Dead Letter Drop

  I had to try and get to Sumpy before the rest of this mob, and I knew if I had any time at all that it was precious little. My chances of thumbing a ride were slim. Nobody stops for hitchhikers on a dark New Jersey road except the odd rapist for a solitary female. They certainly weren’t going to stop for me, bleary-eyed, unwashed and with 36 hours of beard; if I was going to get myself a ride, I was going to have to dispense with the customary niceties.

  A short way back, where we’d driven off the Parkway, we’d doubled back round and underneath it. I walked back there and up onto the Parkway, and stood looking down onto 9 West. It was a perfect vantage point; any car turning onto the Parkway would have to slow down to walking pace to make that turn.

  I forced my adrenalin to start pumping, as I had been trained to be able to do, forced every muscle and blood vessel and nerve ending in my body into full alert by clenching and relaxing, clenching and relaxing, hyperventilating my lungs; my whole body began to tingle with energy; I was racing; the 25-foot drop to the road started looking easy, dangerously easy.

  I crouched, poised, wound up like a spring; every factor of timing and movement that had been rammed into my skull during my training I yanked to the front of my brain’s memory banks. I waited.

  A truck passed, grinding up through the gears. Another. A giant tractor-trailer, its diesel firing staccato cracks into the evening sky through the exhaust that rose up from the massive hood in front of the windshield. A station wagon, loaded with kids whose heads were swivelled round at the wreck behind them down the road. The siren of the first police car heading for the wreck cut through the air like a cheese knife. A Ferrari howled off up the road, pressed down on its suspension by the force of acceleration like some powerful jungle cat. A motorbike accelerated after it in a hopeless attempt to pace it. A beat-up Ford full of greasers, radio blaring out music through the walls of the car. And then my mark: a large, soft-top Chevrolet going slowly, right-turn indicator flashing.

  I stared carefully through the windshield as the car approached; the driver was definitely on his own. I planted my feet firmly on the ground, made sure my right foot was rock firm, then my left foot; I bent my knees so that they were almost touching the ground, left knee slightly forward. I was going to have one chance and one chance only: if I landed awkwardly I would seriously injure myself; if I missed there was no way I’d get off the road before being hit by the next car, and what would be left of me by several more after that.

  I froze the Chevrolet’s progress down into fraction of a second by fraction of a second movement. I could see the driver’s face clearly: thin, nervous, concentrating for all he was worth on the act of keeping his car travelling in a straight line down the dead straight road. I’d left it too late. No I hadn’t. Yes I had; better to wait for the next car. Maybe not get another convertible for some time, not for a long time perhaps, empty like this, travelling so slowly, so close in to the bank. Jump!

  I sprang, feet thrust out in front of me; air rushed past. The car was moving one hell of a lot faster from here than it had seemed to be from the bridge. I aimed the metal tips of my heels at the middle panel of the roof, worried about the PVC – it could be damn tough – then felt them slice through; then a thump, a horrendous ripping rending sound, a winding crack of my back on a metal strut, followed by a searing pain on my arm as another metal strut sliced off the skin. I crashed down onto the plastic cover of the back seat, felt the springs flatten and snap beneath me, then bounced up like some clumsy elephant on a trampoline, crashed down again, thumping violently into the seat back, kicked out my feet against the side of the car, and sank them hard into the cushioning on the panel. As my ass crashed back down onto the seat I was already reaching into my breast pocket for my Beretta.

  My method of entry into the car had done something terrible to the driver’s nerves. We did a sharp swerve across the approach lane and over both lanes of the Parkway; swerved back across the three lanes and onto the hard shoulder; back across the three lanes, this time with the tail end swiping a chunk of itself off against the central barrier. We swung back across the entire three lanes, then the approach lane ended and we swung back across the two remaining lanes, zigzagged wildly three times in succession, miraculously missing the central divider and the verge. My driver was getting the hang of things. We swerved back across only one and a half lanes this time, and then the idiot went and slammed on the anchors for all he was worth.

  ‘Don’t brake – accelerate!’ I yelled. ‘For Chrissake accelerate!’ But it was too late; there was a scream of tyres from behind and I turned to see the headlamps of a saloon pointing almost vertically down at the tarmac. I tried to relax against the impact. He hit us with a wallop that lifted us in the air and spun us half round, flung me up in the air cracking my head on a roof spar, flung my driver up against his seat belting. Then he bashed us again, this time more gently, just behind the driver’s door. There was a rapid succession of screeching tyres, the banging of metal on metal and the smashing of metal on glass, that trailed on way back into the distance as most of the southbound Parkway drivers behind us tailgated each other.

  ‘Shift it!’ I said. ‘Shift it!’

  ‘I . . . but . . . I . . .’

  ‘Move this goddam car, move it!’

  ‘Accident. Must stop. Police. Insurance. Must stop.’

  ‘Move it, you jerk, I’m telling you. Drive on!’

  ‘But . . . my car . . .’

  ‘Stamp on that accelerator – gas pedal – goddam stamp on it, or I’ll blow your fucking head and balls off.’

  ‘It won’t go.’ He started frantically to turn the ignition key; each time he did there was a horrible metallic grating sound. ‘It won’t go!’ he repeated.

  ‘It’s already going,’ I said.

  He turned his head with a pathetic, pleading look, to find himself staring down the receiving end of an extremely unsympathetic and very determinedly held Beretta.

  Something must have got through for he tramped on the gas pedal and the tyres, grinding themselves away against the wheel arches that had been rammed against them, spun protestingly round. As we grated forward there was a clattering, followed by a thunderous roar, as the exhaust parted company with us. Sounding like a cross between a tugboat and an iron foundry, we started to pick up speed.

  ‘Just keep it going, nice and easy and as fast as you can, my friend.’

  He gave a tiny nod. He was welded to the steering wheel and sitting bolt upright in his seat, like a rabbit with premature rigor mortis. ‘Yes, er, sir.’ Unfortunately he was one of those people who find it impossible to hold a car on a completely straight course and he continually sawed at the steering wheel with his hands. Up to about 50 it was tolerable. As the needle started to flicker up to the 65-mark we started to sway in an uncomfortable manner, his sawing movements became bigger and we began to feel very unstable.

  ‘Slow down to 50 and hold it there. Hang a left onto the George Washington Bridge when we get to it.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He was a natty little man, spick and span and dainty. A Chopin waltz was playing on his tape deck. He wore his hair short and it was slicked with hair cream. He had on a rather loud, brown checked jacket, with a bright red shirt and pale-blue polyester tie. He reeked of several different brands of after-shave and cologne and talcum powder and face lotion and under-arm spray and in-between-toes spray. He looked like a prime candidate for one of Elmer Hyams’s Pontiac bargains.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Henry, er, Timbuck – er, Henry Timbuck – er, Henry C. Timbuck, sir.’

  ‘Glad to know you, Henry C. Timbuck.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  He had a cute lisp. His whole voice in fact was cute. It was the typical nasally high-pitched accent of New York gays. He gave his words a little mince as he spoke, and minced his body at the same time. He relaxed, just a trifle, which was a mistake as he nearly put us up the back of a bus.

  Henry C. T
imbuck looked like he’d been all set for a Sunday night on the Manhattan tiles. I wondered vaguely whether he was off to some bar to sit on his own and try for a pick-up, or off to have dinner with his boyfriend, or off to that loneliest of all pastimes – cruising.

  A hurricane was raging in through what was left of the roof, and I climbed over into the front seat to get the protection of the windshield. The stink of perfumes was even stronger.

  ‘What do you do?’ I asked him. I have no idea why I asked him; I didn’t give a monkey’s what he did, and I didn’t hear his reply. There were a lot of matters I had to sort out fast, and for me they all took priority over Henry C. Timbuck’s career. I churned over the events of today, trying to see where any of it fitted, if any of it fitted at all.

  I was shivering with cold. ‘Got a heater in this thing?’

  Timbuck fiddled with some knobs on the dash and the car went once more into a violent swerve. Fortunately there was nothing trying to pass us. A stream of roasting air poured onto my feet and a blast of freezing air shot into the centre of my stomach, accompanied by a noise from behind the dash not unlike that of an asthmatic bulldog.

  I hit the button on what appeared outwardly to be a standard Seiko digital watch but inside contained the full technical treatment from MI5. Its level of accuracy was so high that it would not gain or lose more than a hundredth of a second in two years, either on the moon, on land, or five miles underwater. Not a lot of point in it, to my thinking, unless one is going in for inter-galactic travelling in a big way. Which I wasn’t. Today’s date beamed up on the dial. I shouldn’t have gotten the date – the button I pushed was for the time. I pushed it again and the date appeared once more, dark purple against the cream background. So I pushed the button for the date. That also gave me the date. I pushed the button for the time again and got my precise height above sea level. I made a mental note to strangle two gentlemen, one named Trout, the other Trumbull, on my return to England. I pushed the time button again, losing patience, and got the temperature, first in Celsius, then in Fahrenheit, followed by a barometric read-out. I patiently and gently pushed the button once more. It gave me the time in Japan, followed by the time in Iceland, Libya, Romania and Argentina, then a rapid-fire sequential coded print-out of all emergency dialling codes to Control in London from almost anywhere in the world. Finally the contraption took complete leave of its senses and began to spew out gibberish at an ever increasing speed until the face became a blur of blinking lights that made it look like the entrance to a rather smart strip club.

  The car clock read 8.25. ‘That clock correct?’

  ‘Er – no, sir . . . usually keep it half an hour fast, but right now it’s stopped altogether . . . couple of months now . . .’

  ‘Got a watch?’

  ‘No – I, er, don’t carry one . . . you know, muggings . . . I don’t take any valuables with me when I go out.’

  ‘What do you do with your nuts – leave them in a glass of water?’

  If Henry C. Timbuck had a sense of humour he was doing a good job of concealing it. He ignored my remark, gritting his teeth and pursing his lips; half his face said that no way was he going to lower himself to laughing with a hijacker; the other half said that he was having the most exciting time of his life.

  I looked around for the radio. Couldn’t see it. There was just the tape deck, tinkling out the Chopin. It was getting on my nerves. I ejected the cartridge. ‘Where’s the radio?’

  ‘Oh – I had it taken out; gets me down; so much bad news – all the time, whenever you turn the radio on; listen to a nice programme, nice music, nice talking, nice show – on comes the news: murder, rape, air crash, bombs. Why do they go and put nice programmes on then spoil them with the news?’

  I didn’t have the time right then to explain to Henry C. Timbuck how the world worked. I quietly cursed my luck in picking what must have been the only automobile in the United States of America that didn’t have a radio in it.

  I reckoned it was a good fifteen minutes since my exit from the bogus police car. I had been with Timbuck for about five minutes. If the crew that had been sent to grab Sumpy weren’t already at her flat they couldn’t be far away. I had to get to her before they did.

  ‘Sir, I don’t exactly know who you are,’ said Timbuck, ‘and I’ll go along with anything you want. You can have all my money – I don’t have much on me, but I’ll gladly write you out a cheque . . .’

  He was silenced by an appalling clatter that started somewhere at the back of the car. He started slowing down.

  ‘Don’t slow down!’

  ‘But that noise –’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘It sounds like something’s falling off.’

  ‘Accelerate.’

  Reluctantly but obediently he obeyed me. ‘I’m, er, very fond of this car – it’s the first car I’ve ever had.’

  His voice was beginning to drive me crazy.

  ‘You’re from England, aren’t you? I can tell. I, er, had a friend from England once, used to come and stay with me – mostly at Christmas; he had a dry-cleaning business in Cardiff – guess that’s not really England.’

  The more he talked the slower and more erratic his driving became. I finally couldn’t stand it any more. ‘Pull over and stop – we’ll have a look at the rear end.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  We swerved over onto the hard shoulder and came to a violent halt. He pushed the gear shift up into park. ‘I won’t be a second, really I won’t.’

  Henry C. Timbuck hopped out of his car and ran off round to the back. Before my ass had even hit the seat his had vacated, I had that shift down into Drive and the gas pedal flat on the floor; I left poor old Timbuck behind in a shower of gravel and rubber. I got behind the wheel, and the seat-belt buzzer screeched, and the warning lamp flashed on and off. Keeping my foot flat on the floor I grappled with the harness for a few moments before giving it up. I needed a call-box in a hurry. One came up at a gas station a couple of miles on.

  It rang. Once. Twice. A third time, fourth, fifth, hell. Then, ‘Hallo?’ It was Sumpy’s voice. She sounded anxious. ‘Where are you, Max?’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, I’m okay. I’m fine. I’ve had a nice time.’

  ‘Can you talk?’

  ‘What do you mean. Max? Of course I can talk. Are you okay? You really sound terrible.’

  I was slightly relieved. She didn’t sound as if there was any large goon holding a gun at her head – at the moment. And yet there was something in her voice, something that was different to the normal Sumpy, the sweet soft girl with the deliciously rude mind. I couldn’t figure out what it was. Roadside call boxes are not the best places for conducting voice analyses.

  I was dead worried. Any moment someone was likely to come bursting into her apartment. I had to gain some time to get over there. ‘Sweetheart, listen to me closely and do exactly what I say. Lock and bolt your front door, take off all your clothes, take your handbag into the bathroom, lock the bathroom door, get in the shower and don’t come out to anybody, nobody, until you hear me.’

  ‘Are you feeling horny, Max?’

  ‘I’ll keep you guessing; but do as I say – you must – and do it now. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ She sounded dubious.

  ‘You sound like you don’t want to.’

  ‘No. I will . . . it’s just that, er, the police are sending someone around . . . want me to make a statement . . . something like that . . . about last night.’

  Her words shot through my body like a bolt of lightning. It was just possible the police did want a statement but Supertypist had assured me when we had finished at the station that as far as they were concerned the matter was closed. Whoever was going to Sumpy’s apartment wasn’t from the police, however good his connections in the station at the Midtown Precinct North.

  ‘Just get in the shower. I’ll be with you in five minutes and I’ll let them in.’

  ‘O
kay, Max.’

  ‘Bye.’

  I flung myself out of the booth and back into the car. The rear tyre had gone flat and the shape of the rear end wasn’t going to put much joy into Timbuck’s life when he got to take a closer look at it.

  In spite of that flat tyre and the Sunday evening traffic I covered the George Washington Bridge, half the length and the entire width of Manhattan in twelve minutes flat, and abandoned the wreck a block away from Sumpy’s Sutton Place apartment building. I ran down and round towards the front of the building. There was a large Chrysler parked right by the entrance with two large hulks in the front. Even from a fair distance they looked like close cousins of the goons to whom I’d so recently taken such a dislike.

  I ducked into the building through a side door which was open and ran round to the elevators. All four of them were progressing upwards from fairly low floors. The elevators in this building weren’t fast and I decided to get up by foot. I wanted to beat them up to Sumpy’s floor in case she was about to be put in one and brought down. I started sprinting up the forty-two flights to Sumpy’s floor, wishing to hell more New Yorkers would copy Londoners and live in basements. Fit though I was, my tiredness was getting to me, my heart was banging, and my lungs searing; I seemed to be eternally snatching at the rail, rounding the sharp corners, running up more steps; I was never going to reach the top.

  There was a terrible screech, a thump, and I was sprawling up the stairs, completely entangled in an elderly couple that I’d bowled over backwards like skittles – he with his astrakhan coat over his dinner jacket, she dressed to kill in her finery – and a brace of Pekinese dogs, one yelping, the other barking and snapping. I disengaged myself, muttering winded apologies, and continued my onslaught up the staircase.

  Finally I saw the number 42 painted on the wall. I stopped to try and gather my breath, then cautiously looked out into the corridor. It was rich-looking, with mock Persian broadloom and thick, dark, handsome wood doors to the apartments. Hovering between the elevators and Sumpy’s closed door was an extremely large goon. He was trying, extremely unsuccessfully, to look nonchalant, as though he were waiting for the elevator – but the elevator button wasn’t lit.