Speak of the Devil

2

WE HIT BROADWAY AND WENT LEFT. I FIGURED I WAS BEING TAKEN TO the Midtown North station on Fifty-fourth, a five-minute drive, tops, with the cherry spinning and the siren clearing the way. But the accessories remained undeployed, and as we drifted past Fifty-third, I leaned forward in the seat. “Boys. You missed the turn.”

The driver said nothing. Gumdrop half turned in his seat. “Shaddup.”

The radio crackled, and a female voice spit out a series of numbers and letters. Gumdrop glanced curiously at his partner, who nodded tersely. Gumdrop fished a headset from the glove compartment and put it on, glancing at me briefly as he leaned forward to plug it into the radio, which suddenly went silent. I placed both the cops somewhere in their early thirties, which meant I was the senior man in the car. The driver looked up in his mirror and saw that I was still leaning forward.

“Sit back.”

“Just so you know,” I said, “I’m the good guy here.”

“Sit. Back.”

I sat back. We crossed to Ninth Avenue and passed a restaurant called Zen Palate. Margo loves that place. There are three of them in the city, the closest one to her being the one on Broadway in the mid-Seventies. She’s dragged me there a couple times. I like half the stuff I’ve tried there with her. The other half tastes like cardboard.

Margo.

With all that had just happened, it was hard for me to imagine that Margo could still just be sitting up on her pillows, dressed in her oversize Rangers jersey, waiting for me to come back with the bagels. But maybe she was. Margo can balance on the precipice of a moment better than anyone I know.

The car hit a pothole, and my head slammed hard against the roof. I tallied no fewer than four ways I could have sued the city. A minute later, Gumdrop pulled off the headset. He turned to his partner. “We’re supposed to get a bag.”

The driver gave him a look. “A bag?”

“Yeah. That’s what they said. We’ve got to cover his whole head.”

The driver looked at me in his mirror. “You hear that?”

I nodded. “I heard. You’re supposed to cover my whole head. Whatever the hell that means.”

We hit another pothole. The driver swore softly, then glanced into the mirror again. “What’s your name?”

“Malone,” I said. “Fritz Malone.”

The driver nodded. “You prefer paper or plastic?”

AFTER FETCHING THE BAG (PAPER) FROM A MARKET ON FORTY-EIGHTH, the cops drove to a spot under the West Side Highway, just north of the U.S.S. Intrepid. I could make out the tail wing of one of the jet fighters on the rear of the aircraft carrier. Before they put the bag over my head, the black guy blindfolded me. He was leaning in the back door, one knee on the seat. His partner stood behind him, looking around anxiously. Gumdrop looked pale. I’d have given him a cocky wink right before getting the blindfold, just to make him a little more nervous, but to tell God’s honest truth, I wasn’t feeling too happy myself.

Something was seriously wrong here. I had lifted a service revolver from a freshly murdered policeman, given chase to the shooter, and discharged three bullets from the police revolver, striking the shooter once in the shoulder. Taking me into custody was the right thing to do. But pulling the squad car over beneath the West Side Highway and putting a blindfold on me, that wasn’t the right thing to do. The fat trails of sweat on Gumdrop’s fleshy face told me that he knew it, too.

“What the hell is this?” I snapped as my world went black.

“Down on the floor.”

The black guy took hold of my shoulders and guided me into position, semifetal, my ear against the hump. The cops got back into the front seat. The engine fired up. They spoke not a word.

This was all wrong.

Wherever it was I was being taken, the driver didn’t take the direct route. Most of Manhattan is a grid. You go north-south, you go east-west. In the Village, it gets all screwy, as well as down in Chinatown and in the Wall Street area. But where we were, midtown, everything is straight streets and ninety-degree turns. From the floor of the car, I tried to track our course, but after several sets of turns that could only suggest redundancies and doubling back, I was lost. Which I assumed was the point.

I thought again about Margo. By now even Margo would have moved off the bed. She’d have heard all the sirens coming up from near the park, and she’d have flipped on her television. She’d be one of the many millions of New Yorkers who were now glued to their sets. What was I saying? Not just New Yorkers, people all across the country. The network jinglemeisters were probably scrambling right now to lay down little five-second tracks in just the right tone: solemn yet provocatively urgent. The graphics people would have worked even faster. Their work was probably already up on the screen, blending with the horrific images.

THANKSGIVING DAY MASSACRE

MAYHEM IN MANHATTAN

PARADE OF TERROR

Margo would be sitting at her kitchen table watching the breaking reports. I could picture her, bare feet pulled up onto the chair, the Rangers jersey pulled over her legs, covering her like a tent. Her stomach would be grumbling for want of bagels.

And she’d know. Margo knows me. The same way her mother knew her old man when he was still in the game. My being gone this long, she’d know that somehow I had gotten myself involved. But Margo also knows the odds. She’d know in her heart of hearts that in all likelihood, I was probably okay. As she likes to say, I seem to have been born under the watchful eye of the Saint of Reckless Dumb Luck.

Even so, she’d be having fingernails for breakfast.

WE STOPPED. TWENTY MINUTES OF DRIVING, BY MY ESTIMATE. TAKING into account the little maneuvers to throw me off, we were still in Manhattan. I would have sussed out easily enough if we had traveled over a bridge or through a tunnel. My ear was close to the ground. Literally.

The two policemen got out of the car. Nothing happened for the next five minutes except that my calves cramped, first one, then the other. Finally, the men in blue returned and the rear door was opened. Unfolding me from the floor was not exactly a ballet, but we all did what we had to do. Outside the car, one of the cops adjusted the bag to sit straighter on my head.

“Thank you.”

I was taken by both elbows and led forward. “Step up,” one of the cops said. About twenty steps later, he said it again. I heard the click of a door being opened, and I was led inside. Even under the bag, I could practically taste the staleness of the air. I was somewhere cold.

We walked a few more feet and then stopped. I waited. After about twenty seconds, I said, “I hope you guys appreciate how docile I’m being.”

Gumdrop told me to shut up. This seemed to be his specialty.

“Listen,” I said. “I don’t know what academy you two attended, but you’ve both got a lot to learn about bringing a person in. This is bullshit. Take this goddamn bag off my head.”

Nothing. A moment later, I heard a small metallic squeaking sound. “Take three steps,” the black guy instructed. My elbows were released. I took the three steps.

“Later,” Gumdrop muttered, and I heard the squeaking again. Nothing. Then the ground shifted suddenly.

Elevator.

Going up.

I was pretty sure I was alone now.