Dead Bang Read online

  “I am sure they were on top of the television,” said Manny.

  “I’ll go get them,” said Karen.

  Manny scrambled off his chair. “I will check while you prepare the tea.”

  Karen took a laundry basket from a narrow closet next to the refrigerator. “I have to get our stuff in the washer,” said Karen. “And we have to wash Art’s hanky.”

  “We must share tea with our friends,” said Manny, his voice stern.

  “It’ll take a couple of minutes for the kettle to boil,” said Karen. She kicked off her shoes and padded out of the room with the basket under her arm. The chill in the house had roused her nipples, and I measured the sway of her breasts under the thin gauze of her peasant top.

  “But,” said Manny. Panic flushed down his face. “I am quite sure!” He hurried after Karen.

  I turned to Wendy and found her wearing disdain like a party mask. “You’re old enough to be her father,” she whispered.

  We never had any daughters.

  “It’s like a train wreck,” I said. “You can’t look away.”

  Wendy tucked her chin to serve me a doubtful, sideways glance from under arched eyebrows.

  “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it,” I said.

  Wendy leaned back against her chair and fished the cigarette case out of her purse. Her butterfly pendant—a gold wire frame with black onyx inlays—nestled in her sweater between her breasts. She caught me looking.

  “I’ve always liked that pendant,” I said.

  “That’s your story?”

  “Not entirely,” I said and kissed her temple.

  From the bedroom, I heard Karen laugh. I patted Wendy’s shoulder. A faint smile fought its way onto her lips. Then, we heard the flat smack of an open-handed blow.

  Karen screamed.

  4

  WENDY AND I FOUND MANNY sitting on the bed, hugging the suitcase like a teddy bear while Karen jerked on the broken trolley handle. Having raised three children, I knew exactly what to do. I yelled, “Knock it off!”

  Wendy racked her fists on her hips and said, “All right. One at a time. What’s going on here?”

  The trolley handle snapped off the suitcase with a crack. Karen stumbled back and crumpled into a pile on her laundry basket. Manny stood up, holding the suitcase like a bag of groceries. He said, “I am going now.”

  I shoved him back onto the bed with my left hand, pointed my right index finger at his face, and said, “In this country, you don’t smack women around.”

  Manny let the suitcase roll onto the bed. He stood up with his feet spread, elbows tucked, and fists turned up karate style, at his waist. He said, “You should mind your business!”

  I faked a straight right but twisted left to lay on the left hook. Manny’s left foot brushed my right ear as it rocketed by my head. Wendy’s purse arced by—in a blur on the end of its long leather strap—catching Manny standing on one foot as it rang the bell on the right side of his head. The Maverick .380 in the purse might as well have been a brick. Thank God Wendy doesn’t carry a bullet in the spout, like I do. The blow bulldozed Manny onto the bed on his right shoulder.

  Karen regained her feet and clocked Manny squarely on the back of the head with the trolley handle. Wendy’s second swing caught Manny on the backside and drove him to the floor. Karen’s second swing smacked across his back, and he let out a yip—which meant he was alive. I was relieved.

  I turned to Wendy as she wound up for another swing—her eyes narrow with laser heat—and smothered her with a hug. “It’s okay,” I said softly. “It’s enough.”

  She growled, “Let me go.”

  Karen beat a steady “Yiee! Yiee! Yiee!” out of Manny with the trolley handle. Manny pushed himself to his knees. Guarding his head with one arm, he crawled for the bedroom door.

  Wendy relaxed. I let her go and grabbed Karen’s wrist. “That’s enough!” I told her. Manny scrambled to his feet and ran down the hall for the front door.

  Karen’s lips curled open over clenched teeth. I shook her wrist and yelled her name. The light came back into her eyes as she focused on me. She shook her head and said, “What?”

  “That’s enough,” I said. She relaxed, and I let her go. Manny had the front door open. Karen tore after him with a war whoop and the trolley bar raised over her head. Three steps down the hall, I caught an arm around her waist, and she let fly with her trolley handle. Manny skated out the door and yanked it shut just as the handle crashed on the door and clattered to the linoleum.

  I turned Karen to face me. She moved her head back and squinted her eyes. I released her and blocked the way to the door. “If somebody smacks you, you can defend yourself,” I said. “But this has gone way beyond that.”

  Karen folded her arms and made an insolent face. “I only smacked him once.”

  “You hit him?”

  Wendy started out of the bedroom. She caught my gaze, closed her eyes, and shook her head.

  “Why did you smack him?” I asked.

  “Because I put the shirts in the suitcase, and if they aren’t in there, he took them out.”

  “So you smacked him?” I asked.

  “No, he wouldn’t give me the suitcase.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “He said to tell you and Wendy to go,” said Karen. “He said if I didn’t make you leave, he’d kill you. So I laughed. And then I smacked him.”

  “Right,” I said. “Well, listen. I’m going to go see if I can get Manny to come back. Maybe we can talk this out. If he goes to the police, this is going to get ugly.”

  I didn’t see Manny on the street, so I walked west toward Division Avenue checking bushes and backyards with open gates along the way. I found Manny sulking against a pay telephone in front of a rambling collection of oblong gray cinder block cubes that was the Casa Via Motel—“Low Rates For Extended Stays.”

  Manny snapped into his karate stance. “I am not afraid of you,” he said, his voice calm, almost bored.

  “I didn’t come here to fight you,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the honk and swoosh of traffic on Division Avenue. “I came here to apologize.”

  “I can easily defeat you.”

  “If this is about a couple of T-shirts, it’s not worth all this trouble. I hope you’re not hurt badly.”

  “No,” he said and relaxed his stance. The cosmetics had been washed off his face. He raised a hand to comfort a lump on his head. Two long welts formed a red “X” on his forearm. He looked away. “Allah is merciful they did not kill me.”

  I chuckled. “I don’t think they would have killed you.”

  He took his hand off his head and showed it to me palm up. “This woman is crazy.”

  “Karen has some issues,” I said.

  He said something in a language I didn’t understand. Whatever was on my face, I don’t know, but he translated, “The Prophet says that two-thirds of the souls in hell are women.”

  “Muhammad?”

  “Peace be upon him.”

  “Look,” I said. “Come back to the house. We’ll talk this out. You can get your stuff. I’ll take you anywhere you want. I’ll drive. Hell”—I shrugged—“you can drive.”

  “I have called for help,” said Manny.

  “As long as you’re all right.”

  “I want my property.”

  “Come back to the house,” I said.

  “You should take your woman and go before there is trouble.”

  “There’s no need for the police,” I said. “This is just a misunderstanding. We can talk this out.”

  “You have called the police?” asked Manny. He scanned the street, moving his eyes but not his head.

  “You said you called for help.”

  “Yes,” said Manny. “On the telephone I said I need help.” He looked away. “Will they send the police?”

  I laughed. “Well, the fire department’s across the street.” The fire station stood quiet and dark—with two g
arage doors rolled down like the eyelids of a sleeping giant.

  “There are police there?”

  “Nope,” I said. “Just firemen.”

  “I do not think you know what is funny,” said Manny, his face angry.

  “C’mon, Manny. You got to lighten up here.”

  “I know what is funny.” Manny pointed at his chest. “I make people laugh.”

  “Okay, Manny, I’m sorry. I wasn’t making fun of you because I respect you. If you like, I’ll wait for the police with you.”

  Manny turned and walked north toward Forty-fourth Street. Without looking back he said, “Do not wait for the police.”

  “You’re all right?”

  “Take your woman. I am not being funny …” The rest was lost in street noise.

  • • •

  I didn’t have to knock. Karen stood guarding the door, happy as a cocker spaniel with a new chew toy.

  “The bad news is that I have to buy new clothes,” she said.

  “Art,” Wendy summoned from inside the house, using the same voice I heard the day she found the garter snake coiled in the middle of the laundry room floor.

  I brushed by Karen. “What is it, hon?”

  “Did you find Manny?” Her voice came from the kitchen.

  “I talked to him. He said he called the police, but then he walked away.”

  “You’d better take a look at this,” said Wendy.

  I rounded the corner. The suitcase lay on the table with the lid open. From the look on Wendy’s face I expected body parts, but it was money. No shoes. No toiletries. No Skivvies. Just money. Used bills, bound in rubber bands.

  Karen said, “The good news is that I have plenty of money.”

  “Holy shit,” I said, and pried up the bundles with the ballpoint pen from the breast pocket of my suit coat. “It goes all the way to the bottom. If Manny called for help, I don’t think he called the police.”

  Karen took a bundle, unwrapped the elastic band, and fanned out a fistful of fives, tens, and twenties.

  “You think it’s counterfeit?” asked Wendy.

  “Not likely,” I said. “People rarely print their own small change.”

  “Drugs?” asked Wendy.

  “Generally they smuggle the drug money out of the country.”

  “I know what kind of money it is,” said Karen.

  Wendy and I fixed eyes on her. She smiled.

  “My money,” she said.

  “Actually, technically, it’s Manny’s money,” I said.

  “It was in my suitcase,” said Karen. “We don’t have to tell anyone,” said Karen. She shook a handful of cash at us. “We can share it.” She focused on the cash. “Oh, my God,” she said, “there’s fifties and some hundreds too.”

  “When I talked to Manny, he said he wanted his property back. If he comes up empty, whoever he works for will probably kill him and then come here looking for us,” I said.

  “I didn’t think he had any friends here,” said Karen.

  “What makes you say that?” asked Wendy.

  “He was supposed to go to Germany, but he said they canceled his tour. So he was going to spend some time here and then we were going over to Canada.”

  Wendy rolled her eyes. “He said.”

  “No, really,” said Karen. “Manny is a comedian. I met him on the beach, but he gave me tickets to his show. He was in the ballroom in the casino, and the place was packed. When we left, he cashed in a ticket for Germany to come with me.”

  “I never heard of him,” said Wendy.

  “If he talks for a living,” I said, “what’s with the pidgin English?”

  “He doesn’t have a Canadian accent,” said Karen.

  “I just talked to him,” I said. “He didn’t sound Canadian to me either.”

  “He does accents in his act,” said Karen. “Maybe it was the whack on his head.”

  “He had a Canadian passport?” asked Wendy.

  Karen made one nod.

  “He came here for a reason,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Karen, beaming. “He came here with me.”

  Wendy closed her eyes and smiled.

  “Do you have a telephone book?” I asked.

  Karen shook the money in her hand. “I’m keeping this,” she said, but her face was less certain. “I have to replace my clothes and stuff.”

  “You need to replace your lingerie,” Wendy said, and handed her another bundle. Karen’s eyes lit up like a kid with a new kitten.

  “I’ll just put this in my drawer,” Karen said and started out of the room.

  “The telephone book?” I said.

  “In the cupboard over the telephone,” she called out as she skipped down the hall.

  I wheedled the telephone book from under the stack of unopened mail, unpaid bills, and fashion catalogs. “They won’t let her keep that,” I said.

  “Easy come, easy go,” said Wendy.

  The telephone book was two years old. The back of the front cover listed “emergency numbers.” I dialed the local FBI office, got no answer, and looked at my watch. Seven-fifteen. I dialed the number listed for the Detroit office.

  “FBI, Detroit,” said a female voice in an angelic crystal chime that sounded like it belonged to a twelve-year-old.

  “I need to speak with a special agent,” I said.

  Karen walked back into the kitchen.

  “I’m Special Agent Holman,” said the young voice.

  “Good,” I said, and tried to make it sound positive. These days it seemed to me that law-enforcement agencies recruited directly from the grade school safety patrol. “A close friend of mine flew in from Nassau today. She brought a new friend with her, a fellow of Middle-Eastern descent—”

  “What was his name?” Agent Holman asked.

  “All I have is Manny. Just a sec.” I turned to Karen but didn’t cover the telephone. “What’s Manny’s last name?”

  Karen looked at me like I had lost my mind. “Manny is all I know,” she said.

  “You don’t know his last name?” asked Wendy.

  “Why should I?” asked Karen, indignant. “We just hooked up.”

  “You saw his passport,” I said.

  “Big maple leaf,” said Karen.

  “We don’t know his name,” I said into the telephone. “He had a Canadian passport. He was in Nassau working as a comedian.”

  “Why did you call, Mister …?”

  “Hardin,” I said. “Art Hardin. Karen Smith is the young lady with the new friend. I’m calling because Manny emptied Karen’s suitcase in Nassau and brought it into the country filled with cash.”

  “How much?” she asked.

  “About a bushel and a half in various denominations.”

  “How much is a bushel?”

  “Four pecks.”

  “Mr. Hardin!”

  “A henway.”

  Wendy frowned and smacked me on the shoulder.

  “What’s a henway?” asked Special Agent Holman, having found a little gravel for her angelic voice.

  “About two pounds,” I said. “I’m standing here looking at thirty-five or forty henways of U.S. currency in a suitcase Manny just brought in from the Bahamas.”

  “Where’s the man you call Manny?” asked Agent Holman.

  “We had a little altercation when Karen tried to open her suitcase. Manny took a few lumps and fled.”

  “Do you know where he is now?”

  “I last saw him at a pay phone at the corner of Division and Montebello. I followed him up there to smooth things over, but he said he’d called for help. I thought he had called the police. I didn’t know the suitcase was full of money until I got back.”

  “Is there another telephone line in the house?” she asked.

  I glanced at Karen. “You have another telephone line in the house?”

  “There’s an extension in the bedroom,” said Karen.

  “Same number as this?” asked Wendy.

  “Well
, yeah,” said Karen.

  Special Agent Holman didn’t wait for my answer. “I’d prefer to stay on the line but it looks like I have to hang up. A special agent from the Grand Rapids office will call you. Stay by the telephone.”

  “The number is—” I started.

  “Karen Smith on Montebello in Wyoming, Michigan?”

  “Right,” I said. She said she had the number and hung up.

  “We have to wait for a call from a local agent of the FBI,” I said and looked at Karen. She’d folded her arms so they’d look fashionable with her angry face. “Did you lock all the windows before you left on your trip?”

  “All the ones that’ll lock,” she said.

  “We need to move some of your furniture to block the door.”

  “I think that’s just a little dramatic,” said Wendy.

  “For this much cash, they’ll kill you,” I said.

  “Which they?” asked Karen.

  “Damn near any they,” I said. “If I’m wrong, we’ll move the furniture back.”

  Karen had a sleeper sofa in the front room. It took all three of us to push it up the hall to block the front door. A side door opened off the back corner of the living room to the outside. Karen said she never used it.

  The door wasn’t locked, only stuck—the lock didn’t work. I wedged it shut with a metal folding chair. “We need to let our eyes adjust to the dark,” I said. Wendy rolled her eyes, but I turned off the lights in the house. We retired to the kitchen to sip our tea and coffee while Karen played with the money in the light filtering in the window from the streetlamp outside.

  “We could play Monopoly with real money,” Karen said as she unwrapped bills and sorted the denominations.

  Around eight o’clock the telephone rang. I picked it up.

  “Art?”

  I recognized the voice—Special Agent Matty Svenson from the Grand Rapids office of the FBI. “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  Matty said, “Leave the money and get out of the house. Meet me in the Meijer’s parking lot at Fifty-sixth and Division.”

  “Matty—”

  “In the parking lot. Do it now!” Matty hung up.

  A dark minivan—could have been blue or green in the available light—roared up the drive and slid to a stop on the lawn. The driver stepped out dressed like a waiter but wearing an ammo bandoleer like a Hollywood-Mexican bandito. Manny sat in the passenger seat, lips taut and eyes narrow. The slider banged open and two bearded men in “Speedi Oil Change” coveralls bailed out carrying Kalashnikov rifles.