The Baby Blue Rip-Off (16 page)

I thought for a moment. “I believe a guy named Chet Richards runs it.” That was the name Debbie had told me, anyway.

“Are you kidding?”

“Of course not.”

“Hell, Mallory, you know who Richards is?”

“No. Who is he?”

“Well, for openers, that pale little girl in the backseat over there is Felicia Richards. Chet’s her brother.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not, Mallory. We’ve had run-ins with Richards and his sister before. I tried to nail him for pushing dope last year, and word is that nursery of his is an investment made from several years of pushing. And he was pimping, too. Used to sit down at the Old Mill Bar and pimp for guess who?”

“Who?”

“Felicia. His sister.”

“Nice, I like a family business.’

“Well, Mallory, looks like it’s all fitting together. Looks like if I can collar these people, we’ll have a case against them.”

“Looks that way.”

“Mallory, I want to tell you something.”

“Go ahead, Brennan.”

“I want to tell you thanks. Thanks for—well, damn it—thanks for not paying any attention to me when I told you to stay out of this thing. You’ve done a lot.”

“Not really. Most of it came from these people knowing me and worrying that maybe I’d recognized them, or maybe start poking my nose around. They blew their cool, probably because they hadn’t planned on anything like murder entering in.”

“Just the same. Thanks.” He put his hand out.

“Why shouldn’t I shake hands with my best friend’s father?” I said. And did.

He turned and crossed the still busy street and walked over to the cop in the blue-and-white and gave him several minutes of instructions. Then he got in his own unit, turned his siren on, and cleared a space in the line of traffic; once in, he switched off the siren and headed out of town, south: out toward the antique shop run by Frank and Sarah Petersen.

I wished I was going with him, in a way.

And in another way, I was glad I was out of it. Glad it was over for me. My gut tightened when I thought about Pat Nelson and the mentality that let him callously rip people off, rob them of their property, from their prized possessions, like antique Christmas plates, to that most prized possession of all: life.

And Debbie? It would be a while before I could even think about her at all, even in a negative way. She had always been a scarred area on my psyche, but nothing severe—more like a
shallow pit on your skin where you once popped a pimple when you were thirteen. But this time, her wound had cut deep, and when scar tissue finally covered the area over, it would leave an ugly place.

I got in my van, anxious to get home, to crawl back into the wonderful solitary confinement of my ancient silver trailer, to drink a six-pack or two of Pabst and fall into oblivious, drunken sleep that would, I hoped, be dreamless. But the traffic was thick and snail-paced, and I had to head up West Hill to avoid it, through residential districts; then I could cut down Second Street and on up East Hill and home. The West Hill detour took me past Mrs. Fox’s place, and I slowed as I drove by, glancing at her stately but now declining two-story gray nineteenth-century home, wondering how the nice old gal was doing. Parked on her slanted, well-tended lawn, backed up to the side entrance of the house, was a van.

A green van with the words
GARDENING SERVICE
on the side.

The house next door was smaller than Mrs. Fox’s, but of the same gothic, dignified type, and seemed in less of a state of decline. My insistent knocking was answered by a man of perhaps sixty-five, wearing an obviously expensive ash gray suit that indicated he was still active in business; he was thin without looking frail, with hair the same color as his suit and a long face whose deep lines were presently deepened further in irritation. He hadn’t even finished asking who the hell I was when I pushed my way in and closed the door behind me.

“What do you think you’re doing,” he sputtered, frightened now, “barging into a person’s house—get out of here before I call the police!”

“That’s just what I want you to do,” I said.

I gave him a second to say, “What...?” and calm down a bit.

Then I excused myself for barging in and explained about the robbery next door. I was just finishing up as a handsome, silver-haired woman in a beige dress appeared at the mouth of the entryway; she was a few years older than her husband. “What’s the fuss, Henry? Who is this young man?”

“He says there’s a robbery going on next door, Genevieve.”

“Good heavens! Is it that green van pulled up to the house?”

I nodded, getting impatient, wishing these people would get a move on.

“I thought that was suspicious,” she said. “She always has her son do the gardening for her. She can’t afford having it done. Are these the same people who killed that poor Mrs. Jonsen?”

I nodded again and said, “And no doubt they’re holding Mrs. Fox captive right now.”

The man said, “I’ll phone the police at once,” and rushed off.

Finally!

His wife was shaking her head back and forth, saying, “I just don’t understand people anymore, I really don’t.”

“Ma’am,” I said, “do you have a back door?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Could I use it?”

“Yes, of course. I’ll show you the way.”

But first I had to step back onto their front porch for a moment to retrieve something: a tire iron I’d gotten from my van, the best short-notice weapon I could come up with. I didn’t intend to lay my ribs on the line again without some protection. I’d left it out of sight on the porch before knocking, as I hadn’t wanted to alarm these people any more than necessary. Now that they understood the situation, my being armed wouldn’t shock them, even if my weapon was somewhat unorthodox.

So I slipped out the back and was glad to be able to avoid coming up on the van from the street side; this way, cutting through the neighbors’ yard and up the hill on the passenger’s side of the vehicle, my approach was less obvious, more unexpected. I moved quietly but not slowly—in a crouch, like a humorless Groucho Marx, holding onto the tire iron with two hands, as if I were expecting somebody to try and take it away. There was no sound coming from the van: no voices, no shuffle of feet, no scrape of objects being moved. At first I thought they were just being extra-cautious in their loading, but even when
I got right up next to the van, there was nothing but silence within. Either the van was already full and the two guys were inside the house having a final look around; or the van was empty and the loading hadn’t begun yet. The latter made more sense to me, but that doesn’t mean I eased my grip on the tire iron, though it did give me the courage to go squeezing through the space between van and house.

Nobody there.

Nothing in the van.

Meaning they hadn’t started loading yet; they weren’t far enough along with the heist for that. Which made sense. After all, they were short-handed; only two of them had gone along. That one guy, the whining one, had decided to stay behind. Damn! I should’ve guessed when the guys in the van struck out at the Coopers’ place that they’d go on ahead and try Mrs. Fox’s—the groundwork had been laid, they’d said; why waste it? I would’ve kicked myself in the butt if I’d had the time and energy to spare.

I moved around to the front of the van, opened the door on the passenger’s side, and got a nice surprise. The keys were in the dash. One key stuck in the ignition, the other (the rear-door key) dangling like an earring in poor taste. I yanked them out of the dash and dropped them in my pocket; our two rip-off artists wouldn’t be leaving in this van, not unless they cared to go coasting down the hill in neutral. The thought of that made me smile and helped chip away at my tension, my apprehension; started to loosen me up. I’d been too late to help Mrs. Jonsen, but, damnit, the cavalry was going to be on time this trip.

Between the two seats was a big box of gardener’s tools, probably containing its share of burglary tools, too, if you cared to dig deep enough. I didn’t, but the top level of the box
provided me with several items I felt would prove useful: a piece of grease-smeared cloth, the stuff that gags are made of; and a coil of rope, probably the remainder of a larger coil of rope, part of which had been used to tie up Mrs. Jonsen last Thursday. And it was no trick to guess what use a similar length of rope had been put to in the past few minutes.

I returned to the rear of the van and glanced in the open side door of the house. A half flight of stairs rose to a landing and a closed door. I stuck my head inside for a closer look, and somebody behind that closed door said, “I’ll get started, Chet.”

It was a distant voice, but not
that
distant, and I once again ducked inside the van’s rear compartment. That van’s rear end was getting to be a second home for me, and I huddled in its darkest corner, hiding in its deep shadows, the tire iron in my hands like a rifle. A plan of sorts had started to form in my head, having partially to do with the rag I’d stuffed in my pocket and the coil of rope slung over my shoulder. I waited for the distant voice to get closer.

Didn’t take long. The door at the top of that half flight of stairs popped open, like it had been butted open, which in fact it had. Hulk (or P. J., or whatever the hell you want to call him) came down the stairs, arms filled with a big box that blocked his vision.

So. After the Cooper score had fizzled, they’d gone back to Tony’s to get some boxes so they could pack up Mrs. Fox’s antiques carefully, on the scene; since they planned to cut out tonight, that would save time. And that accounted for why they weren’t any further along with the robbery than they were. They must’ve got out of Tony’s just a whisker before Brennan and the cops made the scene.

P. J. ducked into the van. He put his load down near the front, his back to me, and though that big ass of his made a damn tempting target, I had something better in mind. There’s a streak of revenge in the best of us, you know, and I swung that shaft of iron into his side, into his ribcage, and at the same time covered his mouth with my left hand, a hand now holding that greasy rag. Once I had the rag stuffed in his mouth, I let him turn himself around, still doubled over with pain; he took one look at the tire iron and, out of reflex action, stood up straight.

Which is something you don’t want to do inside a van, especially when you’re Hulk’s size. But he did it anyway and, in doing so, banged his head into the roof of the van like a hammer driving in a nail, making a
thunk
sound that echoed hollowly in the small compartment. He fell to his knees, then on his face. He couldn’t have been out colder if I had bashed him in the head with the tire iron.

I used the rope to tie his hands and feet together behind him, in one big package. He was breathing well, despite the greasy rag crammed in his mouth, and as long as he didn’t choke to death on the taste of the thing, he’d be okay; besides, he wouldn’t be waking up for a while anyway.

After I locked the van’s rear doors, I tossed the keys over into a hedge in the neighbors’ yard. I figured that was as good a place as any for them. Then the tire iron and I walked back around the van, entered the house, and crept up the stairs to the landing, cracking open the door to see what was beyond, ready to cave in the first unfriendly skull that presented itself.

Fortunately, what was beyond the door was the kitchen, with not an unfriendly skull in sight. It was big, a high-ceilinged ballroom of a kitchen, with light pine cabinets surrounding the room and gleaming white walls showing beneath them. Two of
the walls were lined with ancient but well-preserved appliances: multiple-burner gas range, big round-shouldered Westinghouse, long horizontal freezer you could store a buffalo in, with an electric dishwasher the only apparent recent addition. Otherwise the room was empty, with the exception of the small, square pine table and its chairs in the center of the room. Sitting at the table, tied to one of those chairs and gagged, was Mrs. Fox.

She was wearing what she’d worn that first evening I’d brought her hot supper around—a blue cotton dress with white cameo brooch—and was maintaining her usual quiet dignity. She seemed to be waiting, with patience, and with some irritation, for these intruders to be done with their sacking of her home and leave her alone.

Her eyes smiled when she saw me, and when I took the gag off, I saw the corresponding smile below. But she was a smart old gal and didn’t say a word as I untied her. I whispered, “Go out the side here, and go over to the house next door. The police are on their way.”

And she whispered back at me, “You’ll have to help me to the door. My cane is in the living room, and I’ll never make it without support.”

“What about after you get outside?”

“Then I’ll crawl if I have to. I just don’t feel that my falling down in here and causing a commotion would be ideal, do you?”

I walked her over to the door and helped her on down the steps and out of the house, as carefully as an usher at a wedding seating the mother of the bride. Once outside, however, I realized she’d had an ulterior motive in asking for my aid. She said, still whispering, “Now listen here, young man, you just come along with me; you’re not going back inside that house.”

“I have to.”

“You said the police are coming,” she said. “Let them take care of this. You stay away from those people in there. Don’t go in that house.”

“I have to.”

That was when the old guy from next door appeared and took Mrs. Fox by the arm and began walking her over to his place. She kept her eyes on me, however, her expression making it clear she didn’t approve of my going back in.

But I did anyway, of course, and my first action was to kick over the chair Mrs. Fox had been sitting tied-up in. It clattered to the floor, and the noise brought on the hoped-for response; I heard movement out in the other part of the house and positioned myself to the right of the swinging kitchen door, and when somebody pushed through, I cut him in half with the tire iron.

“Sh... i... i... it,” he gushed, the air emptying out of him.