Marcus is amazingly quiet for a man his size. Laurie and I follow his lead and are quiet as well, though I’m afraid that whoever is in the house can hear my heart pounding. When I set out to become a lawyer, I never imagined myself in a situation like this, and suffice it to say I’m not going to run into any of my law school buddies in this house.
“Should we wait out here?” I whisper to Laurie.
“No,” she says, in a tone that indicates the issue is not really debatable.
So we follow Marcus through the now open door. I don’t close it behind me; there is not enough money in the world to make me do anything that would impede my escape route out of here.
There is a staircase directly in front of us, and a source of very dim light coming from near the top of it. On the entry floor seems to be a hallway with a few closed apartment doors, though there is no light coming from underneath them.
Marcus still seems to know where he is going, and that is up the stairs. Laurie and I start to follow him, though it’s too narrow for us to walk side by side. I graciously allow her to go first.
Suddenly there is a noise from above, and the sound of an angry, unfamiliar voice. I can’t make out the words, but from the tone, I don’t think it’s “Make my home your home.”
I’m straining unsuccessfully to see what’s happening, but I can’t do it. I sense some quick motion above us, and I hear the word “Hey!” Then there is a thumping sound, a shriek of pain, and something seems to come out of the darkness, heading down toward us.
Actually, it is flying above us, so high that we don’t even have to duck to get out of the way. It’s very large and it’s making a disgusting noise, so I think it’s a body. I also feel a slight spray of liquid, and I don’t even want to guess what that might be.
It lands with a sickening thud on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, and doesn’t move.
“What the hell-”
My question is cut off by what seems like another human missile fired from the top of the stairs. It’s pretty much the same as the first, but mercifully without the spray. It doesn’t go quite as far, and seems to land on the first step. Marcus must be getting tired. Maybe he threw some bodies a few days ago, and he’s pitching on only three days’ rest.
“Marcus, are you all right?” It’s Laurie’s voice, probably confirming that Marcus was not one of the flying bodies.
“Yuh,” Marcus says, always at his most eloquent in a crisis.
“I’ll stay down here and watch them. You want Andy to come with you?”
“Yuh.”
Just because Marcus said “Yuh,” it doesn’t mean I have to obey. I take orders from no one; I dance to my own drummer. I have never been accused of being a “Yuh-man.”
On the other hand, if I stay down here and send Laurie up, I’ll be in the dark, watching over two enormous goons who are going to be rather pissed if and when they wake up. If I go up the stairs, at least I’m under Marcus’s rather large protective umbrella.
While I’m deciding, Laurie says, “Andy, are you going up?”
“Yuh,” I say, always at my most eloquent in a crisis.
I trudge up the steps, feeling my way along the railing in the dark.
When I’m about three quarters of the way there, I hear a click and turn around. Laurie has snapped on a small flashlight, the kind that might go on a key ring. She is shining it on the two motionless masses at the bottom of the stairs, and holding a gun on them in case they move.
I have no idea whether they are alive or dead, and I’m not going to spend much time worrying about it.
As I near the top of the steps, I hear a crashing noise, and I think that Marcus must have broken down a door. Sure enough, down the hall there is an apartment with no door, and light emanating from inside. I hear scuffling noises and grunts coming from that direction, and then silence.
“Marcus?” Before I walk through that door, I want to know that Marcus prevailed. If he didn’t, there’s no way I could.
“Yuh.”
I take a deep breath, walk to the open door and enter the apartment. It is completely unlike what I expected. It’s a nicely decorated, very comfortable living room, complete with trinkets on the tables and pictures on the walls. The furniture is comfortable and welcoming; this could have been the living room in Leave It to Beaver . Add some stockings, a tree, and seventy-two chairs, and Edna could invite her extended family here for the holidays.
There is a large sofa, complete with throw pillows, and Marcus sits at one end of it. He looks at ease and comfortable; the only thing missing is slippers and a pipe.
Double J is nowhere to be found, although the gasping noises I hear make me believe that Marcus has hidden him somewhere. I scan the room, and sure enough, a head that I assume belongs to Double J sticks out from under the couch, on the side where Marcus is sitting. I further assume the rest of him is under the couch, though I could be wrong.
Double J’s face shows his obvious panic over the fact that he is not able to get any air into his lungs, so I say, “Marcus, get up. He’s gonna die.”
Marcus thinks about it for a moment, as if weighing the pros and cons, and then gets up. He turns and lifts the couch off its captive, as if it were a toy. He then picks Double J off the floor by his collar, and puts him on the couch, in the same place that Marcus was sitting.
I wait a few minutes while Double J keeps gasping and writhing. Feeling more secure, I call down to Laurie to make sure she’s okay, and she assures me she’s fine.
Finally, Double J is able to speak, and he croaks, “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m a lawyer,” I say, and then I point to Marcus, who is sitting on what looks like a dining room table. “He’s an intern in my office. Helps out with collating, copying, that sort of thing.”
He just looks at me, not knowing what the hell I’m talking about, so I continue. “I want to talk to you about the fire in Paterson, six years ago.”
“What about it?”
“I’m trying to find the guilty party, and I have reason to believe you have information that could be helpful to me.”
He looks incredulous. “That’s it?”
I nod. “That’s it.”
“Are you shitting me? That’s what this is about?”
“Yes.”
“So why did you come in like the goddamn Marines?” he asks, pointing at Marcus as well. “And why the hell did you have to bring the Incredible Hulk?”
“Your associates weren’t welcoming enough. So am I to assume you’re willing to talk to me about the fire?”
“Shit, I’ll talk to anybody about the damn fire. Three of my people died in that thing, man. I was out, or I would have been charcoal-broiled myself. You think I don’t want to find the son of a bitch that did it?”
“So help me find the guilty party.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” he says, glancing over at Marcus to make sure he’s not offended by the name-calling. He doesn’t seem to be. “If I knew anything, I’d have caught the prick myself. And he’d have been dead ten minutes later.”
“Do you know Noah Galloway?”
He laughs derisively. “You mean the guy they just arrested? Yeah, I knew him. He was a customer, the little shit.”
“Could he have done it?”
He shakes his head. “No chance.”
“Why not?”
“First of all, he wouldn’t have had the balls, and if he did have the balls, he was always wasted. No way he could have pulled it off.”
“It was a can of fluid and a match,” I say. “He couldn’t have done that?”
He looks at me like I’m an idiot, then points at Marcus. “You needed him to get in here, and this ain’t where I work, you know? Where I work, nobody gets in. I got more to protect.”
“Somebody got in,” I point out.
“Maybe.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I think it was somebody that was already inside; that’s the only way,” he says.