by S. J. Rozan
“And you believed her?”
“Believed her? In what way?”
“These things are stolen,” I told him.
“Stolen?” He looked at me as though I should be ashamed of myself. “Stolen? Oh, my, young man, you are—”
“I’m a private investigator,” I said. “These things are among a group of items stolen from a client of mine last Friday.” I handed him my card. He looked at it and then at me. He handed it back.
“Young man, you have been less than forthright with me.”
“You do your business your way, I do mine my way.”
His face took on a stern and schoolmasterly look. I went on, “Do you get much of your stock that way, total strangers bringing in pieces this valuable? Happens every day?”
“Of course not. What is there that happens every day? My stock, as you call it, comes to me from many sources. Much of it I go in search of. Some is brought here by acquaintances or strangers. Without being immodest, I may tell you that this shop is known for handling only items of the highest quality. A young lady with such valuable items to sell would naturally—” He broke off, his open mouth forming a perfect circle. “Young man! I hope you are not implying that I knowingly—”
“I don’t think I am.” I picked up the tray and the candlesticks. “I want these things back and I’ll pay for them—assuming the price is reasonable. But I want to know everything you remember about this girl. Did she bring you anything else?”
“No, just this set.” He pursed his lips. “Stolen . . . you’re sure? Yes, yes, of course you are; a young man like yourself is always sure. Really, I can’t tell you very much else about her. A dazzling smile, a promise of secrets. Enchanting. Many years ago, I would have been tempted to play the prince to her Rapunzel.”
“Was she alone?”
“She came in here alone, though I believe someone waited in the car for her.”
“What kind of car?”
“A truck, actually, I think, a blue truck, the kind that rides high on its wheels.”
“And she didn’t give you her name, tell you where she was from, where her grandmother lived?”
“No, no.” He shook his head. “Really, young man, such a charming child—”
“Never mind. If you remember anything else, or if she comes back, give me a call at this number, okay?” I wrote the number at Antonelli’s on my card and passed it back to him.
He looked at me as though it were I who had opened Pandora’s box and let evil loose on the world.
The price of the tray and candlestick set was very reasonable, although it was more cash than I had in my pocket. But it didn’t matter.
He took my American Express Card.
I started the car, swung it around, and headed back down the pockmarked road. The silver was carefully wrapped and in the trunk. I’d had on my gloves when I’d handled the pieces, so I had fair hopes of being able to lift a good set of prints from them, including the shop owner’s.
I had less hope that anything I found would be useful. The golden young lady’s prints wouldn’t be in anyone’s computer unless she had a criminal record, which seemed unlikely.
But she might have been working with someone who did.
I walked around that thought slowly in my mind, looking at it from all angles. The sun was thin above the overhanging pines and a breeze was coming up. I was driving with the window open, as usual; I could smell the dampness in the air. Maybe rain, maybe snow. The road surface modulated from potholes to asphalt and I shifted gears, accelerating as the road curved. I reached for the radio dial.
Suddenly I slammed on the brakes. The car rocked to a stop about six feet from a Chevy truck parked square across the road.
The truck was big, black, and empty. It filled the shadowed road ditch to ditch. I threw the Acura into reverse, but not in time. Two figures leapt out from the darkness under the trees. They had guns, one each. They came up even with my front windows and stopped, on either side of the car. The one on my side spoke loud and fast.
“Turn the car off!”
I turned the car off.
“Now throw out the keys.”
I tossed my keys in his direction. They rang as they hit the pavement.
“Get out. Slowly. Keep your hands where I can see them. Watch him!” he called to the other.
The second figure circled around the front of the car, his gun trained on me through the windshield. I opened the door and got out slowly, my hands open and far from my sides.
“What’s up?” I asked. The face in the shadows was vaguely familiar.
“Turn around, spread your hands on the car. Search him, Ted.”
I put my hands on the top of the car. Ted went over me clumsily from behind. In my jacket he found my wallet; under my arm, my empty holster. He searched my pockets but there wasn’t anything he wanted. He didn’t look for an ankle rig. I wasn’t wearing one, but he should have looked.
“His holster’s empty, Otis,” Ted whined. “His gun ain’t here.” He backed away from me.
“Where’s your gun?” Otis barked.
“State troopers, D Unit,” I said over my shoulder. “Ask for Lieutenant MacGregor.” I heard my keys jingle as Ted picked them up.
“Funny,” said Otis. “Look in the car, Ted.”
Ted tucked his gun in his belt and searched my car, crawling into the back, running his hand under the seats, snapping the glove compartment open and closed. In the well by the gearshift he found the roll of quarters I kept there. He pocketed them with a grin, climbed out of the car.
“Nothin’,” he told Otis, pointing his gun at me again.
There was a Smith & Wesson .22 strapped up behind the dash, but it would have taken a better man than Ted to find it.
“The Park View,” I said suddenly. “You guys sat down the other end of the counter.”
“Free country,” Otis said. “Fuck the gun. Let’s go. You come with me. Ted’ll bring your car.”
I turned slowly, stood facing him. His face was broad, doughy. The knuckles on the hand wrapped around the big automatic were hairy and thick. “Where?” I asked.
“Guy I know wants to see you.” He gestured in the direction of the black truck.
“Who?”
“What do you care?” The gun was black and mean-looking. He waved it around a little.
“I guess I don’t.” I walked a few steps toward the truck, Otis walking behind, Ted back by my car. When I had space around me I turned again to face Otis, as slowly as before. My arms were still and loose at my sides, but my fingers and my spine were tingling.
“No,” I said.
“What the hell do you mean, no? I’m supposed to bring you in, I’m goddamn gonna bring you in.”
“You won’t shoot me. Whoever wants me probably wouldn’t like it if you brought me in dead.”
“No.” Otis smiled, showing thick brown teeth. “But he might not mind if you was hurt a little.” We were standing no more than four feet apart. He lowered the big automatic, leveled it at my knee.
“He might not,” I said. “But I would.”
While I was still talking, while his eyes were on my eyes and his attention on my words, I whipped my left foot up, over, out, caught his gun hand on the inside of the wrist. His arm flew back and I dived after it, grabbed it, spun him around so he was between me and Ted. He swung at my jaw with his free hand but he was way off balance and couldn’t put a lot behind it; when it landed it didn’t matter much. I kicked him again, in the stomach this time, and he squealed as I twisted his arm sharply from the wrist, bent it hard in a way it was never meant to go. He grabbed wildly at me. I wrenched the gun from him and smashed it across his jaw. I pulled his twisted wrist hard up behind his back, shoved the barrel of the gun under his chin.
“Tell Ted to drop it!” I said.
Nothing happened. I yanked on the wrist in my hand.
“Goddammit, Ted!” he gasped.
Ted threw his gun down as though it w
ere suddenly hot.
“Okay,” I said. “Face down in the road, hands behind your head. Now!” I pushed Otis down. Ted scrambled to flatten himself.
I picked up Ted’s gun, a smaller, older version of the Ruger 9-mm I’d taken off Otis. I went over both men for anything else of interest. I found their wallets, leafed through them. Local boys, Otis and Ted, nothing more than what they looked like. I took my wallet, my quarters, and my keys back from Ted and then stepped over to my car.
“All right,” I said. “Get up.”
They climbed to their feet. Otis was white, holding his wrist close to his chest. Ted just looked sullen, as though his picnic had been spoiled by rain.
“You broke my wrist, motherfucker,” Otis growled.
“No,” I said. “If I had, it would hurt. Let’s go.”
“Where to?”
“You tell me. It’s your party.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t get it. If you was coming anyhow, what was all this for?”
“Oh, a lot of reasons. One, I like to be the guy with the guns. Two, I want Grice to know I’m coming because I’m curious, not because he sent some penny-ante punks after me.” Otis ground his teeth when I said that, but he didn’t speak. “And three, nobody drives this car but me.”
“How did you know it was Frank wanted you?”
“I didn’t. But this seems like his style. Heavy-handed and amateur. Let’s go.”
They got into the black truck, started it up. I slid behind the wheel of my car, turned the key, and watched Ted slam the truck forward and back until it faced downhill.
I lit a cigarette, dragged on it deeply. The truck rolled down the hill and I followed. When we came out of the pines we turned right, driving farther up into the hills away from town. The late afternoon sun was lost behind a flat lid of clouds. Geese in a V-formation sliced across the sky, heading north.
I hadn’t made those guys in the Park View, hadn’t spotted them tailing me. I squashed the cigarette butt against the ashtray, slammed the ashtray shut. Ted sped up, bouncing over the rough road. There was no chance of my losing him but I sped up too, hugging his tail more closely than I needed to. Maybe it would piss him off.
There was a time when I kept a bottle of bourbon in the glove compartment, but it wasn’t there now, so I lit another cigarette and followed the truck into the fading afternoon.
A pale-green house, dark-green trim, peeling paint. Shutters slanting or missing altogether. Unpainted two-by-tens on concrete blocks stepping up to a sagging, rail-less porch. Tattered screen doors; dark, uncurtained windows, staring blind.
The Chevy turned into a swampy field to the left of the house, bounced to a stop. I pulled partway off the road, parked so a car could pass me but not park me in easily.
Not a lot of people had ever tried living up here, deep in the woods near the top of the ridge, and most of the ones who had had given up and gone away. There was nothing here, except small streams and blackberry thickets and pale snowdrops already showing through a carpet of maple leaves. By next week, wild crocuses, lavender and gold; then lilies in stands of sunrise colors on the stream banks. But you couldn’t farm this land, and the streams weren’t really good for fishing.
I’d driven through here a few times over the years. I’d driven just about every road in the county at one time or another. Sometimes there would be a tired woman hanging clothes out on a line, or a man with his head and arms under the hood of one of the junked cars that sprouted like mushrooms. But mostly there were just empty frame houses and a few desolate trailers, their aluminum doors flapping in the wind.
The Chevy truck sat silent on the grass. I got out of my car, crossed behind it, keeping the car and then the truck between me and the house. Otis’s gun was in my hand. I opened the Chevy’s driver-side door. “Okay, come on out.”
Ted climbed down, his eyes on the gun. He moved a little away from me, chewing on his lip. “Anyone in the house?” I asked. He shook his head, looked into the truck at Otis.
“This way,” I told Otis. He slid across the seat and under the wheel, dropped to the spongy ground beside me. “What happens now?” I asked.
His left hand still cradled his right wrist. He scowled. “I’m supposed to call Frank when we get here.”
“This his place?”
“He don’t live here. But he owns it.”
“Where does he live?”
“Cobleskill.”
“Why come all the way out here?”
He didn’t answer, just kept scowling.
“Yeah,” I said. “Stupid question.”
We went around the truck and up the plank steps. There was no movement, no noise except for the sounds we made. Otis fumbled with a key but he couldn’t work the lock left-handed; Ted had to do it, in the end.
The failing afternoon light didn’t reach inside. Otis flipped a switch and a floor lamp came on in the front room, to our left. There was a tattered couch against the far wall; two brown chairs, upholstery split, white stuffing hanging out; some side tables; peeling, faded wallpaper. A doorless doorway in the back led to a kitchen with a linoleum floor, cabinets on the wall. Straight ahead of us was a small hallway. An uncarpeted wooden staircase ran along the right side of the hallway, leading up into darkness.
The whole place was still and deserted and smelled of mildew and stale cooking grease. It was colder than it was outside, in the way a damp, closed place can be.
“Sit down,” I said to Ted. I gestured with the gun at one of the brown chairs. “If you get up I’ll shoot you. It’s not a problem for me. Understand?” He nodded and sat quickly, hands gripping the soft arms of the chair. I turned to Otis. “Okay. We’re here. Call Frank.”
He crossed the room to a table that stood under the one lit lamp. There was a black phone there. Otis lifted the receiver with his left hand and, holding it, dialed. He put the receiver to his left ear and I put the gun to his right one, repeating in my head the number he’d dialed.
There was silence in the shadowy room, then Otis spoke. “Yeah. It’s me. Gimme Frank.” He waited. I gently wrapped my fingers around his swollen right wrist. He tensed and looked at me. I raised an eyebrow and nodded. “Yeah, Frank,” he said back into the phone, licked his lips. “No, it’s good. We’re here.” Pause. “Yeah.” Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. “Yeah, okay. No problem.” He replaced the receiver slowly. I let go of his wrist, took the gun from his head.
“What the fuck was that for?” He drew his wrist to his chest.
“Sorry,” I said. “You strike me as a guy too stupid to be sneaky when he’s really scared. You did fine, Otis.” I stepped back a little, included Ted in the wave of the gun. “Let’s go.”
Ted stood up fast. Otis said, “Go where?”
There was a door in the wall under the staircase. I backed over to it, watching the two men who stood in the yellow lamplight. I threw the bolt and the door creaked open. A gust of mud-scented air rolled into the hallway. “Downstairs,” I said.
Ted and Otis filed past me. I bolted the door behind them, then went quickly out the front. There was a double-doored cellar hatch on the side of the house by the truck. It was held shut by a large bolt. I found a piece of warped two-by-four from a rotting pile of construction lumber on the porch and, as insurance, wedged it through the doors’ iron handles.
I went back inside, looked at my watch. Five-thirty. It would take Grice at least half an hour to get up here from Cobleskill. I switched on another light in the living room, picked up the phone. I dialed the number at Antonelli’s.
It rang a long time in the emptiness.
If the cops were still there they would have answered, because all over the world that was what cops did.
If they were gone Tony should have answered. Under the circumstances another man might have closed the bar for the rest of the day, or the rest of the week. But as much as the big house across the road, the bar was where Tony lived. And unlike the house, in the bar he wasn’
t alone.
I pressed the cut-off button, got another dial tone, called the state troopers.
“D Unit. Sergeant Whiteside,” a woman’s voice said.
“Ron MacGregor, please.”
“Sorry, he’s gone. Someone else help you?”
“You still have Tony Antonelli up there?”
“Hold it.” The voice went away, came back. “Says here Antonelli was just here answering questions, left hours ago. Who’re you?”
“Richard Wilcox. You guys find Jimmy Antonelli yet?”
“Who’s Richard Wilcox?”
“Jimmy’s lawyer. Are you holding him, or is the sheriff?”
“Far as I know, no one is,” she said cautiously. “You hear different?”
“My mistake,” I said. “Thanks, Sergeant.” I hung up.
Out in the kitchen an old refrigerator started to hum. I went back there, looked around. A cast-iron pan with a half inch of pale grease and crumbs in the bottom sat on a splattered gas stove. Dishes and crusted silverware were piled in the sink and a breadboard held a hunk of bread you could have thrown through a plate-glass window. I opened the fridge. What was in it I wouldn’t have touched on a bet.
Except the three green bottles of Rolling Rock, lying on their sides on the bottom shelf. I took one out, twisted off the top, and went back to the living room. I moved one of the brown chairs so that I could see the front door from it, but someone looking in the window couldn’t see me. I sat, lit a cigarette, sipped the Rolling Rock, and waited.
I was on the second bottle when I heard the faint rumble of an engine, coming closer fast. A minute later a pair of headlights swept into the front windows, stopped moving, went out. The engine stopped abruptly. Doors slammed, footsteps sounded on the loose boards of the porch.
I raised the automatic, held it steady in my right hand. The beer was in my left. The front door opened. Frank Grice stepped into the little hall, trailed by the big, friendly-faced guy with the mustache. Grice turned into the living room doorway, his mouth open as though he were about to say something.
Then he saw me. He stopped, frozen in a half-completed motion. The big guy stopped too, then started again, moved forward with a little growl. Grice put his hand up without taking his eyes off mine. The big guy stopped.
