Speak of the Devil Read Free Page A

with the horrific images.
     
THANKSGIVING DAY MASSACRE
MAYHEM IN MANHATTAN
PARADE OF TERROR
     
    Margo would be sitting at her kitchen table watching the breaking reports. I could picture her, bare feet pulled up onto the chair, the Rangers jersey pulled over her legs, covering her like a tent. Her stomach would be grumbling for want of bagels.
    And she’d know. Margo knows me. The same way her mother knew her old man when he was still in the game. My being gone this long, she’d know that somehow I had gotten myself involved. But Margo also knows the odds. She’d know in her heart of hearts that in all likelihood, I was probably okay. As she likes to say, I seem to have been born under the watchful eye of the Saint of Reckless Dumb Luck.
    Even so, she’d be having fingernails for breakfast.
     
     
    WE STOPPED. TWENTY MINUTES OF DRIVING, BY MY ESTIMATE. TAKING into account the little maneuvers to throw me off, we were still in Manhattan. I would have sussed out easily enough if we had traveled over a bridge or through a tunnel. My ear was close to the ground. Literally.
    The two policemen got out of the car. Nothing happened for the next five minutes except that my calves cramped, first one, then the other. Finally, the men in blue returned and the rear door was opened. Unfolding me from the floor was not exactly a ballet, but we all did what we had to do. Outside the car, one of the cops adjusted the bag to sit straighter on my head.
    “Thank you.”
    I was taken by both elbows and led forward. “Step up,” one of the cops said. About twenty steps later, he said it again. I heard the click of a door being opened, and I was led inside. Even under the bag, I could practically taste the staleness of the air. I was somewhere cold.
    We walked a few more feet and then stopped. I waited. After about twenty seconds, I said, “I hope you guys appreciate how docile I’m being.”
    Gumdrop told me to shut up. This seemed to be his specialty.
    “Listen,” I said. “I don’t know what academy you two attended, but you’ve both got a lot to learn about bringing a person in. This is bullshit. Take this goddamn bag off my head.”
    Nothing. A moment later, I heard a small metallic squeaking sound. “Take three steps,” the black guy instructed. My elbows were released. I took the three steps.
    “Later,” Gumdrop muttered, and I heard the squeaking again. Nothing. Then the ground shifted suddenly.
    Elevator.
    Going up.
    I was pretty sure I was alone now.
     
3
     
    SOMEONE WAS WAITING FOR ME WHEN THE ELEVATOR DOOR SLID open. My arm was grabbed tightly and I was yanked forward. I stumbled a few steps and jerked free.
    “Whoever you are, fuck you.”
    A gravelly voice muttered, “Just c’mon.”
    My arm was taken again and I let myself be led forward. Tile floor, not wood. Something in the slap of the shoes. My other senses were already picking up the slack. We walked about fifty paces before we stopped.
    “Sit down.”
    I lowered myself carefully. The fingers of my cuffed hands found the chair before the rest of me did. Straight-backed metal chair. I perched lightly on the edge. Between the tumble down the steps at the Bethesda Fountain and my being curled up on the floor of a police car, my muscles were beginning to show me their aches. Even so, I tensed my legs, ready to leap. The bag was lifted from my head. The gravelly voice sounded. “Oh shit.”
    The handcuffs were unlocked. I heard them being tossed onto a table as I kneaded the circulation back into my wrists, then I reached up and tugged off the blindfold.
    I was in a room about the size of a small classroom. No windows, completely unadorned. The walls were painted infirmary green, circa several decades ago. A ridgeline of what looked like coffee stains ran about four feet off the floor along the wall facing me. Overhead, a bank of fluorescent lights buzzed, giving off cold, colorless light.
    I was seated at the long end of a rectangular wooden table. The