The Devil Met a Lady (12 page)

Pinketts reluctantly put his cigar on the floor and ground it out with his heel.

“And now,” he said with a grin, sitting in the lone chair, “what is your plan?”

“I plan to stay alive,” I said, moving to the nearest rack of film cans and looking at the labels.

The films, each labeled with the title and the name of the star, were in no particular order—
Hearts of Dixie, The Great K & M Train Robbery, Our Hospitality, Sunrise
.

“How?” asked Pinketts reasonably.

I began to remove the film cans from the shelves across from the door.

“Stack them in front of the door,” I said. “The door opens into the room.”

Pinketts shook his head.

“So you keep them out with a wall of film cans and they let us starve to death.”

“Move the cans,” I said, pausing to give him a grin of enormous sincerity.

“You threaten me?” he said, putting his right hand on his chest. “There are men out there planning to kill me. What have you to threaten me with?”

“No threat,” I said, moving toward him and dropping the stack of full film cans in his lap. “There may be a window on the other side of the shelves. We can’t move the shelves until we get the cans out.”

“Then,” he said, “you shall have the use of my strong back and willing arms.”

Pinketts got up and stacked the cans from his lap in front of the door. It took us about ten minutes to empty the one set of shelves and stack all the cans. Then we realized that the shelves against the wall were wedged behind the two sets of shelves on the side walls. We unloaded one of those and then tried to slide the empty set out of the way. We couldn’t budge it and my back started to scream.

“Keep pulling,” I said.

“I do not like to sweat,” said Pinketts.

“I don’t like to be shot,” I said.

We pulled. The shelves began to move. Not much, but they did move. It took us maybe another ten minutes to get the shelves out far enough to reach the empty shelves against the wall across from the door. That set was bigger, heavier, and there wasn’t much room to move it because of the film cans covering most of the floor. When we got it far enough out, I crawled behind and found …

“No window.”

Pinketts laughed. I came out from behind the shelves and looked at him.

“Why would anyone build a room with no window?” I asked.

“To store film or wine,” said Pinketts.

“This isn’t a wine room and it was built before anyone heard of movies,” I said.

We both figured it out at the same time. The window was boarded over. All we had to do was tap the wall till we found it.

“We need more room,” I said, stacking cans upon cans upon cans. Tom Mix on Louise Glaum on Reginald Denny.

Another ten minutes and we had enough room to inch the shelves about three feet from the wall. Finding the window was easy.

“There,” I said, pointing at the place I had just tapped.

“Brilliant,” said Pinketts. “Now I ask a question and you ask a question?”

“Ask.”

“What do we use to make the hole?”

“I’ve got a better one,” I said. “What do we do to cover the noise?”

“They can’t get through the door,” he reminded me.

“But they’ll hear us breaking through the wall and be waiting for us on the other side,” I said.

We moved back into what was left of the middle of the room, where I got a new idea.

“Take the tops of two cans,” I said, tipping over the single chair and breaking off one thick wooden leg, which is easier to say than it was to do, especially trying not to make noise.

“When I say ‘bang,’” I said, “knock them together. I’ll try to go through the wall.”

“Insane,” said Pinketts.

I ignored him and slithered back behind the shelves with my club.

“Now,” I shouted.

I hit the wall and felt the wooden chair leg go through and hit glass, but there was no bang of cans to cover the noise I made.

“I said, ‘now,’” I hissed.

“You were supposed to say ‘bang,’” said Pinketts smugly on the other side of the shelves.

“What are you two doing in there?” came Jeffers’s voice at the door.

“Start banging,” I whispered. “And don’t stop banging till I tell you.”

Pinketts began to bang.

“Louder,” I called as I plunged the chair leg through the wall again.

I could hear the rattle of film cans as Jeffers tried to open the door. I punched holes in the wall with a fury while Pinketts banged film-can lids and added his own touch, Italian folk songs.

It took five or six punches in the wall to get enough room to start to pull out the plaster. Jeffers had stopped trying to open the door. I knew where he was going. I worked harder.

“Bang,” I shouted. “Bang for the love of Kali.”

Pinketts kept banging and singing.

The good news was I made a space big enough for us to crawl through in about three wild minutes, during which I could tell that Jeffers had been joined by someone, probably Hans and Fritz, in trying to push the door open.

The bad news was that, while the window was beyond the inner wall, there was also an outer wall beyond the window.

“I’m tired,” Pinketts sang out.

“I’m working,” I screamed.

“They are going to move the cans,” he bellowed over his own banging.

I climbed up into the space I had cleared. My back told me no, but I kept going. Then I got my back against the back of the shelving, propped the chair leg in the open space, got a grip on the top of the back of the shelves with my left hand, and kicked through the window with both feet. A sharp-toothed shock bit down my spine, but my feet went through a layer of stucco over thin plasterboard. Getting my feet back out was the trick of the night.

“Hurry,” said Pinketts, banging a little more slowly.

“I’m through,” I said.

“Don’t give up now,” cried Pinketts. “They’re almost inside.”

“No,” I shouted, now jabbing at the stucco wall with the chair leg. “I’m through.”

Andrea Pinketts renewed his din.

Sweat was stinging my eyes. I joined Pinketts in song. I was going nuts. The hole was big enough. Maybe.

“Now,” I shouted.

Pinketts stopped banging, but the guys at the door pressed on. Film cans tumbled. Pinketts made his way next to me behind the bookshelf.

“You did it,” he said, looking into the night through the hole.

I made a step with my hands and let him climb up and slither into the night through the hole. I wasn’t sure I had enough left in my back to follow him. I clutched the club like an armed Neanderthal, leaned through the hole, and pushed my way through with my feet. I got a bonus. As I tumbled through into the night and I heard a final crash of flying film cans, the shelves behind me tipped over from my final push.

Someone inside shouted, “Shit,” and I tried to roll over.

“Let’s get going,” I said, trying to get up.

I had a simple plan. Run to the nearest neighbor. Tell them to call the police. Do the same at two or three houses and then come back here to try to figure out a way to save Bette Davis.

I discovered several important things very quickly, things which severely changed my plans.

First, and least important, Pinketts was gone.

Second, and very important, I couldn’t run. I could barely get up.

Third, and most important of all, Jeffers was standing in front of me with a gun in his hand.

“Peters, you are a dead fool,” he said.

“What the hell’s all the noise?” a man’s voice came from the darkness behind him.

Jeffers held a finger to his lips and aimed the gun at my face.

“That you, Scott?” came another man’s voice from the left. “I think it’s Parrish’s house.”

Jeffers knelt at my side, gun to my right temple, battered face inches from mine.

“Zipper on the mouth,” Jeffers whispered, making a zipper motion from left to right. “Or I shoot and run.”

Someone broke through a row of bushes and I looked up at a man in his seventies wearing a blue-and-white striped bathrobe.

“Who the hell are you two?” the man asked, looking down at us.

Jeffers turned his weapon toward the man, who saw it and staggered backward.

My right hand, holding the chair leg, came up slower and not as hard as I wanted, but hard enough to catch Jeffers in the back of the head. The “klunk” was hollow. Jeffers tumbled forward and the man in the robe ran like hell.

Jeffers wasn’t quite out, but he wasn’t quite at home either.

He writhed around moaning as I forced myself to my knees and grabbed for his fallen gun.

That was the cue for Hans and Fritz to come running around the side of the house. They saw Jeffers on his knees, groaning, before they saw me with the gun in my hand. Hans stopped. Fritz didn’t. He had a sharp-pointed white fencepost in his hands.

“Hold it,” I yelled.

Fritz didn’t hold it. I shot. Low. I didn’t hit him but I was close enough to make Fritz stop, think, and lose his fence-post. From Hans’s position, it must have been a hell of a sight. Fritz gritting his teeth by the light of the almost-full moon. Me crouched with a pistol leveled at him. Jeffers was now on his feet, dazed, looking in the wrong direction for the Melrose bus.

There were voices all around now. Neighbors. Angry voices. Frightened voices.

“I’d say you’ve got five minutes till the police are here,” I said to Hans, who was the closest thing to leadership I could find to deal with.

On the other side of the house I could hear the gentle purr of the Graham’s motor coming to life. Wiklund, Inez, and Bette Davis were going off to who-the-hell knows where, and I couldn’t move.

“We’ll just sit and …”

I hadn’t been paying attention to Fritz, who now earned not only his Purple Heart but a gunsel’s Medal of Honor. His arms were around me, squeezing, and I dropped the gun. I started to pass out from the pain but not before I heard a screeching sound.

A fuzzy orange missile flew out of the hole in the wall of the house and landed on Fritz’s head.

Fritz let go of me and rolled away, but Dash tore after him, going for his face.

Another sound. A siren. Either it was an air raid or help was on the way. My last semiclear image was Hans stepping in front of me and hitting me in the face with the back of his hand. And then I was out.

I figured myself for dead. The sirens were gone. A cool breeze touched my face. The taste and smell of my own blood struck me as fascinating. I didn’t want to open my eyes till I got wherever Koko the Clown, who had appeared at one side to pick me up, was taking me. He pulled some trick and had me floating in front of him. Koko pushed me as if I were a cloud, and I went sailing away like a helium-filled balloon. I liked it. It was a hell of a lot better than being beaten by killers.

Koko pointed to something in front of us. Since he was pushing my shoulders and I was lying flat, I had to look down past my shoes. I couldn’t believe what I saw.

Jeremy, Gunther, Shelly, and my brother. Their hands were out to catch me. Koko pushed again and I shot forward toward them. I wanted to tell them to get out of the way, that I was going to mow them down like bowling pins. But I couldn’t speak. I tried, tried to speak, tried to move as I shot ahead, feet first, the human cannonball.

I closed my eyes and waited. When there was no thud, I opened my eyes again and felt pain, in my chest, my back, my nose. I opened my eyes and saw a snarling, ancient face full of impure hate. I hoped I was wasn’t looking into a mirror.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

T
his the joker?” the face in front of me said.

“Yeah,” came a familiar dry voice from behind the face a few inches from my nose, breathing hellfire and garlic.

“Never saw him before,” said the guy in front of me.

About this time I realized I was on my back and there was no sky beyond this guy who had never seen me before. There was only a white ceiling with a white glass fixture over a bright bulb.

“Take your time, Mr. Braddock,” the voice said.

“Said I never saw him before,” Braddock said, standing up.

Now I could see the guy with the dry voice. My brother Phil was sitting in a chair near the bed I was on. His head was bent forward and he was rubbing the bridge of his nose. A bad sign.

“Thank you, Mr. Braddock,” Phil said.

“If I’d seen him before, I’d remember,” Braddock said. “Face like that. I’d remember.”

“Thank you, Mr. Braddock,” Phil repeated, still rubbing his nose.

“What I want to know is why?” asked Braddock, turning to Phil, standing over him. “I want to know why and I want to know who’s paying. And I goddamn sure want to know now. Sonofabitch goes loony nuts, tears holes in my house. I got a right.”

“We’ll get back to you, Mr. Braddock,” said Phil softly.

I wanted to warn him, but decided it might be better if Phil focused his ire on Old Man Braddock rather than on me.

“Not good enough,” said Braddock, leaning over Phil.

I was propped up on two pillows in the hospital bed and I could see that Braddock was big, old but big.

“Mr. Braddock,” Phil said, taking his hand from his face and removing a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his sweating palm. “I have a rotten temper. I also have a headache. I think you should get the hell out of here before my temper and headache get together. We’ll get back to you.”

“Braddock,” I said. It came out as a sandy croak. “Run for the door. Save your life.”

“What the hell do you know about it?” Braddock asked, turning to me.

“He’s my brother,” I said.

Braddock looked back at Phil and then at me.

“That beats all,” he said. “That just about beats all. Cops and robbers holding hands. I’m gonna see Al Farlant. Believe you me. Al Farlant will hear about this in the hour.”

Braddock stomped out of my hospital room and slammed the door. I missed him before the room stopped rattling. There was no one between Phil and me.

“Who the hell is Al Farlant?” I asked.

“Who gives a shit?” said Phil.

“Where’s Seidman?” I asked.