Hard as Nails

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Arlene caught just a glimpse of the Burned Man's ballcap—an old Brooklyn Dodgers' cap, she noticed—before the flashing lights arrived.

It was five minutes before midnight, she noticed, and the man from the pest control van had spent a few minutes looking at her car and another couple of minutes walking around out there, checking it out, before approaching her driver's side door—still unlocked, she feared—on foot. Then the top of his cap rose above the driver's side doorsill of the Buick. Arlene aimed the Magnum and prepared for the recoil and flying glass.

The red lights flashed first, and then she heard the sirens.

The ball cap disappeared from the window and a few seconds later an engine started up and the van's headlights splayed across her windshield again.

When the headlights turned away, Arlene sat up and peeked over the dashboard.

The ambulance was accompanied by a police cruiser and both vehicles were sweeping around in a turn, away from the mall entrance, toward the pest control van with its hypothetical cardiac arrest victim.

The van drove away toward the north exit at high speed.

Both the ambulance and police cruiser stopped—as if nonplussed—and then gave chase to what appeared to be the fleeing heart-attack victim. Within a few seconds, the flashing lights had disappeared out onto Niagara Street and the parking lot was quiet again. Arlene bad known that Niagara Falls's Memorial Medical Center was only a few blocks north on Walnut Avenue, but this was good time even for that proximity. Evidently midnight on a drizzly Sunday in late October was a slow time for them.

The old Dodge with Ontario plates turned into the mall lot slowly, hesitantly, braking twice, as if the driver and occupants—Arlene could see several heads silhouetted against the streetlights along Niagara—were suspicious, ready to bolt at any sign of movement. Arlene shifted to the driver's seat but kept her head low, peering through the Buick's steering wheel.

"Arlene?"

It was a good thing, she realized later, that she'd just lowered the hammer on the big Magnum and set it back in her purse, or she probably would have soot herself when Gail's voice erupted from the cell phone. Arlene had forgotten about the phone. Heck, she'd forgotten about Gail.

"Are you all right!?"

"Shhh, shhh," Arlene hissed into the phone. "I'm fine."

"Well, damn it!" cried her sister-in-law and friend. "You're scaring me to death."

The Dodge with the Ontario plates had stopped by the mall doors. Now a small woman carrying an old suitcase was shoved out onto the sidewalk in front of the doors and the Dodge accelerated away toward the Third Street exits.

"Gail, it's quite possible that you just saved my life," Arlene said calmly. "I'll call you tomorrow with the details."

"Tomorrow!" squawked the phone. "Don't you dare wait until…"

Arlene broke the connection and turned her phone off. She waited only a few seconds, half expecting the bug control van or the police cruiser to reappear at high speed.

Nothing. Just the small woman and the old suitcase and the empty lot.

Arlene started the Buick, turned on the headlights, and drove up to the woman in a wide arc so as not to spook her.

More girl than woman, thought Arlene as she hit the button to roll down the passenger side window. The doors had, as she'd feared, not been locked. "Aysha?" she said.

The young woman did not flinch back. She looked to be a teenager, with a pale face and large eyes above her cheap raincoat. The suitcase she clutched looked like something Arlene's parents might have owned.

"Yes, I am Aysha," said the girl in accented but smooth English. "Who sent you, please?"

Arlene hesitated only a second before saying, "Yasein. Please get in."

The girl got in the front seat She still clutched her bulky suitcase.

"Toss that in the back," said Arlene and helped her lift it between the seats and drop it on the rear seat. The young woman was smaller than fourteen-year-old Rachel.

Checking her mirrors again, Arlene drove quickly out of the Rainbow Centre's parking lot took Third up to Perry, and Ferry to 62. Within minutes they were on the northern extension of Niagara Palls Boulevard, headed toward Buffalo. It was drizzling again and Arlene turned on the Buick's wipers.

"My name is Arlene DeMarco," she said slowly. And then, without planning it she said, "Welcome to the United States."

"Thank you very much," said the young woman, looking calmly at Arlene. "I am Miss Aysha Mosed, fiancée of Mister Yasein Goba of Lackawanna, New York, United States of America."

Arlene nodded and smiled, while inside she was hurting and thinking, How am I going to tell her? And how am I going to tell her in a way that will still allow her to talk to Joe tomorrow?

"Yasein is dead, is be not?" said Aysha.

Arlene looked at her. Lie to her, was her thought Aloud, she said, "Yes, Aysha. Yasein is dead."