“This is an emergency.”
“It always is.”
“But this is a case of life and death.”
“There’s a phone booth on the corner. I can stop if you want me to.”
There was no time for the pay phone, and if I got in a fight with the driver I would lose precious minutes. The only thing I could do was to keep on moving.
“I’ll give you a hundred dollars, and you can make the call yourself.”
“Keep your money, brothah. We’ll be where you’re goin’ in a minute.”
My father would have applauded such an upstanding working-class individual. I wonder what he would have thought of me.
THE FRONT GATE’S BUZZER was going when I got there. I found out later that when the home-emergency button is pushed, the gate stays open for the cops to come in.
My adrenaline supply was plentiful that day. I made it up the stone stairway with no difficulty. The door was connected to the security system, too.
«€€nti
Two of the maids were unconscious on the floor. A big black man in a dark cranberry suit looked like he was dead at the foot of the bouquet table. And Willie Sanderson was leaning over a woman’s body, choking her, halfway up to the second floor.
Once again I was in motion. After three staggery bounds I leaped upon the killer’s back and rained down fists upon his head and shoulders.
At first it felt as if I’d jumped on the back of one of Rodin’s bronze masterpieces. Willie’s body didn’t even sag under the weight. But the accumulation of blows finally got to him. He stood up, throwing me off with the motion. I thought that he was going to come after me but instead he wobbled and then sat down, his back against the railing.
He was staring at me with disbelief on his face. I agreed with him. It made no sense that I could have beaten him even one time.
Sanderson closed his eyes as a thick trickle of blood snaked out from his left nostril.
I looked over at the body of Hannah Hull and made a sound that I didn’t know lived inside me.
An overpowering exhaustion spread out from my chest all the way to my fingers and toes. The yellow bird fluttered up and landed between Hannah’s lifeless form and her killer. My last conscious thought was that if Willie got up I was a dead man.
Ê€„
53
I don’t remember the journey to the dimly lit and gray interrogation room. I just opened my eyes and found myself sitting there with elbows on the table and pain coming awake at various points in my body. My left foot felt tight in its shoe, and I had pulled an upper-back muscle somewhere along the way.
Willie Sanderson came into my mind and I had the fear of a boxer who connects with his best punches but his opponent keeps on coming, round after round. But the fright didn’t last long. Sanderson was a reminder of the girl-child who had offered me a treasure. She was rich, but she had suffered, too. I was too late to save her. I caused less damage when I’d done piecework for killers and thieves.
I don’t know how long I sat there or if those thoughts came quickly or slow.
The door to the room opened, allowing Bethann Bonilla and Carson Kitteridge to enter. She was wearing a buff-colored dress suit and he was clad in a shabby green, single-button two-piece that he had owned for at least the last five years.
The homicide sergeant’s face was mostly impassive. She seemed distant and maybe just a touch confused. Carson’s attempt at a poker face, on the other hand, could not mask the fact that he expected to win the pot.
They pulled up chairs opposite me and settled in.
I wondered if I could walk.
“Lana Hull,” Kitteridge said. “Her first name is Veronica but I guess she prefers her middle name.”
“That supposed to mean something to me?”
“Her maiden name was Maxwell, but she lived with a guy named Paxton for a while. Her son was Thom Paxton.”
I didn’t care. My face, I was sure, revealed that fact.
“We know that she hired a detective named Norman Fell to find the men who she blamed for her son’s death.” Carson could not repress the smile.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
“Why do you say that, Mr. McGill?” Bonilla asked.
“Kid died seventeen years ago. How come all of a sudden outta nowhere she’s gonna start looking for those men?”
“She didn’t know until recently,” Carson said. “When Thom was young, just a boy, she was committed to a mental institution by her parents and the father of her child. They say she’s a schizophrenic. Her boyfriend, Lloyd, moved away and kept the boy. Later on, when Thom died, the father, through Lana’s mother, let her know that he’d succumbed to pneumonia. But when the father died, six months ago, he left a letter for Lana. In the letter he told her what he remembered about the boy’s death. There was a letter of explanation from the detective in charge of the investigation.
“It wasn’t much. But I guess it was enough for you to find them after Fell fed you the nicknames. How did you manage to get into sealed records, anyway?”
I wasn’t going to incriminate his disgraced partner but I’m sure he suspected.
“Fell gave the names to Lana Hull and she told Willie,” Carson continued. “They had become very close when she was at the nut-house after a relapse.
“Willie killed three of the men outright and had his cousin pay somebody to knife the one they call Toolie in prison. Toolie’s dead, by the bye, he had a heart attack. They’re calling it homicide anyway.”
“Mr. McGill?” Bonilla said tentatively. There was a hesitance in her tone, as if she hoped that her question would go unanswered.
“Yeah?”
“Why?”
“That’s a big question.”
“Why risk your life like that?”
I opened my mouth but that was as far as I could get.
“He might not say it,” Carson interjected, “but you better believe that old LT has an angle.”³€€ he
I could see that Kitteridge was smitten with the homicide sergeant. She, on the other hand, was not convinced by his cavalier indictment.
“Why am I here,” I asked, “instead of at home, in my bed?”
“You know,” Kitteridge said.
“No, I don’t.”
I gazed into Sergeant Bonilla’s eyes and she glanced away.
“Fell,” Kittridge said.
“I know a guy named Thurman.”
“Three other dead bodies, four if you include Willie.”
“Sanderson’s dead?” I asked.
“Brain hemorrhage. You finally got him, LT.”
I only had a high school diploma but I knew my numbers. There should have been five corpses even if the security guard under the flower arrangement had not died.
I looked up at Carson and his eyebrows rose an eighth of an inch.
“Am I under arrest?” I asked. I was feeling better.
“No. The DA is concentrating on Lana Hull, but he can’t get to her.”
“Why not?”
“She’s up in Albany, institutionalized again. Her father-in-law, too. You know the old man was knee-deep in gangsters since he was in his teens. We think he might have helped the wife but they got more lawyers than a teenager’s got pimples. If it ever comes to trial, you will be asked to testify.”
“I’ll keep my calendar open,” I said, grabbing on to the table and hoisting myself up.
I put some weight on my left foot and almost fell back into the chair.
“Should I get you a crutch?” Bethann asked.
“No need,” I said.
I took a step and stopped, took another step. The pain didn’t ease but I was coming to understand it. I limped to the door, grateful for the knob, and then lurched out into the brightly lit, light-green hallway. I had taken half a dozen steps when Carson called to me. Gratefully, I rested my hand against the wall and waited for him.