Child, Lee – Without Fail

was cold and dark and damp and the traffic was bad. There was

congestion everywhere. Long lines of red brake lights streamed

ahead of them, long lines of bright white headlights streamed

towards them. They drove south across the 11th Street Bridge

and fought through a maze of streets to Froelich’s house.

She double-parked with the motor running and fiddled behind

the steering wheel and took her door key off its ring. Handed it

to him.

‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours,’ she said. ‘Make yourself at

home.’

141

He took his bag and got out and watched her drive off. She

made a right to loop back north over a different bridge and

disappeared from sight. He crossed the sidewalk and unlocked

her front door. The house was dark and warm. It had her

perfume in it. He closed the door behind him and fumbled for a

light switch. A low-wattage bulb came on inside a yellow shade

on a lamp on a small chest of drawers. It gave a soft, muted

light. He put the key down next to it and dropped his bag at the

foot of the stairs and stepped into the living room. Switched on

the light. Walked on into the kitchen. Looked around.

There were basement stairs in there, behind a door. He stood

still for a second with his ritual curiosity nagging at him. It was

an ingrained reflex, like breathing. But was it polite to search

your host’s house? Just out of habit? Of course not. But he

couldn’t resist. He walked down the stairs, switching lights on

as he went. The basement itself was a dark space walled with

smooth old concrete. It had a furnace and a water softener in it.

A washing machine and an electric dryer. Shelving units. Old

suitcases. Plenty of miscellaneous junk stacked all around, but

nothing of any great significance. He walked back up. Turned

off the lights. Opposite the head of the stairs was an enclosed

space right next to the kitchen. It was larger than a closet,

smaller than a room. Maybe a pantry, originally. It had been

fitted out as a tiny home office. There was a rolling chair and a

desk and shelves, all of them a few years old. They looked like

chain store versions of real office furniture, with plenty of wear

and tear on them. Maybe they were secondhand. There was a

computer, fairly old. An inkjet printer connected to it with a fat

cable. He moved back into the kitchen.

He looked at all the usual places women hide things in

kitchens and found five hundred dollars in mixed bills inside

an earthenware casserole on a high shelf inside a cupboard.

Emergency cash. Maybe an old Y2K precaution that she

decided to stick with afterwards. He found an M9 Beretta

nine-millimetre sidearm in a drawer, carefully hidden under

a stack of place mats. It was old and scratched and stained

with dried oil in random patches. Probably army surplus,

redistributed to another government department. Last

generation Secret Service issue, without a doubt. It was

142

unloaded. The magazine was missing. He opened the next

drawer to the left and put his hand on four spares laid out in a

line under an oven glove. They were all loaded with standard

jacketed cartridges. Good news and bad news. The layout

was smart. Pick up the gun with your right hand, access the

magazines with your left. Sound ergonomics. But storing

magazines full of bullets was a bad idea. Leave them long

enough, the spring in the magazine learns its compressed

shape and won’t function right. More jams are caused by tired

magazine springs than any other single reason. Better to keep

the gun with a single shell locked in the chamber and all the

other bullets loose. You can fire once right-handed while you

thumb loose shells into an empty magazine with your left.

Slower than the ideal, but a lot better than pulling the trigger

and hearing nothing at all except a dull click.

He closed the kitchen drawers and moved back into the

living room. Nothing there, except a hollowed-out book on the

shelves, and it was empty. He turned on the TV, and it worked.