Authors: G.M. Ford
“Uh . . . uh . . .” a deep voice stammered. “No . . . uh . . . I’m sorry. I’ll be . . . sorry.” The voice seemed to fade into the distance. The shoes disappeared. The door closed. Paul could hear raised voices coming from the hall. The door opened again. Four black shoes this time. “I told you,” a new voice admonished. “We’ve got to . . .” it went on. “Ooooh . . .” The voice sounded as if its owner had swallowed something that refused to go down. “Sorry . . . uh . . . we’ll be . . .” The door closed.
“Better hurry out of here now,” Shirley said. To anyone outside the room, Shirley’s voice must have sounded as it were some industrial noise. Not to Paul, who, once again, did as bidden, crawling out from beneath the bed and pushing himself to his feet among the collection of dust bunnies he’d swept out from under the bed with his body.
Shirley sat in her chair facing the door, her back turned to Paul. She’d dropped her bathrobe and was sitting there naked to the waist. From the rear, her skin was translucent and hung in folds and pleats from her ruined body, her twisted skeleton clearly visible through the skin, like some ancient mummy. From the front . . . from the front, Paul could only imagine.
She twisted her head and gave Paul what, in Shirley, passed for a smile.
“You shoulda seen their faces,” she squawked.
“You didn’t have to . . .” Paul began.
She jerked a thumb at the window. “Not all of ’em are gonna be that squeamish,” she said. “You better go out there. That’s as good as it’s gonna get.” She winked at him. “Good luck.”
Paul pushed open the window and looked down. The back porch roof was about ten feet below. He squeezed through the opening, one foot and then the other. Then turned around and held the windowsill for a moment before casting his fate to the winds and letting go.
Must have been pure adrenaline kept him glued to that spot on the roof, because just about the time he allowed himself a deep breath and figured he didn’t hear anybody in hot pursuit, he began to slide off. Slowly at first, hands scratching and stretching for a hold, then gaining momentum as he surfed across the slate, felt his feet poke into thin air, and then, with a shout stillborn in his throat, he entered free fall for maybe a second and a half before crashing down onto the back stairs, driving the air from his lungs and sending a hot iron of pain shooting up his left leg. And then bang . . . he somersaulted backward into nothingness . . . until the beach and the palms and the sand and the two guys appeared in his head and he could see that it wasn’t a Frisbee being tossed back and forth as he’d imagined but a radio-controlled airplane swooping and diving overhead and . . . or was the plane flying on its own and the remote control box was . . . no . . . couldn’t be . . . that was crazy.
He lay with his cheek nestled up to the cold concrete of the walk. He croaked and wheezed for breath, dry-heaved a couple times, and then lay in a heap, rocking slightly, hiccuping air . . . until the heaves returned, and he pushed himself to his knees and yakked up a small pool of yellow bile.
His head felt as if somebody’d driven a steel rod in one ear and out the other. He groaned, lowered his face close enough for the odor of his own discharge to straighten him right back up. One foot beneath him and then the other. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and then wished he hadn’t, as the act allowed his brain sufficient time to process the pain screaming up from his ankle. He hopped on one foot and looked around. The backyard suddenly seemed enormous, the fence miles away. He put the toe of his injured foot on the ground for balance. Pain lanced through his lower leg. He bent at the waist and massaged his ankle. He groaned and then dropped to one knee. That’s when he heard the shouts.
“There he is,” someone yelled.
When he looked up, a head and a pair of dark-clad shoulders were sticking out of Shirley’s window, pointing at him and yelling for backup.
Paul struggled to his feet and limped across the yard toward the back fence, an unadorned cedar-planked affair separating Harmony House from the big green-and-white mansion on Howser Street, a house and yard with which Paul was quite familiar as the owners were longtime customers of Suzuki Landscaping. Paul pushed off his good ankle and managed to propel the top half of his body up onto the top of the fence, which rocked and swayed from the addition of his weight and the power of his momentum. Using his heavily muscled arms, he hoisted himself up and over, landing on one foot in the soft bark of the cut flower garden that Paul had, last summer, helped to build. A deep growl scattered his thoughts like litter.
Then he remembered. The big white German shepherd with the bad attitude. Used to follow him wherever he went in the yard. What was its name? Something about . . . and then it came to him.
“Blanco,” he said, holding out his hand. The dog put his teeth away, ran his pink nose over Paul’s knuckles, and wagged his tail. Paul patted him on the head a couple of times and then limped across the yard as quickly as he was able.
He made it to the rear gate and was lifting the latch when he heard somebody scrambling over the fence behind him. Unfortunately for his pursuer, so did the dog. The guy probably would have been all right if he’d been quicker with his feet or better yet hadn’t tried to kick the dog in the head at all. As it was, Blanco sidestepped the flying shoe and bit the guy in the crotch. A high-pitched yowl rose above the rush of wind in the trees. As Blanco lowered his hindquarters and began to shake his head from side to side, the pitch of the scream rose to operatic heights.
Paul closed the gate and limped out toward Howser Street. He could still hear aria al castrado wafting through the trees as he hooked a quick left and gimped it south beneath the canopy of century-old oaks, festooned now with new-grown leaves, glowing ad-glow green in the sun and quivering like virgins in the breeze. He crossed the street, moving diagonally toward the big gray stone house halfway down the block, another of Ken’s customers, whose name he could not recall. He’d rounded the corner of their porch when he heard the squeal of tires and the roar of an engine. He ducked between a pair of massive rhododendrons whose tightly folded purple blossoms threatened to explode their spring encasements. He stood motionless as one of the black Lincoln Town Cars came roaring by, squealing all the way to the corner and turning left, running back toward Arbor Street in a cloud of burning rubber. Paul moved along the side of the house, crossed the yard, and stepped through the gate. He found himself in a wide unpaved alley running the length of the block. Here on the true crest of the hill, the backyards of the mansions did not abut one another.
Instead, the practical needs of the households were serviced by a communal alley running along the rear of the dwellings, providing surreptitious trash collection, ease of delivery, and ample space for garages, in many cases spacious garages which had once, a century ago, housed the last remains of the horse-and-buggy era, a mews, as it were, where the care of both animals and of leather coexisted in ironic harmony in those halcyon years before the advent of the internal combustion engine. Paul leaned back against the thick ivy and caught his breath. His head throbbed to the rhythm of his heart. A dull roar filled his ears, and for the first time since he’d regained consciousness in the hospital . . . for the very first time . . . he wished he could go back to who he was before . . . the shuffling specter they called Paul Hardy, the unresponsive guy so completely lost in his own little world of half thoughts and repeated phrases as to render himself virtually invisible, a state that at the moment held great appeal. His ankle was on fire as he hustled north along the alley, working his way up the hill toward the bright lights of Landon Street, a place where he thought he might be able to lose himself in the crowd. He got about a third of the way down the alley when the sound of an engine snapped his head around in time to see the silver Town Car slide into view, its tires churning up a maelstrom of dust, closing the distance in a big hurry.
The speed at which the car was approaching greatly limited Paul’s options. He dodged to the right, into a shallow indentation in the brick retaining wall, throwing his back hard against a pair of green Dumpsters, as the car slid to a halt about a foot in front of his face. From within the massive cloud of dust, a running figure appeared. The apparition circled the front of the car, arms extended in the combat position, gun pointed at Paul’s face as he stiff-legged his way over to where Paul stood.
The barrel of the gun looked as big as a tunnel. “Don’t move!” the guy yelled over and over. “Don’t move!” He held the gun an inch from Paul’s face. “Turn around!” he shouted. When Paul didn’t move, the agent reached out with his left hand and tried to move him manually. Paul stood his ground. The guy mashed the gun barrel into Paul’s forehead. He repeated his command to turn around. Again Paul ignored him.
And then Paul Hardy seemed to relax, almost to resign himself to his fate. He smiled, and then he reached up and slapped the weapon aside as it if were a fly, sending the automatic flying end over end through the air, banging off the fender before finally falling to the ground, where it discharged on impact.
That’s when everything seemed to go slow motion. The agent froze. The grip on Paul’s shoulder relaxed. He cast a quizzical look Paul’s way and then used the hand he’d had on Paul to search the back of his thigh. That the hand came back red seemed to puzzle the guy no end. He dropped to one knee and allowed a low moan to escape his throat. A sticky-looking pool of blood was forming on the ground. The agent’s eyes bulged at the sight of his own fluids seeping into the ground among the patchwork of oil stains. His look of astonishment changed to something more akin to fear. Then his G-man training took over. He pivoted on his knee and made an all-out dive for the gun. Paul jumped completely over the straining body. He clamped a boot onto the stretching arm and kept adding pressure until the G-man stopped straining to reach his weapon and began to yell, “Okay . . . okay!” over and over, at which point Paul bent and picked up the automatic and then released the guy’s arm from beneath his boot.
The black steel felt hot in his hands. The feel told him he’d had one of these in his hands before. He looked down. On the ground, the G-man had pulled off his belt and was applying a tourniquet to his upper thigh. Paul reached to help but the guy cringed out of reach.
“Your radio thing work?” Paul asked, pointing to his own ear. The guy didn’t answer, just kept twisting the belt tighter and tighter without ever taking his eyes from Paul. “Better call yourself some help,” Paul said.
The guy started to reach for his collar and then hesitated, as if Paul’s suggestion might be some kind of trick, a ruse designed to get him to do something stupid as an excuse to injure him. His hand wavered in midair.
Paul nodded down at the guy’s leg. “That’s pretty ugly,” he said.
“You better call for some help.”
The guy’s eyes were locked on Paul’s as his hand crept to his call button.
“Agent involved shooting,” he said. “This is fourteen seventythree. Agent down, requiring emergency personnel.” He kept his gaze glued on Paul. “I’m . . .”
“You’re in the alley between Howser and Bradley. Three hundred block,” Paul quickly added.
The G-man frowned and cleared his throat, then repeated the location into his microphone. Somebody on the other end must have asked for a clarification because he sighed and started over with the “fourteen seventy-three . . . agent down” stuff and went through the whole thing again, talking slow and loud and speaking clearly, like there was an idiot on the other end of the line. By the time he finished talking and looked up again, Paul was gone.
The desk sergeant looked like he hadn’t moved in a month . . . like under the uniform, he might be covered with bark. The facial expression said he’d seen it all; the boatload of flab hanging over his belt said he’d managed to inhale a few meals while observing life’s rich pageant. He rocked himself off the stool, scowled, and then leaned his badge out over the counter. “Lemme see some ID,” he said to the little man in the gray suit.
The little guy used an exaggerated sweep of the arm to pull a black leather case from the inside pocket of his impeccably tailored suit jacket. Using only one hand, he flopped the case open and was about to similarly snap it closed when the big cop reached down and plucked it from his fingers.
He brought the ID up in front of his red face and held it there for a long minute before lowering it to the desk. The little man reached for his case, but the cop pulled it back out of reach. “And you want me to what?” he asked.
Gray suit told him again . . . slower this time, like he was talking to a child. The cop winced at the guy’s tone of voice. “I’m gonna have to bounce it by the watch commander,” he said. The little man opened his mouth to speak but the cop waved him off. The matter wasn’t open to discussion, his big hand said. He extracted a handheld radio from among the menagerie of cop equipment hanging from his Sam Browne belt. He brought the black box to his mouth and pushed the button with his thumb.
“You there?”
“Ramey,” squawked the static voice.
“I need you at the desk,” the big cop said.
Ramey didn’t bother to answer. The radio clicked silent. The cop returned it to his belt. “How many?” he asked. The little man gritted his perfect teeth and told him for the third time. “Two.”
“Where are they now?” the cop asked.
The little guy seemed relieved. At last they were covering new ground. “Outside in the car,” he answered, tilting his head toward the street.
A nearly inaudible electronic buzz was followed by the sharp snap of a lock. From a door built into the wall behind the booking desk, a uniformed officer stepped out into the lobby. A sergeant, Hispanic, maybe five ten, nearly as wide as he was tall. Every bit as kinetic as the desk officer was languid. A few more cop decorations and he risked being mistaken for a rear admiral.