And then we veered sharp to the right, and I could hear rocks spitting up against the underside of the vehicle, tickling the van’s belly, and we came to a stop.
An alley, then. We’d stopped in an alley, probably in a residential area.
I heard the front van doors open, slam shut. No pretense at stealth. Had my presence been detected? I held the scissors ready, bayonetlike.
“What’s going on up there?” I heard the authoritative voice say.
“Don’t know,” Hulk said. “Hell. Something.”
“Something is right. I thought Frank said the college kids were gone on weekends.”
“He did. He did say that.”
“Well, they sure as hell aren’t gone this weekend.”
Silence.
Somebody put his hand on the handle that would open the rear van doors. From the positioning of the voices, I figured it was Hulk. I was ready. The scissors and I, we were ready.
He pushed down the handle with a click and began to pull open the doors.
“Wait,” the authoritative voice said. “Hold it; somebody’s coming.”
I placed my foot against the right rear door along the bottom and put my hand inside the square opening. When Hulk pushed the doors shut, I kept the one door from latching by stopping it with my foot and bracing with my hand.
“How’s it going, man?” A new voice. A young voice. And, I thought, a drunken voice. Or maybe stoned. You don’t call two men “man” when your head is totally right.
“Fine,” they said together.
“Going to do some gardening, man?”
“Yeah,” they said.
“Well, uh… don’t cut the grass too short, you know what I mean?” Laughter. His, not theirs. Silly laughter at that.
“Say,” Authoritative Voice said, “what’s going on anyway?”
“Party, man. Bash. Midsummer bash. Not many of us stuck around here for summer school, but whoever is around is upstairs, man. Hey, you want some beer or something?”
“No thanks,” they said.
“Well, listen, if people start roamin’ around outside while you’re doing your work, man, don’t mind ’em. Things aren’t too hairy yet, but they’re gettin’ there. Party just got started last night. By tonight it really oughta be goin’ good. Well, I gotta split.”
“Good-bye,” they said.
I heard his footsteps paddle away. A door yawned open, and I heard the sound of rock music blare out. Then it slammed and cut the music off.
“Damn,” Hulk said.
“Goddamn,” the other one said.
“What we going to do?”
“Scratch it.”
“But….”
“No way we’re going to get it done with all those kids wandering around, drunk on their butts, stoned out of their skulls. We were counting on it being the way Frank laid it out.”
“Those goddamn college kids aren’t supposed to be here on the weekend.”
“Yeah. But they are. Let’s go.”
I heard their footsteps stirring up gravel and then the twin slams of the front van doors. The motor started up and, as they got moving again, I rolled out of the back of the van.
I hit hard, rolling off the alleyway into some bushes to my left. They hadn’t seen or heard me.
They coasted away in the van, turning right at the mouth of the alley, and were gone.
I got to my feet, brushed myself off, and looked around.
Across the alley from where I stood was a two-story yellow clapboard house. It was set up a slight incline to a basement garage. Upstairs was where the party was going on. In the second-story windows I could see the young bodies moving around; and now the sound of rock music, inaudible in the van except when that door had opened, was easy to hear. And strangely out of place in this sleepy residential area full of sedate old two-story houses like this one.
Which was, by the way, a house I recognized.
It was where the Cooper sisters lived.
21
As quietly as possible, I brushed aside the questions of the Cooper sisters, and got their permission to use the phone, and dialed the sheriff’s office. Lou Brown answered.
“How’s it going, Mal? Can I help?”
“It’s gone past that point, Lou. I’m ready to bring Brennan in.”
“You been moving fast, then. I thought you were going to keep me up on what you were doing.”
“Well, I hadn’t done a damn thing till this afternoon, and now it’s broken loose all at once. Is Brennan around?”
“He’s sacked out upstairs. He was out till all hours on an accident call last night.”
“Bother him.”
“That important, huh?”
“That important.”
“Okay.”
I heard the click of the extension button being punched in, and it took ten rings to get Brennan to answer. Good thing he wasn’t a fireman.
“What is it?” he said, very groggy.
“It’s Mallory. Wake up.”
“Oh, Jesus. I was out late, Mallory, have a heart. Trying to catch some sleep, damn it; can’t you talk to Lou or somebody about whatever it is-”
“Brennan, wake up. I got your break-ins solved for you.”
“You what?”
“Know a place called Tony’s Used Auto Parts?”
He sighed. “Down in South End, sure.”
“Well, the garage part of Tony’s is a warehouse for the hot goods these guys rip off. It’s where they keep the stuff till they can get it fenced.”
“Mallory, I don’t know how to tell you this, but we’ve heard the same rumors about Tony’s that you have, and on my say-so the cops used two John Does on that place in the last five weeks, and they never found a damn thing. We’ve pushed our luck on that one about as far as we can. So no matter what you heard about Tony’s, forget it.”
“I didn’t hear anything about Tony’s, Brennan… I saw it.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. I busted in there this afternoon and had a look around.”
“Goddamnit, Mallory! You can’t-”
“Can’t, hell. I did. Now do you want to tell me how you’re going to toss me in the can and so on, or do you want to hear what I found out?”
Another sigh. “Go on.”
“I only saw one of them. A big guy, with a blond crew cut and a broken nose. He’s the one that clobbered me at Mrs. Jonsen’s when I interrupted him loading up that green van. His name is P. J., I think, and I believe he lives above the auto parts shop with some woman, who’s probably in on it, too. The others I didn’t see, but I heard ’em talking. The main guy wasn’t around, but they referred to him as Frank.”
“You’re out of your mind, Mallory. Breaking in there, eavesdropping, damn-”
“Shut up and listen. They’ve got all the stuff they stole from Mrs. Jonsen’s, everything from her color television to her antiques, still stored away in that garage. But from what they were saying, I gather they’re going to skip town tonight, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re loading that stuff into that green van I told you about right this minute, so move it, will you?”
“Well… it’s within the city limits, so I’ll have to call the chief of police and have him get some men down there straight away. If they use another warrant on that place and don’t find anything, the chief’ll have my ass and I’ll have yours.”
“Just do it.”
“Where are you now?”
I gave him the number.
“Well, sit tight there, Mallory. I’ll get back to you in a minute.”
I hung up.
And as I did, Miss Viola Cooper handed me a crystal glass filled with that delicious homemade dandelion wine, and Miss Gladys Cooper said, “Now come into the living room and tell us what this is all about.”
I followed them into the cluttered living room, sat on the sofa, and sipped my wine. They had good reason to wonder what I was doing there; not only had I come around on a Saturday afternoon, rather than my traditional Thursday evening with their hot suppers, but I was also a scraped-up, dirty, disheveled sight from my tumble out of the van in their alley, and I still had the pair of scissors clutched in my hand, I laid them on a doily-strewn end table by the sofa and told the sisters that I had just been witness to the kids who lived upstairs preventing the robbery of the Cooper home by two bogus gardeners.