Kelly took two loaded magazines from a drawer, along with a single loose round. He inserted one loaded clip into the piece, working the slide to load the first round in the chamber. He carefully lowered the hammer before ejecting the magazine and sliding another round into place. With eight cartridges in the weapon, and a backup clip, he now had a total of fifteen rounds with which to face danger. Not nearly enough for a walk in the jungles of Vietnam, but he figured it was plenty for the dark environs of a city. He could hit a human head with a single aimed shot from ten yards, day or night. He’d never once rattled under fire, and he’d killed men before. Whatever the dangers might be, Kelly was ready for them. Besides, he wasn’t going after the Vietcong. He was going in at night, and the night was his friend. There would be fewer people around for him to worry about, and unless the other side knew he was there—which they wouldn’t—he didn’t have to worry about an ambush. He just had to stay alert, which came easily to him.
Dinner was chicken, something Pam knew how to fix. Kelly almost got out a bottle of wine but thought better of it. Why tempt her with alcohol? Maybe he’d stop drinking himself. It would be no great loss, and the sacrifice would validate his commitment to her. Their conversation avoided serious matters. He’d already shut the dangers from his mind. There was no need to dwell on them. Too much imagination made things worse, not better.
“You really think we need new curtains?” he said.
“They don’t match the furniture very well.”
Kelly grunted. “For a boat?”
“It’s kinda dull there, you know?”
“Dull,” he observed, clearing the table. “Next thing, you’ll say that men are all alike—” Kelly stopped dead in his tracks. It was the first time he’d slipped up that way. “Sorry . . .”
She gave him an impish smile. “Well, in some ways you are. And stop being so nervous about talking to me about things, okay?”
Kelly relaxed. “Okay.” He grabbed her and pulled her close. “If that’s the way you feel... well . . .”
“Mmm.” She smiled and accepted his kiss. Kelly’s hands wandered across her back, and there was no feel of a bra under the cotton blouse. She giggled at him. “I wondered how long it would take you to notice.”
“The candles were in the way,” he explained.
“The candles were nice, but smelly.” And she was right. The bunker was not well ventilated. Something else to fix. Kelly looked forward into a very busy future as he moved his hands to a nicer place.
“Have I gained enough weight?”
“Is it my imagination, or ... ?”
“Well, maybe just a little,” Pam admitted, holding his hands on her.
“We need to get you some new clothes,” he said, watching her face, the new confidence. He had her on the wheel, steering the proper compass course past Sharp’s Island Light, well east of the shipping channel, which was busy today.
“Good idea,” she agreed. “But I don’t know any good places.” She checked the compass like a good helmsman.
“They’re easy to find. You just look at the parking lot.”
“Huh?”
“Lincolns and Caddys, honey. Always means good clothes,” Kelly noted. “Never fails.”
She laughed as intended. Kelly marveled at how much more in control she seemed, though there was still a long ways to go.
“Where will we stay tonight?”
“On board,” Kelly answered. “We’ll be secure here.” Pam merely nodded, but he explained anyway.
“You look different now, and they don’t know me from Adam. They don’t know my car or my boat. Frank Allen doesn’t know your name or even that you’re a girl. That’s operational security. We ought to be safe.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Pam said, turning to smile at him. The confidence in her face warmed his blood and fed his already capacious ego.
“Going to rain tonight,” Kelly noted, pointing at distant clouds. “That’s good, too. Cuts down visibility. We used to do a lot of stuff in the rain. People just aren’t alert when they’re wet.”
“You really know about this stuff, don’t you?”
A manly smile. “I learned in a really tough school, honey.”
They made port three hours later. Kelly made a great show of being alert, checking out the parking lot, noting that his Scout was in its accustomed place. He sent her below while he tied up, then left her there while he drove the car right to the dock. Pam, as instructed, walked straight from the boat to the Scout without looking left or right, and he drove off the property at once. It was still early in the day, and they drove immediately out of the city, finding a suburban shopping center in Timonium, where Pam over a period of two—to Kelly, interminable—hours selected three nice outfits, for which he paid cash. She dressed in the one he liked best, an understated skirt and blouse that went well with his jacket and no tie. For once Kelly was dressing in accordance with his own net worth, which was comfortable.
Dinner was eaten in the same area, an upscale restaurant with a dark corner booth. Kelly didn’t say so, but he’d needed a good meal, and while Pam was okay with chicken, she still had a lot to learn about cooking.
“You look pretty good—relaxed, I mean,” he said, sipping his after-dinner coffee.
“I never thought I’d feel this way. I mean, it’s only been ... not even three weeks?”
“That’s right.” Kelly set his coffee down. “Tomorrow we’ll see Sarah and her friends. In a couple of months everything will be different, Pam.” He took her left hand, hoping that it would someday bear a gold ring on the third finger.
“1 believe that now. I really do.”
“Good.”
“What do we do now?” she asked. Dinner was over and there were hours until the clandestine meeting with Lieutenant Allen.
“Just drive around some?” Kelly left cash on the table and led her out to the car.
It was dark now. The sun was nearly set, and rain was starting to fall. Kelly headed south on York Road towards the city, well fed and relaxed himself, feeling confident and ready for the night’s travail. Entering Towson, he saw the recently abandoned streetcar tracks that announced his proximity to the city and its supposed dangers. His senses perked up at once. Kelly’s eyes darted left and right, scanning the streets and sidewalks, checking his three rearview mirrors every five seconds. On getting in the car, he’d put his .45 Colt automatic in its accustomed place, a holster just under the front seat that he could reach faster than one in his belt—and besides, it was a lot more comfortable that way.
“Pam?” he asked, watching traffic, making sure the doors were locked—a safety provision that seemed outrageously paranoid when he was so alert.
“Yes?”
“How much do you trust me?”
“I do trust you, John.”
“Where did you—work, I mean?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s dark and rainy, and I’d like to see what it’s like down there.” Without looking, he could feel her body tense. “Look, I’ll be careful. If you see anything that worries you, I’ll make tracks like you won’t believe.”
“I’m scared of that,” Pam said immediately, but then she stopped herself. She was confident in her man, wasn’t she? He’d done so much for her. He’d saved her. She had to trust him—no, he had to know that she did. She had to show him that she did. And so she asked: “You promise you’ll be careful?”
“Believe it, Pam,” he assured her. “You see one single thing that worries you and we’re gone.”
“Okay, then.”
It was amazing, Kelly thought, fifty minutes later. The things that are there but which you never see. How many times had he driven through this part of town, never stopping, never noticing? And for years his survival had depended on his noting everything, every bent branch, every sudden bird-call, every footprint in the dirt. But he’d driven through this area a hundred times and never noticed what was happening because it
was a different sort of jungle filled with very different game. Part of him just shrugged and said, Well, what did you expect? Another part noted that there had always been danger here, and he’d failed to take note of it, but the warning was not as loud and clear as it should have been.
The environment was ideal. Dark, under a cloudy, moonless sky. The only illumination came from sparse streetlights that created lonely globes of light along sidewalks both deserted and active. Showers came and went, some fairly heavy, mostly moderate, enough to keep heads down and limit visibility, enough to reduce a person’s normal curiosity. That suited Kelly fine, since he was circulating around and around the blocks, noting changes from the second to the third pass by a particular spot. He noted that not even all the streetlights were functioning. Was that just the sloth of city workers or creative maintenance on the part of the local “businessmen”? Perhaps a little of both, Kelly thought. The guys who changed the bulbs couldn’t make all that much, and a twenty-dollar bill would probably persuade them to be a little slow, or maybe not screw the bulb in all the way. In any case, it set the mood. The streets were dark, and the dark had always been Kelly’s trusted friend.
The neighborhoods were so ... sad, he thought. Shabby storefronts of what had been mom-and-pop grocery stores, probably run out of business by supermarkets which had themselves been wrecked in the ’68 rioting, opening a hole in the economic fabric of the area, but one not yet filled. The cracked cement of the sidewalks was littered with all manner of debris. Were there people who lived here? Who were they? What did they do? What were their dreams? Surely not all could be criminals. Did they hide at night? And if then, what about the daylight? Kelly had learned it in Asia: give the enemy one part of the day and he would secure it for himself, and then expand it, for the day had twenty-four hours, and he would want them all for himself and his activities. No, you couldn’t give the other side anything, not a time, not a place, nothing that they could reliably use. That’s how people lost a war, and there was a war going on here. And the winners were not the forces of good. That realization struck him hard. Kelly had already seen what he knew to be a losing war.
The dealers were a diverse group, Kelly saw as he cruised past their sales area. Their posture told him of their confidence. They owned the streets at this hour. There might be competition from one to the other, a nasty Darwinian process that determined who owned what segment of what sidewalk, who had territorial rights in front of this or that broken window, but as with all such competition, things would soon attain some sort of stability, and business would be conducted, because the purpose of the competition was business, after all.
He turned right onto a new street. The thought evoked a grunt and a thin, ironic smile. New street? No, these streets were old ones, so old that “good” people had left them years ago to move out of the city into greener places, allowing other people, deemed less valuable than themselves, to move in, and then they too had moved away, and the cycle had continued for another few generations until something had gone very badly wrong to create what he saw now in this place. It had taken an hour or so for him to grasp the fact that there were people here, not just trash-laden sidewalks and criminals. He saw a woman leading a child by the hand away from a bus stop. He wondered where they were returning from. A visit with an aunt? The public library? Some place whose attractions were worth the uncomfortable passage between the bus stop and home, past sights and sounds and people whose very existence could damage that little child.
Kelly’s back got straighter and his eyes narrower. He’d seen that before. Even in Vietnam, a country at war since before his birth, there were still parents, and children, and, even in war, a desperate quest for something like normality. Children needed to play some of the time, to be held and loved, protected from the harsher aspects of reality for as long as the courage and talents of their parents could make that possible. And it was true here, too. Everywhere there were victims, all innocent to some greater or lesser degree, and the children the most innocent of all. He could see it there, fifty yards away, as the young mother led her child across the street, short of the corner where a dealer stood, making a transaction. Kelly slowed his car to allow her safe passage, hoping that the care and love she showed that night would make a difference to her child. Did the dealers notice her? Were the ordinary citizens worthy of note at all? Were they cover? Potential customers? Nuisances? Prey? And what of the child? Did they care at all? Probably not.
“Shit,” he whispered quietly to himself, too detached to show his anger openly.
“What?” Pam asked. She was sitting quietly, leaning away from the window.
“Nothing. Sorry.” Kelly shook his head and continued his observation. He was actually beginning to enjoy himself. It was like a reconnaissance mission. Reconnaissance was learning, and learning had always been a passion for Kelly. Here was something completely new. Sure, it was evil, destructive, ugly, but it was also different, which made it exciting. His hands tingled on the wheel.
The customers were diverse, too. Some were obviously local, you could tell from their color and shabby clothing. Some were more addicted than others, and Kelly wondered what that meant. Were the apparently functional ones the newly enslaved? Were the shambling ones the veterans of self-destruction, heading irrevocably towards their own deaths? How could a normal person look at them and not be frightened that it was possible to destroy yourself one dose at a time? What drove people to do this? Kelly nearly stopped the car with that thought. That was something beyond his experience.
Then there were the others, the ones with medium-expensive cars so clean that they had to come from the suburbs, where standards had to be observed. He pulled past one and gave the driver a quick look. Even wears a tie! Loose in the collar to allow for his nervousness in a neighborhood such as this one, using one hand to roll down the window while the other perched at the top of the wheel, his right foot doubtless resting lightly on the gas pedal, ready to jolt the car forward if danger should threaten. The driver’s nerves must be on edge, Kelly thought, watching him in the mirror. He could not be comfortable here, but he had come anyway. Yes, there it was. Money was passed out the window, and something received for it, and the car moved off as quickly as the traffic-laden street would allow. On a whim, Kelly followed the Buick for a few blocks, turning right, then left onto a main artery, where the car got into the left lane and stayed there, driving as rapidly as was prudent to get the hell out of this dreary part of the city, but without drawing the unwanted attention of a police officer with a citation book.
Yeah, the police, Kelly thought as he gave up the pursuit. Where the hell are they? The law was being violated with all the apparent drama of a block party, but they were nowhere to be seen. He shook his head as he turned back into the trading area. The disconnect from his own neighborhood in Indianapolis, merely ten years before, was vast. How had things changed so rapidly? How had he missed it? His time in the Navy, his life on the island, had insulated him from everything. He was a rube, an innocent, a tourist in his own country.
He looked over at Pam. She seemed all right, though a little tense. Those people were dangerous, but not to the two of them. He’d been careful to remain invisible, to drive like everyone else, meandering around the few blocks of the “business” area in an irregular pattern. He was not blind to the dangers, Kelly told himself. In searching for patterns of activity, he hadn’t made any of his own. If anyone had eyeballed him and his vehicle especially hard, he would have noticed. And besides, he still had his Colt .45 between his legs. However formidable these thugs might appear, they were nothing compared to the North Vietnamese and Vietcong he’d faced. They’d been good. He’d been better. There was danger on these streets, but far less than he had survived already.
Fifty yards away was a dealer dressed in a silk shirt that might have been brown or maroon. It was hard to tell the color in the poor illumination, but it had to be silk from the way it reflected light. Probably real silk, Kelly was
willing to bet. There was a flashiness to these vermin. It wasn’t enough for them merely to violate the law, was it? Oh, no, they had to let people know how bold and daring they were.
Dumb, Kelly thought. Very dumb to draw attention to yourself that way. When you do dangerous things, you conceal your identity, conceal your very presence, and always leave yourself with at least one route of escape.
“It’s amazing they can get away with this,” Kelly whispered to himself.
“Huh?” Pam’s head turned.
“They’re so stupid.” Kelly waved at the dealer near the corner. “Even if the cops don’t do anything, what if somebody decides to—I mean, he’s holding a lot of money, right?”
“Probably a thousand, maybe two thousand,” Pam replied.
“So what if somebody tries to rob him?”
“It happens, but he’s carrying a gun, too, and if anyone tries—”
“Oh—the guy in the doorway?”
“He’s the real dealer, Kelly. Didn’t you know that? The guy in the shirt is his lieutenant. He’s the guy who does the actual—what do you call it?”
“Transaction,” Kelly replied dryly, reminding himself that he’d failed to spot something, knowing that he’d allowed his pride to overcome his caution. Not a good habit, he told himself.
Pam nodded. “That’s right. Watch—watch him now.”
Sure enough, Kelly saw what he now realized was the full transaction. Someone in a car—another visitor from the suburbs, Kelly thought—handed over his money (an assumption, since Kelly couldn’t really see, but surely it wasn’t a BankAmericard). The lieutenant reached inside the shirt and handed something back. As the car pulled off, the one in the flamboyant shirt moved across the sidewalk, and in shadows that Kelly’s eyes could not quite penetrate the e was another exchange.