Abel Baker Charley (27 page)

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Authors: John R. Maxim

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BOOK: Abel Baker Charley
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“Baker?” Sonnenberg said in a louder voice as he rose
and stretched before reaching for the phone again. ”I think
Abel is smiling, Baker.”
Harrigan paused at the door of Tanner Burke's suite and lis
tened. He heard nothing. The creak of a chair, perhaps, but
he could not be sure. An odd wave of anger came over him
as he stood there. It had no cause that he knew. And it re
ceded as he left the door and walked toward the emergency stairwell.
Carefully, he checked the fire stairs for two floors in each direction. All was quiet. Harrigan returned to the fifteenth-
floor landing, where he sought a comfortable place to wait.
The stairs were of cold concrete, softened only by several coats of gray paint. He eased onto the second step, then
squirmed sideways to relieve the pressure of his service re
volver against his kidney. He wished he'd thought to visit
the men's room before leaving the lobby. That last cup of tea
would be asserting itself before long.
A door opened several floors below him, followed by the
soft padding of sneakered feet running steadily down the re
maining stairs. He checked his watch. Not ten after six and
there go the joggers, thought Harrigan. God save us all.
What will be the next perversion of civilized behavior that
captivates popular fancy.
Harrigan had jogged only twice in his adult life. The first
time was that once with Duncan Peck and then once more with Notre Dame. Nice fellow, incidentally. Multiple mur
derers don't come much friendlier. Anyway, it was only
twice. And both times in the line of duty. Harrigan was sure that God would forgive him as long as he swore never to ac
knowledge either event at a cocktail party.
Duncan Peck.
You tried to sucker me, you old bastard, didn't you! You made me run with you until just short of the point where I'd
vomit all over your Nikes, and then in my weakened state
you plied me with selected truths. You left out the big truths.
And the biggest of those is that you're very much afraid of
this Dr. Sonnenberg, aren't you! Oh, Duncan. We're going to
see who'll sucker whom, now won't we!
Harrigan's brain exploded with light.
The image it held was Duncan Peck's face shattered like
a crystal bowl, and through the pieces Connor Harrigan
could see the concrete landing rushing up at him. His arms
flew across his face and his elbows painf
u
lly broke his fall.
Goddamn, he thought. His mind still worked, but his body would not follow. Was he shot
,
his brain asked
?
Hands were on him now. A knee dug deeply into his
back, arching it, and a pulling hand had gripped his fore
head. Another hand appeared and the arm behind it tried to tighten across his throat. With a burst of effort, Harri
gan jammed his palm across the forearm before it could
close against his windpipe. It helped, but little. God, he
was so weak. Or was the man that strong. Baker? Is it you,
Baker?
Another door opening somewhere. Noises. Grunts. More
weight across his back. Now less weight. The man is rising. Still holding on but rising. Something is pulling him up.
A slipping, clawing hand twisted Harrigan's head to one
side. He could see two men. Part of them. And another shape
at the landing door. The choking arm, he could see, was
dressed in blue. Oh, Harrigan, damn you for a careless ass.
It's that false cop who's killing you.
The uniformed man let go. Harrigan felt him scraping to
his feet and then he saw him spin away, slamming against
the fire hose that hung in folds on the landing wall. Harrigan
rolled to his knees, gulping air and pushing at his eyes to
make them focus. Baker! The man helping him was Jared Baker. And the girl, her eyes wide with fright, stood at the
door behind him.
Baker, he saw, was struggling desperately. His face
flamed red and his arteries bulged at his temples. One arm
was locked around the policeman's head while the other
clawed at his gun hand. What gun is that? Harrigan won
dered. An odd-looking thing. An air pistol, he realized.
The air pistol, if that's what it was, shook loose and clat
tered to the floor. The policeman grasped at his service gun, but it was pressed hard against the wall. Enraged, he drove
his fist savagely into Baker's stomach. And again. The blows
made Baker gag, but still he held fast, his eyes washed with
tears and turning toward Harrigan. They seemed to be beg
ging for help.
Harrigan, his legs not yet steady, lurched toward the two
men. A third blow, low against Baker's groin, broke his hold
at last, and Baker half-collapsed against the wall. His hands
flew to his eyes and forehead as if the pain was there and not
where the blows had landed. Harrigan heard him cursing
someone.
The freed policeman spun toward Harrigan, whipping a
stiffened hand toward the older man's throat. Harrigan
slapped it past him and turned the man, aiming three fast, chopping blows to his kidney. A wild elbow crashed against Harrigan's ear and staggered him. Before he could recover, the policeman had cleared his revolver and lined his sights against Harrigan's chest. Baker lunged for the gun, but the
policeman knocked him aside with a backhanded slap. The
gun hand began an arc toward Baker's head but hesitated. Only for the smallest amount, but enough. For then another
foot flew against the policeman's face. A woman's foot. It
struck again and a third time. Now Baker seized the gun and
through his pain fought to bend it backward over the blue-
coated wrist. The policeman tried to twist away and stum
bled. Off balance. And then Harrigan had him. Now it was
Harrigan's arm that snaked over the policeman's neck while
his right hand gripped the big man's jaw.
The policeman knew at once what was happening to him.
He'd done it twice himself. Once very slowly to a woman in Montreal while her boyfriend watched and screamed. He
thought of her and tried to scream himself. It would not
come. Desperately, he threw both legs forward, hoping that
his descending weight would break the older man's hold. It
was a mistake. Harrigan's grip had become a noose, and the man had thrown himself through an open trap. Baker could
see the horror in the policeman's eyes even as his neck
snapped with the sound of wet wood. His body trembled,
sagged, and died. And with a final wren
c
h, Connor Harrigan
destroyed his brain.
Tanner Burke moaned and gripped the doorway. Baker
reached her before she could faint. The act kept him from
fainting.
Silence.
Several moments passed before anyone spoke.
Harrigan,
exhausted, had sunk quietly to the step, where he sat mas
saging his neck, twice glancing curiously at the man who
was Jared Baker. At the monster who just fought like a
schoolboy. Tanner Burke's eyes had hardly left the dead man's face.
“He's not a real policeman, miss,” Harrigan whispered hoarsely. He said that although he was not truly certain.
Tanner Burke swallowed. “Who are you?” she managed.
“Ah, yes.’
9
The bald man grunted, shifting his weight to
free his leather case. He saw an odd, faraway look come
over Baker's face and then it was gone.
“Mr. Baker, Miss Burke.” He nodded, pulling a card from
its plastic sleeve. “My name is Lawrence Fenton. You're wondering, of course—”
“Good morning, Mr. Ha
rri
gan,” Baker said wearily.
11
To the extent that anything at all could unnerve Connor Harrigan, it startled him that Baker knew his name. Knowing his
face was another matter. The face he'd allowed Baker to see,
just once or twice, he thought, as he'd done with Notre
Dame. A bit of eye contact and a few words exchanged.
Sometimes risky, perhaps, but a way of getting the feel of a man. And, in Baker's case, a way of knowing whether the
quarry had knowledge of the hunter.
But when first they had seen each other months before,
Harrigan could recall no light of recognition in Baker's eyes.
No uneasiness. On the contrary, he remembered only a
glazed and distant look. A momentary mental flabbiness.
Eyes barely in focus. Except... when that other change had
come over Baker. When Baker was hard and the eyes were
those of a snake ...
Forget that, he thought. The point was that Baker knew
both his face and his name. And the knowledge was hardly
recent, judging by Baker's manner. That notion offended
and embarrassed Harrigan. It meant that those months of
professional unobserved surveillance were not so unob
served and professional after all. It seemed to mean that
Baker had been indifferent to his presence, which offended
him most of all.
Steady, Connor, he thought. No prima donnas here. Do
not let the insult cause you to trip over a bloated professional
ego. Instead, think! Think of what it means so that you can proceed unencumbered by wounded pride.
Did it mean that Baker knew of your presence from the
beginning? From the day of jog number one, when you
spotted that little bug in the grass of Potomac Park? Not
likely, he thought, even if the bug was Sonnenberg
’s
which he had to assume it was. Could Baker have known all the
time that Connor Harrígan's glass was trained on Sonnenberg's house while he slipped in and out to make those tele
phone calls to his daughter? Of course not. There was at
least one answer right there. He'd never have called his
daughter if he'd known he was being watched and recorded.
Which meant in turn that Sonnenberg, given that the jog
ger's bug was his, had never shared what he learned with
Baker.
On the other hand, Harrigan thought, allowing his mind to graze a bit, Baker did not share much about his daughter with Sonnenberg. The phone calls told him that even before
he knew what was said. The foolish, chancy phone calls to
an invalid Tina Baker. Harrigan supposed that he knew from
the first days of his surveillance that young Tina would be the glue that would hold the pieces together in the end. In
spite of Sonnenberg, apparently. Each time Sonnenberg and
his housekeeper drove off on an errand, there would be
Baker, an uncharacteristic hat pulled down over his face,
strolling down to the Mobil station to call his daughter. Peck had been right about that. And it was stupid. The Mobil sta
tion phone booth was an easy wire. Not like the house,
which was a goddamned electronic supermarket full of re
sponders that would blow your ear out if you tried to listen. Baker could have called from the house but he didn't. It had
to be that Sonnenberg had told him not to call. Sonnenberg
would have had his own phones wired to make sure, and
Baker must have known that.
On the day of the final call from the Mobil station, the
one that said, “Tina, honey, I have to take a trip,” Harrigan
had taken over Biaggi's shift. Biaggi had come down with the flu, which was just as well because Michael, Harrigan flattered himself, would likely have missed Baker when he
moved. Harrigan damned near missed him himself.
A splattered van had passed through Sonnenberg's elec
tric gate,
puzo paints
—
free est
i
mä
t
ies
was stenciled on the
side. One man emerged, no doubt a Puzo, and entered the
house with a canvas tarp over one shoulder and a canvas
sack full of paint cans hanging from the other. Harrigan
logged the visit and waited.
Two hours later, Puzo emerged carrying the same materi
als and freshly stained with green paint. He climbed behind the wheel of the van and ground the gears twice before fig
uring out which one was reverse. So, Harrigan recalled, the
astute observer concludes either that Puzo needs to be re
trained every time he climbs into his own van or that the guy
in the painter's suit isn't Puzo. Good morning, Jared Baker.
Harrigan followed the van with some difficulty. Baker
had not spotted him, he was sure, yet he drove as if he was
being tailed. He was using evasive techniques that Harrigan
recognized
. C
halk one up for Peck's conspiracy theory. The
guy had been trained.
The van stopped eventually on a side street off Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. Baker locked the car carefully, then
walked around the corner, where he entered a Minute Man
dry cleaner and walked to the back of the store after a brief
chat with the proprietor. Playing a hunch that the van had al
ready served its purpose and gambling that Baker would
leave by another door, Harrigan searched for and found a
rear alley once used by trucks delivering coal. Baker re
warded his choice, not twenty minutes later, by appearing
large as life in a fresh business suit and climbing into a sil
ver Pinto that had clearly been left for him.
Excited now, Harrigan ran to his car. The cooperative
Mr. Puzo might not have meant much by himself, but now
he had someone else, a cooperative dry cleaner at the very least, who had gone to considerable trouble to stash a car
and perhaps some luggage for a fugitive from a very shaky
murder warrant. Why was Baker worth it? Harrigan
wanted to know. Beating a stretch in jail might have been
of consuming importance to Baker, but it simply should
not have been that big a deal to anyone else. It didn't seem
worth all this. But obviously it was. To Sonnenberg, at
least. And to Sonnenberg's increasingly impressive net
work.
He nearly lost Baker at La Guardia Airport. The car
turned out to be an Avis rental, later shown to have been
rented by someone who did not exist but who had papers to show that he did. Baker paid cash for an American Airlines
flight to Atlanta and, as boarding was announced, he eased himself toward the adjacent gate, where he calmly stepped aboard a plane bound for Indianapolis, with stops at Pitts
burgh and Dayton. Harrìgan realized too late what had hap
pened. Gambling again, and remembering Duncan Peck's
briefing, Harrìgan booked himself aboard the next available
flight to Dayton. Once there, he rented a car and drove it first
to the nearest Goodwill Industries donation bin, where he
helped himself to a frayed windbreaker and a pair of dried-
out brown shoes. Next, with the help of his Avis map, Harrìgan made his way out Germantown Road and to the
Riverview Grill, which stood near the main gate of the Day
ton Tire and Rubber Company. The sign on the door read:
Howard
T
willey
—
owner/manager.
At seven that evening,
the new relief bartender showed up for work. Harrìgan had
guessed right again.
It was a new Jared Baker, a coarser version. This one wore a cheap plaid shirt, open at the neck and showing a
white T-shirt underneath. His hair had been slicked with Brylcreme, then flattened and combed straight back. He
chewed gum with his mouth hanging open and did his best
to affect the dull-eyed boredom of a blue-collar bartender.
His name, Harrigan learned, was Jimmy Flood.
Harrigan had parked quietly at one end of the L-shaped
bar. Behind him, a Space Invaders game blinked colored
rows of descending alien craft. A black man stood washing
glasses at the end near the door. Harrigan recognized him at
once. Baker was closer, in the center. It was Baker who'd
served the beer that Harrigan was nursing. It was then that
the glaze came over Baker's eyes. As he took Harrigan's dol
lar bill. It wasn't much. Just a momentary pause as if a dim
memory had kicked at him from within. On a hunch, and for
reasons he'd only understand months later, Harrigan forced his thoughts away from Baker and onto the country & west
ern ballad that wailed from the jukebox. Baker relaxed visi
bly. Harrigan slid from his stool, his instincts telling him to
give Baker room, and took a seat at the idle electronic game.
A
tool and die maker named Eddie Kuntz held up a quarter questioningly at Harrigan. Harrigan nodded and gestured
toward the opponent's seat opposite. Harrigan had lost his
fourth straight game when Albert Doviak pushed noisily
through the front door.
“Oh, Christ!” muttered Eddie Kuntz, glancing up briefly.
Harrigan followed his eyes. The huge man who entered
stood smiling and breathing heavily as he scanned the
faces at the tables. He wore only a soiled T-shirt against
the chill night, yet his face, arms, and shaven head
gleamed with sweat. Harrigan saw a splatter of blood on the T-shirt and more on the knuckles of the man's right hand. Several in the room exchanged looks and dropped
their heads.
“Trouble?” Harrigan asked.
“Probably. Doviak's lookin' playful tonight.” Kuntz kept
his attention on the screen.
“Who's Doviak?” the question came casually.
Kuntz raised both eyebrows. “You're not from around
here?”
“Akron,” Harrigan answered. “Goodyear plant.”
Eddie Kuntz shrugged in acknowledgment. “Doviak's
not so bad usually, but he's in training. He's gonna be
lookin' for a couple of tuneup fights tonight.”
“Tuneups for what?”
“Tough Man competition starts tomorrow night.” Kuntz
fished for another quarter.
“Tough Man competition? What's that?”
Kuntz looked up. “You kidding?”
Harrigan returned a shrug. “In Akron, competition is
bowling leagues.”
“Tough Man”—Eddie leaned forward—“is this thing
where they have all the toughest guys in town enter this tour
nament and beat the shit out of each other in the ring down at
the auditorium. Winner gets ten grand. Doviak lost in the fi
nals last year, but the next night he took on the
winner, big
nigger named Floyd, for a side bet. Without no rules, he
butted Floyd's face in and left him on top of some garbage
cans.”
Harrigan flicked a look toward Howard Twilley, who he
was sure had overhead. He thought he saw a faint smile on the black barkeeper's face. Twilley stepped around Baker,
who now seemed distinctly nervous, gently squeezing his
shoulder as he passed. Baker nodded and tried a weak smile
of his own.
“Good evening, Albert’
9
The black man grinned broadly
at Doviak. The bigger man still stood blocking the doorway
with the look of a restless bouncer.
“Good evening yourself, dark person,” Albert boomed pleasantly. Two black patrons looked up. The younger one
reached for the neck of a Budweiser bottle and eased it to his
lap. Two more men made a space for Doviak at the end of
the bar.
Twilley drew a beer and poured a shot from a Seagram's
bottle. He placed them before the vacant stool. ‘This is on
the house, Albert,” he said. Then the smile faded. “It's one
for the road.”
Albert laughed. He looked to each side as if making sure
his good humor was noted. He laughed again, louder this
time, as he straddled the stool and brought his face closer to
Twilley's.
“Don't do that, Howard,” he said more quietly. “Don't
buy me no drinks and tell me to walk.”
Harrigan nudged his playing partner. ”I think Albert has
found his tuneup.”

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