All the Old Bargains

by Benjamin M. Schutz

  I flicked the switch. She was there on the bed on her back. “Jesus Christ.” I shuddered. She had not died easily. I holstered my gun and walked over to the body. I grabbed a sheet off the floor to cover her with. As I spread it out and began to pull it up over her I turned to look at her one last time. I wanted to remember what Leroy had done when I came to render the bill.

  “Help me, please help me,” she whispered. Her eyes danced and bulged as if they were trying to fly from her face.

  I crouched next to her. “Terri, it’s okay. This is Leo Haggerty. It’s all over. It’s gonna be okay.” It’s gonna be okay. What the fuck was I talking about?

  “I can’t move. I can’t feel anything. Oh god, I thought I was going to die here.”

  I leaned forward, her eyes focused on my face and I asked her what happened. As I did that I reached down with my left hand and took a firm pinch on the back of her forearm and squeezed hard. Her eyes never left my face. She stopped and licked her lips. I told her to wait, I would get a towel and wet her lips. I found one on the back of the toilet and put an end under the tap.

  “He raped me.”

  “Listen, I’m just going to wet your lips. Don’t try to swallow any, you might choke.” I patted her lips and brushed her face, pushing back the tendrils of her hair from her forehead.

  She took a deep breath. “When he was finishing he said he was going to fuck me to death. He grabbed my neck in his hands and started to twist my head around. I heard my neck break. When I came to I was alone in the dark. My throat hurt too much to scream. I tried to get up to run but I couldn’t move. I was so scared. I thought I was going to die here, alone, slowly.” Tears began to well up in the corners of her eyes.

  “Did Leroy say anything to you. Any clue to where he’d be going from here?”

  “No. He just laughed and said there was no one to save me. That you’d be dead too.”

  “Did he say anything else, anything at all about his plans?”

  “Yeah.” She furrowed her brow. “He said killing people was going to solve all his problems and then he said that I was just a tune-up. That the real McCoy would make him rich.”

  I went back to the sink and moistened the towel. I brought it back to Terri and carefully wiped her face.

  “What happened? How did they find out about you?”

  She took a painful swallow. “The next trick I went to was a plant. When I didn’t trick he must have called them back about me. They wanted to know who I had talked to. They burned me with cigarettes. The film thing was a setup to flush you out. Leroy told me they’ve been ripping off Panczak for months. They thought that I was spying on them for him. They were going to kill me and you to keep it quiet.”

  “All right. Now listen to me. I’m going to have to leave you. I’m going to call the cops and get an ambulance here right away. I can’t move you and we need to get you to a hospital. Okay?”

  “Will you come right back, please? Don’t leave me here.”

  “Terri, I can’t. He’s still got that girl and he’s going to kill her. The cops will be here in minutes. They’ll be here before I even get back.” I stopped talking and wondered if a victim on hand is worth two in your mind. “I’m going to try to make you more comfortable for when they come to get you.” I went and got two bolsters off the floor and gently put one of each side of her head, next to her swollen, bruised neck. Leroy’s handiwork was impressed into her flesh, a necklace of death. I put her arms down at her side. Before I put her legs together, I took the towel and cleaned her. She had messed herself when she had gone into shock. The fact that she would have twitched spastically, evacuated and gone white when she went into shock probably convinced Leroy she was dead. Fortunately he had broken her neck too low, leaving her alive. Fortunate was my word, it was not my life. I pulled the sheet up over her legs.

  She was trying to speak. I bent down to hear her. “You know I didn’t want to tell him. I’m sorry.”

  I pulled the sheet up over her burned breasts. “Yeah, I know you didn’t. It’s okay.

  “I’m going to leave the doors open upstairs so you can hear them when they come in. They’ll be here in five minutes Terri, just hold on.” She whispered okay and I left. I wedged a towel under the door at the top of the stairs and then latched open the front door to the house. I stood on the front porch scanning the vista for a sign of Arnie. Every time I tried to think about Terri entombed in her own flesh my thoughts dissolved into a blur of horror. It was too much. Too much. I tried to focus on her, to keep an image of her in my mind, force it into my furnace of rage and make it a weapon, but I couldn’t. One thought did come clearly to me, as insistent as a pulse: my fault, my fault.

  Arnie pulled up the road in his car. When he pulled around in a circle and I didn’t move, he looked at me. I stepped off the porch.

  “Let’s get to a phone, man, and in a hurry.”

  “What’s up?”

  “What’s up is that Terri Johnson is down there with a broken neck, paralyzed from the neck down and we’re gonna get an ambulance out here fast. Let’s go.”

  “We’ve got one thing to do first though,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Drop me back at these guys’ car. I’m going to take it over to Springfield Mall and leave it on the lot. It’ll be months before it’s noticed. You get the ambulance and pick me up on the lot.”

  “Fine.”

  Arnie gunned the motor and we slewed down the driveway out onto the road, then left toward Hooes Road and Springfield. As we turned onto Hooes I noted the road to the house, Lorton Church Road. I dropped Arnie at the car and flew up the road. On the right was the Springfield Volunteer Fire Department with an ambulance. I spun into their lot, jumped out and ran into the glass-fronted dispatcher’s office.

  The dispatcher was sitting at his desk, deep into solitaire. He looked up, furrowed his brow and squeezed a yeah around the dead cigar lying in his mouth like a downed telephone pole.

  “I’ve got an emergency. There’s a woman with a broken neck in the basement of a house—the first house on the right on Lorton Church Road. She’s paralyzed from the neck down. Listen, can I use your phone? I need to call the police.” He pointed to a phone on the desk opposite him, flipped a bank of switches and began to bark into the intercom system. I plugged my ears and dialed the phone number.

  “Fairfax County Police. May I help you?”

  “Yeah. Please get me Lieutenant Schaefer.” I never tell people it’s an emergency unless there’s no other way to get through. Everybody has rules for how to react to the word “emergency” and they do things their way, no matter what. “Emergency” doesn’t speed things up; it delivers you into the deepest part of institutional bureaucracy where the rules are the most rigid. Everybody’s so busy covering their ass with cast-iron Pampers that nobody cares to hear what your trouble is until they’re sure it won’t jump up and bite them. So you do it their way or not at all.

  “Schaefer here.”

  “Frank, this is Leo Haggerty. I’m at the Springfield VFD. There’s a woman, a reporter named Terri Johnson, in the basement of a house out there with a broken neck courtesy of Leroy Dixon. I’m here getting an ambulance for her. Dixon’s driving a late model black and gold Caddy—a Seville, I think. The only places we’ve seen him are a building down in Olde Towne, near the Interarms warehouses and that massage parlor on Washington—The Garden of Eden Health Salon.”

  “Is Johnson dead, Leo?”

  “No, Frank, but she might wish she was. She’s dead from the neck down.”

  “What the hell is this all about, Leo? What the fuck is she doing out in Lorton? And how do you know all this?”

  “Listen, Frank, I’m going after Dixon right now.”

  “Bullshit, Leo, you stay put and out of this. Whatever’s going on stinks and it sounds like it’s fucked up eight ways to Christmas. I don’t want anything else fucked up. I’ll send men to those places. You come in to talk, now, or I’ll have
you brought in.”

  “Sorry, no can do, Frank. I’ll explain later.” I hung up and sprinted to the car. An ambulance was already on its way, heralded by its nasal siren’s whine.

  Three minutes later I picked Arnie up on the Loisdale Road side of the mall.

  “Now what?” he said.

  “We find Dixon and the kid before he kills her.” I sat quietly, trying to put together what I knew so far in a way that would tell me where Dixon would go. My anxiety kept intruding, tumbling my thoughts. It was like trying to read Plato on a high wire.

  “Pull over for a second, Arnie.” We slid into a MacDonald’s parking lot. I squeezed my eyes shut and put my head in my hands. Killing solves all problems. Terri was a tune-up? Big money and the real thing? Killing Terri and me might keep him out of jail or clear of Panczak for a while but his days are numbered. He couldn’t keep dipping into the till forever. Why kill the kid? If she’s willing, he can just set up elsewhere. Maybe she’s not. Maybe she’s become a liability. He’d want one last big score so he could clear out. Tune-up? Sex and death a tune-up? Sex and Death and Big Money? I was sick when it made sense to me.

  “Let’s go to Olde Towne, Arnie.” We swung out of the parking lot and went up the ramp to 395 North and then hard right across four lanes to the 95 North ramp heading to Alexandria. Six minutes later at a discreet sixty-five we were in Alexandria. We turned right on King Street and headed into Olde Towne. It’s the section between Washington Street, the road to George’s home and the Potomac. Bounded by the disenfranchised on the north and the “truly needy” on the south. Olde Towne is just that. There’s Washington’s church and Robert E. Lee’s childhood home. Plaques on most of the buildings attest to their being part of the original “Olde Towne” area, circa 1749. It has cobbled streets and an architectural dress code. No golden arches here. It’s also the boutique and restaurant center of the town and the air is full of the minty fresh smell of new money. Traffic creeps by, since parking places are scarcer than a black face in this end of town. It’s Virginia’s answer to Georgetown—mankind passing in close quarters lubricated by good manners.

  We drove down King Street, the central spine of this section, all the way to the river. Then right past the Interarms warehouses. We turned right at Union Street and saw no Alexandria Police Department cars on the street. Maybe we were too late and it was all wrapped up and done. Maybe Fairfax and Alexandria were squabbling over jurisdiction and no one had arrived yet. We went down Union Street between the rows of numbered weapons warehouses to another red brick cube, three stories high. We pulled down the alley between it and Interarms number seven, toward Water Street and there it was: a black and gold caddy snuggled up behind the building.

  Chapter 18

  Arnie pulled down the alley to Water Street. We were at the southern end. A straight run of four blocks up to King Street then a left and the city would branch out before us.

  “I don’t like being in a corner at all.” Arnie shook his head.

  “I want to be able to get out of here in a hurry. I don’t want Leroy chasing us on the streets after we fuck up his car. I don’t think he has any backup for this shtick. Panczak gave us his blessing, remember.”

  “Yeah, but what about his buyer?”

  “Buyers are rodents, ferrets. They stay low and in the dark. Sunlight kills them, you don’t need bullets. Okay?”

  Arnie shrugged. If it really stank he wouldn’t do it, not for me or anybody. “You know we stick out like sore thumbs in these outfits. Who the hell dresses like this for a stroll in Olde Towne.”

  “We’ll split up then. Together we look like a sandwich board for a mortician.”

  Arnie pulled two windbreakers out of the back seat and we pulled them on over our shoulder holsters. He handed me a pair of surgical gloves. I slipped them on, flexing my fingers so that they fit snugly. Arnie did the same. I patted the gun and the knife in the small of my back. “Okay, I’ll go up the alley. You go up King Street and over on Union. I’ll kill the car and go up the fire escape and work my way down from the roof. You start at the bottom and work your way up. Okay?”

  Arnie nodded. “Fine, we’ll do it that way. I’ll start up the ladder a few minutes after you. The two of us together are as inconspicuous as a varicose vein on a Rockette.”

  Arnie headed off toward King Street and I walked up the alley, staying in the cover of the high fence around the Interarms warehouse. At the junction of the two alleyways, I looked up at the back of the building. Three fire doors connected to the escape ladder. Two windows on each floor, one on each side of the door. First floor: curtains; second floor, shutters; third floor, blinds. I looked both ways before I crossed, just like my mother taught me, and glided across the alley to Leroy’s wheels. As I pivoted around it I felt the hood for engine heat. Still warm. He didn’t come here right from the farm house. He dropped off the girl or picked up somebody else and got here not too long ago.

  I squatted down alongside the car next to the wall, pulled out my knife and stabbed the front and rear tires. The car slowly listed into the pavement. I sheathed my blade, grabbed the bottom of the ladder and pulled it down. As soon as it swung down I pulled out my .45 and moved as smoothly and quietly up the ladder as I could, stopping every flight to check for noises. As I got off at the third floor I looked down and saw Arnie approaching the building. I pulled on the fire door and when it opened thanked the great fire chief in the sky. The door closed and I hugged the wall. I let my eyes adjust to the darkness, my ears to the background sounds, trying to filter out the sounds that pipes and floors make from those that people do. Nothing.

  The building was old. The fire escape was added on to a building with only an elevator on the inside. It had been built back in the good old days, before people realized that elevators don’t work during fires and that for the people trapped inside them they become giant casseroles. The hallway went the length of the building then flared out into a foyer. The elevators were there. There were two doors on this corridor and one facing me on the far wall of the foyer. Maybe three offices. I wished we’d just stuck our noses in and looked at the directory in the foyer first. But then we might have bought it right there. I edged down the hall to the foyer and learned nothing. The door on my left said Please Enter around the Corner. The door on my right said Orthodontic Laboratory. There was a fire extinguisher on the wall. I took it down and pulled out the safety pin and left it on my right side facing the fire escape where I could grab it on the way out. I edged up to the foyer. The elevator was to my right. Opposite me was a door for an insurance agency. Just above the knob a newly lettered sign proclaimed We Also Prepare Tax Forms. The hall continued on after a jog to the left leaving a dark corner beyond scrutiny. To my immediate left was a door marked Ace Film Company: Processing, Sales and Distribution. Bingo.

  I slid along the wall and grasped the knob, slowly turning it and then pushing it inward. I pulled out my Colt and went through the door in a crouch, scuttling sideways. If there was an alarm I’d have company soon. Two minutes alone gave me my answer. The front door was for show and whatever inspectors needed to be paid off. There was a desk for a a receptionist and behind that another door. In the back would be a storage area for the films they distributed and sold and processing equipment for their own film. The major centers for making adult films for theater releases are New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. If Monte was making his own, and the setup at Lorton sure pointed to that, they would be eight millimeter loops for the peep shows he owned around Fort Belvoir. I sat a moment and heard voices from the back. I crossed to the secretary’s desk and found the alarm button on her desk. In case of a raid she’d hit that button. It would be a silent signal and anything unsavory would be quickly destroyed. The side door I’d passed in the corridor would probably be for an exit off the boss’ office. I figured a corridor beyond this first door with his office to the left. Then processing equipment and a storeroom in the back. My guess was that Monte’s office would hav
e equipment for “screen testing” his stars and for private shows, and that’s where they’d be.

  It was time to find out if my mental map was worth a damn. I crouched by the door and pushed it inward and repeated my crab imitation going through. So far I was right. Over the door there was an alarm light which was not on. It would have been visible from anywhere in the room. In the right corner was a vault holding the films they kept in stock. In the left corner was a darkroom, but the door was open. Around it was other processing materials and equipment. There was an office off the corridor as I expected. I went through the door to his office. The voices were coming from the den. The furnishings were early pimp with unlimited bucks; rococco excess. Scarlet shag rugs, black leather, not vinyl, chairs. Side bar with cut crystal decanters, large rosewood desk. Behind that a throne where the prince would hold court, twirl his ruby ring and grant wishes. Paneling, genuine I’m sure, on the walls. Indirect lighting on wretched art. Furnishings are for comfort and pimps are connoisseurs of that. Art is not and they are lost with it. The left hand wall had an aquarium except the fish were dead. The plants were all plastic. Behind the desk was the hall door. To the right, the door to the den. I moved in the disjointed slink of the stalking cat to the door and listened to the voices.

  “Tony, I don’t want to do this. I don’t like him. He gives me the creeps.”

  “Shit. Goddamn it. Shut up. Listen, all you gotta do is this last one, for Christ sakes and we’ll be set. Leroy’s got somebody lined up who’ll pay a lot of money for this flick. We’ll be set. We can split and go to California if you want, anywhere.” I listened to Tony mesmerize her. First the staccato crackling of a live wire. Then slowly the sentences got longer, slower and he began to turn the world upside down. Randi was so lost she’d follow anybody who offered a direction, believe any tour guide. If you love me fuck this stranger. Earth to Randi, come in please. There was silence. She was thinking. Maybe.