Little Odessa
Page 25
Kate went back to the closet and began placing bundles inside the cloth bag. “If you really have to know,” she said as though she was being imposed upon, “they’re parts for an A-bomb, for the trigger.”
Harry said, “Wow,” and moved closer to the light. “Ormont must be gettin’ zillions for ’em from the right party.” He brought the krytron to his mouth and kissed it. “I love everything about this.”
Kate began to sob. “You do,” she said. “I’ll bet that’s all you could ever love. These fucking things …” She scooped up a bundle with two hands. “I hate them.”
Kate heaved the glass into the darkness. As it smashed against the wall, Harry winced. “Ormont asks how come we’re runnin’ short, you’ll tell him.”
Kate reached inside the safe again. Harry yanked her away. “I think maybe you better cool off.”
He sat her on the bed and then stepped over the broken glass. “Well,” she heard him say, “will you look at this?”
Kate squinted into the gloom, but could make out only his humped shadow against the wall. She got up off the mattress and aimed the lamp at him. Harry was down on his knees, pinching glass slivers out of some white powder that he had shaped into a neat mound.
“What is that?” Kate asked.
Harry was grinning ecstatically, too engrossed in what he was doing to answer.
“I asked you, what’s that?”
“Coke,” Harry said. “About half a pound.”
“Don’t be absurd. It’s part of the krytron.”
“Yeah?” He rolled a crisp dollar bill into a tight cylinder. “Do some.”
Kate came closer. She kicked away pieces of glass and bent down beside him.
“Now you know why Ormont would’ve moved heaven and earth to have these back …Nuclear triggers.” He laughed. “It’s just a scam for movin’ all this nice blow out of the country, and you were goin’ to be his mule.”
“You’re fantasizing. You wish this was drugs.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, and lowered his face over the white mound.
“What are you doing?”
“What’s it look like I’m—?”
She was all over him, then, digging her nails into the back of his neck. “You’re crazy,” she screamed, “you’ll ruin your life.”
“Get offa me.” With one arm he was no match for her. Until she ran out of gas she had to be as strong as the woman he read about in the Star, the one who picked up a truck that ran over her baby.
Kate knotted her fingers in his hair and pulled his head away. “I love you,” she shouted into his good ear. “I mean I could, I think.”
“Bullshit,” Harry said.
“I do,” Kate screamed. “I love you. I do.” She yanked his arm behind his back and slipped her hand under the elbow, pushing down hard on his wrist. “I’ll break this, too,” she said. “I saw how in a movie. If you don’t get away from that stuff, I swear I will.”
Harry fixed on the cocaine. “Who do you think you’re trying to fool, Kate?”
“Remember, you asked for this.”
Harry felt the ligaments tear around his elbow, heard something snap. “I give,” he cried out. “I give, I give.”
“Did I break your elbow?”
Harry looked at his good arm, wondered if he still could call it that. It was hanging at a strange angle, turned inside out, like an old screwball pitcher’s. “God, this is killin’ me,” he said. “Lettin’ all that coke go to waste.”
Kate nudged him toward the safe. “It doesn’t have to.” She peeled the paper from one of the krytrons and then twisted the bulb out of the glass bowl and let the cocaine pour through her fingers.
“Please don’t do that,” Harry said. “It’s like throwin’ away food while babies are starvin’ in Ethiopia.”
“You can deal it. We’ll go partners.”
“This kind of weight? Where am I gonna find a buyer?”
“Do I have to tell you everything?” she said. “We’ll sell it back to Howard. He’s been taking so much money out of the Knights, and from everything else he has going for him, that he had to rebuild the vault to hide it all. You thought you were holding him up, but the fifty thousand came from petty cash.” She unscrewed the bulb from another of the glass bowls and spilled the cocaine into the sack. “First we have to bring him his krytrons, though. Like you say, a deal’s a deal.”
When Kate carried the sack outside, she found Howard in the BMW with the engine running, his hair plastered against his forehead with perspiration. “Where are they?” he asked.
“Inside,” she said. “All wrapped up in a clean white sheet and ready to go. But Harry hurt his other arm. He needs you to help bring them out.”
“That bag,” he said. “What’s in it?” Kate winked conspiratorially. “Souvenirs.” Kate brought the sack onto the passenger’s seat as Howard marched up the walk like he had a date with a firing squad. She turned on the heater and made herself comfortable in the soft leather. The thing was, she saw clearly now, Howard really did care for her; but the fifty-eight-year-old Israeli with the bullet hole in his back had to be at least ten times as dangerous as any burglar from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, ever could hope to be. The police scanner barking out the report of a burglary in progress in Forest Gardens forced open her eyes. She reached for Howard’s walkie-talkie, and felt the wind go out of her as she remembered the one still on her belt. She was chewing on her lip as she slid over the gearbox and fit her feet awkwardly on the pedals.
Grinding into first, she steered away from the curb. But when she stepped on the clutch again, the car bucked and then stalled, and she pushed helplessly at the stick. She leaned on the horn, looking through the gate at two dim figures wrestling a white ghost along the flagstones.
“You hear that?” Harry said. He had stopped moving and was peering at the street over his end of the sheet.
Howard’s face was red turning to purple. “Just a little more.” He blinked away the sweat that was running into his eyes. “We’re almost there.”
“We ain’t even close. We gotta get goin’.”
“You promised to help me, I gave you money …”
“I’ll give it back,” Harry said. “Most of it. Come on, these krytrons ain’t worth shit to you now anyway.”
“What do you know—?”
“I ain’t got time to argue.” Harry let go and the cloth fell out of Howard’s hand with the clatter of breaking glass.
Harry ran across the lawn, looking back to see Howard on his hands and knees, tying the corners of the sheet around the paper bundles. “You comin’?” Harry called to him.
Howard looked up, then began dragging the sheet over the grass.
When Harry got to the sidewalk, the BMW was stopped with its nose pointing into the driveway. He jumped in the passenger’s seat and put his left hand on the stick. “Step on the clutch,” he said. “Now the gas. I’ll work the transmission for you.”
Kate backed away with one eye on the house. “What about Howard?”
“He’s happy doin’ what he’s doin’.”
“We can’t leave him. The police will be here any second.”
“It’s his choice,” Harry said. “…Now gun it.”
Harry wound through the gears as Kate steered along the black streets. When he could see city lights framed by a railroad trestle, he took the wheel from her and guided the car out of Forest Gardens. On Continental Avenue he pulled up to a hydrant and set the emergency brake. “The coke,” he grinned. “I gotta have another peek.”
He swung the bag onto his lap, but turned toward Kate without looking inside. His face was the same color Howard’s had been. “The hell’s goin’ on?”
“I dumped the cocaine in the sewer,” she said. “I was afraid the police would find me with it.”
“You did what?”
“I had to.”
“Who’re you tryin’ to fool, Kate? You don’t scare so easy.”
“I was scared,” she i
nsisted, “scared that if we kept it, you’d mess yourself up again.”
“I wasn’t gonna do twenty pounds. I would’ve found a buyer.”
“Either way,” she said, “you end up in the sewer.”
Harry looked at her for a very long time. He drummed his fingers against the dash, then poked one through Nicholas’s key ring and twirled it, let it fly into the darkness. “Easy come, easy go,” he said with a sickly smile.
He was toying with the stick when Kate put another key in his hand. “You mean what goes around, comes around,” she said.
“What’s this?”
“The key to Howard’s. The money he was going to give us for the cocaine is just sitting inside his vault now. And with all the trouble he’s gotten himself into, who can say he’ll ever get the chance to enjoy it …?”
But Harry was already out of the car, running around to her side and tearing open the door, squeezing in on top of her. “Lemme drive,” he said.
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copyright © 1988 by Joseph Koenig
cover design by Heather Kern
978-1-4532-5963-4
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