by G. M. Ford
“I’ll admit it, Chief, the whole thing is pretty far out there. A bunch of wounded veterans get together in what’s supposed to be a therapeutic setting and decide to heal themselves by robbing banks. Sounds more like Hollywood than history.”
“It surely does,” said the chief. The spring groaned again as the she pushed back the chair and got to her feet. “Thank you for sharing, Mr. Corso. I’ll take your suspicions under advisement. You may consider your civic duty done.”
Corso didn’t budge. “Which means you’ve no intention of looking for Randy Shields. No intention of looking into any of it.”
The chief was shaking her head. “What it means, Mr. Corso, is that whatever I’m going to do, I’m not going to share it with you. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Andriatta got to her feet. Corso stayed put. She reached down and put a hand on his shoulder. When he still didn’t move, she tugged on his shirt.
“If there’s nothing else, Mr. Corso,” the chief prodded.
“There’s the matter of how my car wreck managed to become listed as a suicide attempt.”
The chief moved out from behind the desk and ambled toward the door. “Subsequent forensic examination revealed damage to the car which could not be accounted for in a suicide scenario.”
“Somebody better tell Hertz Rent-A-Car.”
The chief pulled open the office door and stood aside.
“I’ll take care of it,” she assured him.
Corso got to his feet. “So then you’re admitting you think somebody purposely pushed me into the lake.”
“Quite the contrary, Mr. Corso, we believe it was a hit-and-run. Someone losing control on an icy road…someone scared…someone…”
Corso’s patience was gone. He strode quickly out of the room. Chris Andriatta watched satisfaction flicker in the other woman’s eyes, then followed Corso back into the hall.
43
D irty gray clouds drifted overhead. The air was wet and cold, sending a shiver down Corso’s spine as he and Andriatta crossed the police department parking lot. Out to the north, the horizon seemed to be drowning itself in the lake’s black waters. Corso pulled out the keys and pushed the wrong button. The horn began to honk. Took him a full thirty seconds to get it to stop.
“At least you didn’t get yourself arrested,” Andriatta said.
Corso kicked at a pile of snow, found it frozen solid and came up limping.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath as he jerked open the car door and threw himself into the driver’s seat.
“I guess that’s pretty much the end of the party,” Andriatta said. “Unless of course you’re looking forward to a little jail time.”
“Like hell,” Corso countered.
He stuck both hands in his jacket pockets and came away empty.
“Shit,” he said.
“Other than having no idea when to quit, what’s the problem?”
“My cell phone.”
“What about it?”
“I drowned the damn thing.”
“You’ll probably get in less trouble without one.”
Corso ignored her admonition. “I’m going to that mall out on the highway. They’re bound to have a place I can get a new phone.”
“Give it a rest, Corso.”
“You coming?”
She thought it over. “Malls don’t work for me. Why don’t you leave me at the hotel. I’ve got a few things I’d like to take care of anyway. Give me a call when you’re on your way back. I’ll meet you out front.”
Corso started the engine. “Here we go,” he said.
He dropped the car into gear, eased out of the parking lot and into the street.
“I can’t convince you, can I?”
“Convince me of what?” Corso asked as he turned right at the first stop sign, drove two blocks and turned right again.
“To let this thing go.”
He made a quick left on Lakeshore Drive. The hotel was four blocks down.
“Why would I do a thing like that?”
“Because it’s better for your health and well-being.”
“I’ve been threatened by a lot worse than Chief Cummings.”
Corso pulled the car under the portico. A kid in a uniform hustled over and opened the door. Andriatta popped her seat belt. Corso leaned her way, perhaps for a parting word, perhaps even for a quick kiss, but she was off the seat and gone without a backward glance. The kid closed the door. Corso watched her walk inside, then drove off. Her disapproval hung in the air like the scent of dying flowers.
Took him the better part of an hour and a half and a 180 bucks to get a new phone. One with a charged battery and the same number he used to have, which took a bit of research, since he had no idea what his number was since he never called the damn thing.
Halfway back to the hotel, he called Andriatta. She was waiting outside when he pulled up. “You feeling better now,” she asked as she got settled in.
“Howsabout some lunch?” he asked in reply.
“Sounds like a hell of an idea.”
“First I’m gonna make a coupla calls, so I can eat my lunch in peace.”
Corso pulled the car out of the way down to the far end of the half circle making up the hotel’s driveway. He put the car into park and pulled the phone from his jacket pocket. Next he hoisted himself partway out of the seat and produced his wallet, from which he drew a business card. Andriatta fiddled with her purse as Corso dialed the phone. “Special Agent Morales please.” He listened. “Can you tell me when he will be?” He listened again. “No. No. I’ll call him back. Thank you.”
“I hate that phrase,” he said.
“What phrase is that?”
“Away from his desk. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Hell, the dead are away from their desks.”
“Why Morales?”
“I want him to run Randy Shields’s name through the computer. I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts he comes up as being part of that Pomona veterans group.”
“And if he does?”
“That makes me right.”
“Is being right that important?”
“It is to me.”
“Explains why you’re single.”
“So I’m told.”
He dug around in his wallet again. Came out with another business card and dialed. She raised an eyebrow. “The boss,” he said. After dialing the number, he used his thumb to raise the volume, then pushed the speaker button. He set the phone on the console. The sound of the ringing phone filled the inside of the car. A woman’s voice answered the phone.
“Greg Wells’s office.”
“This is Frank Corso. Can I talk to Greg please.”
“Oh…yes…,” she stammered. “Mr. Wells has been trying to reach you. I’m sure he’ll…oh yes.”
Two clicks and a buzz later.
“Frank…Jesus…where the hell have you been?”
“I fell into a rabbit hole,” Corso answered.
“I’ve been trying to call you for days.”
“I lost my phone.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He looked over at Andriatta. Her eyes were dark as asphalt. “No reason to be sorry,” he said. “It was just a phone.”
A moment of silence ensued.
“You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“About Chris Andriatta.”
Corso’s brow furrowed. “What about her? She’s…”
“Just this morning. Her building superintendent found her dead in her apartment. She’d been shot in the head. The cops say it was murder. Said she’d been dead about a week.”
Corso stopped breathing. He looked down at the phone on the console just in time to see her finger break the connection. Something hard and insistent was pushing at his ribs. He looked down. A big-bore revolver was pressed hard against his side, midway between his hip and his armpit.
“Drive the car,” she said. “Make a single move and you’re
dead.”
The phone began to ring. She picked it up, found the power button and switched it off. “I’m not going to tell you again,” she said, grinding the barrel into his side. “Next time I’ll put one through your kidneys.”
Corso did as he was told, wheeling the SUV out of the driveway and into the street. “Turn right,” she directed. Corso complied.
They left town heading south, covering territory Corso had never seen before. Stunted forests and hardscrabble farmland. Land that, in better times and places, people might have ignored altogether.
Corso kept an eye on the odometer, making certain he knew how far they’d traveled. In 11.6 miles, she jammed the gun harder into his side and told him to slow down. She slid the window open, watching the mailboxes glide by.
“Turn here,” she said.
Corso pointed the car down a snowy lane bordered on both sides by swaybacked wire fences. A pair of windblown ruts said somebody had broken the trail for them since the last serious snowfall. The big car negotiated ruts with little more than an occasional shake and rattle. Corso’s knuckles were taut and white.
The house was set back in the trees. A snowy-roofed rambler with a Jeep Cherokee parked in the snow outside the double garage. “Pull up beside that one,” she directed. Again Corso complied. “Hey, listen…” he began.
“Shut up,” she said.
A pair of floodlights mounted up near the apex of the garage roof suddenly snapped on, bathing the area in weak yellow light, dividing the area into dark and light with nothing between. The woman reached over and turned off the car.
“Turn off the headlights, take the keys out and give them to me,” she said in a voice he’d never heard before.
When Corso didn’t move, she lifted the barrel of the gun until it was level with his ear. “This can end right here,” she said.
Corso snapped off the lights and used both hand to remove the keys from the ignition. He dropped the key ring into her outstretched hand. A sense of movement at his shoulder brought his head to the left. Randy Shields stood in the driveway beside the car, holding what looked like some sort of assault rifle.
“Get out,” the woman said.
Corso hesitated. She ground the gun barrel into his ear and repeated the order. He did as he was told.
He stepped out into the snow, where Shields motioned with the rifle, then followed Corso toward the side door of the house. Corso heard the car door slam, heard the crunch of the woman’s boots on the frozen snow. A shaft of dim light formed a triangle at the base of the doorway. Corso hesitated. Shields butted him forward with the rifle. Corso staggered slightly as he lifted a foot into the doorway.
Inside the door, one either moved left into the kitchen or continued forward, down a steep flight of stairs. “Downstairs,” Shields ordered.
Corso moved carefully, using a crude handrail attached to the wall. Three steps down, a well-lighted workbench came into view. He kept moving but slowed enough to force Shields to prod him onward with the rifle. As their bodies came together, Corso made his move.
He reached behind, grabbed a handful of Shields’s plaid wool coat and pulled hard, bending at the waist, lifting his captor up and onto his back. And then the extra weight buckled his own knees, sending them both tumbling head over heels down the rickety wooden stairs.
Corso forced a final rotation and came out on top. He grabbed the rifle in both hands and tried to wrestle it from the other man’s grasp. The sound of footsteps pulled his attention from the wrestling match; he looked up just in time to receive a blow behind the ear…and then another. His vision swam. The third blow turned out the light.
He drifted in blue water, with the sound of the gulls in his ears and the rolling of the deck beneath his feet, sunning himself until he heard voices and looked for another boat. Nothing. He tried to raise his arm to shield his eyes from the bright sun but couldn’t.
Then he was awake. Rough cinder-block walls. Taped to a wooden chair. The voices were behind him. Anxious and full of doubt. “I told you this asshole was going to be a problem. I told all of them.”
Her voice was bitter and impatient. “You were right. Does that make you happy? Our whole goddamn lives are in jeopardy, but at least you can take pride in being right.”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
“Nothing’s ever your fault, is it? Not Bobby being dead. Not botching your end of the operation. Nothing. Not ever. It’s the government’s fault. It’s bad luck. It’s…” She stopped. “He’s awake,” she said after a moment.
“Well he ain’t gonna…”
“Shut up,” she said. “We’re not going to have one of those detective-story scenes where the chump finds out what’s going on right at the end.”
Corso heard a rustling, followed by two minutes of silence, then the sound of her shoes coming his way. He tried to throw himself over backward, but the chair wouldn’t budge. From the corner of his eye he saw her arm and the needle in her hand. He watched in horror as it penetrated his coat and shirt and finally his skin. He bellowed through the tape covering his mouth, shaking himself from side to side until the warmth overcame and the shade came down.
44
H e was ten years old when the soldier came to the house. He stood in the window and watched the khaki vision climb out of the dusty Ford sedan, his uniform pressed and starched, his chest a rainbow of ribbons, his sleeves awash in stripes and chevrons. His bearing was regal. To a ten-year-old who lived twelve miles from a town where the gas station, the post office and the grocery store were one and the same, he could have been just about anything wonderful…maybe a commodore or an admiral or maybe even a grand vizier. He carried his hat under his arm as he mounted the front steps and knocked on the sun-warped screen door.
It was late August. One of those years when the cicadas buzzed in the trees like Jew’s harps. As always that time of year, it was oppressively hot. Mama had rigged a swamp cooler in the parlor window and she kept the shades drawn in vain hope she could keep the languid afternoon air at bay. Despite her efforts, the contraption managed to accomplish little other than to blow wet straw all over the room and raise the dripping humidity a few notches higher.
At the back of the clearing stood an arched grape arbor, built way back when the grassy patch of ground had first been claimed from the ancient forest. According to his mother, the land had never been suitable for the growing of grapes, the soil too heavy with clay, the climate too hot and the air too humid. After a few years, she said, even the withered bunches of fruit that appeared and quickly died every spring, disappeared altogether, leaving only the thick leathery leaves to cover the arbor in a veined blanket of green, within whose cool and tranquil shade his father spent his summer days, sitting on the bench with his back to the house, mumbling under his breath at whatever soul-eating demons he’d brought back home from that frozen foxhole in Korea.
His mother got halfway to the door, saw the stranger on the porch and returned to the kitchen to fetch her teeth. Other than for meals, infrequent trips to town and seasonal visits to church, she kept her teeth in a glass on the windowsill over the kitchen sink. She returned, wiping her hands with a dish towel as she walked.
She pushed open the screen door, forcing the soldier to retreat to the top step. “Help you?” she asked.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said with a slight bow of the head. “I was given to understand this was the home of Mario Corso.” She kept wiping her hands as she looked him up and down.
“That’s right. You know my husband?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“You was in the war together?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She considered his answers. “He’s out back,” she said finally. “Come on along. I’ll show you.” She draped the dish towel over the porch rail, skirted him on the stairs and strode quickly toward the side of the house. “Could I? Uh, ma’am…I need to get something…”
He held up a finger and then move
d quickly to the Ford, where he reached under the front seat, pulled out a brown paper bag and hurried back to her side. The muscles on the side of her jaw quivered like they did when something was wrong and heads were about to roll. The boy held his breath. To his surprise, she merely turned and walked around the side of the house with the soldier in tow.
The second they were out of sight, the boy burst out the door and headed around the house in the opposite direction. He fended off limbs and bushes on his way around the back of the toolshed, where he peered around the corner directly into the near end of the arbor.
His mother was already on her way back to the house. The soldier stood in the shade at attention. Waiting for the boy’s father to take notice of his arrival. After several minutes he said, “Gunny, it’s me.”
The boy’s father stopped talking to himself and looked up. Half a minute passed. “That you, Aldo?” he asked.
“It’s me, Gunny,” he said. “How they hangin’?”
The boy watched in amazement as a smile crossed his father’s cracked and broken lips, as his father got to his feet and threw his arms around the man, as they stood in the shade for the longest time, arms wrapped around each other like grown-over vines, heads resting on each other’s shoulders for what seemed like hours, until they unwound and sat down side by side on the bench.
“Brought you something, Gunny,” the other man said. From the paper bag, he produced a bottle of whiskey and two paper cups. He poured them both a drink and offered a toast. “Semper Fidelis,” he said, raising his cup. His father repeated the phrase and drank the whiskey down. For good measure, they did it again.
