There was an enormous crashing sound, somewhere near me. I was on an endless conveyor belt. No, I wasn’t; I was on a bed of hot coals. No, I wasn’t; I was inside a bass drum. No, I wasn’t; I was awake.
There was someone with me, someone in front of me. It was dark and I couldn’t see. I felt utterly desperate and hopeless. I felt teary and then I realized I had things I could do.
I reached out and touched a shirt. I grabbed for my bat. I dived for my remote switches. It was all going wrong. Then it went right. I found them. I switched them. The flashgun went off. I was momentarily blinded but I found my bat and I raised it and I swung it for all I was worth.
It crashed heavily into the soft part of my inner door. It bit deep. It went through.
“My God!” a voice said. “What the hell are you trying to do?”
My eyes and mind cleared simultaneously.
Lieutenant Miller stood in front of me. “Have you gone crazy?”
I blinked. “What the hell are you doing here at this time of night?” I asked.
“Night?” he said. “Twenty past eight may be night for softies like you but for me it’s just part of the working day.”
“Twenty past eight?” I asked. “Past eight?” I looked around. I saw light edges round the blind over the window. “I was asleep,” I said. “I must have fallen asleep.”
Miller looked at me like I was crazy. Then asked, “Don’t you usually sleep at night?”
I realized I was stiff and sore. “That chair isn’t very comfortable.”
I stepped toward the stove. “Want some coffee?” I tripped on the remote wire to the camera. It fell off the stove and hit the floor with a deadly thud. The flashgun shattered. I moved the pieces to one side with my foot, the least of my problems. “I’m making some anyway,” I said.
Miller watched without saying anything. I got water and the percolator and the makings. I brought the combination back to the stove.
Then I turned to him. “Why are you here?” I asked. “Not a social call, surely.”
“No,” he said as I turned the gas on.
“What, then?”
“I . . .” he began. Hesitated, struggled, inhaled, and spat it out. “I’m supposed to bring you in.”
“In?”
“To the department.”
“Oh?” I turned the gas off again. It had waked me up better than coffee ever could.
“Gartland wants to see you.”
“Is that all,” I said. “Well, I don’t want to see him.” I turned back to the stove.
“Don’t make life hard for me, Al,” Miller said plaintively. “They’ve been shitting on me right and left about this because you’re making trouble. Don’t you give me a hard time, too.”
“Nobody is making life easy for me,” I said, the plaintive one now. I turned the gas on again.
“He told you to stop working on the case,” Miller said quietly. “And you didn’t. You told me you would keep me informed if you did any work on it, and you didn’t.”
“What didn’t I?”
“What about Pighee’s doctor last night?”
“I was going to call you, but I ran out of dimes. It’s the truth.”
Miller shrugged. “Gartland wants to see you.”
“Jerry,” I said, “I already said I didn’t want to see him. This thing doesn’t add up the way I’ve been told about it, and I’m going to keep working until I know at least a few more details.”
“Like what?”
“Like what kind of project these people are working on that’s supposed to be so important.”
He looked like he was about to say something. But he didn’t.
“Do you know?” I asked him.
Silence again, which this time I took as his not saying no.
“Well, what is it?”
“I’m not supposed to know,” he said.
“But you do.”
He was quiet for a moment again, but then it burst out. “Only that they’re setting up for a bust of just about every major drug distributor in the whole fucking country. That’s all. And I call that important.”
“How?” I asked. “How?”
He sighed heavily. “I don’t know, Albert, but they’ve been working up their contacts for years.”
I just stared at him. “When does the boom get lowered?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But soon. And that’s why they’re so worried about you.”
I sat in my chair for a few moments. But then I said, “Is the F.B.I. allowed to break the law, Jerry?”
Exasperatedly he said, “They’re working with the heroin to set the real drug gangsters up!”
“I mean, are they allowed to kill people?”
“Kill people? Who?”
“John Pighee, for one. And that other guy, Rackey—I think him, too.”
“I didn’t know Pighee was dead. When was that?”
“He’s always been dead,” I said.
He didn’t like that. He didn’t understand it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Al, but you already know, more than you’re supposed to.”
“It’s my face. People just talk to it,” I said. “They can’t help themselves.”
“Come on, get your jacket,” he said.
“Why?”
“I already said. Gartland wants to see you.”
“And I already said I don’t want to see him.”
He stood up. “Come on, Al.”
“Are you arresting me?” I asked, more than a little surprised.
“Not unless I have to,” he said.
“On what charge?” I stood up to meet him.
“If I have to,” he said, “because you’ve been accused of abducting one Marcia Merom.” He read from his notebook. “She and a Mr. Seafield came last night late and made a preliminary statement that accuses you of having forcibly removed this Marcia Merom from her place of residence. They say she came to no harm while she was in your power and that you released her, but she is pressing charges. They said they’d come in today and make full statements.”
“Where is Seafield supposed to come into this?”
“He says he heard her protesting outside her front door as you removed her through the back.”
“Do you believe that crap?”
He smiled an icy policeman’s smile. “I believe that Captain Gartland wants to see you.”
I picked up my jacket from the chair I’d slept in and put it on. I scratched myself behind my ear. I really didn’t want to talk to Gartland; I didn’t have anything I wanted to say to him. He thought I was rash and unreasonable. There was certainly no chance of getting him to initiate a real investigation of the Loftus people. The prospect of seeing him made me sorely sad.
I took a step toward the door.
Then I did a rash thing.
I clobbered Miller on the chin with the biggest roundhouse right cross I’d ever in my wildest imagination hit anybody with.
He dropped like a stone. It must have been half the sheer surprise.
It surprised me. I looked at my fist as if it had a life of its own.
I left my office very quickly.