Under Siege (38 page)

But he knew the answer. He pointed the car toward

Avenue and fed gas.

“How well do you know Captain Grafton?” Jack Yocke asked Toad Tarkington. It was about ten o’clock and they were standing on the balcony looking at the city. It was nippy but there was little wind. “Oh, about as well as any junior officer can know a senior one. I think he personally likes me, but at the office I’m just another one of the guys.”

“By reputation, he’s one of the best officers in the Navy.”

“He’s the best I ever met. Period,” Toad said. “You want paper shuffled, Captain Grafton can handle it. You want critical decisions wisely made or carefullly defended, he’s your man. You need a man to lead other men in!combat, get Grafton. You want a plane flown to Hell and back, nobody’s better than he is. If you want an officer who will always do right regardless of the consequences, then you want Jake Grafton.”

“How about you?”

“Me? I’m just a lieutenant. I fly when I’m told, sleep when I’m told, and shit when it’s on the schedule.”

“How does Captain Grafton always know what the right thing to do is?” “What is this? lwenty questions? Don’t you ever lay off?”

“Just curious. I’m not going to print this.”

“You’d better not. I’ll break your pencil.”

“How does he know?”

“He’s got common sense. That’s a rare commodity inside the beltway. I haven’t seen enough of it in this town to fill a condom, but common sense is Jake Grafton’s long suit.”

Yocke chuckled.

“Better watch that,” Toad admonished. “Your press card may melt if you crack a smile. Your reputation as an uptight superprick is on the line here.”

Jack Yocke grinned. “I deserved that. Sorry about those cracks the first time I met you. I was having a bad day.”

“Had one of those myself one time,” Tarkington muttered. He stamped his feet. “I’m getting cold. Let’s go inside.”

Harrison Ronald stood by the side of the Mustang and stared at the right front tire. Flat.

Tmffic whizzed by on Rhode Island Avenue. When he felt the wheel pulling and heard the thumping, he had pulled into a convenience store parking lot.

Fate, he decided, as he opened the trunk and rooted in it for the jack and lug wrench. On the way to his rendezvous with destiny, Galahad’s horse threw a shoe. How comes this stuff never happens in the movies?

He got the front end off the ground, but the lug nuts were rusted on. Damn that Freeman, he never had these tires rotated or balanced or aligned. Got so damned much money he never takes care of anything.

He needed a cheater bar or a hammer. Frustrated, he sat on the pavement and kicked at the end of the lug wrench. The wrench flew off, scarring the nut. He tried it again. And again. Finally the nut turned.

A police cruiser pulled into the lot and stopped in front of the store. Two white cops. They got out of the cruiser, stood for a moment or two silently watching Ford wrestle with the wrench, then went inside.

Jesus, didn’t they see the outline of the automatic in the small of his back, under his coat? Those shitheads. A weapon was the first thing they should have been looking

for.

As Ford kicked at the last nut, he glanced through the big platass windows. The cops were sipping coffee and flirting with the girl behind the counter. He skinned his knuckle and it started bleeding. Well, it wouldn’t bleed long. The dirt and grease would get in the skinned place and stop the blood. His father’s hands had always had chunks missing, cavities full of dirt and grease that slowly, ever so slowly, healed just in time to be ripped open again. As a kid he had looked at his fathees thick, heavy hands and asked, “Don’t they hurt?”

Dad, wherever you are, my hands are cold and hurt like bell and my ass is freezing from the pavement and my nose is dripping. He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

So what did’ya expect? The cops’d help? Get real!

Jack Yocke found himself staring at Tish Samuels. He had been watching her for several minutes when he realized with a start what he was doing. He glanced around to see if anyone had noticed. Jake Grafton met his eyes. Yocke smiled and looked away.

Okay, so she’s not Playboy beautiful, she’ll never be on the cover of Cosmo. In her own way she’s lovely.

Standing there watching her move, watching her gestures and body language, he remembered the Cuban madonna on the hood of the truck with the baby at her breast. How long had he looked at that girl? Thirty seconds? A minute? That woman had been life going down the road. In spite of war, revolution, poverty, starvation, she rode with courage from the past into the future.

He looked at Tish and tried to visualize her on the hood of that truck. She could ride there, he concluded. She’s a survivor.

He poured himself another drink and settled on the couch to watch Tish Samuels.

Maybe he was just getting older. His ambitions somehow seemed less important than they used to be and he was rapidly losing faith in his own opinions. How many of his colleagues truly believed in the ultimate wisdom of the voters? Opinionated, egotistical iconoclasts-Jack Yocke marching bravely among them-they believed only in themselves.

Okay, Jack. If your meager brains and wisdom won’t be enough, what will be? What do you believe in?

Musing thus, he found himself contemplating his shoes and in his mind’s eye seeing the people walking on the road to Havana, walking as the dust rose and the sun beat down, walking into the unknown.

In front of the Sanitary Bakery Harrison Ronald turned the car around on a whim and backed it up beside the others. Six other cars. A crowd tonight.

He went to the door and knocked.

The man inside shut the door behind him and bolted it and jerked his head. “They want you upstairs, second floor, way down at the end.”

The interior of the warehouse was dark, no lights. The only illumination came from streetlights outside through the dirty windows high up in the wall. He knew what was in here though and went along confidently as his eyes adjusted.

Second floor, down at the end. God, there was nothing down there but some empty offices with six inches of dust, dirt, and rat shit, and some broken-down furniture that was so trashed the last tenant had left it.

He checked the position of the automatic in his waistband at the small of his back and pushed against the thumb safety to ensure that it was still on. Wouldn’t do to shoot yourself in the ass, Harrison Ronald.

He went up the stairs and turned left, toward the east end of the building. He could hear moaning. A male voice. He stopped dead. Someone groaning, a deep, animal

sound. Harrison Ronald stood frozen, listening. There! Again!

He slipped his hand under his coat and touched the butt of the automatic again, then pulled his hand away. No one in sight. Just the windows and the dim light and the black shapes of the pillars that hold up the roof. And that sound.

The terror seized him then. He started shaking as the low animal sound curled around him and echoed gently down the vast, empty, dark room. Someone past screaming, someone who had screamed his lungs out, who was now past words and pleas and prayers, someone who was past all caring. Someone who moaned now only because he still breathed.

There was something else. A smell! He sniffed carefully. Burned meat. Yes, burned meat, the smell of fried fat, acrid and pungent.

Oh, my God!

Harrison Ronald Ford walked forward. Toward the door open and the light leaking out.

The moans were louder and the voice.

“You betrayed your brothers, your brothers of the blood. Sold out to the honky fucks, sold out your flesh and blood, sold out…” Freeman Mcationally. Harrison Ronald recognized the voice. Freeman Mcational- “What did theypayyou? Money? You’ll never spend it. Women? You’ll never screw “em, not with what you got now. Ha!”

Mcationally was insane. Crazy mad. His voice was an octave too high, on the verge of hysteria. “Kill me.” Silence. A scream. “Kill me!”

Harrison Ronald Ford pushed open the door. The stench was overpowering.

A naked man was tied to a chair in the middle of the room and above him an unshaded bulb burned. At least, he had once been a man. Strips of flesh hung from his frame. His crotch was a mass of raw meat. His face-Harrison walked closer to see his face-only one eye left-the other socket was black and burned and empty. On his chest were more burns. Amazingly, there was very little blood.

“Put the gun away, Sammy.”

He looked around. Other men sat in chairs around the wall. On the floor was a laundry iron with bits of flesh still clinging to it, a wisp of smoke rising.

“Put the gun away, Sammy.” It was Freeman. He was standing against the window. He had a pistol out and was pointing it.

Harrison looked down. The Colt was in his hand. He lowered it, then looked again at the man in the chair. “Kill me.”

“The shithead sold us out. He was whispering tales to the feds. He admitted it, finally.”

He could kill them all. The thought ran through Harrison’s mind and he moved his thumb to the safety. Five

of them, seven rounds. Freeman first, then the others. As fast as he could pull the trigger.

Freeman walked over to Ford and stood looking at the man in the chair with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Isn’t that some heavy shit? I’ve known him as long as I can remember. And he sold me out. was Freeman snorted and shook his head. The sweat flew from his brow. “And all this time I thought it was you, Sammy. Shee-it!”

Mcationally shook his head again and walked back to the window. There he turned and pointed his pistol at Harrison Ford. “You got a gun. Kill him.” He said it conversationally, like he was ordering a pizza.

The tortured man was staring at Ford with his one eye. His hands were still tied behind the chair, orbledwhat was left of his hands. Traces of white showed through the seared flesh-bones.

“Shoot him,” Freeman said, making it an order.

Harrison took a step closer. The eye followed him. Now the badly burned lips moved. He bent down to hear. “Kill me,” the lips whispered.

Harrison thumbed off the safety. He raised the Colt and pointed it above the raw, oozing hole where the man’s left ear had been. The ear itself lay on the floor by the iron. “Sorry, Ike,” Ford said, and pulled the trigger.

ke Randolph’s body was in the trunk of the car when Harrison Ronald parked it on E Street in front of the FBI building. Freeman had told him to get rid of it, dump the body in the street somewhere. The mutilated corpse would

nly be a little point to ponder for anyone who someday entertain the notion of crossing Freeman Mcationally.

, Freeman. Whatever you say, man. Four of them had tossed the body in the trunk and Harrison had driven away. He hadn’t waved good-bye. And he pondered the point. The sun was up.

Sunday. Eight a.m. The streets and parking places were empty. In a few hours the suburban malls would open and the last-minute Christmas crowds would pack the parking lots and surge through the sprawling temples of retailing. The shoppers would swarm over the downtown malls too, but that was two hours away. Right now the only people on the streets were alcoholics and derelicts. Paper and trash from overflowing cans swept by the car, carried by the wind.

Harrison sat behind the wheel with the engine off and listened to the silence.

He had made it. He was still alive. His hands shook. The relief hit him like a hammer and he began to sob. He was tired, desperately tired. The tears rolled down his cheeks and he lacked the energy to move. Done.

Well, hell, I gotta get to Hooper. Give him the keys to Ike Randolph’s hearse, then get some sleep.

He remembered to lock the car, then climbed the stairs to the FBI building and walked through the open foyer to the quadrangle. He went down the stairs to the quadrangle plaza and crossed to the kiosk where the Federal Security guard stood. The uniformed man watched him approach. “Tom Hooper. Call him.”

“And who are you?”

“Sam … Harrison Ronald Ford. Evansville, Indiana, police. He’s expecting me.”

“If you want to stand over there, sir, I’ll call up and see if he’s here.” He walked away so the rent-a-cop could watch his hands. He was too tired to stand. He sank down against the wall and crossed his arms on his knees and lowered his head to rest on them.

He was sitting like that, crying, when Thomas Hooper spoke to him six or seven minutes later.

“There’s a corpse in the trunk of the car.”

“Who?” Freddy and Hooper stared at Ford. “Ike Randolph. They tortured him. He’s a real mess.” The FBI agents looked at each other. “We gotta ditch the body.”

“Why?” Freddy asked, incredulous.

“We gotta, man,” Harrison insisted.

“Now listen. We go to the grand jury on Monday. Monday evening or Tuesday they hand down murder indictments and we scoop up Freeman Mcationally and his lieutenants and lock them up. They won’t get out on bail. There’s no bail for murder. Then we give the grand jury all the rest of it and let them come up with a couple hundred counts.”

Harrison was tired. “You listen. Freeman gave me tonight off. But if that body don’t show up someplace, he’ll smell a rat. The very first thing he’ll do is check my apartment to see if I’m there. I won’t be, man, I can guarantee you that. I ain’t ever going back there. Then Freeman’ll will. Maybe he’ll skip. Maybe he’ll be waiting with heavy ordnance when you 90 to bust him. Maybe he’ll put out a contract on me. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder!”

“We can’t just go dump a corpse in the public street and-was

“Why not?” Tom Hooper asked. “Well, hell, we’re the cops, for Christ’s sake.”

“We dump the corpse and wait half an hour and call the police. Why not?”

Hooper was thinking of the grand jury and the lawyers. Just because the FBI wanted a quick indictment was no guarantee there would be one. It might take a week. And as he sat staring at Harrison Ford, he realized that he was going to play it Ford’s way or the undercover man might go to pieces. Ford might not last a week.

“Where you parked?”

“Right in front of the building on E.”