I snicked a match to a cigarette and drew a deep breath, sucking in the smoke. The air outside was humid but refreshing after the hot, smoky club. My Chevy hadn’t moved from where I parked it—a hopeful sign—and I got in, turned the engine over, rolled down DeBaliviere Street, then headed west on the parkway towards the office. As I drove along and checked my rearview mirror, a sometimes necessary habit, I noticed a car a couple of blocks behind seemed to be following me. Probably nothing, but then, that hunch hasn’t paid off for me lately. I slowed down, flipped a sudden Uey on a cut-through, turned back across DeBaliviere, then headed west again, this time on Lindell. As I approached the Washington University hilltop campus at Skinker, I sped up and then slammed on the brakes and doused the lights. I scanned the roadway. Intermittent traffic on Skinker. No sign of the car following me. A bag man loping in silhouette under a street light was all I saw.
Ten minutes later, after my little paranoid vigil, I drove away towards Maplewood, into the industrial court where my bleak little office lay. Occasional street lamps lit the road up and down the roadway. Most of the buildings were dark, except the paperclip factory, which ran night and day, supplying all the world’s goddamn paperwork. Which reminded me, I had been neglecting my own.
As I got out of my car, I glanced around to see if I had been followed. I opened my office and decided against turning on the light. I lit a cigarette, grabbed a cold cup of coffee on my desk, and walked over to the window. Just then, headlights shined in the window. I stepped back from the glass and watched as a police cruiser eased by. Were they looking to sweat me some more? Just as the car passed, I caught just a glimpse of a head turned my way, but couldn’t see who it was.
I stood there for maybe ten minutes when, Bingo, the cruiser showed again. So predictable. This time it stopped just shy of my car. The driver’s door opened. A uniform stepped out, playing a flashlight along the length of the Chevy, then inside it. I still couldn’t see if he was someone I knew. He fixed the beam on the front door glass of my office. I held still. Even though it was dark, I didn’t know if the cop could see inside. After a few seconds, the beam moved away. The cop got back in the cruiser, put the car in gear, and then drove off slowly.
True to their word they were keeping me close. I sat down at my desk, splayed my feet forward, then let my body slouch down. I didn’t like being watched. Feeling hemmed in made me crabby, as did a little punk from a few beers and no food.
Just as I reached for the cold cup of coffee again, another set of headlights appeared, weaker and closer to the ground, like a feeble beast crawling to its death. But I sat up at the sound of a gear stretched to its limit before shifting up. Whatever was coming wasn’t weak after all. Some other car was zooming down the twisting road of the industrial court, its low-slung lights belying its high rate of speed. As it drew near my offfice, the familiar low rumble of a Cadillac coupe reached my ears. Son of a bitch. Jerri Hanady.
She screeched to a halt next to my Chevy. I walked over to the door, and just as I pulled it open, she rolled down the window of her coupe.
“Mrs. Hanady?”
“Get in,” she hissed.
I walked toward her car and leaned down. “Why don’t you come inside?”
“There’s no time, dammit. Get in!”
That’s when I heard another car barreling up the road, tires screeching.
I jogged around to the passenger side and got in. Before I’d shut the door, she gunned the motor as if she were an Indy driver. I felt like I was crammed into a clown car.
She sped away from the car bearing down on us. Mournful sirens overtook the sound of her grinding through the gears. I looked back to see the swirl of blue and red lights gaining on us.
I returned my attention to Jerri Hanady. “Mrs. Hanady,” I said. She didn’t respond. “Uh, Mrs. Hanady, that’s the law behind us.”
“Hang on!”
Before I could even think about hanging on, she yanked the steering wheel to the left, slamming me against the door. The car careened sideways as we shot out onto Manchester Road.
“Damn, lady, hey!”
She glared over at me, jammed the gearshift down mercilessly to turn north on Hanley, and then really opened her up. The cruiser, only a half a block behind us, kept up.
“That son-of-a-bitch! That bastard!” she hissed.
“Mrs. Hanady, who? What’s going on?”
She glared at me again. “Tom! He’s got Rachel! And he’s … Aggh!” She slammed the gearshift into third and jetted onto the Route 40 on-ramp without looking for oncoming cars.
“Watch out!” I yelled. The driver of the car in the outer lane lay on the horn and swerved just in time to avoid kissing our car. Mrs. Hanady seemed not to notice. She shifted again and swerved out into the fast lane. I stared at her in awe. Then I glanced down at the speedometer. Eighty-five miles an hour and climbing.
To keep my mind off the coffee threatening to come back up, I yelled, “Is Rachel all right?”
“How the hell should I know?” She was on the point of tears. The car rattled as she zig-zagged from one lane to the next. The cop car struggled to keep up. But one thing I was sure of—he would have gotten backup by now. We were going to be in deep shit if we got caught.
She gasped out something and beat the top of the wheel with one fist. With her left hand, she maneuvered behind a truck in the fast lane and then laid on the horn.
“Move, move!” she shouted.
At this speed and with her emotional state, we were inches away from pulling a James Dean. My life wasn’t great, but shit, I still wanted to live it. Just when I thought the car wouldn’t handle another abrupt lane change, she jerked the wheel, sending the coupe across both lanes, ran over the grass at an exit ramp, and righted the car in time to pass through a yellow light at the intersection. We were outside the city limits.
As she pulled down an alley behind some stately homes, she had the wherewithal to douse the lights. Even though she’d slowed down and we had no guiding light, she continued to rip down one residential street, then another. And another. I assumed—I hoped—she knew where she was going. So, for that, I kept quiet. Besides, like Mrs. Hanady, I was in emotional overload. No sense adding to her reckless disregard for our lives. As it was, my gut was roiling. And if I’d opened my mouth, I would have thrown up. When she pulled onto a two-lane road in a wooded area, she flipped the lights back on and brought the car up to about fifty.
I looked around past the trees still zooming by and studied the road behind us. Then I turned back around and said, “We’ve lost him.” When she didn’t slow down, I put my hand on her forearm. “Mrs. Hanady,” I said in a gentle tone, “think of Rachel. Please. Slow down.” Of course, I was thinking of me, too.
She started sobbing uncontrollably. Her hands slid down to the bottom of the steering wheel, and she hung her head. Thinking she was going to let go completely, I seized the chance to grab the wheel. When I did, she brought her hands up and covered her face. “Mrs. Hanady, put on the brakes.” As we slowed, I gripped the wheel and steered us onto the shoulder of the road. Then, as if her anger surfaced again, she slammed the brakes, hard, and I had to throw my hand to the windshield to keep from lurching into it. Finally, the car stopped. I leaned over and turned off the engine, pulled the key from the ignition, and yanked up the parking brake. Then I leaned back against my seat, closed my eyes, and wiped the sweat from my forehead. I realized then, that I’d been holding my breath.
I let her cry for a few minutes. Damn me for not packing a handkerchief. I tried a comforting hand on her right shoulder. She let it stay.
“How about I drive?” I said.
She nodded. I got out and came around to her door. When I opened it, she just sat there. “Mrs. Hanady, please.” She took my offered hand and I steered her over to the passenger side. I hurried back around the car and stepped in behind the wheel and started it up. As I pulled onto the road again, keeping it to a reasonable speed, I looked over at her. She was staring out the windshield. Blank as a sheet of paper. The car purred and hummed under my touch, and I found I was perfectly at ease driving it despite the circumstances.
She broke the silence first. “Turn at the gravel road up ahead on your left.” Her voice was stripped of tone. I found the road and turned. The headlights played off tall oaks and underbrush. A rabbit darted ahead of us and then disappeared to one side. At the top of a rise, I saw a shack.
“Pull around behind it. Just go over the weeds.”
I did as she said, then stopped the car and hit the lights, but kept the engine running. I glanced over at her.
“Turn off the engine.”
I hesitated before following her order. Our friendly cop could still have found us. And I didn’t like that I had no idea where the hell we were—making a getaway a crap shoot.
We sat for a minute in silence. There were no sounds outside the car. Maybe it was the absence of squealing tires and the roar of internal combustion altering my sense of hearing, but it seemed as though the insects were holding back their racket, waiting, watching us.
“Mr. Darvis, get out. We need to get out and walk.”
She opened her own door this time. I came around to her and offered an arm, but she nudged it aside. “Wait here.” She stepped onto the porch of the shack The shack was so old it could have dated to slave times for all I knew. These grounds might have once been worked by forced labor. The thought was not a consoling one. Mrs. Hanady pulled something off a window sill. A flashlight. She shined the beam on a foot path that led further up the incline and began to follow it. I walked behind her.
We went this way in silence for about five minutes. Up ahead I could make out the blue-black space of a clearing. The tall, wide silhouette of a building framed the night. The Hanady garage.
She led me to the back of it. She produced a key and opened a door, then started up a set of stairs. I followed her again. My nervousness returned. My last visit here hadn’t been exactly pleasant. At the top of the stairs, she opened a door. And there we were, in the same ugly hallway I had been pushed into before. Only this time, we were on the opposite end. She walked forward and opened the door to Tom Hanady’s office. And me without a gun.
Now composed, she entered and flipped on the lights. The same dull orange exuded from the ensconced lamps, but the two chairs in front of Hanady’s desk had been shoved out of the way and overturned. His desk sat at an odd angle from the back wall. A file drawer was open, and papers were strewn around on top of the desk.
“Drink?” she asked as she walked over to a cabinet.
I’d never seen a woman go from hysterical to deadpan indifference in such a short period of time. I didn’t know if I should be appalled or impressed.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I think I better have one. Pour yourself one, too.” She looked at me coldly, then produced a bottle of bourbon and two crystal glasses from the shelf. I walked over to Hanady’s desk, and noticed a half-empty glass sat on the desktop. I picked up one of the chairs and sat it upright. I watched her walk back over to me. In the orange light, she looked like an overcooked sunbather. I had never seen her so much as unkempt outside the preschool. But now, her brown hair was disheveled, and I saw a line of grey along the part. Dark lines of mascara ran from under her eyes, giving her the appearance of a ghoul. Her blouse was rumpled and stained over one breast. Her skirt, non-descript and a little baggy, was a far cry from others I’d seen her wear. She didn’t seem to notice, or care. She handed me a glass and sloshed some liquor into it, then poured one for herself and gulped until the glass was empty.
“Easy,” I said. I took a slug from my own glass and watched her. Then I righted the other chair and gestured for her to sit down.
“Now,” I said, “tell me what is going on.”
By way of reply, she grinned sickly and pulled a folder from off of the desk.
“Read it,” she muttered. I set my glass down and opened the folder. As I did, she pulled out a cigarette and bit it between her teeth, like she wanted to hear it scream. Her sick grin in the match light transformed into a sadist’s leer.
Inside the folder were three sheets of paper. I glanced at each one. The first two pages were typewritten. The third was hand written. On all of the pages, there were four columns. In the first column, there was a list of male and female names, all English. In the second column, all in Spanish, full names were listed. From what I could tell, the first names in this column belonged to women.. Next to several of those names were superscript numbers. In the third column, alongside each row of names, dates were entered. In the last column, more dates, between eight and ten months after the dates in column three. Some of the spaces in the last column had N/A scratched in. I looked over each page and then looked at Mrs. Hanady.
Since she’d sucked the life out of the cigarette, she mashed it out. To my surprise, right on the top of the desk. Then she reached for another. She handed one to me and I took it. She lit mine, and then hers. First time for everything, I guess. For a few minutes, the smoke from our cigarettes congested the air between us. At last I spoke.
“These look something like birth records.”
“Oh, really,” she deadpanned. Menace oozed from her.
“Well, the dates at the end are about nine months after—” Her seering look cut me off.
“These are Colombian women?” I asked. She nodded. “What’s with the numbers?” The sick grin appeared again. She pointed her cigarette to a slim journal on the edge of the desk. I picked it up and opened it. In the same neat handwriting, columns of numbers were followed by notes. I flipped through the pages. The numbers totalled twenty-seven. I picked one at random: number fourteen. I read:
This was a sweet one. Tight,Tight,Tight! Tho she didn’t
make a sound the whole time. I wanted her to call out in
Spanish, like #11. Now she is worth going back for!
I skimmed through a couple of others. More of the same. One in particular, though, chilled me.
Weepy. Weak. Sickly. Might produce a hump-backed calf.
No good in the States. Not even worth a roll in the hay.
Off the farm! One for Meeki’s men.
Throughout, women were rated accordingly. Like a seed catalog of lasciviousness. I closed the cover and held on to the journal. I didn’t want to be here in the first place, and now I felt my skin crawl as though in a preemptive getaway.
“Mrs. Hanady. I don’t know what to say.”
She glared at me. In the orange light, her features were sharp, like the blade of a machete. “Girls! Young girls! Innocent. God!” She threw her empty glass across the room. The glass shattered against the wall. Then she stood up and grabbed a handful of papers off the file cabinet and made as if to rip them to shreds. Instead, she threw them at me. “Fucking men!” she screamed. At first I was stunned, but when she reached for the tell-tale folder next, I grabbed her hand and stood up. She slammed her other hand down in a fist on mine, then she clawed at my chest like a drowning cat. I held onto her arm and tried to grab her other flailing arm. She landed a couple of good scratches on my face before I could restrain her.
“Mrs. Hanady, I don’t like the idea of hitting a woman, but I will.” At this, she slackened, so I let go of her. “We need to take these documents to the police.”
“And what the hell will they do?”
“I don’t know that you are aware of this, but they’re working on the murder of a police officer. He was here . . . at your house last night.”
She stiffened. “What are you talking about? Murdered?”
“Officer Frederick. He was staking out your house.”
“I know that. But how? I thought he simply left.”
“I guess you could say that. He was shot in the head and dumped in the woods.”
“Oh, God, no.” I grabbed her as she collapsed and set her in the chair. I stood over her, in case she fainted.
“The police thought I did it. At first, anyway. Some of them still do.”
She looked up at me in horror. I could see she was struggling with the possibility of being here with me—a possible cop killer.
“I can tell you I didn’t kill him. I was here.” I bounced my finger up and down. “Right here. In this room. With your husband and Meeki.” At the name, she snorted. “Meeki hammered the back of my head, and then your husband punched me out. I woke up in the gravel next to the road below.” Her expression didn’t change. “Mrs. Hanady—”
“Stop calling me that!”
“All right. Jerri. We need to go to the police. You’re in enough trouble for outrunning that copper back there.”
“I want you to go find him.”
“Who?” I said stupidly.
“Tom. I want you to find him.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. I can’t leave the state, much less the country.”
“I don’t care. I’ll pay you anything to do it. I’ll give you anything to do it.” She reached desperately up to her breasts. I felt like I was going to vomit.
“Mrs.—Jerri—I’m still a suspect in Officer Frederick’s murder. I have strict orders to stay put, and that’s what I’m going to do until I can clear my name. Then…” I trailed off.
She looked up at me expectantly. “Then you’ll get him?”
“I’ll do whatever I can within reason to bring him in. And, most importantly, bring your daughter back safely.”
“Yes. My daughter.” She hung her head and whimpered, then just as quickly sat up and steeled herself. She looked straight up at me, her eyes again hard and cold as granite. “I want you to kill him.”