The Books of Fell (22 page)

He waited while Ann Dragon got Nina into the front seat of the Pontiac and the garment bag into the back.

I could see the dragonfly tattoo very clearly now as his left hand gripped the steering wheel, while his right one kept the gun trained on me.

“Have you moved from dope into kidnapping, now?” I said.

“Just shut up!”

The Pontiac took off.

He turned back to me, swiveling his shoulders so he could look me in the eyes.

“My name is Ted Draggart. I’m an FBI undercover man. You’re who? Somebody Fell?”

“John Fell. And I don’t believe you. FBI men don’t have tattoos.”

“I’m doing the talking right now, John! … Nina is not being kidnapped, and you don’t know shit about FBI men! … Nina is with my partner. We’ve been undercover here for almost a year. Ann will take Nina someplace safe, while you come with me. Do you understand?”

“Why doesn’t Ann just take Nina home?”

“Because that’s where
we’re
going. I didn’t count on you, but now that you’re here, I’m going to have to! You’re going to have to count on me if you want to save your ass, so start trusting me.”

I didn’t say anything, just watched while he stuck the gun in the top of his pants.

He started the jeep.

“I’ll fill you in as much as I can, so you’ll understand the action. For God’s sake get rid of the handlebars!”

I’d forgotten my mustache, and I tore it off.

“You paid a visit to the base we set up. Dragonland.” He started the jeep. “Everyone paid a visit there but the ones we expected.”

“Nina. Me … Paul Lasher.”

He snorted. “Yeah. Paul Lasher. When you’re dredging, you get the dregs. But he was a bonus, it turned out. Let me tell you a few more things before we come to Lasher.”

We were heading back to Cottersville.

He said, “Ann and I were given a name.”

“She’s your wife.”

“She’s my partner. Let
me
talk, John…. The name was David Deem. We got it from a fairly reliable source, if you want to call someone with dope connections and convictions reliable. But he wanted to make a deal, get himself out of serving twenty years. Deem was the bite. Our informer knew there was a sporting-goods setup involved too, but nothing else…. Ann and I set ourselves up in Point Pleasant after we got a read on Deem. Our case agent had nothing to incriminate Deem, so we came in blind.”

We were making all the right turns that would take us to Jericho Road.

“I angled to meet Nina,” Dragon said. “We’d found out she was the only one he had left to care about. She was my ‘in’ to Deem. I met him, and I found out all I could, which wasn’t much…. Later we fixed my arrest for selling cocaine and arranged to get me off, with the newspapers picking up the story…. We didn’t figure Deem himself would come after me. Everything we knew about him was clouded over, anyway, but we figured him as a guy who wouldn’t want anyone muscling in on his territory … and particularly his daughter. We thought he’d send someone to Dragonland to threaten me, someone who’d lead us to his operation by some zigzag route.”

“Deem sells drugs?”

“Not exactly. Not at all what we thought. Deem doesn’t have a territory. He’s a facilitator. He doesn’t sell anything; he helps it get sold. He has this mail-order deal called DOT. Short for Deem Out There. Advertises: Out There You’ll Need Us. All-weather equipment. Let me finish, John,” he said, as I started to tell him I’d heard Nina mention DOT. “There isn’t time now.” He looked at his watch and picked up some speed.

“Your friend Lasher — ”

“He wasn’t my friend.”

“This Lasher came to Dragonland last fall. He’d read the newspaper write-up of my arrest. He was sniffing around, trying to see if I knew this Creery. There was a point when I even thought he was trying to frame Creery, or get him killed. I didn’t have time for it, didn’t want him around, but while he was there he said he knew a lot about my girlfriend, Nina Deem.

“I paid attention suddenly. I asked him how the hell he knew her name. He told me his mother was her shrink. Then he began playing the bigshot, telling me a lot of stuff about Nina, like the fact I’d told her I was married. I finally told her that after my arrest. She’d gotten herself a tattoo like mine over in Lambertville. That’s the first I realized she’d made this thing into a big romance.”

“She fell in love with you. Didn’t you
angle
for that?”

“She was a kid! I thought she had a crush on me, sure, but I never encouraged it, never even held her hand — nothing! I didn’t count on this flood of emotion. She’d call Dragonland even after I told her not to, to let
me
get in touch with
her.
Then she appeared with you. And after that she called to apologize for bringing you there. I couldn’t discourage the contact with her altogether, because I needed that.”

We were passing Main Pharmacy and Playwicky Road.

Dragon said, “You see, Lasher let something drop that got my ears pricking. He said his mother told him Nina was going away at Easter. It was going to be a surprise. Her father was planning to take her to Europe…. Lasher said maybe I could use that information … and maybe he could get me more if I’d help him get this Creery…. I wanted him to go because he was just in the way. I told him I didn’t want to run off with Nina, thanks anyway, I was happily married. I had a hell of a time getting him out of there that day. He hung around, had his picture taken…. But he’d given me the tip: Deem was going to run in March. We had to work fast!”

We were a block from Jericho.

Dragon was slowing up. He said, “A few months later Lasher was killed…. I sent in for information on this Creery. Routine, not my province, but Lasher’d said Creery used drugs, so you never know…. I asked for anything the computer had on Creery, and lo and behold, we found a connection to DOT. It was there all along, but we hadn’t been looking for it, and it still isn’t too clear. I tried to get a court order to tap Deem’s phone. It never came through, and we found out Deem was booked to go this Sunday…. We’re going to park a few doors away. My backup’s there somewhere. John, I don’t want you to leave this car, okay?”

“Yes.” It was beginning to fit, all of it. I knew then why Mr. Deem was so eager to get Nina to The Charles Dance that weekend, and why he’d allowed her to stay overnight. He was making all the arrangements in the house, packing up, preparing to close it and clear out.

I said, “And I suppose Nina thought you were eloping with her tonight!”

“She probably did, but there was no other way. When she told me she could stay overnight on The Hill, I was afraid Deem might take off solo…. Maybe not, but we couldn’t take that chance, so we moved. We put a man on Jericho while Ann and I went for Nina. I wanted her out of there, and I wanted her prepared for what she’s going to have to find out about her father. Ann’s taking her in, and telling her everything. She’ll be good with her, John.”

“Fell,”
I said.

“Fell. I care a lot about Nina, too.”

We went down Jericho and parked two doors away from the house.

We weren’t there long before a man rapped on my window.

Eddie Dragon said, “You sit tight, Fell.”

He got out.

I heard him say he had a Hill boy with him who’d stay in the jeep. I watched him stop and drop something. Then he turned around and came back to the passenger side.

The man was right behind him.

I rolled down my window.

“I didn’t count on this, Fell. Sorry,” Dragon said.

“No conversations!” a voice barked. “Just get him out and in the house!”

It wasn’t a voice I’d ever heard before, but I knew the face when I saw it.

Mark Twain from Miami.

He was stopping to pick up Dragon’s gun from the street. Then he had two.

The phone wires were cut, Deem told me, and there was a naked man locked in the crawl space. Deem said he had no idea who the man was, that Meatloaf had been let out to do his business and routed him out of the bushes. Then Hunter had taken his clothes, to go through them and to limit his action.

We were locked in, too, Deem and I, in Deem’s study. If we tried anything, Hunter’d warned us, he’d kill us both.

From the sounds below, Dragon was being put in with the backup.

“At least Nina’s safe,” I said.

“No she isn’t. Hunter made me call the school and say she was to come home immediately, alone. He sent a taxi for her.”

I explained that she was with Ann, that Dragon had seen to that. Then I told him who Dragon was, or what he was … that Ann was his partner, and the naked man part of their team.

He looked too frightened to understand what I’d told him. “Don’t try anything, Fell,” he said. “Hunter means it when he says he’ll kill us.”

He was sitting in his big Eames chair hugging Meatloaf.

“What could I try? There’re bars on those windows.”

I was still absorbing the idea this man was involved with dope. He looked the same to me, right down to the suit, the necktie, and the shine on his shoes. It was hard for me to imagine him jaywalking, much less “facilitating” drug sales.

He knew I’d been told something by Dragon. He was having trouble looking at me, though I was right there on his footstool. It was the first time we’d ever been face-to-face when I’d had shoes on.

“Hunter killed his own stepbrother,” he said finally. “Now he’s going to kill me, too.”

“How do you know he killed Creery, sir?” I didn’t mean to call him “sir,” but habit won out. He seemed to respond to the respect I’d given him unintentionally, and he met my eyes for the first time.

“I suspected as much,” he said, “and when I accused him of it tonight, he told me he’d kill Nina, too, if I didn’t cooperate with him…. What have I done, Fell?” he sighed. “What
have
I done?”

“How did you ever get involved with someone like Hunter?” I said. He had a handkerchief out and was mopping his brow.

He said, “You might as well hear it from me, Fell. Tell Nina, too; otherwise she’ll never learn the truth. I won’t live to tell her.”

He lifted Meatloaf up to his chest and held him hard. “A long time ago, Bob Creery and I had dinner one night in Miami. We’d been friends in Sevens. My business was bad. He said he could help me out.” He leaned down and brushed his lips against the top of the dog’s head. “Bob was sort of an entrepreneur. That’s a polite name for it. He had his paint business in Miami, a couple of warehouses. He was sometimes legitimate, mostly not. Bootleg stuff. We formed DOT together. I sold stolen goods…. It wasn’t right, of course, but no one got hurt. Insurance covered the losses…. That was the way I rationalized it. DOT thrived. So did I…. Oh, Fell, Sevens did something to me. It gave me a taste for certain comforts, small luxuries. I’d never been as happy as when I lived as a Sevens…. I got spoiled for any kind of life that wouldn’t be easy.”

Meatloaf jumped out of his lap and down to my feet to sniff me.

Deem said, “Everything turned sour right before Barbara died. Bob had his stroke, and his stepson couldn’t wait to take over! Next thing I knew we were in the cocaine business. It was being shipped from South America to the paint factory inside croquet mallets, the handles of tennis rackets, anything wooden. It holds up well in wood and doesn’t add that much extra weight…. He sent me samples to show me until I said, ‘I don’t want to know about it — stop it.’ He’d empty out the cocaine, paint the stuff, and ship it on. My equipment and DOT gave him another outlet. He’s got outlets all over the country.”

“Did Creery’s father know, or Creery?”

“Bob wouldn’t have allowed it, not Bob. He wasn’t a man of any integrity, but he wouldn’t have okayed drug trafficking…. It’s too dirty … and it’s too risky. I wouldn’t have either, if Hunter hadn’t known all about DOT. Bob was paralyzed all down one side, and that left me at Hunter’s mercy.” Deem folded his handkerchief neatly and placed it carefully back in his breast pocket. “The boy didn’t know, I’m sure. Hunter pretended to get the kid off pot by substituting pills. That’s why there were rumors that Cyril was selling, because he could get all he wanted. Of course the kid got hooked. Hunter wanted him addicted. But that boy thought it was his own fault he couldn’t stop…. And he was being bullied by that Lasher boy.”

“Well … they bullied each other.”

“I think he taunted him once too often. Didn’t Nina say he had proof of some kind that Bob told him how to get into Sevens?”

“Yes. There was a letter.”

“I believe the story going around The Hill is that Cyril killed Lasher. An associate of Hunter’s told me, just last fall, that the boy was on a combination of amphetamines and Quaaludes. There was plenty of Miami gossip regarding young Cyril, speculation about how Hunter’d deal with him after Bob’s death…. And drugs change your whole personality. You live a nightmare. You love the drug more than you love anything. Well” — he gave a strange little choked cough — ”that’s how we got rich. Cocaine made us rich. Richer than we’d ever been…. Hunter is a greedy man, Fell. He wanted that little empire for himself. Bob’s near death. Cyril would have inherited everything from Bob … and there’d be a lot of explaining to do. So Hunter saw his chance.”

“But if he knew Creery’d killed Lasher, why didn’t he just turn him in?”

Deem shook his head. “No. In our business we know too well how elastic the law is. Hunter didn’t want Cyril alive. The law wouldn’t kill him, so Hunter did…. I didn’t even know he was up north until Cyril was found dead. We never made phone calls to each other. We met in Florida, always. We never wanted any record of rapport … Even after young Cyril’s death, I never expected him to walk through that door the way he did tonight…. Walked in here and caught me red-handed, said, You’re not going anywhere…. Poor Nina. My poor, poor Nina.”

I picked Meatloaf up and handed him to Deem. He needed to hold on to something, do something with his hands, which he’d begun to wring. I’d never make a good policeman. I felt too sorry for people I knew who got themselves into trouble. I could see myself in them, maybe, see how easy it was to start heading down the wrong road.

“They say it’s a small world.” Deem was talking into Meatloaf’s neck. “And it is indeed. Do you know how Hunter learned I was planning to bolt?”

He didn’t wait for my answer.

He said, “Hunter spent some time with Inge Lasher’s daughter these past few weeks. She told him her brother thought a man named Eddie Dragon was supplying Cyril with the pills. Cyril’d never told her the truth…. Then she told Hunter about Nina being mixed up with Dragon: She’d heard her on the answering machine…. One day Dr. Inge told her, Don’t worry, she won’t be calling here after Easter, Mr. Deem is taking her away…. Well. That was all Hunter needed to hear. He did a little investigating on his own, called the travel bureau, and found out I was leaving tomorrow morning.”

“Thank God for Eddie Dragon,” I said. “Or whatever his real name is. He got Nina out, anyway.”

“He started it all,” Deem said bitterly.

I noticed Deem blamed everyone but himself. Sevens. Hunter. Eddie Dragon.

“By now Hunter knows he’s trapped, too. He can’t lock up the whole Cottersville police force in the dry cellar, can he? They’ll be along, won’t they?” He seemed ready to cry. “I hope you’ll be kind enough to take care of Meatloaf, Fell. And to tell Nina I truly love her…. Hunter won’t hurt you. Just me. I never should have put bars on those windows.”

I was praying that he was right about the police coming, that by then Ann had gotten to them. But I was also remembering my father telling me of times local police didn’t interfere with federal arrests.

We didn’t say any more for a while. Deem sat there cradling Meatloaf in his arms like a baby. Then we heard a door slam.

Meatloaf began barking. “Don’t, darling,” Deem told the dog. “Hush and don’t make trouble.” He put his thumb and finger over Meatloaf’s nose like a muzzle.

Hunter unlocked the study door and appeared with an armful of clothes, a gun peeking out from under trousers and shirts, underpants, coats, and shoes.

“I’ll take your car keys, David,” he said.

I petted Meatloaf with trembling hands. He was making low sounds close to growling. The gun in Hunter’s hand was aimed at me and the dachshund.

The dog jumped down as Deem reached into his pocket.

Hunter looked at me and said, “You’re coming!”

“Why take the boy?” Deem asked.

“For a shield,” Hunter said.

Deem dropped the keys into Hunter’s palm.

At first when I heard the noise, I thought there was a radio on in the house.

Then, as it became louder, I knew what it was.

“What the hell is that?” Hunter snapped.

He walked over to the window.

I could see the look on his face, and I knew I’d always remember it. The flesh caved in, and the eyes got wide.

“Get over here!” he said to me. “What the hell is this?”

They were in the yard with their gold flashlights shining on their faces. Singing.

I could see Charles Dickens and Charles II, Charles Bronson and two Charlie Chaplins.

There were about a dozen Sevens there. Kidder I recognized, and Fisher. Schwartz next to Fisher.

They were in good voice and I’d never felt more like joining in.

Then they began to shout our names, seven times apiece.

“DEEM! DEEM! DEEM! DEEM! DEEM! DEEM! DEEM!”

Behind me Meatloaf was dancing to the door and barking.

“Shut that damn dog up!” Hunter cried out.

There were tears rolling down Deem’s cheeks as he realized they’d come to rescue him, however they had gotten word he needed them.

I might have bawled myself, but I had gone to quiet Meatloaf, near the door, telling him to be still, a moment before my hand reached for the knob and my legs did the rest.

I had my own cheering section to spur me on.

“FELL! FELL! FELL! FELL! FELL!” — and I was out of there for the last two.