The Death in the Willows (11 page)

“Drop it!”

Dr. Warren turned to stare into the muzzle of a .38. “What?”

“You heard me, drop it.” Rocco thumbed the hammer of the revolver back and the click seemed to reverberate throughout the room. The hypodermic clattered to the floor as Dr. Warren backed into the other corner. “Take the position,” Rocco thundered.

“What?”

“You heard me. Turn toward the wall, feet out, palms against the wall. Fast!”

Rocco had frisked the psychiatrist, cuffed his hands behind his back, and was preparing for interrogation when the doctor's bloodcurdling cry for help brought three attendants rushing to the room.

“Under Connecticut General Statutes any licensed physician can commit for a period of thirty days any individual who is deemed to …”

“Please, Bea. No more. I hurt.” Lyon, in the front seat of the Murphysville cruiser, held his sides as he fought to retain his laughter.

“I feel like a damned fool.” Rocco hunched over the wheel. “I might have shot the long drink of water.”

“Who was he going to certify?”

“All of us, I think,” Bea answered. “He didn't have much sense of humor. I still think you should have stayed for a few days of observation.”

“I was afraid they'd pad my room while I slept.” The codeine they'd given him had driven away most of the headache, but his ribs still ached. He looked down at his torn shirt and blotched pants and decided he looked exactly like what he was—a man who had recently jumped from a hot air balloon.

A smile crinkled the edge of Rocco's mouth. “Okay, it was kind of funny, but what did you want me down here for anyway? Or was this a set-up joke on Rocco?”

Lyon explained the accident. Rocco nodded as he drove, occasionally asking questions, until he had all the details. “Why would anyone want to kill you?”

“Why a whole bus?”

“The state is still working on the terrorist theory.”

“Any further word?”

“Negative, and that bothers them. It's usual in cases such as this that the group make contact with a newspaper or radio station to take credit for the act.”

“He, she, or they still wanted a lot of people dead.”

“Major Collins?”

“Or the missing man who gave me the gun. We've got to find him.”

“Who?”

“Both of them.”

Martha Herbert, in a long housecoat and her hair wound around fat purple curlers, stood at the front door and pursed her lips as she viewed the entourage on her stoop. She stood aside and let Rocco, Kim, Raven, and Bea enter while Lyon followed last.

“House guests, hon,” Rocco said as he leaned over to kiss his diminutive five-foot wife.

“All of them?” she asked in a small voice as her husband made introductions and led them all toward the basement recreation room.

Raven looked at Martha Herbert's short figure swaddled in the voluminous housecoat, and then at the gargantuan Rocco. He looked again, and then leaned over to whisper in Kim's ear.

Kim laughed.

Lyon had always wondered what men whispered into women's ears at parties and cocktail lounges. Perfectly normal-appearing men of routine senses of humor must have some secret reserve of particularly funny things that they hoarded for those occasions. He must ask Bea if she'd ever been whispered at.

The Herberts' daughter, Remley, was in the rec room on the couch with her feet straight up the wall and a phone stuck in her ear. Rocco sent her upstairs for coffee while he pulled the convertible out to its double-bed length.

“Lyon and Bea can stay here tonight. There's no access through the basement except from the upstairs.”

“I once saw you sleep through an artillery barrage.”

“Martha hears the cat cross the floor, and her punch in my ribs brings me around fast.”

“We'd be all right at Nutmeg Hill.”

“Maybe and maybe not. I'd like a day to get my equipment set up out there.”

“Equipment?”

“I got some great electronic surveillance stuff. Infrared sniper-scopes from the army, that sort of stuff. Turns night into day.”

“Matching grants,” Lyon and Bea said together.

When Remley served coffee, Raven produced his silver flask and toured the room with a flourishing lace to everyone's cup. Martha and Rocco Herbert refused, Martha with a near indignant toss of her head, Rocco with a wistful nod. When he was finished, Raven stood by the empty fireplace in a stance of anticipation. “Well, when do we begin the investigation? Did I ever tell you about the time I did a story on New Scotland Yard? Fascinating place, and there was one inspector who gave me …”

Kim crossed quickly to the writer and grasped him by the elbow. “If he gets started, we'll be here until dawn listening to his story. Good night, folks.” She steered Raven upstairs, his exuberant chatter still audible as they walked through the house.

“No windows near the couch,” Lyon mumbled after the others had left.

“What does that mean?” Bea asked as she helped him remove his shirt and pants.

“No lines of fire. We're safe. We can sleep.” He sank onto the sofa bed and seemed to fold back against the pillow. “I'll start checking tomorrow.”

Bea lifted his feet and pulled the covers over him. “You're in no condition to do anything tomorrow.”

“Got to, got to.” His voice seemed to fade.

“What will you do first?”

“Check out the hijacker. Have to know if we're dealing with terrorists or what.”

She shucked off her clothes down to panties and bra and slid under the sheets next to him. “Lyon.”

“Be ready in a minute. Little nap first.”

She laughed. “I only wanted you to know how glad I am that you're all right.”

“Uh huh.”

“Lyon, the balloon. I know it's totally destroyed, but did we have any insurance on it?”

“Cost too much. Remember when the agent came by the house last year?”

“And the balloon cost six thousand.”

“Plus accessories.”

She heard him begin to snore, and she lay next to her husband and was a little ashamed that she thought about the six thousand dollars.

The Datsun accelerated as she pulled off the entrance ramp and into the fast lane of the interstate highway. It was 140 miles to New York City, and she'd be in midtown in three hours. She'd left a note for Lyon that said she'd gone to the city to shop—and that was only half a lie.

She'd awakened that morning early, instantly alert, and had begun to plan her day, outlining the speech she was to give in Marston that night. Then all political thoughts had vanished, and all she could think of was yesterday at the balloon meet.

Again she saw herself looking through binoculars at the Wobbly III as it inexorably moved toward the high tension lines … and then watching him dive from the gondola and fall to the ground. She had sunk to her knees on the grass with her head bent forward, her body forming an S curve of profound grief. She had stumbled toward the field where he lay sprawled across the grass, and then he had moved and groaned.

She wondered if he really knew the extent that she loved him. She tried to express it physically, and yet when she spoke it aloud, it often seemed to come out as a humorous aside rather than an endearment.

Bea knew she was a competitive and often abrasive person. Her battles with life and those things she considered unjust often seemed to consume her, and Lyon so often supplied the relief and tenderness she so desperately needed. She was not whole without him.

8

Bea Wentworth sat on an orange crate holding a Styrofoam cup of tepid coffee between both hands in the back room of Miller's Supermarket on West Fourteenth Street. She wore a rose linen pantsuit with a simple white blouse and very practical shoes. Although she cocked her head attentively, and the small hearing device in her right ear was turned up, she still found it difficult to follow the quixotic train of thought of the assistant manager, Jimmy O'Halloran, as he stood by a wide sink lopping lettuce with a long knife.

“Like I told the cops. He was a real fuc … goof-off. I got my break early today. How about a shot at the White Rose?”

“How long did Mr. Shep work here?”

“Mister … Jesus … nobody called that creep ‘mister.' You're not bad, baby. I mean, you're like well preserved, know what I mean? Willie was a loser, you know.”

She wondered if being well preserved were a compliment. All things considered, she thought it probably was. She tried again. “He worked here how long?”

“The cops were all over my ass. Dragged me out of bed. Christ, youda' thought … scared the old lady shitless.” He stopped his annihilation of a head of iceberg and turned, knife pointed, to look her over. “I'm an ass man myself, know what I mean?” His leer bordered on the grotesque.

“Me, too,” Bea said sweetly. “How long did you know Willie Shep?”

“A hijacker yet. Who the hell would believe it? I was jumping the old lady when the heat knocked. Christ, if I don't perform a couple of times a week she thinks I'm playing around. Course, she's right, I like a little variety. You ever fool around? About three months is all.”

“You knew him three months?”

“Which is two months and five weeks too long. God, you shoulda' heard the scream Marilyn let out when he grabbed a handful.”

“Willie made a pass at someone here?” Bea fought for coherence and wished for an interpreter. But then, who would interpret the interpreters?

“Pass, smash. Mar was back here on a break, and Willie walks up behind her, one hand gives a goose and the other grabs a knocker. Jesus, did she yell. Everyone in the store stopped and pissed.”

“That's when they fired him?”

“Boss here don't give a fuck, you know. Hell, no union, and they can give you the finger anytime. Mar knocked him cold with a blue.”

“A blue what?”

“A frozen bluefish. Thought she nearly killed the little bastard.”

“Did you ever see him with any of his friends?”

“Dudes like Willie don't got no friends. They're professional enemies. I mean, you can't go to the local for a beer and a shot with Willie. He'd be hitting you up for five and you never could make out.”

“You never saw him with anyone?”

“Blond bird came in a coupla times and they came back here and yelled at each other. Like she wanted him to lay a few on her, but he never had any money—always broke.”

“Who was she?”

“A tough little bitch. I tried a play or two the first time she waltzed in, but she was the kind would want you to lay a C-note on her before she assumed the position.”

“Did you ever see him read anything such as books or newspapers?”

“Little fink couldn't read the price list and get it right.”

“Did he ever talk politics?”

Jimmy O'Halloran finished sprucing the last of the iceberg and carefully hung his rubber apron on a nail. He jockeyed the crate of produce onto a dolly, snaked a comb from his back pocket, and slicked his hair back. “Break time. How about you and I going back behind the avocados? We got a mattress back there for when Mar's in the mood.”

“How about me telling your old lady?”

He blanched. “You wouldn't do that?”

“Then you wouldn't have to perform for maybe six months or a year.”

“You wouldn't do that?”

“Don't tempt me, Jimmy. Really, don't tempt me.”

Bea found a symmetry to Willie Shep's career. She backtracked his job history and found that before the three months at the supermarket there were three months at the taxi company (fired after a minor accident when it was found he'd been drinking on the job). Then there was the loading dock at the wire mold factory until terminated for excessive absenteeism. In none of her interviews had she discovered any political awareness on the part of Willie, any evidence of radical literature he might have read, or radical friends he might have had. At least not as far as his jobs were concerned. She knew from the police dossier that he'd spent a year in the Marines before being given a general discharge, which she knew was a euphemism for a goof-off the service wanted to dump.

The sign that read
ROOMS
stuck in the parlor floor window of the brownstone on East Tenth Street was flyspecked. Bea climbed the steps slowly. Her feet, even with the comfortable shoes she'd worn for walking, were beginning to have that dull numbness that pressages a full ache. With a sigh, she reached for the heavy knocker and let it fall three times in rapid succession. The dull thud echoed through the interior of the house.

A high voice penetrated the door. “All right, all right, keep your pants on.”

The woman who finally opened the door was of indeterminate age and very round. By some strange quirk of obesity, her stomach had moved outward and upward to meet the pendulous sag of her breasts. This provided a surface that made any evidence of a waistline indiscernible. She looked at Bea with small eyes embedded deep in a round face.

“Your sign says rooms available.”

The chain clattered off its hook as the woman leaned out the door to peer sideways at the sign in the window, as if viewing it for the first time. When she glanced back at Bea her eyes moved down the pantsuit.

“You want further uptown.”

Bea began to feel that she should pay more attention to her dress. An early morning pass by a produce clerk had now been followed by her identification as a prostitute. “I'm interested in a room on the second floor rear.”

“Don't allow no men unless he's your steady.”

“I doubt I'll have visitors.”

“Why that room?”

“I heard about it.”

“You don't look like a cop.”

“I want to see Willie Shep's room.”

“Cops already cleaned it out. I ain't running no tour guide service.”