Dead Bang (6 page)

“You saw his passport,” I said.

“Big maple leaf,” said Karen.

“We don't know his name,” I said into the telephone. “He had a Canadian passport. He was in Nassau working as a comedian.”

“Why did you call, Mister …?”

“Hardin,” I said. “Art Hardin. Karen Smith is the young lady with the new friend. I'm calling because Manny emptied Karen's suitcase in Nassau and brought it into the country filled with cash.”

“How much?” she asked.

“About a bushel and a half in various denominations.”

“How much is a bushel?”

“Four pecks.”

“Mr. Hardin!”

“A henway.”

Wendy frowned and smacked me on the shoulder.

“What's a henway?” asked Special Agent Holman, having found a little gravel for her angelic voice.

“About two pounds,” I said. “I'm standing here looking at thirty-five or forty henways of U.S. currency in a suitcase Manny just brought in from the Bahamas.”

“Where's the man you call Manny?” asked Agent Holman.

“We had a little altercation when Karen tried to open her suitcase. Manny took a few lumps and fled.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“I last saw him at a pay phone at the corner of Division and Montebello. I followed him up there to smooth things over, but he said he'd called for help. I thought he had called the police. I didn't know the suitcase was full of money until I got back.”

“Is there another telephone line in the house?” she asked.

I glanced at Karen. “You have another telephone line in the house?”

“There's an extension in the bedroom,” said Karen.

“Same number as this?” asked Wendy.

“Well, yeah,” said Karen.

Special Agent Holman didn't wait for my answer. “I'd prefer to stay on the line but it looks like I have to hang up. A special agent from the Grand Rapids office will call you. Stay by the telephone.”

“The number is—” I started.

“Karen Smith on Montebello in Wyoming, Michigan?”

“Right,” I said. She said she had the number and hung up.

“We have to wait for a call from a local agent of the FBI,” I said and looked at Karen. She'd folded her arms so they'd look fashionable with her angry face. “Did you lock all the windows before you left on your trip?”

“All the ones that'll lock,” she said.

“We need to move some of your furniture to block the door.”

“I think that's just a little dramatic,” said Wendy.

“For this much cash, they'll kill you,” I said.

“Which
they?”
asked Karen.

“Damn near
any
they,” I said. “If I'm wrong, we'll move the furniture back.”

Karen had a sleeper sofa in the front room. It took all three of us to push it up the hall to block the front door. A side door opened off the back corner of the living room to the outside. Karen said she never used it.

The door wasn't locked, only stuck—the lock didn't work. I wedged it shut with a metal folding chair. “We need to let our eyes adjust to the dark,” I said. Wendy rolled her eyes, but I turned off the lights in the house. We retired to the kitchen to sip our tea and coffee while Karen played with the money in the light filtering in the window from the streetlamp outside.

“We could play Monopoly with real money,” Karen said as she unwrapped bills and sorted the denominations.

Around eight o'clock the telephone rang. I picked it up.

“Art?”

I recognized the voice—Special Agent Matty Svenson from the Grand Rapids office of the FBI. “Yes, ma'am,” I said.

Matty said, “Leave the money and get out of the house. Meet me in the Meijer's parking lot at Fifty-sixth and Division.”

“Matty—”

“In the parking lot. Do it now!” Matty hung up.

A dark minivan—could have been blue or green in the available light—roared up the drive and slid to a stop on the lawn. The driver stepped out dressed like a waiter but wearing an ammo bandoleer like a Hollywood-Mexican bandito. Manny sat in the passenger seat, lips taut and eyes narrow. The slider banged open and two bearded men in “Speedi Oil Change” coveralls bailed out carrying Kalashnikov rifles.

“Doesn't look like Manny plans to sue,” I said.

I
SHOOK HANDS WITH
my empty holster and really, really, really wished my Detonics wasn't in Kentwood in an evidence bag. Wendy had six rounds in her .380. She probably hadn't oiled it recently, and she never carried a spare magazine. I lurched to my feet and asked, “Karen, where do you keep the shotgun?”

“I don't like guns,” said Karen. “The police have to protect us.”

“We gotta get outta this cheese box,” I said.

“This
cheese box
is my home,” said Karen, pecking out 911 on the kitchen wall phone.

“And a lovely home it is,” said Wendy, as she snapped down the window shade. “Out the back, dear.” Wendy peeled the telephone out of Karen's hand and flopped it onto the counter.

I scooped up the money Karen had sorted into stacks and tossed it in the air. “Are you nuts?” asked Karen as she snatched at the bills fluttering down around her.

“I'm hoping they'd rather pick up the money than chase us.”

“Let's just wait for the police,” said Karen.

“Time to go,” said Wendy, taking Karen by the elbow.

I grabbed a double handful of bundled money from the suitcase and exited the kitchen just a step behind the ladies. Someone tried the front door. I pulled the rubber band off a bundle and threw the cash at the door. The bundle blossomed into a cloud that drizzled green up the short
hallway. Thuds buckled the front door. The doorjamb exploded, but the sofa bed only gave up an inch or two.

Wendy took two bundles and loosed them in the living room. I tossed two wrapped bundles toward the bedroom. Wendy snatched the folding chair loose from the side door, and I jerked the door open.

I met a tall, dark stranger with a full beard and a Kalashnikov rifle. He stepped in and swung up the muzzle. I pushed the barrel to my right and dropped to a squat. Bullets sprayed through the front walls of the house. Wendy clobbered the man in the door with the folding chair.

Stunned, the man went slack on the trigger. I moved my left hand onto the rifle stock, stood, and smashed the weapon upward at the same time. The butt of the weapon plowed into the man's jaw, and he crumpled into a pile. I kept the rifle.

Loud, anguished yelling came from the front of the house. Then silence, followed by a burst of rifle fire that atomized the kitchen window. I could hear china and glassware explode in the cupboards. Windows at the back of the house shattered.

The color drained from Karen's face and she said, “That son of a bitch! That was my mom's stuff!”

I snatched a peek out the door. A man with a full beard, one continuous eyebrow, and an assault rifle inched his way up the side of the house with his back to the siding. I pushed the stunned gunman clear of the opening with my foot and shouldered the door closed. Wendy wedged the chair under the door handle.

“Bedroom,” I said. I looked up the hall and saw a man's arm and shoulder in a long-sleeved white shirt wedged through the front door. I put my backside against the sofa and shoved with my legs. The door crackled. The man screamed, and I let up until he struggled free of the door. I pushed the door closed with the sofa and followed Karen and Wendy into the bedroom.

The carpet squished underfoot as Karen's waterbed emptied itself onto the floor. Her window, now reduced to a few dangling shards, looked out onto the backyard. I pushed up on the sash but it didn't move.

“Locked,” said Karen. She reached under the shade and released the lock. “The screen is painted shut.”

I threw up the sash and rammed out the screen with the butt of the rifle. The yard stretched back a hundred feet and opened into the yard behind without a fence. I took Karen's makeup mirror off the dresser, stuck it out the window, and found no one peeping around the corners.

“I'm going halfway down the yard so I can cover both sides of the house,” I said to Wendy. “I'll wave if it's clear.”

I handed Wendy the rifle and climbed out the window. Karen's house had been built on a slab without a basement, so it was only about four feet to the ground. Wendy handed out the rifle. I hustled backwards until I had a good angle on both sides of the house. The woody stubble of last year's weeds—lawn maintenance was blessedly low on Karen's priority list—provided some concealment as I took a prone position with the rifle. The sides of the house remained clear of gunmen. I beckoned with my hand and mouthed, “Ladies, if you please.”

Wendy slid out feet first with her pistol in her hand and ran to lie beside me. A staccato burst of rifle fire broke out from the front of the house. Karen did not come out the window. We waited. Nothing. Then a second burst of rifle fire.

“I have to go back in,” I said.

“I told her to come out first,” said Wendy. “She said she'd be right behind me.”

“I don't see her,” I said. I heard the first police siren in the distance.

“Maybe she decided to wait for the police.”

“I don't think she'll last that long,” I said.

“Oh, honey,” said Wendy. “I don't know.”

“In the yard behind us there's a boat on a trailer. I'll cover here until you get back there. You'll have to cover us when I get Karen out of the house.”

“I don't like this,” said Wendy.

I gave Wendy the rifle and took her pistol. “That's the safety,” I said. “Hose ‘em like a dry garden, doll. Whistle when you're ready.”

“I don't like this,” said Wendy.

“Maybe she'll come out while you're on your way to the boat,” I said.

Wendy climbed to her feet, and I heard fast footfalls race toward the back of the yard, but Karen didn't come to the window. I heard Wendy whistle like she was calling the boys in from the lake for lunch—two fingers in the mouth. Her dad taught her how. I pushed up and ran for the back of the house. At the window I stuck the .380 in my belt.

The front door had been ventilated like a cheese grater, and the leather sofa bed had been slaughtered for the second time. Someone had his shoulder to the door. A clatter of automatic rifle fire roared in the kitchen. I spied over the half wall and saw the muzzle of the blazing weapon stuck in through the window. The suitcase had been upset, spilling bundles of money over the table. On the floor lay Karen with her back to the wall in a fetal ball with her face buried in her hands.

I drew the .380, but the firing stopped and an arm in a white sleeve snaked in the window to grapple with the suitcase, causing bundles of
money to cascade from the table. Karen bounded off the floor, grabbed an iron skillet from the stove, and bludgeoned the arm.

“You fucking asshole!” Karen yelled. “You shot up my house!”

The arm snapped back out of the window like an anteater's tongue with a termite in tow. “We want the money!” yelled Manny, with a growl in his voice.

Karen said, “Come up to the window, and I'll give you the money.” She lobbed out several bundles.

The person battering the door quit. I shoved the sofa and took back the four or five inches they'd gained.

“I am out here,” said Manny.

Karen grabbed the teakettle and poured it out the window.

Manny screamed, and Karen launched out of the kitchen at a dead run for the back of the house. I didn't interfere. In the bedroom I said, “Go! Run for the boat in the yard behind yours. Wendy's there.”

Karen slid out. The front door gave it up. I locked the bedroom door and climbed out the window. I could hear panicked voices arguing. Over the din, Manny yelled crisp, individual words that I did not understand.

Karen ran, eating ground with long strides and pumping sharp elbows. I scrambled backwards, watching the bedroom window over the sights of the .380. Police sirens filled the air from all directions.

Wendy yelled, “They're coming down the side of the house!”

I turned and ran until I found Karen and Wendy crouched and peeping around the boat. Wendy held the rifle out to me.

“Too heavy,” she said. We traded weapons.

The porch light at the side of the house with the boat blinked on. A man with bulldog jowls and more belly than T-shirt stepped out of the side door.

“What the hell is going on out here?” he asked, uncorking the charred stump of a fat cigar from the corner of his mouth. A burst of AKR fire hosed an arc into the side of the house. The porch light exploded and tinkled down the asbestos siding. Ducking back into the door, he said, “I'm calling the police!” From inside the house, he added, “Jesus Christ, my fish tank!”

We ran out along the dirt-rut drive and crossed the street.

Six or seven houses closer to Division Avenue, we took cover behind a large blue spruce tree on the lawn of a Dutch Colonial. Icicle Christmas lights dangled, belatedly, from the eaves. A dog in the house raised a racket, but no lights came on.

“Karen?” I said, and realized that I didn't have the air to finish the
question—time to cut down on the cigars and lay off the donuts. I took off my suit jacket.

“What on earth?” gasped Wendy, leaning her shoulder against me with her pistol dangling in her hand.

“Were you doing?” I finished, loosening the sling on the rifle.

“I had to go back to the kitchen,” Karen said, not winded.

“For what?” I asked.

“I had to get my shoes,” said Karen.

“They could have killed you,” I said. I slung the rifle over my right shoulder, muzzle down, magazine to the rear, and with the butt just under my armpit.

“They could have killed Art,” said Wendy, shaking a finger.