No one in sight. Just the windows and the dim light and the black shapes of the pillars that hold up the roof. And that sound.
The terror seized him then. He started shaking as the low animal sound curled around him and echoed gently down the vast, empty, dark room. Someone past screaming, someone who had screamed his lungs out, who was now past words and pleas and prayers, someone who was past all caring. Someone who moaned now only because he still breathed.
There was something else. A smell! He sniffed carefully. Burned meat. Yes, burned meat, the smell of fried fat, acrid and pungent.
Oh, my God!
Harrison Ronald Ford walked forward. Toward the door cracked open and the light leaking out.
The moans were louder, and the voice.
“You betrayed your brothers, your brothers of the blood. Sold out to the honky fucks, sold out your flesh and blood, sold out …” Freeman McNally. Harrison Ronald recognized the voice. Freeman McNal—“What did they pay you? Money? You’ll never spend it. Women? You’ll never screw ’em, not with what you got now. Ha!”
McNally was insane. Crazy mad. His voice was an octave too high, on the verge of hysteria.
“Kill me.”
Silence.
A scream. “Kill me!”
Harrison Ronald Ford pushed open the door. The stench was overpowering.
A naked man was tied to a chair in the middle of the room and above him an unshaded bulb burned. At least, he had once been a man. Strips of flesh hung from his frame. His crotch was a mass of raw meat. His face — Harrison walked closer to see his face — only one eye left — the other socket was black and burned and empty. On his chest were more burns. Amazingly, there was very little blood.
“Put the gun away, Sammy.”
He looked around. Other men sat in chairs around the wall. On the floor was a laundry iron with bits of flesh still clinging to it, a wisp of smoke rising.
“Put the gun away, Sammy.” It was Freeman. He was standing against the window. He had a pistol out and was pointing it.
Harrison looked down. The Colt was in his hand. He lowered it, then looked again at the man in the chair.
“Kill me.”
“The shithead sold us out. He was whispering tales to the feds. He admitted it, finally.”
He could kill them all. The thought ran through Harrison’s mind and he moved his thumb to the safety. Five of them, seven rounds. Freeman first, then the others. As fast as he could pull the trigger.
Freeman walked over to Ford and stood looking at the man in the chair with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Isn’t that some heavy shit? I’ve known him as long as I can remember. And he sold me out.” Freeman snorted and shook his head. The sweat flew from his brow. “And all this time I thought it was you, Sammy. Shee-it!
McNally shook his head again and walked back to the window. There he turned and pointed his pistol at Harrison Ford. “You got a gun. Kill him.” He said it conversationally, like he was ordering a pizza.
The tortured man was staring at Ford with his one eye. His hands were still tied behind the chair, or what was left of his hands. Traces of white showed through the seared flesh — bones.
“Shoot him,” Freeman said, making it an order.
Harrison took a step closer. The eye followed him. Now the badly burned lips moved. He bent down to hear. “Kill me,” the lips whispered.
Harrison thumbed off the safety. He raised the Colt and pointed it above the raw, oozing hole where the man’s left ear had been. The ear itself lay on the floor by the iron.
“Sorry, Ike,” Ford said, and pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ike Randolph’s body was in the trunk of the car when Harrison Ronald parked it on E Street in front of the FBI building. Freeman had told him to get rid of it, dump the body in the street somewhere. The mutilated corpse would certainly be a little point to ponder for anyone who someday might entertain the notion of crossing Freeman McNally.
Yeah, Freeman. Whatever you say, man. Four of them had tossed the body in the trunk and Harrison had driven away. He hadn’t waved good-bye.
And he pondered the point.
The sun was up.
Sunday. Eight a.m. The streets and parking places were empty. In a few hours the suburban malls would open and the last-minute Christmas crowds would pack the parking lots and surge through the sprawling temples of retailing. The shoppers would swarm over the downtown malls too, but that was two hours away. Right now the only people on the streets were alcoholics and derelicts. Paper and trash from overflowing cans swept by the car, carried by the wind.
Harrison sat behind the wheel with the engine off and listened to the silence.
He had made it. He was still alive.
His hands shook.
The relief hit him like a hammer and he began to sob.
He was tired, desperately tired. The tears rolled down his cheeks and he lacked the energy to move.
Done.
Well, hell, I gotta get to Hooper. Give him the keys to Ike Randolph’s hearse, then get some sleep.
He remembered to lock the car, then climbed the stairs to the FBI building and walked through the open foyer to the quadrangle. He went down the stairs to the quadrangle plaza and crossed to the kiosk where the Federal Security guard stood. The uniformed man watched him approach.
“Tom Hooper. Call him.”
“And who are you?”
“Sam … Harrison Ronald Ford. Evansville, Indiana, police. He’s expecting me.”
“If you want to stand over there, sir, I’ll call up and see if he’s here.”
He walked away so the rent-a-cop could watch his hands. He was too tired to stand. He sank down against the wall and crossed his arms on his knees and lowered his head to rest on them.
He was sitting like that, crying, when Thomas Hooper spoke to him six or seven minutes later.
“There’s a corpse in the trunk of the car.”
“Who?” Freddy and Hooper stared at Ford.
“Ike Randolph. They tortured him. He’s a real mess.”
The FBI agents looked at each other.
“We gotta ditch the body.”
“Why?” Freddy asked, incredulous.
“We gotta, man,” Harrison insisted.
“Now listen. We go to the grand jury on Monday. Monday evening or Tuesday they hand down murder indictments and we scoop up Freeman McNally and his lieutenants and lock them up. They won’t get out on bail. There’s no bail for murder. Then we give the grand jury all the rest of it and let them come up with a couple hundred counts.”
Harrison was tired. “You listen. Freeman gave me tonight off. But if that body don’t show up someplace, he’ll smell a rat. The very first thing he’ll do is check my apartment to see if I’m there. I won’t be, man, I can guarantee you that. I ain’t ever going back there. Then Freeman’ll know. Maybe he’ll skip. Maybe he’ll be waiting with heavy ordnance when you go to bust him. Maybe he’ll put out a contract on me. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder!”
“We can’t just go dump a corpse in the public street and—”
“Why not?” Tom Hooper asked.
“Well, hell, we’re the cops, for Christ’s sake.”
“We dump the corpse and wait half an hour and call the police. Why not?”
Hooper was thinking of the grand jury and the lawyers. Just because the FBI wanted a quick indictment was no guarantee there would be one. It might take a week. And as he sat staring at Harrison Ford, he realized that he was going to play it Ford’s way or the undercover man might go to pieces. Ford might not last a week.
“Where you parked?”