C H A P T E R • 55
I backed into Viola. She pushed me away.
“Did they do that?” She pointed to a van where it was moving to exit the alley. Next door to her house, the burnt remains of the wooden box covering the generator was still smoldering.
“Riley and Joseph said they could do it. It was clumsy,” I said. “But I couldn’t think of anything else to do to get Virginia out. I hope his friends call Bobby an ambulance.”
“When did you take Virginia?”
“She and Adrianne took a car just before Bobby grabbed me.”
We both wanted to get out of there and she had the car, so I caught her keys when she tossed them.
“Hurry.”
“Who says it’s hard to find new money,” Mister Bell said, as he and Al walked out of the dark. He was carrying the Louis Vuitton speedy bag full of money.
“Marc! We’re going to get Virginia,” Viola said.
I walked to the front of the car. “We’ve got to get out of here,” I told them. “I think Bobby’s partners are in Viola’s house. I heard them shooting at the door.”
“No. They’re not,” Al said. “I was waiting outside. There was two of them. When we heard the explosion, they shot at the door lock and broke into the house and then ran back out and took off down 145th Street. The good news is, they are in Bobby’s red Cadillac. Easy to find.”
“If Bobby told them where Virginia is, they’ll know where Viola is going to be. Come with us. We need to go.” I held the car door open.
“It looks like you have this under control,” Al said. “I’m not going to be standing around minding my business when the police show up. Let me see if I can get home without being stopped.” And he walked to the alley exit and away.
Mister Bell said, “You go. I’ll ride over with my boys. Their van is on the street. That was a neat little explosive ordnance event wasn’t it? They called me, and I told them to go on ahead and blow some stuff up. They put a cherry bomb in the generator’s gas tank and stuck the fuse in a cigarette. When it burned down it blew and then they put out the fire. Easy.”
He took Viola’s hand. “Virginia is a smart little girl. She’ll be okay until we get there.” He hugged her.
I thought I heard a backfiring vehicle and Mister Bell became a weight on Viola before he slid down to sit.
“Oh, my God.”
“Get in the car,” he said and pointed to Viola’s window.
When I looked up, I saw Bobby Bop was sitting facing the window, his big gun in one hand propped on the window ledge. We watched him fall over.
“I’m okay,” Mister Bell said. “You go see about Virginia. I’m good. Take this.”
Viola reached for the bag with the money and stopped. “I need you to carry that bag,” Viola said. “I can’t manage it. I hurt my leg when I dropped off that stupid rope ladder. It’s too much for me with this damn leg. Hurry.”
I picked up the money bag with the intention of throwing it into the backseat of her Buick. And to make room, I pushed aside rags and tools and other junk someone must have been using to work on the car.
I drove us to the alley’s opening, where there was a fireman blocking our way.
I recognized him from the night the house two doors away imploded, and I rolled down the window.
He remembered me too. “We have to stop meeting like this.”
“Have you been careful?”
“Always am.”
“I need to get to the street. The fire is out but I need you to call an ambulance. Two people are hurt back there. One is in the alley. One is in the building next to the one with the burnt generator. The window is open and he has a gun.”
The fireman moved out of our way and we rolled out of the alley and onto St. Nicholas Avenue. The traffic was stopped to make way for another fire engine speeding north up St. Nicholas.
I used the empty uptown lane to drive downtown facing the truck two blocks away and turned left just in time on 145th Street.
I turned right on Edgecombe Avenue and drove south to 137th Street, and then over to Eighth, where I found a space at the corner. I moved the bag into the trunk and I walked and Viola limped down the length of the street, barely avoiding one of the neighborhood cats, now a gut puddle, at the curb in front of my house.
I heard music and knocked.
“Who?” Adrianne said.
“It’s me.”
She opened the door and Virginia ran to Viola for a hug.
“I’m glad to see you too sweetheart. We’re leaving.”
“No. You’re not.” Adrianne looked past us to the street. “We’ve got babysitters.”
I turned around to look out.
“They’re sitting in the red Cadillac down the street. But they’ll be back. They came in right behind us,” Adrianne said. “They don’t want you to go anywhere until they get their money tomorrow.”
I walked over to the phone.
“It’s dead,” Adrianne said. “What money are they talking about?”
“We left it in the car. All that money and still not enough,” Viola, said, “Virginia. We’re going to get out of here. I’m not wanting to be sitting here with them all night. Seriously. They could do anything. Give me my keys, Pearl.”
“Then I’m going with you,” I told her. “It’s not safe for you to be driving with your bad leg and with Virginia in the car. You’re liable to hit someone in a crosswalk.”
She looked at me and raised her two hands in a surrender and smiled.
Adrianne asked, “How do you think you’re going to get out? They’re not going to let you just walk out the door.”
“I have an idea,” I said. “Come with me. We’re going upstairs.”
“I cannot hang out any more windows,” Viola said.
“No. We’re walking out the door.”
They followed me upstairs, and I moved the cupboard and opened the door to our portal into Cecelia’s house next door.
“What the hell?” Ginny said.
Viola said. “Your daddy always said you practiced at being Lt. Knight by playing detective with Cecelia. But I had no idea you were this serious.”
After we crawled through, I told them, “When we were girls, we read that prohibition bootleggers opened the space between the top floors of these row houses and escaped through them when the feds came in downstairs. Daddy had a beam put in. We have been using it since we were kids.”
Virginia said, “This is like C.S. Lewis in Narnia. The Magician’s Nephew.”
“You are such a weird kid,” I said.
I carefully closed the wainscoting, and we walked downstairs.
Mrs. Miller walked out of her room. “Pearl Washington,” she said and looked at us. “And a crowd. What are you doing using your hidey hole in the middle of the night?”
Ginny went for a hug and was unable to easily pull herself away.
“This feels so good,” Mrs. Miller said. “How are you sweetheart?”
“I’m good Auntie Elizabeth,” Virginia said and made her escape.
“We have to go,” I said, and I walked over to Mrs. Miller. “Do you have anyone here with you?”
“No. I’m waiting for Marc.”
Before I could gather myself to figure out what to do about this terrible thing, Adrianne walked over and took Mrs. Miller’s hand.
“You all be careful,” she said to me. “I’ll stay here.”
I led the rest of us down the stairs.
The front light was off. I disabled a motion timer, using the chops I learned when we were escaping as girls.
I opened the street door slowly and looked out. Then, I stepped back. Two men were walking up my stoop next door.
“Come on. We don’t have but a minute until they see we’re gone,” I said.
All three of us hunkered down and ran along the parked cars to Viola’s car sitting at the distant curb.
The trunk was open and a man looked up. But I had to kick him to get him to release the bag he thought he was going to run away with. Then I had to kick him again when he tried to grab it back. I allowed the one who was stretched across the back seat to pull himself out of the car door with the broken window. And we watched them both run down the street.
“Just in time,” I said and slammed down the lid to the trunk.
“Virginia, see if you can find space in the back.”
“It’s a mess back there,” Ginny said.
I turned on the car and saw my company running out of my house.