Wilderness

CHAPTER 10.

In the morning Janet went to the Boston Public Library and spent the day in the microfilm room reading back issues of The Boston Globe for information about Adolph Karl. She went up to the university for her one o'clock class and came back at two-thirty and worked until five.

When she got home at six that evening she knew that Karl was married, had two sons, had been in jail for five years on an armed-assault charge, had been arrested four other times for loan sharking and narcotics and had been released. She knew that one of his sons had graduated from B.C. and was now in Suffolk law school. She knew that Karl had a summer home in Fryeburg, Maine. That he liked to hunt and fish around Fryeburg, that he was probably active in organized crime, had probably killed four people. She knew that Mrs. Karl's first name was Madelyn and that her maiden name had been Corsetti and that she was active in Roman Catholic women's groups in Lynn and Boston. And she knew that Adolph Karl owned a discount furniture store on Portland Street in Boston.

Her husband and Chris Hood learned of the store too. It was ten-thirty in the morning when Karl and two other men came out of the house and got into the blue Lincoln with the orange vinyl roof. Hood watched from the seawall and then turned and stared out to sea. Newman started the Bronco and cruised down slowly. He stopped, Hood got in, and they swung out three cars behind the Lincoln.

"He alone?" Newman asked.

"No. There's two men with him. He's in the back seat with one of them. The other one's driving."

The blue Lincoln drove west along the shore drive onto the Lynnway, and south on the Lynnway. It stopped once at a doughnut shop. The man in the back seat got out and went into the shop. Newman pulled the Bronco into a gas station next door and parked by the air hose.

"That Karl?" Hood said.

"No."

Hood got out and put air in the tires. The man came back out of the doughnut shop with a box of doughnuts and a paper bag. Hood got back in the Bronco. The Lincoln pulled back out into the Lynnway traffic, the Bronco fell in behind it. They drove to Boston.

The Lincoln pulled up into a loading zone with a yellow curb and parked in front of a furniture store on Portland Street just up from North Station. The sign said Adolph Karl's Union Furniture. Karl and the two other men got out and went in. Newman drove around the block. On the next pass by Union Furniture the Lincoln was still there.

"Why don't you go in and look around?" Newman said. "I'll keep circling."

Hood nodded. "Let me out on the corner. I'll stroll in and act like a customer. You go around the block and be on that corner. Double-park there. If I have to come out fast I want to know you'll be there." Newman said, "I'll be there." He stopped the car.

Hood got out of the car and strolled toward the furniture store. Newman put the car back in gear and went around the block again. He double-parked where Hood had told him to. He could see the front of the store. As he sat, a short fat woman in a tight pink dress that didn't reach her knees shuffled up to the car. She wore blue rubber clogs on her feet. She handed a card through the window of the Bronco.

Newman took it. The card said, "I am a deaf mute. You may buy this card for a quarter." Newman dug a quarter from his pocket and gave it to the woman. Her hair was gray and in a tight coil at the back of her head. She wore sunglasses. She took the quarter and moved away up Portland Street, toward Government Center. Newman turned the card over. On the back were diagrams of sign language. She can tell herself she isn't begging, Newman thought. He stuck the card in a crack in the defroster vent.

Chris Hood came out of Union Furniture and walked slowly down Portland Street toward Newman. He got in the car.

"Nothing," he said.

"Karl in there?"

"If he was I didn't see him. There were a couple of salesmen. Then there's some stairs along the left wall in the back, and like a balcony of offices across the back on the second floor. I would assume Karl was up there."

"Did it look like a place we could hit him?"

Hood shrugged. "Got to see the upstairs layout. In the store itself it doesn't look promising."

"Do we really need to see upstairs too?"

Hood looked at him for a span of ten seconds. "Yeah, we have to see upstairs. We have to see everything. This isn't Capture The Flag, Aaron. You don't go in unprepared. Here, anywhere. You gotta know what you can expect." Newman said, "Okay. You're probably right. How we going to do it?"

Hood picked the card off the defroster slot and read it. "First let's park this thing," he said.

Newman found a meter past the store on the right.

"First off, it's gotta be you," Hood said. He put the card back in the defroster slot. "The salesmen have seen me in there. They'll be too suspicious if I'm caught trying to go up to the offices."

Newman felt the fear again. It surged in his stomach and flashed along his arms and into his fingertips. He kept his face still.

"How about I use that card?"

Hood looked at the card again.

"Go in and pretend to be a deaf-mute beggar and go upstairs and wander around?" "Yes," Newman said. His throat was stiff. "And if anyone catches me I hand them the card."

Hood pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. "Not bad," he said. "But you look too good."

He reached into the glove compartment and brought out a felt fishing hat. "Try the crusher," he said. "Just put it on and let it be as wrinkled and mangy as it is. Don't smooth it out."

Newman put the hat on. "Okay," Hood said. "And we'll have to do something with the shirt." He took the skinning knife from his pocket and opened the blade. "Mind if I ruin the shirt? I'll cut the sleeves off almost at your shoulders." "Go ahead," Newman said. His breath was short.

Hood cut the sleeves off. When he finished Newman leaned over and rolled his pants legs up over his ankles. His bare legs were pale above his blue Pumas. He put the deaf-mute card in his hat band.

"I'll go in first," Hood said. "I told them I wanted to shop around and I might be back. Then you come in and head for the back left.

You'll see the stairs."

Newman nodded.

"If there's trouble, start yelling. I'll be up in half a second. And don't be afraid to use the gun. That's what you got it for."

"Okay."

Hood grinned. "Okay, I'm going. You come right behind me."

"Okay."

Hood grinned again. Made a thumbs-up gesture and got out of the car.

Newman sat in stillness. He felt thick, as if there were insulation around him and reality were distant and unclear. Hood went into the store and Newman got out of the car and went to the store behind him.

The store was shabby and the furniture was cheap and garish, imitation plush in bright reds and blues. Wooden love seats with small print slip covering that pretended to be colonial. To his right as he went in, Newman had a sense of Hood talking to a salesman. In the far right back corner of the store another salesman bent over a table, writing in a notebook. Newman walked straight to the back left and up the stairs.

Nobody said anything. At the top of the stairs there was a balcony that ran off at right angles to the stairs across the back of the store. There were three frosted glass doors at intervals in the back wall of the balcony. The salesman who'd been writing was now out of sight under the balcony, the other was still talking with Hood.

Newman felt disconnected. His jaws hurt and he realized he was clenching his teeth. He relaxed his jaw. He couldn't seem to feel the gun against his groin as he had before. He ran his left hand over the area as if scratching a bite. The gun was there. He waited for the surge of reassurance but nothing came.

Promptly he moved onto the balcony and opened the first glass door. The room was windowless and empty. The only light came through the open door and the frosted glass partition that separated it from the next office. There was a gray metal conference table and five folding chairs in the room. On the table was a newspaper and an empty cardboard pizza box in which a few crusts of pizza remained. Two paper coffee cups were near the box. In the corner of the room there was a stand-up electric fan. There was nothing else in the room.

Newman closed the door as quietly as he could. Every movement he made he had to think of. Nothing was natural. Nothing automatic. He stepped back from the door. There was light in the next office. I could tell Chris I tried and it was locked and that there was no one up here. I could turn now and go down and out and go home. And be safe.

He stepped to the next door. There was light behind it. He could hear a voice. From the floor below a voice said, "Hey, what the hell are you doing?"

His fear saved him. He was numb and slow with it and didn't react.

Instead, mindless' and terrified he turned the knob and walked in.

Adolph Karl sat at a desk facing the door with his feet up and his coat off talking into the telephone. I could shoot him now. To his left, at a small table against the wall, the two men who'd been with him all day were playing cards. In front of each there was a card up and a card down. Blackjack, Newman thought.

Karl said into the phone, "Hold on," then he put the phone down on the desk and swung his feet down onto the floor. He looked at Newman.

"Yeah?" he said.

The two men against the wall both turned toward Newman. One stood up and took a gun from under his coat and held it against his leg. The man with the gun had thick lips and a long face. His hair was curly, and his skin was very white. The other man, still seated, was immense.

Three hundred pounds, Newman thought. His chest was vast. His stomach stretched tight against his white shirt but it looked hard, like a Russian weight lifter's. His shirt sleeves were rolled back two turns over his forearms, and his wrists were as thick as cordwood. He stood up too and took a step toward Newman. He was tall and his back arched slightly. He was clean-shaven and his hair was slicked back and shiny.

He looked very clean.

"The man asked you a question, douche bag," he said. Newman knew the voice.

There were no windows in this room either. Just a cinder-block back wall painted yellow. In the left corner a gray metal file cabinet.

There was no rug on the floor. The only light was an overhead hanging fluorescent. The huge man took another step toward Newman. The man with thick lips stood without movement, the gun held against his right thigh.

Newman took the card from his hat band and held it out to the big man.

The man read it.

"It's a fucking dummy, Dolph," he said. "He's scrounging." The big man handed the card to Karl. Karl read it.

"Throw him the fuck out," he said. He crumpled the card and threw it on the floor. The big man took hold of Newman's shoulder and turned him around.

Karl said, "Tell those fucking assholes downstairs that if anybody comes wandering up here again I'm going to cut their balls off."

The big man held onto Newman's shoulder with his left hand and shoved him out the door. Newman made no resistance. He was afraid he might fall. His legs had no feeling. The big man shoved him along the corridor and down the stairs, moving him faster than he wanted to walk, so he stumbled and had to hold the banister going downstairs. Newman had a sense of Hood's presence to the left of his periphery.

The big man stopped at the front door, opened it, planted his right foot against Newman's buttocks, and shoved him sprawling, face first, into the street. He let the door close.

Newman lay a moment face down on the sidewalk, feeling the roughness of the concrete against his cheek. He felt as if he might urinate right there, lying down on the sidewalk. He was out of there. He was alive.

They hadn't hurt him. He'd done it and survived.

He got up and walked down Portland Street to Hood's car. He got in the passenger side and sat as still as he could. His heart thumped in his chest the way it did after intercourse. He waited for it to quiet. He pressed his open hands on the tops of his thighs. His hands felt sweaty and swollen.

Hood came out of the store and walked down to the car. He got in, took the keys from above the visor, and started the car. They drove down Portland Street, away from the Union Furniture Store.

"You all right?" Hood said.

"Sure," Newman said. "Sure."