Worst Case Scenario (13 page)

Chapter Seventeen

When he pulled up across the street from the tidy, working-class duplex in Wilmot, Ohio, Gallagher got a gut-wrench worse than the one that preceded the first sales call he'd ever made. It wasn't quite paralyzing, but it was bad enough to make him forget for a moment the brain-numbing fatigue that pulsed through his body after the six hours of cabs, planes, shuttle buses, and rental cars that separated him right now from Washington.

He'd been doubtful from the beginning about even finding the woman. He was a salesman, not an analyst. He hadn't seen the inside of a library since college. He couldn't believe that he could just walk up to the ready reference desk of the Wilmot Public Library, give the librarian a two-week range of dates and a topic, and have her turn over a handful of yellow clippings from the
Wilmot Press Gazette
that would tell him what he needed to know.

But that's what had happened. Inside fifteen minutes he'd had five names, and it hadn't taken much review of the follow-up articles to decide that Marian Littlecross was the one he wanted to see.

He didn't expect an answer when he rang the bell beside the dull silver-framed screen door, and he didn't get one. Taking out one of his cards, he printed two sentences neatly on the back in blue felt-tip pen and wedged the card in between the door's frame and the grillwork decorating its front. The sentences read: “Ms. Littlecross: I have $55 for you if you have 15 minutes for me. I'll phone at 6:00.”

On his way to the Red Roof Inn, where he had a reservation, he supplied himself with two bacon cheeseburgers, a large order of crispy curls, and a six-pack of beer. He figured that once he was in his room resting on pillows propped against the headboard of his bed, the food, the beer, and ESPN would just about get him through to six o'clock.

Gallagher had spent the better part of two hours the day before talking with Michaelson and Marjorie about the most effective way to approach the woman whose name he'd managed to find. The consensus was total deceit.

Gallagher didn't like that, particularly. On his office desk a Lucite paperweight encased a bromide in which he happened to believe with passionate intensity: “A Lie Doesn't Sell Anything But Your Competitor's Product.” Unfortunately, though, he couldn't come up with anything within spitting distance of the truth that looked like it might work, so he was going along with the approach they'd suggested.

Promptly at six he muted the tube and called Littlecross' telephone number. He reached an answering machine. The voice on the recording sounded simultaneously defensive and world-weary. Gamely reminding himself of another piece of paperweight wisdom—”Selling Starts When the Customer Says No”—he took a deep breath and plunged in.

“Ms. Littlecross,” he said after the beep, “this is Todd Gallagher with SafeHome Security, and I've got some good news for you. Your name was selected for participation in a marketing survey that I'll be conducting for SafeHome in this area. The survey takes fifteen minutes flat, and your answers will of course be kept strictly confidential. If you're willing to take part, you'll be paid fifty-five dollars, and that's cash on the nail, before you answer question one. You can reach me—”

He stopped as he heard the phone pick up.

“Okay, I've heard enough,” a husky contralto said.

“Ms. Littlecross?”

“That's me. I just wanted to hear what was behind the hint before I decided whether to talk to you. You checked out. The number on your card is the same one information has for your office in Raleigh, there's someone there who's heard of you, and the Better Business Bureau says you're reputable.”

“I'm relieved to hear that,” Gallagher said, reflecting automatically that this didn't sound like a woman who needed home security advice from him or anyone else.

“You gonna try to sell me anything? 'Cause I'll tell you right off the bat I'm not in the market. I have forty-five-caliber security, and that's all I've ever needed.”

“No, ma'am, I'm not going to try to sell you a thing. I am a salesman and people tell me I'm good at it, but today I'm trying to get information that'll help me sell things to other people.”

“I guess you might as well come on over, then. Just be sure you have the money, and plan on being out of here before
Seinfeld
comes on.”

“See you in half an hour,” Gallagher said.

***

The woman who opened her door to Gallagher twenty-seven minutes later looked as though she was in her early fifties. Light brown hair streaked with gray framed a square face with a no-nonsense, this-is-as-good-as-it's-gonna-get expression. The top of her head came almost to Gallagher's chin, which made her five-eight or five-nine, and that height deemphasized a solid build that would have appeared stocky on a shorter woman.

He gave her another of his cards and she invited him in. He stepped directly into a living room where a younger, thinner, shorter version of Marian Littlecross sat with her eyes fixed on a flickering television screen. She didn't glance up at Gallagher's entrance, and Gallagher looked at her only long enough to see her brush Dorito crumbs absently from an oversized, hot-pink T-shirt. Judging from her features, he would have said she was in her early twenties, although her posture, expression, and waist-length hair made him wonder if she were actually still an adolescent.

This would be the girl who, according to the clippings, had been rushed to the hospital with crudely bandaged wrists and a near-catatonic nervous breakdown after finding one of the praying-for-you-in-heaven cards in her mail. He hadn't thought that much about it, but seeing her there now, he shivered involuntarily at the thought of it. However obliquely, he could feel what it must have been like to read that card, without warning, a year after an abortion had ended the first and, as it turned out, the only pregnancy you'd ever have.

Apparently without considering an introduction, Marian Littlecross led Gallagher directly across the living room, through a small dining room, and into a brightly lit kitchen.

“I'm having coffee,” she said as she gestured toward a turquoise table and chairs against the far wall. “How about you?”

“Coffee would be fine, thanks. Black.”

As Littlecross fussed with cups and a Mr. Coffee, Gallagher opened his Leatherette folder, pulled a standard survey form and a SafeHome logo envelope out of its cover pocket, and wondered exactly how he was going to bring this off. During the planning stage it had seemed as though getting in the door would be the hard part and the rest would be a snap: Just find a way to work Sharon Bedford's name into their chat, watch Littlecross' reaction, and make a judgment. Now that part didn't look like such a piece of cake after all.

Littlecross put a midnight blue mug at Gallagher's place and set a pearl gray mug at her own. Stark white lettering on each said borealis health center. Then she sat down and nodded at Gallagher with what he took to be permission to begin.

“First off,” he said, handing her the envelope, “let's not forget your payment. You're kind enough to take time to talk to us, and we do appreciate it.”

Littlecross slit the envelope open and examined its contents skeptically. She found a slick, full-color SafeHome brochure, a fifty, and a five. She folded the fresh-from-the-cash-machine currency into a pocket of her pale blue skirt and set the brochure and the envelope aside—both, obviously, destined for the trash the moment the door closed behind Gallagher.

Figuring that he'd purchased all the goodwill he was going to, Gallagher began going through the survey, asking questions that were carefully designed to make anyone answering them wonder whether they could stand to live another thirty minutes without a fully installed SafeHome security system: How many hours a day is the house empty? What percentage of the people in this neighborhood work away from home during the day? What did she think was the level of illegal drug use in Wilmot? Officials elsewhere estimated that over ninety percent of residential burglaries were committed by amateurs looking for things they could trade for drugs—did she think that was probably the situation in Wilmot as well?

And so on. Bored, monosyllabic answers. He was running out of time and questions and so far he didn't have a clue about how to get the only answer he cared about. Time for the punch line.

“We have a number of satisfied customers around the country who've given us permission to use their names in case you have any questions,” he said. “In the Washington, D.C., area—Bethesda, Maryland, actually—there's Sharon Bedford.”

He watched Littlecross' face. Nothing. Not a flicker.

“I thought you weren't going to try to sell me anything,” she said.

“Absolutely right. Just in case you have any questions about the brochure.”

This couldn't be it. All this way, all this time, all this effort for nothing but negative information. He'd come to believe in the connection between the Wilmot campaign ploy and Sharon's murder, and he wasn't ready to give up on it just because Marian Littlecross had a poker face. But he couldn't think of a way to push it any further.

His eyes scanned the modest kitchen in search of inspiration. Three rectangles—a plaque and two things in drugstore frames—hung on the twelve inches of wall above the sink, but he couldn't read any of them. Dish drainer, wall phone, an untidy pile of papers and address books. Nothing that sparked much of an idea.

Then he saw it. Perched sedately on top of the phone directories. A shiny green elephant, trunk curled, legs tucked under its baked-clay body, tusks jutting aggressively toward the sink. Taking up about two-thirds of the surface of the top book, the animal seemed massive.

“My word,” Gallagher said, his voice filling with wonder. “Is that a
boo-fay
? I haven't seen one of those things in almost twenty-five years.”

Boo-fay
, as Gallagher correctly pronounced it, is an acronym spelled BUFE. The B stands for Big. The U stands for Ugly. The E stands for Elephant. About ninety percent of the BUFEs owned by Americans were bought in South Vietnam.

Littlecross looked quickly over her shoulder to follow Gallagher's eyes.

“Yeah, it is, matter of fact,” she said. “It's been a long time since I've heard anyone call it that.”

Rising, Gallagher crossed the room in two strides to examine the beast.

“Brings back memories,” he muttered.

“‘Memories' is one word for them, I guess,” Littlecross said.

What was the other? Gallagher wondered.
Nightmares
?

He looked up at the three hangings over the sink. The nearest was a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree granted in 1967 by Duquesne University. A plaque, polished brass on dark pine, hung in the middle. Gallagher had read the bitter words engraved there before:

SOUTHEAST ASIA WAR GAMES

1965–1973

SECOND PLACE

The third hanging, beyond the plaque, was a photograph. Six impossibly young women with eyes impossibly old. They were all dressed in khaki uniforms. Four of them casually held cigarettes. Two were black and four were white. One of them was Marian Littlecross, many years ago. And although Gallagher knew the photograph Michaelson had seen only from Michaelson's detailed description, he realized instantly that another of the navy nurses in the picture before him was Deborah Moodie.

Chapter Eighteen

“You have one new message,” the electronic chirp reported cheerfully. “Recorded at nine-twelve p.m.”

“Uh-oh,” Michaelson said, for it was now almost one a.m.

He had last checked his answering machine at nine. Then he'd picked up Marjorie, not at Cavalier Books but at her home. She'd had to leave the store early and change, because they weren't just going out to a late dinner or the last showing of a subtitled movie. They were going ballroom dancing at the Austrian embassy.

With yesterday's rather ostentatious SafeHome LokBox delivery, Michaelson had decided it would be best to be away from his apartment for the bulk of the next several evenings. This had turned out to be a needless precaution yesterday evening, when he'd returned bleary-eyed around three a.m. to find that nothing had happened.

This morning, though—just barely, for the call came at 11:53—a longtime colleague had phoned from Foggy Bottom with the news that warm bodies were needed this evening at the Austrian embassy and a plea to pitch in for old times' sake. He had agreed instantly, partly because of a weakness for the older Strauss that he shared with Marjorie, but mostly because this sudden, custom-tailored invitation told him that tonight was The Night.

The orchestra played skillfully, the champagne sparkled, Michaelson's white dinner jacket gleamed lustrously under the chandeliers, Gallagher wasn't supposed to report until the next morning, and the (almost) carefree hours had slipped away.

Until now. Michaelson pressed 2 on the pay phone to trigger the message.

“Gallagher,” a harried voice said. “I think I've stumbled on some big-time stuff that we'd better talk about real soon. As in yesterday. There aren't any more direct flights from Cleveland to Washington tonight, but there's a connection through Pittsburgh that should get me in a bit after midnight. I'll hop a cab over to your place, and if you're not back yet, I'll park outside your door till you show.”

Michaelson glanced again at his watch. Twelve fifty-three.

“Problem?” Marjorie asked.

“Unless there's a highly unlikely backup on the Key Bridge, actually,” Michaelson said, “this could be extremely unpleasant.”

“It's a good thing we decided to take my car over here,” Marjorie sighed. “Let's go.”

***

Marjorie handed her car phone to Michaelson as her Chrysler Concord peeled up Fifteenth with a tire-squealing lurch. He'd given her the gist of Gallagher's message during their trot to the car.

“Call USAir at National and see if their flight from Pittsburgh got in on time,” she instructed him.

“How do you know he's flying USAir?” Michaelson asked as he dialed information.

“I don't,” she said. “It's just the only airline I can think of that flies from Pittsburgh.”

Marjorie's educated guess proved right, and Michaelson had the information by the time Marjorie screeched through a red light at Massachusetts and P.

“The flight was somewhat delayed,” he reported. “It reached the gate at twelve thirty-two.”

“He won't have checked his bag,” Marjorie muttered. “If he found a cabbie whose first language is English, this could be a dead heat.”

They reached the Georgetown street where Michaelson lived at 1:03. Seeing neither a cab nor an ambulance, Marjorie slowed, cut her lights, and double-parked at the end of the block.

“This scene should be in black and white,” she said. “I feel like I'm in a sixty-year-old Warner Brothers movie. Did you spot anyone?”

“No,” Michaelson said, “but as John Wayne put it in
Fort Apache
, ‘If you saw 'em, they weren't Apaches.' I'll guarantee you there's a lookout within sixty feet of my front door.”

“Where are you going?” Marjorie demanded in some alarm as Michaelson began to get out of the car.

“I'm going to give the lookout something to see. Perhaps looking at a man standing outside his building to savor the night's memories for a few minutes will give the chap time to do his job and divert him from more mischievous pursuits.”

“What if Gallagher already got here and is noisily pounding on your door?”

“Then we'll have to hope that our presumed visitors had a backup plan more imaginative than simply coming out the front door.”

“All right,” Marjorie said. “I'll look for a parking space.”

“Very well. But please don't come up until a light comes on in the window on the Wisconsin Avenue side.”

Michaelson crossed the street deliberately as Marjorie pulled away, and upon reaching the opposite sidewalk, ambled without haste toward his apartment building. The white dinner jacket seemed absurdly conspicuous, but he would have felt exposed even in charcoal gray or navy blue. He reminded himself to suppress his sense of urgency, to stroll, not to hurry or do anything else that might spook someone a few yards away with a bad state of nerves on a hot summer night.

As he approached his building's entrance, he veered toward the street. Left hand in the side pocket of his pants. Right hand rubbing his nose, scratching his chin, dropping limply. He leaned forward and gazed down the street in each direction, as if hoping against hope that his companion might reconsider and return. He posed, imagining titles for the picture he was trying to create.
Too Early for Bed
, perhaps by Gibson. Or with a little wiggle in the brush strokes,
Night's Remnant
by one of the American Impressionists. His mind, meanwhile, sent urgent little telepathic messages into the shadows behind him:
You have plenty of time. No need to do anything rash
.

This went on for six minutes, which should have been more than ample. Turning deliberately, Michaelson then climbed toward the front door. It took him another thirty seconds to get into the lobby and call for the elevator. By the time he stepped from the elevator onto the fourth floor, there should have been abundant opportunity for any burglar not yet eligible for Social Security to get out the alley window and safely away.

He saw Gallagher pacing with nervous energy at the end of the hall, his suit carrier parked against the wall. A grin spreading across his face, Gallagher glanced up at him.

“I guess you got my message,” he said.

“Only a few minutes ago when I called my answering machine,” Michaelson said. “I've been at an embassy party all night and Ms. Randolph just dropped me off. Racing back to Washington in the small hours of the morning is above and beyond the call of duty, and flying USAir to do it was downright heroic.”

“Maybe I got a little excited,” Gallagher said. “But I thought what I found was pretty important, and I didn't want to get into it over the phone.”

“Quite right. Well, let's go in, shall we?”

Michaelson raised the first of the two keys he'd normally need to get into his apartment. It was less than an inch from the lock when the door flew open. An instant later a hard right shoulder smashed into Michaelson's chest and sent him sprawling backward against Gallagher.

So much for imagination, Michaelson thought.

Michaelson felt himself being lowered gently to the floor. He saw the scampering burglar already at the opposite end of the hall, starting down the old-fashioned iron stairway there. Then, as he safely reached the floor, he felt Gallagher let go of him and saw the younger man hustle after the burglar.

“No!” Michaelson yelled, without the slightest discernible effect on Gallagher.

Michaelson scrambled to his feet and hurried after Gallagher and his prey, but he realized that he was doing it strictly for the exercise. This wasn't going to be any contest.

Football coaches distinguish between
fast
and
quick
. Gallagher was both, and by the time he burst out through the front door of Michaelson's building, the burglar had only a five- to ten-yard lead on him. As it happened, the burglar was at that point closing fast on Marjorie, who was approaching the entrance from the opposite direction. She stepped prudently aside.

Any doubts she had about what was going on evaporated when a dark-clad figure burst from the shadows beyond the steps and attempted to blindside Gallagher as he leaped from the entryway to the sidewalk.

The attempt was unsuccessful. Gallagher's left leg snapped viciously, the sole of his foot caught his attacker in the middle of his chest, and the man sprawled backward with a strangled groan. With the burglar's lead now slightly increased, Gallagher raced to continue his pursuit.

As Gallagher approached her, Marjorie did not step prudently aside. There are two things that can happen here, she thought, and both of them are bad.

“Down!” she yelled, making a grab for Gallagher's arm as he sprinted past her.

Gallagher ignored this injunction, but he didn't ignore the gunshot that whistled two feet over his head. He ducked in a wary squat behind the bumper of the nearest car, pulling Marjorie protectively with him.

“Get DOWN!” repeated Marjorie, whose idea of
down
where gunfire was concerned involved being prone.

Two more shots split the humid darkness. Glass shattered. Sheet metal whined. Without further encouragement, Gallagher flattened himself on the street.

A pause. Long enough to raise your head, begin to tell your arms to push your body up.

Then three more shots, half a second apart. Fired from maybe a little farther away and a slightly different angle, but it was hard to be sure about that when you're busy kissing the bricks again. Wood splintered, a tire exploded, and stone screamed with a ricochet.

Another pause, this one shorter. Then more shots. Too many, fired too fast to have any hope of counting them. But those were just fireworks anyway. Neither Gallagher nor Marjorie had any intention of raising their heads until the gunner had had plenty of time to leave the area in the privacy he clearly desired.

Their first impulse when they finally did look up sixty seconds later was to glance back at where the guy who'd tried to tackle Gallagher had landed after Gallagher's drop-kick. He was gone.

“Joker had tried anything that lame with Victor Charlie, he'd've come home in a body bag,” Gallagher said. Unused adrenaline still pumping through his body made his voice ragged.

“The rules are slightly milder in nineties Georgetown,” Marjorie said. “Though not too much milder, apparently.”

Gallagher glanced back in the direction the shots had come from.

“That son of a gun emptied a clip at us,” he said.

“He emptied a clip,” Marjorie said, “but he managed to hit everything in the neighborhood except us. We just learned something important.”