by S. J. Rozan
A light flashed in the depths of Lydia’s eyes, or maybe I just needed to think I saw it there. She turned, slid swiftly from the car, and stalked rapidly away. She didn’t look back.
I leaned back against the seat, shut my eyes. That was it. My part was almost over.
The car started to move again. “That was touching,” Grice said.
“Screw you,” I murmured.
“Where are the paintings?”
“Screw you.”
Arnold grabbed my jacket, jerked me close to him. He smacked me with his open palm once, and again. Howling pain shot through my skull, blinding my left eye.
“No,” I said weakly. “Wait.” I didn’t want to be hurt any more, and I was lying anyway. Arnold pushed me back against the seat. I lay there breathing unevenly, not speaking, as long as I dared. Make them look at you, Smith. Make them think about you, focus on you.
I felt Arnold’s hand tighten on my collar again. “No,” I whispered. I didn’t even try to open my eyes. “Cobleskill. Self-storage rooms near the college.”
“Where’s the key?” Grice demanded.
Key. I hadn’t thought about a key. “No key. Combination. Room number’s one-twenty-four. Combination’s eleven, twenty-five, fifty-one.” I swallowed, said, “Give me a drink.”
“Screw you.” Grice laughed, Otis laughing with him. Arnold was probably grinning, but I didn’t look to see.
I was cold. A drink would have helped, or a cigarette. Or a soft voice, or music. Schubert, maybe. I began to hear the soft opening chords of the B-flat Sonata, the one I didn’t play. They faded, along with everything else, as the darkness thickened around me.
* * *
I woke when the car stopped moving. Outside, a silver sky pressed down like a weight on thick slate-colored clouds. Ted had brought us by the truck road to the flat, exhausted plain. I stared across the pit to the shadowed ridge rising against the sky. We had come along the road up there, the ridge road; from Franklinton it made sense. But the drive from there to the truck road was long, roundabout. You couldn’t see the quarry pits from the ridge road, even in winter. If you didn’t know the area well, if you didn’t know where you were, you might not be able to tell anything about that road when you were on it, except that it was deserted, far from anywhere.
That was the reason I’d given Grice for letting Lydia go there.
“Is that where he’s been staying?” Grice’s words tore the silence. He pointed toward the shack.
“I don’t know.” My voice sounded like sandpaper on a board.
“Drive closer,” Grice told Ted. He drew his gun from his coat; so did Otis. Arnold’s was already out, aimed casually at my belly.
We rolled slowly over the stones scattering the plain. Ted angled the car toward the shack. My heart, beating fast, jarred, then stopped as Jimmy’s van came into view.
Lydia hadn’t made it. She hadn’t understood, or maybe she hadn’t been able to handle the climb down. Whatever; it didn’t matter; she hadn’t made it.
The car stopped again. Arnold leaned across me, as he had across Lydia, and opened my door. He nudged the barrel of his gun against my temple, against the place where the blood was drying. “Out,” said Grice. I swung my legs through the door, stood with an effort. From behind, Arnold grabbed my arm. We moved clear of the car. Grice got out, kept behind me. “Jimmy!” he shouted into the empty sky. The word echoed, faded; there was nothing else. “Jimmy! I just want to talk to you, kid. Come on out for a minute.” There was no movement, no wind in the trees. “Jimmy! I got your friend here, kid, and he doesn’t look good. You don’t talk to me, Jimmy, he could get to look worse.”
More silence. The clouds could have been painted; the surface of the water was polished marble. Grice tapped Arnold’s arm, and we walked forward again, toward the shack.
Then, crashing through the stillness, a gunshot exploded, magnified by silence, multiplied by echoes. It seemed to come from everywhere around us, but as Arnold’s grip suddenly slackened I spun around, ran with everything I had left toward the rock pile at the mouth of the other road.
What I had left wasn’t enough. As shots came from behind me and another from ahead I tripped, stumbled, fell, and knew I couldn’t get up; but strong hands seized me, yanked me forward, around the fortress of rock.
The world was reeling. Shots screamed through the air. I was hauled up, over stones and loose pebbles, until finally I was dropped, battered and breathing dust, my shoulders and arms burning with pain wherever I had feeling at all.
From somewhere above, Lydia said, “Is he okay?”
Jimmy’s voice: “I guess.” I was helped to sit, my back against a rock. At first my eyes showed me nothing but shape and movement. Then things started to make sense again. I squinted, made out Lydia’s black-wrapped form kneeling between two boulders. She squeezed a shot out of Jimmy’s Winchester, pulled back, and reloaded fast as a bullet chipped the stone at her shoulder.
“What the hell are you two idiots doing here?” I coughed on stone dust.
“Christ, he’s crabby,” Jimmy said to Lydia.
“He gets like that when he doesn’t feel well,” Lydia answered. She took aim, shot again. I heard glass shatter.
“I got my goddamn ass busted trying to save yours,” I told them. “You were supposed to be gone by the time we got here.”
“They weren’t going to keep hauling you around if Jimmy was gone,” Lydia pointed out. “They’d’ve killed you and dumped you here.”
“So now they’ll kill us all. I don’t suppose it occurred to you two superheroes to go for help?”
“Not to me. Jimmy?”
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head. Then he grinned at me. “I mean, not after we put it out on the CB.”
The CB. Oh, beautiful consumer audio technology. “You called for help?”
Jimmy grinned again. “Man, I was so scared, I told the guy who picked it up to call the sheriff. Brinkman, man. Me—I called the fucking sheriff!”
* * *
But it wasn’t Brinkman whose car came rocketing up the truck road, scaring a cloud of dust into the air.
Since the first storm of shots, Grice and his boys hadn’t moved out from behind the Ford. They had reasons not to. Lydia was a deadly accurate shot. Otis and Ted were cowards. And Arnold was out of the picture, stretched still as stone where Lydia’s first bullet had dropped him.
But we couldn’t go anywhere either, and we had only one gun. Sooner or later, if we had to keep sniping to keep them pinned, our box of shells would be empty. They would know that moment, and that moment would be theirs.
We had no escape; we needed a rescue.
So fifteen minutes later, when we heard the whine of a heavy engine, the screech of brakes echoing off the stone walls, they were good sounds. “The fucking marines!” Jimmy cheered.
But Lydia, peering around a boulder, said, “It’s not a cop.”
She was wrong, but she was right.
“Civilian,” she said. “One man.” She whipped her head back as a bullet spewed stone chips into the air. She took aim, fired back, pulled her head in again. “He’s out of the car. I can’t see him now. He must be behind the other car with Grice.” She reloaded, inched her head out. “Nothing.” A pause. “But maybe he is a cop. There’s a red light on the dash, the portable kind.”
“What does he look like?”
“I couldn’t really see. Thin face, reddish hair.”
A cold shock hit me. I heard a wordless sound of surprise and sorrow; I realized it had come from me.
This was the piece I hadn’t had.
“Smith!” MacGregor’s voice burst, loud and distorted, from the electronic bullhorn all state cop cars carry, even unmarked ones. “Don’t shoot. I’m coming up there.”
Lydia turned to me. I said, “Let him come.”
I heard MacGregor scramble up the rocks, watched as he appeared, crouching, in the narrow cleft we occupied. His face darkened when he saw me, the cuffs,
the blood.
“What happened?” His voice was tight, cold.
“Your friends.”
“They’re no friends of mine.”
“Crap, MacGregor.” A shiver overtook me. “You’re Grice’s hip-pocket cop. You’re why he’s always a step ahead.”
MacGregor exploded. “I warned you, you son of a bitch!” His voice was driven, full of fury. I squinted to look at him. “I begged you, stay out of this fucking case! I told you to go the hell back to New York!”
“That’s true,” I agreed quietly. “You tried. And I smelled something wrong with the way you did it. But I didn’t add it up. I guess I didn’t want to know.”
“Oh, Christ, Smith, don’t get holy on me! Small shit, that’s all it is. I pass on what I hear. I bury a file or take a guy off something before he gets too close. So what? I don’t have the manpower to go after every crook around. Someone’s going to get away with something. What’s the difference if it’s Grice?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “And the kids shooting up in the Creekside? And guys who’re barely squeezing out a living, then splitting their chickenshit take-home with Grice so they don’t get their legs broken? That’s okay with you, Mac?”
“Oh, come off it! If it weren’t Grice it would be somebody else!” His face was purple with anger, but in his eyes there was something like pleading.
“And Ginny Sanderson?” I said softly. “That’s okay with you?”
MacGregor looked quickly from Jimmy to me. “What about her?”
“She’s dead. Grice shot her. I think you’ll find her if you drag the quarry.” I looked at Jimmy. He was white as marble.
“She was a kid,” Jimmy whispered. “She was a kid.”
“Yeah,” I said. “A kid. That’s what it was about, right, Mac? Kids?”
It took MacGregor a long time to answer. “Tuition,” he said, not to anyone, not looking at anyone. “Books, clothes. Travel. Piano lessons, painting lessons. There had to be something for them besides this. I had to find them a way out.” He faced me suddenly, the pleading back in his eyes. His voice wavered. “I had to, Smith. I’m their father; I had to.”
I had trouble speaking, too. “Ginny Sanderson had a father, Mac.”
“I didn’t know about her. I didn’t know.”
No one spoke. We watched each other, motionless, silent. Statues, all of us, cold and separate, powerless, and alone.
Lydia, finally, broke the silence. A quick, worried glance at me; then to MacGregor, “What do they want?”
MacGregor gave her a blank, lost look. “What?”
“They let you come up here. They’re holding their fire. Why?”
He swallowed. “Jimmy. They’ll let you two leave with me. They want to talk to Jimmy.”
“Do it.” Jimmy’s words came fast, but they caught in his throat.
“Talk, bullshit.” I didn’t look at Jimmy, spoke to MacGregor. “They’ll kill him. Then they’ll call Brinkman. Here he is, the guy who killed Wally, the guy who killed Ginny. Sorry he’s dead, but it’ll save the cost of a trial. Any problems, call MacGregor.” I paused, said, “Then they’ll come for Lydia and me later.”
He met my eyes, nodded slowly. “I know that. It was all I could think of, to get Grice to let me come up here. It’ll buy time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not the only cop who picked up the CB call. Brinkman’s on his way, but he wasn’t close.”
I looked closely at him. “You could have stayed away, then,” I said. “You could have kept out of it, and maybe you’d have stayed smelling clean.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But they said it was Jimmy, and he was asking for help. I had a feeling what was happening. And I’m a cop, Smith. Whatever you think.”
An engine roared to life below us.
“Hey!” Lydia yelled. “They’re moving!”
“What the hell—!” MacGregor stuck his head up next to hers, dropped down again as a shot sliced the air. With a cop’s instinct he reached for his gun, pawed an empty holster. He cursed, looked at me, shrugged. “Grice has it,” he said. “That was the deal.”
Grice’s voice blared from the speaker on MacGregor’s car. “You’ve got thirty seconds, folks. Come down, everyone can leave but Jimmy. How about it?”
“Do it, for Chrissake!” Jimmy said again.
Lydia and I exchanged a look that MacGregor caught, and MacGregor understood it. For the first time, he grinned. “Fuck you!” he yelled over the rock, and his words echoed in the dusty air.
“What’s happening?” I asked Lydia. I struggled to sit up straighter, as though it would help me think.
“They’re moving the Ford around this way. I can’t get a shot.”
But they could. As the Ford’s engine shut off, a barrage of gunfire from our right almost hid the sounds of someone scrabbling up the rock. Lydia whipped around, fired where she couldn’t see. Sudden silence; then a shot from behind her, the side MacGregor had climbed. She answered that, too, and then the Winchester was empty and Ted’s sneering face appeared behind a Luger where the first shots had come from.
He swung the barrel of the gun to Jimmy, who was frozen, pressed against the rock; but before Ted could fire, MacGregor tackled him. They fell, struggled, tumbled down the rocks out of sight. Then a shot. Then nothing.
Lydia had reloaded. Suddenly we were fired on from both sides. Lydia shot again, twice, looked at me with frightened eyes. There was nothing I could give her. She shook herself, reloaded again, and as she did, a siren screamed and tires crunched and car doors slammed and a voice I had never been glad to hear before hollered, “Give it up, Grice! I got two more cars on the way!”
Shots screamed from our right, and two or three from ahead, near the shack. Lydia crept forward to the cleft she’d been shooting from before, craned her neck. She yelled, “Sheriff, on your left!” She stood to get an angle, fired down the face of the rock.
Then, at the whine of another shot, she jerked, lost her footing, fell hard against the rock. She didn’t get up, didn’t move.
“Oh, Jesus, no,” I heard myself plead. I was dimly aware of Jimmy grabbing the rifle, more shots, then silence, sudden and total. I saw nothing but Lydia’s face. “Lydia, please,” I whispered. “Please.”
The silence ended, broken by shouting voices, slamming car doors, a confusion of smaller sounds. Through it all, Lydia’s pale, still face.
“Antonelli, you bastard!” I heard Brinkman yell. “I’m coming up there. You gonna shoot me?”
“No,” Jimmy answered, but it came out as a whisper, so he had to say it again: “No!”
“Stand up—where I can see you!”
Jimmy did, leaning the rifle against a rock, showing the cops below his hands were empty. Grunts and curses as Brinkman hauled himself up the rock pile. He appeared from behind a boulder like Godzilla coming to crush a city.
“Well,” he drawled, with the mean little smile. “Don’t you two look like shit.”
Lydia groaned, moved her hand a little in the dirt.
“Help her!” I looked from Brinkman to Jimmy. “Jesus, help her!”
“Yeah,” said Brinkman. He dropped to one knee, bent over Lydia. “Calm down, city boy. Nothing wrong with her. Just a bump on the head. I got the Rescue Squad coming.”
“Sheriff,” a voice called from below, “two of these guys are alive.”
“Yeah?” Brinkman yelled back. “Which two?”
“The one with the cast. And Ron MacGregor.”
Lydia groaned, stirred. “Don’t move, little girl. You’ll be fine,” Brinkman told her.
Lydia’s eyelids fluttered, opened. “Little girl,” she murmured. “I’ll kill you.”
“It’d be a waste,” Brinkman said. “You saved my life. Now just don’t you move.” He took off his jacket, covered her with it. He swiveled to face me, said, “You know, city boy, you look a hell of a lot worse than she does. Who has the key?”
I had no idea what he meant.
“The cuffs. The key to the cuffs.”
I tried to remember. “Arnold.”
“Arnold Shea? The big guy?”
“Yes.”
Brinkman narrowed his eyes at Jimmy, smiled a little smile. “He’s stretched out there by your van, Jimmy, deader’n hell. Go get the key off him. For your buddy here.”
Jimmy swallowed hard, turned, climbed down off the mound of rock.
“You didn’t have to do that, Brinkman.” I coughed, closed my eyes.
“I like to see that kid sweat,” he said. “Now how about you telling me what went on here?”
“Later,” I said, my voice sounding distant, even to me.
21
MACGREGOR DIED IN the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
After Brinkman had unlocked my handcuffs, he’d told Jimmy to get me down to the cruiser, where it was warm. He moved Lydia there also, laying her on the back seat while I slumped in the front, and we were there like that until the ambulance came; but before that, after I had worked my way down the rocky mound with Jimmy’s hand tight on my numb arm, I had crouched by MacGregor, motionless in the dust.
Brinkman’s fat deputy had covered MacGregor with a blanket from the cruiser. There was blood on the blanket. MacGregor’s face was ash gray and his breathing was shallow, ragged.
I spoke his name. His eyes opened. “Smith.” The corners of his mouth moved weakly. “I guess no trout this spring, huh?”
“Summer,” I said. “They’ll be bigger by then, anyhow.”
“Yeah.” His face contorted with pain. He said, hoarsely, “I wouldn’t have done it, you know.” He gestured toward Jimmy with his eyes. “If you’d left it alone, I’d have found a way to let him off. I knew it was a frame. I wouldn’t’ve let it happen.”
I had no way to tell if that was true, but MacGregor’s gray eyes were locked onto mine, and I said, “I know, Mac. I know.”
His eyes closed. I saw him struggling to keep them open, not to lose yet.
“Take it easy,” I said. “They’ve got an ambulance coming.”
I tried to find something else to say, but there was nothing. Jimmy tugged gently on my arm, and I stood, my eyes stinging in the cold gray light.
