlemass, the assistant manager, was a tall woman of about fifty, in a black sheaf dress with pearls and silver hair cut modishly. She wore makeup and pearl buttons in her ears. I figured she lived in the suburbs.
“The place was built thirty years before safety stock,” she explained. “Before that, film was a combination of celluloid and silver nitrate; extremely volatile.”
“Yeah,” Karyl said. “I can’t believe I never heard of silver nitrate before today. What about it?”
“That’s just it. There were fires, fatalities until someone got the bright idea of enclosing the projection room in solid concrete.”
“It’s a bunker,” Randolph said. “No outside windows.”
“How’d the projectionist get out?”
“Through the door, if he moved quickly. They didn’t always,” the assistant manager added.
“Would the room contain a blast?”
“I suppose that would depend on the material. I don’t know much about explosives.”
He told her what was in Marcus’ vest. The rouge on her cheeks stood out against her sudden pallor. She shook her head.
“Thank you.” Sets of bronze doors were marked by illuminated aisle numbers. He took a step toward the closest door.
She said, “Your men will be careful, won’t they? The Michigan’s on the National Register of Historic Places.”
He stopped. “I’d rather answer to them than the girl’s parents. What’s her name?”
“Crystal.” She bit her lip.
The auditorium was only half the size of the one in the renovated Fox Theater in Detroit, but it seated more people than the average multiplex, and comfortably, in deep seats upholstered in tough, wine-colored mohair, with a chandelier ablaze, as was every light in the vaulted room, including wall sconces, the stumble-bulbs in the risers, and utility lamps for cleaning and maintenance crews. It was as bright as outdoors.
The place belonged to the days of Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Sr., and Ramon Novarro, with an apron in front of the screen deep enough to host a live show before the chariot races started onscreen, an orchestra pit, and a Wurlitzer organ wheezing accompaniment to Garbo, Gable, and all the Barrymores; it would dwarf any refugee from late-night live television, but it was just the right size for Randolph Scott, Marilyn Monroe, and the Marx brothers: faces made to fill a screen the size of a football field. Those places came with a hush, like a cathedral at Easter; only not today. Men and women in uniform prowled the aisles, leading bomb-sniffing dogs on halters and poking big black rubber flashlights between the seats.
A hard white shaft stretched from a square opening at the back of the room halfway up the wall, splashing the movie screen. I shielded my eyes with my hand, but I couldn’t see anything beyond it. He’d taken the highest ground possible, and a point of vantage from where he could see everything that happened below.
Lieutenant Randolph jerked his shoulder toward one of the gilded walls, where a thin rectangle outlined the door to the stairs leading to the projection room. “They’ve been up there twenty minutes. We haven’t heard a peep.”
Marcus might have been waiting for our entrance. A shot rang around the acoustically designed room and one of the bulbs in the chandelier burst and showered a glittering powder of glass onto the seats below.
Peep.
TWENTY-SEVEN
We hit the deck, groping for our weapons. The carpet smelled of Jujubes. I looked at Lieutenant Karyl, lying belly-down beside me in the aisle. “Okay if I go out for popcorn?”
He said nothing; until I started crawling around back in the direction we’d come. A hand strung with steel cable clamped on my arm.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
His whisper was as loud as another man’s bellow.
“Cover me.” I looked back over my shoulder and grinned. “I always wanted to say that.”
He had more to bring to the conversation, but a report from the projection room cut him off. The bullet took a shard of polished mahogany off the arm of a seat a few inches above our heads, exposing yellow wood.
He let go of me, raised himself on one elbow, leveled the barrel of his semiautomatic across his other wrist, and squeezed the trigger.
He’d aimed high because of the ticket clerk. The slug struck the smile off Cupid on the wing in a ceiling vault. By then I was scrambling on hands and knees toward the exit.
One of the heavy doors was held open by a hinged prop. I kicked the prop loose with my foot as I crawled through the opening. The door glided shut against the pressure of a pneumatic tube, but not before another shot aimed from up high struck a panel. Painted plaster dust pelted my back.
Okay, so it wasn’t bronze. You can’t trust anything in show business. Karyl or one of the other cops returned fire.
One of the armored officers on point in the lobby came my way, shouldering his assault rifle, but he must have recognized me from when I came in with Karyl, because he swung it behind his back by its shoulder strap and bent to help me to my feet. I was halfway up; I waved him off.
“How do I get up to the projection room?”
His face was an indistinct oval behind the tinted shield. “I don’t know. We’re still waiting on a floor plan. Anybody hit?”
“Not yet, but somebody’s going to be filling out a lot of insurance forms. Where’s Mrs. Candlemass? The assistant manager.”
“We sent her away. This is no place for civilians. Are you with the locals?”
“Yeah, I’m with ’em.”
“Think there’s really a bomb? There almost always isn’t.” He sounded young.
“This isn’t one of the almosts.”
He returned to his post behind the velvet ropes.
I dusted myself off and stood in the middle of the lobby, looking around the powder room of the Taj Mahal.
Something moved behind the candy counter; a shadow. I walked up to it and leaned my hands on the glass. Someone in an usher’s uniform knelt in a fetal position on the floor, hands clasped behind his neck.
I tapped t
he glass with the barrel of the Chief’s Special.
The figure stirred, unclasped its hands, and looked up at me. It was a college-age boy, breathing so shallowly he had hiccups. His face matched his buzz cut, which he’d bleached albino-white. His eyes were blue, the pupils shrunk with fear.
“Why haven’t you evacuated?” I asked.
“I kind of did.” He hiccuped. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Relax. I’m with the cops. How do I get up to the projection room?”
“There’s just the one set of stairs, from the auditorium. Through the hidden door.”
“What about backstage?”
He pointed to a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
“Thanks.” I put away the revolver. “Got any Milk Duds?”
He hesitated, took a box off the stack inside the counter, and slid it onto the top. “That’ll be three-sixty.” He hiccuped.
* * *
The glamour of the place fell off abruptly when I went through the door. The passage, used exclusively by employees, took a backseat to the several millions the community had invested in restoring the building. Chewing the chocolates to keep my mouth from drying out, I passed between plasterboard walls, unpainted and patched, my way lit by pale fluorescents behind frosted glass panels in the ceiling. The floor was bare plywood. This part was unheated and smelled and felt damp.
Shouts reverberated through uninsulated walls. They might have belonged to the feature soundtrack, but none was playing; at least none but in Jerry Marcus’ head.
“Stay where you are! I’ll shoot her in the head and throw her down the stairs like a sack of potatoes! Bumpity-bumpity-bump!” It was the first time I’d heard his voice. It cracked, as if it were changing. A toad crawled down my back and curled up at the base of my spine.
“Don’t do it, Jerry! This doesn’t have to be any worse than it is!” Lieutenant Karyl sounded calmer when he raised his voice than when he was speaking normally.
The passage ended at a steel fire door. It was locked, in the tradition of fire doors everywhere. I slipped the latch with the narrow strip of aluminum I keep in my wallet. A theater smell puffed out when I opened the door, of dry-rot and old sweat and turpentine. Marcus’ voice was louder now. I tuned out on the words; from here on they’d only get in the way.
The Sundown Speech Page 15
