“The 4500 block, Essex Avenue,’ he told the driver.
‘Where’s that, man?’
‘Bethesda.’
‘Gonna cost extra, man,’ the driver pointed out, turning north.
Kelly handed a ten-dollar bill across. ‘Another one if you get me there in fifteen minutes.’
‘Cool.’ And the acceleration dropped Kelly back in his seat. The taxi avoided Wisconsin Avenue most of the way. At a red light the driver found Essex Avenue on his map, and he ended up collecting the extra ten with about twenty seconds to spare.
It was an upscale residential neighborhood, and the house was easy to spot. There it was, a VW Beetle, an awful peanut-butter color speckled with a little body rust. It could not have been much better. Kelly hopped up the four wooden front steps and knocked on the door.
‘Hello?’ It was a face to match the voice. She had to be eighty or so, small and frail, but with fey green eyes that hinted at what had been, enlarged by the thick glasses she wore. Her hair still had some yellow in the gray.
‘Mrs Boyd? I called a little while ago about the car.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Bill Murphy, ma’am.’ Kelly smiled benignly. ‘Awful hot, isn’t it?’
‘T’rble,’ she said, meaning terrible. ‘Wait a minute.’ Gloria Boyd disappeared and then came back a moment later with the keys. She even came out to walk him to the car. Kelly took her arm to help her down the steps.
‘Thank you, young man.’
‘My pleasure, ma’am,’ he replied gallantly.
‘We got the car for my granddaughter. When she went to college, then Ken used it,’ she said, expecting Kelly to know who Ken was.
‘Excuse me?’
‘My husband,’ Gloria said without turning. ‘He died a month ago.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear that, ma’am.’
‘He was sick a long time,’ said the woman, not yet recovered from the shock of her loss but accepting the fact of it. She handed him the keys. ‘Here, take a look.’
Kelly unlocked the door. It looked like the car used by a college student and then by an elderly man. The seats were well worn, and one had a long slash in it, probably by a packing box of clothes or books. He turned the key in the lock and the engine started immediately. There was even a full tank of gas. The ad hadn’t lied about the mileage, only 52,000 miles on the odometer. He asked for and got permission to take it around the block. The car was mechanically sound, he decided, bringing it back to the waiting owner.
‘Where did all the rust come from?’ he asked her, giving the keys back.
‘She went to school in Chicago, at Northwestern, all that terrible snow and salt.’
‘That’s a good school. Let’s get you back inside,’ Kelly took her arm and directed her back to the house. It smelled like an old person’s house, the air heavy with dust that she was too tired to wipe, and stale food, for the meals she still fixed were for two, not one.
‘Are you thirsty?’
‘Yes, ma’am, thank you. Water will be just fine.’ Kelly looked around while she went to the kitchen. There was a photo on the wall, a man in a high-necked uniform and Sam Browne belt, holding the arm of a young woman in a very tight, almost cylindrical, white wedding dress. Other photos cataloged the married life of Kenneth and Gloria Boyd. Two daughters and a son, a trip to the ocean, an old car, grandchildren, all the things earned in a full and useful life.
‘Here you go.’ She handed over a glass.
‘Thank you. What did your husband do?’
‘He worked for the Commerce Department for forty-two years. We were going to move to Florida, but then he got sick so now I’m going alone. My sister lives in Fort Pierce, she’s a widow too, her husband was a policeman …’ Her voice trailed off as the cat came in to examine the new visitor. That seemed to invigorate Mrs Boyd. ‘I’m moving down there next week. The house is already sold, have to get out next Thursday. I sold it to a nice young doctor.’
‘I hope you like it down there, ma’am. How much do you want for the car?’
‘I can’t drive anymore because of my eyes, cataracts. People have to drive me everywhere I go. My grandson says it’s worth one thousand five hundred dollars.’
Your grandson must be a lawyer to be that greedy, Kelly thought. ‘How about twelve hundred? I can pay cash.’
‘Cash?’ Her eyes became fey again.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Then you can have the car.’ She held out her hand and Kelly took it carefully.
‘Do you have the paperwork?’ It made Kelly feel guilty that she had to get up again, this time heading upstairs, slowly, holding on to the banister while Kelly took out his wallet and counted off twelve crisp bills.
It should have taken only another ten minutes, but instead it was thirty. Kelly had already checked up on how to do the mechanics of a title transfer, and besides, he wasn’t going to do all of that. The auto-insurance policy was tucked into the same cardboard envelope as the title, in the name of Kenneth W. Boyd. Kelly promised to take care of that for her, and the tags, too, of course. But it turned out that all the cash made Mrs Boyd nervous, and so Kelly helped her fill out a deposit ticket, and then drove her to her bank, where she could drop it into the night depository. Then he stopped off at the supermarket for milk and cat food before bringing her home and walking her to the door again.
‘Thank you for the car, Mrs Boyd,’ he said in parting.
‘What are you going to use it for?’
‘Business.’ Kelly smiled and left.
At quarter of nine that night, two cars pulled into the service area on Interstate 95. The one in front was a Dodge Dart and the one behind it a red Plymouth Roadrunner. Roughly fifty feet apart, they picked a half-full area north of Maryland House, a rest stop set in the median of the John F. Kennedy Highway, offering full restaurant services along with gas and oil – good coffee, but, understandably, no alcoholic beverages. The Dart took a few meandering turns in the parking lot, finally stopping three spaces from a white Oldsmobile with Pennsylvania tags and a brown vinyl top. The Roadrunner took a space in the next row. A woman got out and walked towards the brick restaurant, a path that took her past the Olds.
‘Hey, baby,’ a man said. The woman stopped and took a few steps towards the vinyl-topped automobile. The man was Caucasian, with long but neatly combed black hair and an open-necked white shirt.
‘Henry sent me,’ she said.
‘I know.’ He reached out to stroke her face, a gesture which she did not resist. He looked around a little before moving his hand downwards. ‘You have what I want, baby?’
‘Yes.’ She smiled. It was a forced, uneasy smile, frightened but not embarrassed. Doris was months beyond embarrassment.
‘Nice tits,’ the man said with no emotional content at all in his voice. ‘Get the stuff.’
Doris walked back to her car, as though she’d forgotten something. She returned with a large purse, almost a small duffel, really. As she walked past the Olds, the man’s hand reached out and took it. Doris proceeded into the building, returning a minute later holding a can of soda, her eyes on the Roadrunner, hoping that she’d done everything right. The Olds had its motor running, and the driver blew her a kiss, to which she responded with a wan smile.
‘That was easy enough,’ Henry Tucker said, fifty yards away, at the outdoor eating area on the other side of the building.
‘Good stuff?’ another man asked Tony Piaggi. The three of them sat at the same table, ‘enjoying’ the sultry evening while the majority of the patrons were inside with the air conditioning.
‘The best. Same as the sample we gave you two weeks ago. Same shipment and everything,’ Piaggi assured him.
‘And if the mule gets burned?’ the man from Philadelphia asked.
‘She won’t talk,’ Tucker assured him. ‘They’ve all seen what happens to bad girls.’ As they watched, a man got out of the Roadrunner and got into the Dart’s driver’s seat.
‘Very good,’ Rick told Doris.
‘Can we go now?’ she asked him, shaking now that the job was over, sipping nervously at her soda.
‘Sure, baby, I know what you want.’ Rick smiled and started the car. ‘Be nice, now. Show me something.’
‘There’s people around,’ Doris said.
‘So?’
Without another word, Doris unbuttoned her shirt – it was a man’s shin-leaving it tucked into her faded shorts. Rick reached in and smiled, turning the wheel with his left hand. It could have been worse, Doris told herself, closing her eyes, pretending that she was someone else in some other place, wondering how long before her life would end too, hoping it wouldn’t be long.