by Ross Thomas
“If she doesn’t come out in thirty minutes, we go in and get her.”
“We?”
“The four of them and me. You can wait in the car.”
“And if they move her, we follow them. Is that it?”
“That’s it,” I said.
“Then I go up to the door of wherever it is, knock politely, and when it’s opened, I aim a gun at whoever opens it and tell him to open it all the way.”
“I’ll be with you,” I said. “Our four friends will be close by.”
“Then we go in, rescue your wife and Michael’s little blonde thing and that’s it. The curtain descends with me counting the final share of my payment.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Simple,” she said. “Like everything he’s ever done. Complicated, but simple, with someone bound to get hurt.”
“Perhaps.”
“We’ll make a lovely couple going up to that door,” she said. “How do you know they don’t have orders to shoot all callers?”
“I don’t. You can always shoot first.”
“You sound awfully determined.”
“It’s my first wife.”
She looked at me and smiled slightly. “Determined—even for a first wife.”
“You did bring something to shoot with, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
There wasn’t much conversation after that. I lighted another cigarette and stared at the traffic. Magda curled in her corner of the big seat and tapped her fingers on her purse. After a while, she opened it, took out a compact and inspected her make-up. If she were going calling, she seemed to want to look nice.
“Hardman,” the telephone said. “It’s fifteen till and they comin out the front … Two and Missy … she between ’em … They all gettin in a car—Continental, dark blue … all three in the front seat … it’s backin out … turnin onto Massachusetts and headin away …”
“Which way?” It was Padillo’s voice.
“East … we’re right behind ’em … You got it, Johnny Jay?”
“Got it. We’re comin.”
“I’ll take first tail,” Hardman said. “Then we shift off and you take it.”
“O.K.,” Johnny Jay said. “We rollin on Mass now.”
“They comin your way, Mac.”
“All right,” I said. I started the car and pulled it up to the corner, and pulled down the sun visor. The blue Continental sped by, Boggs at the wheel, Sylvia in the center, Darragh on the other side. They didn’t seem to be doing much talking. The white pickup truck was about fifty feet behind them, Tulip driving. I fell in behind the pickup.
“Where you at, Johnny Jay?” Hardman asked.
“Six blocks this side of the circle,” he said.
“We’re four blocks. I want you to take over at Dupont.”
“I’m comin.”
At Dupont Circle, the Continental turned down Nineteenth. “He’s turnin on Nineteenth, Johnny Jay. I’m goin on to Connecticut.”
“I got him in sight.”
“You take the talkin then.”
I followed the pickup truck as it turned right on Connecticut at Dupont Circle.
“This mother’s movin,” Johnny Jay said. “We’re cross-in M Street … goin straight … Now we’re on R … turnin left on K … Red light at Eighteenth … Now we’re goin … Seventeenth … now Seventeenth and I … made the light … now Pennsylvania and we made that one too … Still on Seventeenth. …”
Johnny Jay kept talking as Boggs led him down Seventeenth to the Tidal Basin, up Maine Avenue past what was left of Washington’s waterfront, and then up M Street into the new southwest section of the city.
“I don’t know where this mother’s goin, but he’s headin for home territory now,” Johnny Jay said. “We at M and Van Streets now, baby.”
“He goin past the Navy Yard?” Hardman asked.
“Look like he goin right past,” Johnny Jay said.
“He hit that Navy Yard he can’t turn right till he get to Eleventh. I’m goin to move up on him. You drop back.”
“I’m droppin,” Johnny Jay said.
We were moving down N Street in the southeast section as Hardman talked. At Half Street he turned left and then right on M. I was right behind the pickup and could see the Continental speeding down the double-laned boulevard on M that ran in front of the thirteen-block-long Navy Yard. At Eleventh Street, the Continental pulled over to the right lane, and turned right.
“He goin to Anacostia!” Hardman said. “Shit, man, nobody go there.”
Anacostia was across the river from the rest of Washington and it might as well have been in the next country. There wasn’t much to attract the tourist and the typical northwest Washington resident wasn’t quite sure how to get there if he were ever unlucky enough to have cause to go. It was an area of quiet streets that were turning into a ghetto, but it would take another five years or so for that. At present, it was a mixture, perhaps thirty per cent white and seventy per cent Negro.
“Stick close, gentlemen,” Hardman said, “cause I don’t know this area too well.”
“Who does?” Johnny Jay asked.
We crossed the Eleventh Street Bridge, and turned right. After that I got lost. We were in the briar patch. The Continental turned down a quiet residential street and I drove slowly around the corner and stopped. The pickup followed the Continental down half-a-block. The big white truck with Nineball driving and Johnny Jay beside him with the phone in his hand turned the corner and pulled in up front of me.
I couldn’t see the Continental. Hardman started talking again. “They parked in front of a house, two stories, brick, and they goin in. Missy’s between em. They knockin on the door, somebody openin it, can’t see who, and they’ve done gone in.”
“They get ten minutes,” I said.
“Can you see them, Mac?” It was Padillo’s voice.
“No. The truck’s blocking my view.”
We waited. Magda stirred and opened her purse and looked inside.
“The same two comin out now,” Hardman said. “They gettin in the car. They rollin it now.”
“O.K.,” I said. “The two of us will go up to the door; you be on the sidewalk.”
“Now?” Magda said.
“Now you start earning your money.”
She looked through the window of the car at the cracked concrete sidewalk, the narrow houses that needed paint, and the trees with the last of the year’s leaves clinging as if they had been hung out to dry and forgotten.
“You know,” she said as she pressed the handle of the door, “I think I’m going to earn every cent.”
TWENTY-FOUR
The house was built on a terrace but the grass had long since given up and disappeared. It was a fifteen-foot-wide row-house with a grey brick veneer. It had a window and a door on the first floor and two windows on the second. A porch with a shingled roof seemed to have been added to the front as an afterthought. Venetian blinds were lowered on the three windows.
I studied the houses next to it as Magda and I walked down the sidewalk. They were built from the same plans, but their windows were blank and staring. They were vacant. Some old newspapers were piled on their porches. A broken green tricycle with only one rear wheel rusted in the bare earth yard of the house on the right.
Concrete steps led from the sidewalk up the terrace. We took them, Magda going first, holding her purse with both hands. I looked back. Nineball and Johnny Jay were walking down the other side of the street making a show of looking at house numbers. Hardman and Tulip were doing the same thing on our side of the street, about thirty feet behind us.
We climbed the four steps to the porch. There was no bell, so I knocked on the door, standing to the right of Magda. There was no answer and I knocked again. Louder. The door opened about three inches.
“I beg your pardon,” Magda said, “but I’m to pick up some furniture and I’m having trouble locating number 1537.”
The door opene
d wider and a man’s voice said: “This is 1523.”
She took the gun out of her purse quickly and pointed it at him and said: “Open the door all the way and move back.”
I reached for the screen door, but it was fastened. I had the revolver out of my coat pocket. “Unfasten the door,” I said.
The man made no move to do so, and I had to open the screen door by jerking the hook and eye that held it shut out of its fastening. I got the screen open and hit the wooden door with my shoulder. I went through fast. A heavyset man in shirtsleeves with long brown hair was backing away from me, his right hand moving towards his right hip pocket. He was backing down a hall.
I waved my gun at him and said: “One more step and it goes off.” He stopped. The hall ran to the rear of the house. To the left, along the wall, a flight of stairs led up to the second floor. To the right was what seemed to be the living room. Two men broke quickly out of it, both carrying guns.
“Watch your right,” Magda snapped and shot one of the men in the stomach. He looked surprised and dropped his gun. It was an automatic. Then he sat down on the floor and held his stomach. The other man stopped and stood with his automatic in his hand, looking down at his friend on the floor.
“You shot him,” he said, and there was a note of incredulity in his voice. Something flashed by my left side and I turned in time to see Hardman’s big back with “Four-Square Movers” stitched across it in red thread going in low at the heavyset man with the long brown hair. The man had a gun out of his hip pocket by then and he tried to bring it down on Hardman’s head, but the knife in the big Negro’s right hand went into his side and the man screamed instead and dropped the gun.
Hardman got up and looked at the knife in his hand and shook his head slightly. Then he looked around as if for something to wipe it on and when he didn’t find anything he knelt down and wiped it on the man’s trousers. The man was moaning.
I turned to the one with the gun in his hand. He still held it, but it was pointed at the floor, dangling as if it were forgotten.
“Where are the two women?” I said.
“You shot him,” the man said to Magda. “He was my friend.” He had an accent like Darragh’s and Boggs’s. The man that Magda had shot lay on the floor and twitched. He was still holding his stomach, but he made no sound.
“Johnny Jay, you and Tulip get out on the porch and yell if you see somethin,” Hardman told them. They moved through the door.
“Where are the two women?” I said again.
“Upstairs,” the man said. Nineball reached out and took the gun away from him. The man didn’t seem to notice.
“Anyone else upstairs?” I said.
“No.”
“I’ll go with you,” Magda said.
I nodded and started up the stairs. They were covered with a grey carpet that was worn through on the edge of the risers. The wallpaper was of impossibly pale roses with faded green stems and leaves. Only the thorns looked real.
I kept the revolver in my right hand as we went up. At the top, I turned right. There were three doors, one of them open and leading into a bathroom. I tried the second door; it opened into an empty bedroom. The third door was locked, but there was a key in it. I turned the key and pushed the door open wide and moved into the room quickly.
Sylvia Underhill sat in a chair between twin beds. She had a washcloth in her hand. She looked up, her eyes wide with fear and perhaps anger. Fredl lay on a bed, fully clothed except for her shoes. Her eyes were closed. She seemed asleep.
“Is she all right?” I asked.
“She’s drugged,” Sylvia said. “It’s been awful and I got so frightened.” She twisted the washcloth nervously in her hands. I moved to the bed and looked down at Fredl and put my hand on her forehead. It was too warm.
“I think she has fever,” Sylvia said.
I put the revolver in the pocket of my topcoat and sat on the bed and held Fredl’s wrist. I could feel her pulse and it was slow but steady enough. Her face was pale and her blond hair was spread out on the pillow.
“Are you all right?” I asked Sylvia.
“Yes,” she said, but her voice didn’t sound convincing.
“It’s over now,” I said.
“Not quite, McCorkle.” It was Magda talking to me from across the room. I turned and looked at her. She stood by the door with the automatic in her hand. It looked like a Beretta. She held it steadily; there was no tremor in her hand.
“We’re going to stay here for two more hours—you, me, your wife and Miss Underhill. You’ll send the others away.”
I just kept sitting on the bed. “You’ll notice my gun is not aimed at you,” she said. “It’s aimed at your wife. If you try anything, I’ll shoot her. And if you’re still moving, I’ll shoot you in the kneecap which is quite painful, but most effective.”
“In two hours, Van Zandt will be dead, right?”
“Right.”
“You teamed with Dymec,” I said. I made it a statement, not an accusation.
“There was so much money involved.”
“Why shoot the guy downstairs?”
“He didn’t know who I was. Why should he?”
“Now what?”
“Now you walk carefully over to that door. Open it and call down to your friends. Tell them that you’ll take care of your wife and the Underhill child. Tell them to leave and to take the unwounded man with them. And to keep him safe.”
“Anything else?”
“If they ask about you, tell them that the girl and I are helping to dress your wife. We’ll take her in the Cadillac when she’s dressed.”
I continued to sit on the bed.
“Move,” she said. The automatic didn’t waver. I got up and walked over to the door and opened it. Magda backed so that she had me in full view. I was in front of her, Fredl was to her left. Sylvia was to her left and slightly behind.
“Hardman,” I called.
“Yo!”
“They’re getting Fredl dressed.”
“She O.K.?”
“She’s O.K. You four take off. Take the guy that’s not hurt with you. Leave the others. I’ll meet you at Betty’s. You got it?”
“What you want me to do with him?”
“Keep him someplace safe.”
“You need any help with Fredl?”
“No.”
“We’re leavin then.”
Magda nodded. “Keep the door open,” she said. “I want to hear them leave.”
I kept it open until she could hear the front door downstairs close.
“Now you may go over and sit in the corner, McCorkle, like a good boy.”
“Which corner?”
“The one just behind you. But first, you have a revolver in your coat pocket. I want you to take it out very slowly and put in on the floor.”
“Gee, Magda you think of everything,” I said. I took the .38 out and put it on the floor.
“Now kick it gently towards me,” she said.
I kicked it gently towards her.
“What happens after two hours? You just walk out into the street and call a taxi?”
“Something like that.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think in two hours you’ll leave, all right, but the three of us will be dead. That’s your assignment from Dymec, isn’t it?”
“You have two entire hours to worry about it.”
“How much was the payoff?”
“So much money, McCorkle. So very much lovely money.”
“Enough to retire?”
“Quite enough.”
“I always favored early retirement—especially after an active life.”
“You chatter too much.”
“I’m nervous”
Sylvia Under hill, slightly behind Magda, pulled up her skirt as if to adjust her hose. When her hands came up she held a nickel-plated .25 automatic in them. Her eyes were wide and she held the automatic with both hands, but it still shook. Her eyes asked me the
question and I nodded my head just slightly and Sylvia Underhill shot Magda Shadid twice in the back. She held the small automatic in both hands and jerked the trigger. The first time, her eyes were closed. The second time she pulled the trigger, they were open. She looked as if she were going to cry.
Magda stumbled forward, caught herself and turned. “You little bitch,” she said and tried to get her gun up so that she could shoot Sylvia Underhill or Fredl McCorkle. I don’t think she cared which. I was across the room by then, the switchblade was open in my right hand, and it went into her back and the blade scraped her spine.
She fell then with the knife still in her back. I reached down and pulled it out and wiped it on the bedspread. Sylvia was crying. She sat in the chair, bent forward, the small automatic still in her hands, and cried.
“Let’s go,” I said.
She looked up at me. There was a lot of revulsion in her face. “I killed her,” she said.
“I helped.”
“I’ve never killed anything before, not even animals. Not even a bird.”
I picked Fredl up from the bed. She didn’t seem to weigh very much.
“Let’s go,” I said to Sylvia.
She rose, the automatic still dangling in her hand. “Put that in my pocket,” I said. “The one on the floor, too.”
She walked around the bed and picked up the .38 that I had kicked towards Magda and put it into my right coat pocket. She dropped hers into the other pocket where it clicked against the knife. I walked over to the door and turned. Sylvia was standing in the center of the room, staring down at the lifeless body.
“You’ll have to open the door,” I said. “I have my hands full.”
“I didn’t want to kill you,” she said to the body on the floor.
TWENTY-FIVE
It was a long, difficult drive to Betty’s. I went fast, unconscious of the speed limits, crossing the Anacostia River on the Eleventh Street Bridge and turning right on Potomac Avenue. I cut left on Pennsylvania Avenue and followed it to the Library of Congress, turned right on First Street, sped past the Supreme Court and the Senate Office Building, wound around the maze in front of Union Station, got on to North Capitol Street until I hit Florida Avenue, then caught Georgia Avenue at the old Griffith Stadium site and drove past Howard University until I came to Fairmont.
