by Glenn Ickler
“Didn’t need to. Toni has a bladder problem and can’t go more than an hour without peeing. I just slipped into the ladies’ when nobody was around, hid in a stall and waited for her to come in.”
“Toni said she slugged her attacker in the crotch, but it didn’t seem to hurt. Now I understand why it didn’t work the way it should have.”
“Give yourself a third ‘A.’ That punch hurt, but it didn’t do the kind of damage it does to somebody with balls.”
“But still you got caught in the act.”
“I thought that other woman had gone out. Somebody else must have banged the door twice.”
“Speaking of bangs, do you always carry that gun?” I asked, wondering how much longer I could stall. Where in the hell was Al? He couldn’t still be waiting in the goddamn closet.
“Only when I think I might need it,” Kitty said. “When you called and gave me your sob story, I got a little suspicious because you’re a reporter and because you seemed pretty loyal to your girlfriend when I was coming on to you just a couple of days ago. So I took little Ms. Derringer along as insurance and I’m damn glad I did. But I’ve gotta say you were good. You had me thinking that you really wanted to take me to bed until you pulled out that picture.”
“I really did want to take you to bed. Unfortunately, my first priority was checking out those red boots.”
“I bet your woman didn’t really go to Duluth, did she?”
“Actually, she did. But she went with another woman lawyer because they’re working at a trial.”
“That’s why you were able to invite me to your place tonight.”
“Voila,” I said.
“Well, if it’s any comfort to you, this suite is a lot classier place to die. Which is what’s going to happen to you right now.”
“You won’t get away with it,” I said. Immediately I felt embarrassment at spouting such a stale cliché.
“Why not?” Kitty said. “I’ve got the perfect story to tell the cops. We had dinner, we talked about the Winter Carnival, I brought you up here just to show you the room because you said you’d like to see it, and you got all excited and turned on the Jacuzzi while I was in the bathroom. When I came out, you were standing there naked, and you came at me and tried to rip off my clothes. We tussled, and you were so strong that I was forced to shoot you in self-defense. It’s lucky I had the gun or I’d have been raped and maybe killed. Now take off your shoes and socks, and don’t even think about throwing one of them at me.”
She took another step back, increasing the shoe-tossing range. I pulled off my shoes and socks, being careful not to bend over so far that the tape recorder would fall out of my shirt pocket, and asked what to do next.
“Take off your pants,” she said. “Too bad you lost what I wanted to look at.” Indeed, my sexual arousal had dropped away. I took off my pants, again being careful not to bend too far forward.
“Have you got a back problem or what?” Kitty asked. “You move like you’ve got a rod up your ass.”
“I do have a problem with a couple of disks,” I said. “It’s very painful for me to bend over very far.”
“Well, it won’t be hurting you any more. Get over by the Jacuzzi and take off your shorts.” We did a circle dance, with me moving to the Jacuzzi and her sliding toward the door.
I was standing with my back to the Jacuzzi and starting to pull down my under shorts when the doorknob rattled. Kitty turned her head toward the sound in time to see the door open. I yanked up my shorts and started running toward her, yelling, “Al, get away from the door!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
A Bang-up Exit
It wasn’t Al standing in the doorway. It was Ted Carlson. Immediately behind him was a woman I recognized as Angela Rinaldi, even though she was not dressed in her Klondike Kate costume.
Kitty spun sideways, keeping the gun pointed at me, and said, “Stop right there.” I stopped.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Carlson yelled.
Kitty swung the gun toward him. “Get out of my way, Ted.”
“What the hell are you doing?” he yelled again.
“I’m leaving,” Kitty said. She turned and ran toward the door, and I started chasing her again. I almost had my hand on her shoulder when the gun went off with a bang not much louder than a firecracker.
Carlson screamed and fell backward against Angela, and they both crashed to the floor. Angela landed on her butt with Carlson sprawled on top of her. Kitty jumped over their thrashing legs like a Green Bay running back heading for the Vikings’ goal line and went racing down the hall toward the stairway.
I hesitated for a moment in shock before I followed, leaping over the floundering couple on the floor and running down the hall about thirty feet behind Kitty. I yelled at her to stop, and suddenly she did. So did I because she turned and pointed the little pistol my way. I hit the deck on my belly, buried my nose in the carpet and got my nostrils filled with dust as she fired.
The slug ricocheted off the rug in front of me and burned a skin-deep furrow across the tip of my right shoulder, ruining my shirt and causing a small river—a creek, actually—of blood to begin dribbling down my arm. I raised my head in time to see Kitty disappear through the stairway door.
She had twenty flights of stairs to run down, plus a seventy-five-yard dash to her car, clad only her bra, bloomers and boots. I thought that if I called the front desk, hotel security would be able to head her off. I pushed myself up to a standing position and almost went back down because my knees were shaking so violently. I had to prop myself up against the wall and take a series of deep breaths before my legs were steady enough to carry me back to room 2112, where I could use the phone to call the desk.
When I got there, I found Carlson lying on his back with a red stain spreading across the middle of his white shirt. Angela was kneeling beside him with tears streaming down her cheeks and high notes screeching from her mouth.
I grabbed Angela by the shoulders. “Shut up while I call 911,” I said. She looked at me like I was from another galaxy and let out another scream. I shook her, told her again to shut up and went into the room to grab the phone. I heard Carlson moan in pain as I was pressing zero.
When the desk clerk answered, I told him to call 911 because a man had been shot on the twenty-first floor. “After that, get hotel security into the garage to stop a woman wearing red boots, bloomers, and a bra,” I said. “But tell them to be careful because she’s also got a gun.”
“Sir, are you serious?” the clerk asked.
“I’m not playing games and I’m not drunk. Do both of those things as fast as you can.”
Angela had stopped screaming when I rejoined her at Carlson’s side. As I knelt there, I heard another voice ask, “What the hell is going on?”
I looked up to see Al standing over us. “It’s about time you got here,” I said.
“That man’s bleeding and so are you,” Al said.
“Your powers of observation never cease to amaze me,” I said. “We’ve both been shot by the red-boot girl.”
Carlson’s eyes were closed, and he moaned again as I gingerly tugged his shirttails out of his pants, unbuttoned the shirt, spread it open and pulled up his undershirt. Blood was seeping from a hole in the fleshy part of his left side below the rib cage. Apparently the slug hadn’t hit an artery or anything vital.
I asked Angela if she had a hanky. She fished around in her purse and pulled out a lacy white one. I pressed the cloth against the wound and saw of a series of flashes from above as Al shot photos of the action. I told Angela to hold the hanky in place, and backed off so Al could get some shots that didn’t include me.
When I stood up, the sensation of liquid trickling down my arm and a sharp stinging in my shoulder reminded me that Carlson wasn’t the only person who’d been shot. I started to reach for my shoulder with my left hand, but stopped when I saw the fingers were stained with Carlson’s blood.
Al saw my p
roblem. “I’ll hold the fort here while you go wash your hands and put a towel or something over your shoulder to soak up the blood,” he said. “It might also be smart to put on some pants before the cops get here.”
I’d forgotten that I was trotting around in my under shorts. “Right,” I said. “One should never greet police officers in one’s casual under attire.”
“You must have been having a pretty good time before the shooting broke out.”
“You’ll never believe part of it, but the fun was coming to an end. Carlson took a bullet originally intended for me.”
I left Al to ponder that while I washed my hands thoroughly, draped a towel over my shoulder and clamped it between my arm and my rib cage so I could slip into my pants. I was zipping up the fly when three uniformed hotel security men skidded to a halt beside Al. I buckled my belt and went out to meet them.
“Did your guys catch the woman in the garage?” I asked.
“What woman’s that?” asked a stocky, red-faced man wearing a name tag that said John.
“I told the desk clerk to send security to the garage to head off the woman who shot this guy,” I said.
“Clerk never said nothin’ about no woman,” John said. “Sent us up here to see about a shootin’.” The other two men shook their heads.
“Shit, that means Kitty got away,” I said. “Did the idiot who sent you up here bother to call 911?”
“Don’t know,” said John. “Be a good idea if he did.”
My question was answered almost immediately when one of the elevators opened and three EMTs and two uniformed cops came dashing down the hall. They’d barely reached us when the other elevator opened and two plainclothes officers stepped out. The one in the lead was Detective Mike Reilly.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Reilly said when he saw Al and me. “You two again? Why is it every time I go to a crime scene, you two are there?”
“Just lucky, I guess,” Al said.
“For you maybe,” Reilly said. “Not for me.”
“Not for me, either,” I said. “I’m one of the wounded.” I pointed with my left hand to the towel wrapped around my opposite shoulder.
“Oh, Christ,” Reilly said. “Now you’re a victim as well as a witness?”
“It pains me to say that that’s true,” I said.
“I’ll testify to that,” Al said.
“Just get out of the way for a minute while I talk to the EMTs,” Reilly said.
Angela rose from the floor and held up her bloody hands as the EMTs took over on Carlson. She was staring at her palms like Lady Macbeth in the sleepwalking scene, and her face was the color of Uncle Ben’s rice.
“Come with me,” I said. I took Angela by the arm and steered her to the bathroom. After another splash of Ted Carlson’s blood went down the drain, she emerged looking more alive.
“What were you doing here with Ted?” I asked in a whisper.
“We were going to spend the night here,” Angela said. “He’s been hiding at my place and we were afraid the cops might come there. We were going to hide here and I was going to sneak him out of town in the back of my SUV tomorrow.”
“You’ve been hiding Ted from the cops? Why?”
“I know he didn’t kill Lee-Ann, and I love him. He’s going to leave his wife and marry me.”
“I’ll bet he is.”
She started to cry. “He is, damn it. If he lives from getting shot.”
“He’ll live,” I said. “It’s a flesh wound. He’s got a much better chance of getting well than you have of getting married to him.”
“What do you know about it?” Angela said. “He said he loves me more than anything in the world.”
“You and about a dozen others, so I’ve heard tell. But maybe you’ll be the lucky one. At least you’re right about him not killing Lee-Ann.”
Our discussion was interrupted by Reilly, who said he had some questions for both of us, starting with Angela. She was beginning to wobble a bit, so I suggested he let her sit down. Reilly scowled at me and waved her toward the armchair. He was standing in front of her, asking questions, when Al walked up beside me and suggested turning off the Jacuzzi. I caught it with the water barely an inch from the top.
“That was close,” Al said as I sat on the edge of the Jacuzzi and pulled on my socks and shoes. “And speaking of close, Martha was coming into your apartment as I was going out.”
“What the hell was she doing home?” I asked.
“She said something about the case getting settled during the delay and she asked me where you were.”
“Oh, God, what did you tell her?”
“I said you were working and that I didn’t have time to chat, see you later. You’re going to have some major explaining to do. You’ll need to be very creative.”
“I would be very creative, except it’s all going to be in the paper,” I said. “Most of it, anyway. I can leave out some of the gory details, but when Martha hears that the cops are looking for a woman wearing nothing but a bra and bloomers and boots, I could be in major doo-doo.”
While waiting for Reilly to question me, I got on the cell phone to the Daily Dispatch city desk. It was after 10:00 p.m., and Fred Donlin, the night city editor, was in charge. I told him to save some space on page one for Al and me because we were at the scene of a shooting.
“We heard it on the police radio and I was just going to send some people over there,” Fred said. “How soon can you and Al get here?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m one of the guys who got shot and dear Detective Reilly wants to question me. Al can get away right now with his pix.” Al heard this, waved goodbye and left.
“You got shot?” Fred said. “Why aren’t you in the hospital?”
“It just took off some skin. There’s an EMT checking me out right now.” This was almost true. One of the EMTs was headed my way with her kit in hand. I said goodbye to Fred and gritted my teeth while the EMT, who said her name was Georgia, cut the sleeve off my shirt, cleaned the wound, coated it with liquid fire and taped on a layer of gauze.
“This is just a temporary patch,” Georgia said. “You need to go to the hospital as soon as the detective is done with you.”
“Right,” I said. “Thanks for the patch.” There’d be a long stop at the Daily Dispatch and a heavy frost in Hades before I took a trip to the hospital.
Reilly asked me some routine questions and shook his head in disbelief when I told him that Kitty Catalano had admitted killing Lee-Ann Nordquist. “No way,” he said. “It was a guy in a Vulcan suit.”
“I’ve got her confession on tape,” I said, pulling the mini-recorder out of my shirt pocket. The thirty-minute tape had run out, but I was sure it had been going all the while Kitty was telling her story.
“Bring that with you and report to Detective Brown first thing in the morning,” Reilly said. “I’m going to leave him a memo so he’ll be expecting you, and your ass will be grass if you don’t show up.” He pushed me out of the room, strung a strip of yellow plastic tape across the door and walked away, followed by the rest of the police brigade. Carlson had been loaded onto a gurney and rolled to the elevator, with Angela tagging along for the ambulance ride.
I opted not to put on my blazer before making the two-block walk to the office, but I did have to get into my top coat because it was fifteen degrees outside. The movement and the contact reignited the fire in my shoulder, but I considered myself lucky that the slug hadn’t struck any bones. When I got to my desk at the Daily Dispatch, I was encircled by the entire night staff, all of them asking questions but none offering sympathy to the wounded warrior.
“I’ll talk to you guys later,” I said while I carefully slid the coat off my wounded shoulder. “Now I need to write. Scat!”
They scatted, and I wrote cautiously, leaving out such mundane minutiae as Kitty displaying the artwork on her crotch and my being forced to remove my pants. By the time I had finished and forwarded the story to Fre
d, the newsroom was almost empty. While Fred was reading the story, Al came to my desk and said he was heading for home. Fred asked me a couple of questions, said it was a fabulous story, sent it to composing and bade me goodnight.
I shut down my computer, struggled into my coat again, picked up my blazer and started toward the door, ready for the drive home. Then reality hit me. My car was still in the restaurant parking lot, two miles away.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Playing Pickup
Looking around the newsroom, I saw that the only other people in residence were an assistant editor and a reporter who were standing watch through the night in case of a fire, major accident or freakish storm. I couldn’t ask either of them for a ride home.
A bus was out of the question. It was a few minutes before midnight and I had no idea what the late night/early morning transit schedule might be.
My options were to call a taxi or call Martha. I walked back to my desk, took a deep breath and punched in the number for the phone beside our bed.
“I need a pick-me-up,” I said when Martha answered.
“Where the hell are you?” Martha said just below a scream. “Al said you were at work, but when I called there you didn’t answer your phone, and the desk said they hadn’t seen you or heard from you.”
“You called too early. I’ve been in the office for a little over an hour. My problem is that my car isn’t here. Could you please come and get me?”
“What happened to your car?” The decibel level and tone were still far above normal. “Did you have an accident?”
“The car is fine. No accident. It’s just parked a long way away and it’s too long a story to tell on the phone. Please just come and get me and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Okay,” Martha said in a calmer voice. “I’ll have to get dressed, so it’ll be a few minutes.”
“I’ll be watching for you from inside the front door,” I said.
Nine minutes later, Martha’s Toyota rolled to a stop in front of the Daily Dispatch and I scurried out of the lobby and slid into the passenger seat. Martha leaned over and kissed me on the lips before stepping on the gas pedal.
