Troubleshooters - Into The Night Part 21

He turned to see a young woman stepping out of the kitchen door of the house next door. She was wearing some kind of restaurant uniform and carried a childa"a little girl from the looks of the ribbons and curlsa"in her arms.

"I'm Mary Lou Starrett." She introduced herself in that same thick southern accent he'd noticed on the phone. He moved closer, because she was hard to understand. "I'm the one who called you. How's Donny?"

She was ridiculously young, hardly old enough to leave her own mother, let alone be one.

"Well, it's too soon to say that he's back on his medication, since he's only had one dose, but he has had that one. It's a start," he told her. "Thanks so much for looking out for him."

"It's no trouble," she told him. "He's a friend." Her cheeks dimpled as she smiled. "An unusual friend, but ..: he's a good guy. I feel badly for not calling you as soon as I noticed he was acting strangelya"more strangely than usual, I should probably say."

"It shouldn't have to fall on you," Vince told her. "We call Don every day, but he only wants us to visit once a week. I'd suspected he'd gone off his meds, but I didn't try to push it because disrupting his schedule sometimes makes things worse. Sometimes he just goes into a decline and comes back out on his own. I guess we were just doing a lot of wishful thinking."

She opened the door of her car and put the baby into a car seat in the back, and he completely lost her reply.

"What's that?" he said.

She straightened up, smoothing down her s.h.i.+rt from where her daughter had grabbed hold of it. "I said, that's understandable. I have to get to work, but please don't hesitate to call me anytimea"even for little things, like ... what to get him for Christmas."

Vince had to smile at that. "Well, thanks, but that's an easy one. Stock in an aluminum foil company."

She laughed as she got into her car and said something that he didn't catch.

"What's that?" he asked, bending down to look into the pa.s.senger window.

"I said, it was nice meeting you. You have a nice day, now, Mr. DaCosta."

"You, too, dear," he said, stepping away from the car so she could back out of her driveway.

It was nahce meeting yew. Vince had to laugh. Of course. That was who this Mary Lou had reminded him of. Sally Slaggerty. Whatever little southern town Mary Lou had come from, he would bet big bucks that it wasn't too far from wherever Sally had been born more than eighty years ago.

Sally Slaggerty, who'd lived upstairs from Charlotte and Edna Fletcher, who'd entertained GIs and sailors in an intimate fas.h.i.+on on d.a.m.n close to a nightly basis.

Vince grew to dislike poor Sally pretty quickly, because whenever she came home in the evening, gentleman du jour in tow, Charlotte would make a fast exit from his room.

But then there was that one time.

It was latea"close to midnighta"when ol' Sal got home. Vince had been lying there in the dark for about an hour, thinking about how Charlie had smiled as he'd made his first triumphant trip down the hall to the bathroom just a few hours earlier, when suddenly Sally's radio went on.

He'd learned a h.e.l.l of a lot about s.e.xual relations over the week or so he'd been there. He'd learned that some men did the deed as if they were running the twenty-yard dash and trying to break the world record for speed. Othersa"and they tended to be the repeat performers, invited back for two or three nights until they s.h.i.+pped outa"kept the bedsprings squeaking and Sally moaning for close to an hour at a time.

An hour could be unbelievably long when there wasn't much else to do but listena"with the knowledge that Charlotte Fletcher was in the next room over, listening to the very same sounds.

Vince would lie there in that beda"her beda"and try not to remember that night that he'd found himself beneath the bed, with Charlie beneath him. He'd try not to remember the way she'd held him as he'd cried, or how sweet she'd smelled, or how soft her lips had felt as she'd kissed his forehead.

That night, Vince tried to focus on the fact that his trip to the bathroom had been a triumph. He was feeling much stronger. It wouldn't be long before he was up and out of bed for good. Which put him that much closer to the meeting Charlotte had set up for him with Senator Howard. It was still some time away, but he wanted to go in there looking strong and capable.

He'd barely recognized his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he was so pale and wan.

He tried to block the murmur of voices coming from Sally's room upstairs, but the cras.h.i.+ng sound of breaking gla.s.s made him sit up in bed.

It was nothing entirely new. There'd be giddy laughter now ... Except there wasn't. Just that murmur of voices. Sally's low and intense, her words indiscernible, the man's louder, suddenly clear.

"If you're not going to give it back, I'll leave when I'm G.o.dd.a.m.n ready to leave."

Another crash. And this time Sally cried out in pain or fear, it was hard to tell which.

Vince was up and out of the bed, standing on wobbly legs that hadn't made it farther than the bathroom and back in over a week.

Another crash and another. Jesus, this guy was beating her! Where the h.e.l.l were his pants? "Charlotte!"

The light went on in the hallway, and Charlie pushed open his door, her mouth grim. "I'm calling the police." Wrapping her robe around her, she vanished toward the stairs.

Upstairs, it sounded as if Sally had locked herself in her bathroom. Her "friend" was now beating on the door instead of her, thank G.o.d, but Sally was sobbing, begging for someone, anyone, to help her.

To h.e.l.l with his pants. To h.e.l.l with the police, tooa"they weren't going to get here in time to help at all.

Vince took the stairs down to the front door faster than he should have and fell the last few steps. Charlie was beside him then, all soft flannel and sweet-smelling hair.

"Don't," she said. "Don't, Vincea"I'll go!"

"Like h.e.l.l you will!" He somehow pushed himself up and toward the door. "Call the police and stay here!"

The night air was cold and bracing. Sally's door was around the side of the house and up a rickety flight of outside stairs. It had a wooden railing on both sides, and he was able to pull himself up mostly using his arms, two steps at a time.

By the time he reached the top, Charlie was behind him again, pus.h.i.+ng something into his hands.

A baseball bat.

James's, no doubt. Thank you, James, you old son of a b.i.t.c.h.

"Stay back," he told her again as he hobbled toward Sally's door.

But she didn't. She followed him.

The d.a.m.ned door was locked.

He could see through its window, through a gauzy curtain, into Sally's living room. It was a homey, tidy little room with a rocking chair knocked over from its place next to the radio, a braided rug, and a crocheted blanket thrown over the back of the sofa.

The man pounding on the bathroom door was a behemoth, but a behemoth with a swollen, b.l.o.o.d.y lipa"good job, Sal!

"Go back downstairs," he said, trying one more time to convince Charlie. If he was going to have to fight with this giant, he wasn't going to be able to fight fair, and he didn't want her to watch.

She shook her head. "I'm not leaving you, Vincent."

It was a moment he would have liked to savora"with her genuine concern for him filling her eyes, her face scrubbed clean of all makeup, her usually tidy hah- a golden cloud around her staunchly squared shoulders.

But d.a.m.n, that bathroom door wasn't going to stand much more abuse.

Sally screamed again and Vince didn't hesitate. He swung hard and put that bat right through the window. The crash of breaking gla.s.s resonated through the night, and somewhere in the neighborhood a dog started to bark. Across the street, a light went on. Good. The sooner the police got here, the better.

He reached through the broken window, unlocked the door, and went inside, trying his best to sidestep the broken gla.s.s, which was pretty much impossible.

"Don't come in," Vince warned Charlie, but of course, she ignored him again. Thankfully, she had slippers on as the gla.s.s crunched underfoot.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?"

No doubt about it, Vince had definitely caught the attention of Sally's friend. The man was wearing a disheveled but otherwise gleaming new Air Corps uniform with a first lieutenant bar on his shoulder. He was an officer but clearly no gentleman, and obviously far more than three sheets to the wind. He wiped his bleeding lip with the back of one hand as he sized them up, his gaze lingering on Charlie's thin bathrobe.

Vince stepped in front of her, planting himself and praying that his knees wouldn't give way. Not now, please, Lord. Her fingers tightened on his arm and he knew that she'd just realized how big this guy was.

"I'm a Marine who fought hand-to-hand on Tarawa," Vince told him evenly, told Charlie, too. No doubt she'd forgotten exactly how he'd received those wounds that had kept him confined to her bed for so many days. "I suggest you leave, Lieutenant. I believe you've worn out your welcome here."

"Oh, you do, do you?"

"Sally, are you all right?" Charlie raised her voice to be heard through the bathroom door. But all they could hear was the sound of the woman sobbing.

"That f.u.c.king wh.o.r.e stole my wallet," the behemoth said as if, even if it were true, that gave him the right to beat her.

"Watch your mouth around the lady," Vince countered sharply.

"Yeah, if she's friends with Sally, that ain't no lady you're with tonight, pal. Make sure you bang her hard and get your money's worth. That's all I'm trying to do here. Get my money's worth."

Vince didn't raise his voice. "Listen carefully to me. You are not worthy of breathing the same air as either of these two womena"both of whom have lost husbands in the war, and neither of whom have ever stolen anything in their livesa"a fact I would swear to on my sainted mother's grave.

"So I'm going to start to count. And if you're not on your way out the door and down those stairs by the time I get to three, I'm going to kill you."

"Oh, yeah?" the man scoffed.

"Yeah," Vince said. "Look into my eyes. I will kill you. I'll probably even enjoy it. G.o.d knows I've killed far better men than you.

"One."

The behemoth stared from Vince's face to the bat and back.

"Two."

Whatever darkness he saw in Vince's eyes apparently worked. The man moved, fast, but it wasn't an attack. He headed for the door, skidding slightly on the broken gla.s.s, and slamming it closed behind him.

Charlotte rushed for the bathroom door. "Sally, he's gone. Open up!"

Vince sank down into one of Sally's kitchen chairs, exhausted and aware that even though he hadn't been forced to fight, he'd revealed far more of himself to Charlie than he'd ever intended.

He stared at his feet, cut from the gla.s.s and bleeding. Funny how it didn't really hurt.

"Vince bluffed him into leaving," Charlie told Sally through the door, but as she glanced back at him, he could tell from her eyes that she knew the truth. It had not been any kind of bluff at all.

He would have killed that man. Without blinking.

Mary Lou was on her way in to work, dropping off Haley at Mrs. U.'s, when she saw it.

She was getting the stroller out of the trunk of her car because Mrs. U. and her four-year-old, Katie, wanted to take a walk with Haley down to the doughnut shop.

Of course, another doughnut was the last thing both Mrs. U. and Katie needed, but Mary Lou kept her opinion about that to herself. Particularly when, after setting up the stroller on the sidewalk, she went to close her trunk and saw it.

It was wrapped in some kind of fabrica"oilcloth, she thought it was calleda"and pushed way into the back, behind the jumper cables she always carried and had used on more than one occasion.

She reached in and pulled it toward her and unwrapped it.

And found herself staring at a deadly looking automatic weapon with a spare banana clip.

"Someone wants to give her mommy another kiss," Mrs. U. said from right behind her, and Mary Lou quickly wrapped the big gun back up, shoving it behind the cables and slamming the trunk closed.

G.o.d d.a.m.n Sam! What was he thinking, leaving a gun like that lying around where anyone could take it? Her trunk didn't lock. Anyone could just open it up and help themselves.

Inwardly fuming, she forced a smile and gave Haley another hug and kiss good-bye.

She headed to work, remembering Ihbraham's words from last night, when they'd talked on the phone.

"If you don't tell him that you are unhappy," he'd said, as they talked about Sam, "then how will he ever know?"

She'd told him she'd been working overtime the past few months to be compliant and agreeable. She was trying hard not to stir things up, for fear of driving Sam away.

"But is this thing you fear," Ihbraham had asked, "this being alone again, is it really so much worse than the being alone that you already have?"

She'd thought about little else all nighta"especially when Sam finally did come home. He climbed into bed beside her and fell immediately asleep. And Mary Lou lay there, still as completely alone as she'd been ten minutes earlier.

This gun in the trunk had to be mentioned. There was no doubt about that.

The guard at the gate of the base waved her in. And Mary Lou parked in her usual spot alongside the Dumpster.

She marched into the McDonald's, tired as h.e.l.l of being alone.

Chapter 11.

JOAN WAS SLIPPING into a clean blouse when there was a knock on her hotel room door. She peered through the peephole and saw Muldoon standing in the hall.

"What are you doing back so early?" She left the door open so that he could come in as she b.u.t.toned the last of her b.u.t.tons, heading for the car keys that she'd put on top of the TV cabinet.

They'd stayed so long at Donny's, Muldoon had gotten to the base a mere four minutes before an important meeting starteda"a meeting that he couldn't tell her anything about. Instead of taking the time to drop her here, they'd gone straight to the base and she'd dropped him instead. He'd insisted that she take his truck and drive herself to the hotel.

"May I come in for a minute?" he asked now, still planted securely out in the corridor.

"Of course," she said, tucking her blouse into her pants and grabbing the keys. "But I'm a little crunched for time right now, so I can really only spare a minute." She tossed him the keys to his truck as she swept into the bathroom and raised her voice so he could still hear her. "I'm meeting Commander Paoletti and his fiance for lunch, and I seem to have misplaced my fairy G.o.dmother, so I'm going to have to rely on makeup and this curling irona"ouch!a"to transform myself into something presentable."