Crack-Up (31 page)

“You still there?” Les said.

“You bastard,” I said, then hung up.
 
I took two steps toward the elevators and pressed the up and down buttons both.

The up elevator opened immediately.
 
The compartment was empty.
 
As soon as I stepped inside, I pressed the button to close the doors.
 
A blur of slicker yellow appeared behind the doors the instant before slamming shut.
 
The compartment rose.

Damn that Les Cravey
! I thought.
 
Les had informed the cops of my phoning him earlier to get the lab results on my blood work, knowing the cops would tap his own phone lines.
 
Which was how the cops had just pinpointed my location.

I can’t trust my own defense attorney
! I thought.
 
Fine thing for a paranoid schizophrenic
!
 
The doors to my elevator opened on the second floor.
 
I raced through the exhibits, searching for a stairwell leading back down to the ground floor or the basement.

But just as I found a stairwell, two cops bound up toward me from out of there.
 
I reversed direction, only to find another pair of cops emerging from the elevators.
 
Luckily, a buzzing hive of kindergartners allowed me to dodge the cops and race on.

I reached the walkway ringing the second floor of the rotunda, where a circular railing shielded people from the gaping hole overlooking the first floor below and the great, stuffed woolly mammoth who greets visitors at the front entrance to the building.
 
There my progress was cut off by two security guards and another Capitol policeman.

Within seconds, I was surrounded.
 
The cops all shouted at the tourists to back away from the railing, where I had frozen in a tense, motionless crouch.

A motorcycle cop, who barked loudest of all, ordered me to place my hands on the railing.
 
I did so.
 
And then I scrambled atop the railing and cliff-dived off . . .

Chapter 31

I cushioned my landing on the broad back of the woolly mammoth.
 
The wind leapt from my lungs and the force of my weight toppled the great beast.
 
I lay motionless upon the hairy, crumpled giant, gasping for air and peering through a dusty cloud of taxidermy stuffing, while tourists shielded their children or ran for cover.
 
As soon as I found breath, I stumbled off the stage.

None of my pursuers from the second floor had imitated my dive, but new pursuers were closing in fast, judging by the rising cacophony of police sirens.
 
Through the glass doors, I saw two police cruisers braking to a stop at careless angles outside the front entrance, so I made for the rear exit.
 
But another cruiser was just arriving on that side of the building, so I raced down an exhibit corridor, past dinosaur bones and a hideous giant squid, past a plastic-looking volcano.

I took a sharp corner, where a tiny female security guard jumped out from amid a herd of Mongolian reindeer and sprayed me with mace, stinging my eyes.
 
Semi-blinded and off-balance and dodging the mace, I mingled among the reindeer.
 
The figures felt like they were made of cast iron, and I tipped one over, warding off the guard, and with wet, stinging, squinty eyes, I raced on.

I was plan-less now, clueless too, searching for an exit from the building out of sheer instinct.

Damn you, Les Cravey
! I thought.
 
Damn you to hell
!

Reaching a Neanderthal exhibit, I encountered more cops, three at once.
 
I broke to a stop.

From a wax-figured hunter, I snatched a five-foot tall spear and swung it at my foes and poked with it.
 
But that turned out to be a huge mistake, for it only gave the cops an excuse to reach beneath their slickers for their weapons.

I raced for a nearby stairwell.
 
Inside, I slammed shut its heavy metal doors and slipped the spear into the door handles.

The cops bashed into the doors, but the spear held.
 
They were blocked out.
 
I scrambled down a flight of stairs.

It led to the loading dock area, where all the heavy lifters loading an 18-wheeler had taken a break to watch the excitement outside, the screaming cruisers with their flashing lights converging.
 
One of the workers turned, blowing out cigarette smoke, and saw me opening the driver’s side door to the cab.

“Hey, you!
 
Get out of there!”

Finding no keys in the ignition, I slammed the door shut and jogged outside, onto the sidewalk.
 
My injured ankle had begun to ache.
 
Rain beat upon my shoulders and my ball cap.
 
From the left, a helmeted cop on a motorcycle approached, racing down the street toward the museum entrance.
 
I stepped behind a red minivan and, as the cop passed, tackled him.

The motorcycle flew out from beneath us.
 
We rolled and tussled on the pavement.
 
I tensed two fingers and stabbed at the cop’s windpipe.
 
His hands instinctively reached for his throat.
 
I stripped him of his gun and stood.

The cop stared up at me, frightened now, hands raised in surrender.
 
His motorcycle lay twenty yards off, resting on its side, having smashed into a parked car.
 
It wasn’t idling.

I tucked the gun in my front waistband and ran to the vehicle.
 
I tried standing it up, but couldn’t.
 
It had to weigh a thousand pounds.
 
I tried again.
 
Failed again.

I had to point the gun at the cop, briefly, to keep him from getting up off the ground.
 
On my third try, as the men of the loading dock approached me in a horde, I finally got the vehicle upright, hopped on, turned the ignition, revved the motor, and took off.
 
I nearly tipped over crossing the wet, grassy mall, but soon had the motorcycle under control.
 
Glancing back, I saw that I’d put two hundred yards or so between myself and the flashing lights of the parked police cruisers outside the museum.
 
Yet one of the cruisers began to give chase.

I weaved through traffic on
Constitution Avenue
.
 
The wind blew my cap off.
 
The rest of my disguise—the reading glasses—had fallen off during my wrestling match with the motorcycle cop.

When Union Station loomed ahead of me, I decided it was the perfect place to abandon the motorcycle.
 
I parked at the side of the building, beside an escalator leading down to the DC metro and to all the Amtrak trains heading out of the city.

But instead of going down the escalator, instead of taking a train, I stepped to the front of the building and hailed one of the dozens of yellow taxi cabs waiting in line for customers.

“
Silver Spring
,” I said to my cabbie, a bearded young Black man in a skullcap stocking.
 
He pulled away.
 
Slowly.
 
Sirens wailed all around us.

“Got all wet, did ya?” said the cabbie.

“Forgot my umbrella.”

A cruiser with flashing lights crossed our path, siren wailing.
 
The cabbie hit his brakes hard.
 
“Hell’s going on?” he said.
 
“Why all these cops be stressin’ like this?”

“Don’t know,” I said.
 
“But can we move it?
 
I’m running a little behind schedule.”

Chapter 32

I found some cheap transportation at a ramshackle motorcycle shop in
Southeast DC
.
 
It was a skinny Honda dual sport, ten years old, with off-road tires and high ground clearance—a bike designed for play on trails, not the highway.
 
I managed to afford it by taking it out for a test drive and never going back.
 
But I paid just the same.
 
I needed a back brace by the time I reached
Baltimore
.

The rain that day was unrelenting.
 
I spent the afternoon seated on a covered city bus stop bench, across the street from Bernard Alan Simpson’s furniture store.
 
Wearing only my rugby shirt and blue jeans, I was soaked to the skin after my long ride, and I found myself drenched anew every so often by the tire spray of passing trucks.

It wasn’t until nearly
5 PM
when I spotted them entering the store—the ones I knew would be coming sooner or later, and I’d been banking on sooner.
 
They both wore khaki trench coats with business suits underneath and black umbrellas overhead.
 
They took determined steps, wore determined faces.

The woman was a tall brunette in her late thirties or early forties.
 
Her burly male companion was a full decade younger.
 
He had buzz-cut red hair, a steel pipe spine, and a roving gaze that screamed law enforcement.
 
Twice before the pair entered the store, I had to duck my head behind a soggy, opened newspaper to avoid that gaze.

I’d met them both before, at the Helms compound shortly after the death of John Helms, and in my private seclusion room at the psychiatric ward.
 
They were DC homicide detectives, partners Mona Strecker and Gary Fellows.

I rose from my bench and stepped into the rain.
 
Through the storefront window, I watched a store clerk escort the pair behind the showroom and into the office area.

I faced the street, hunting for a vehicle likely to belong to homicide detectives.
 
I found no candidates there, nor behind the store, where Bernard’s old Mercedes-Benz was parked.

Fifteen minutes later, on the second floor of a parking garage around the corner, I took a peek inside a dark blue Chevy Impala and found a police radio and a mounted shotgun under the dashboard.
 
I waited there, sitting on the cold cement floor, leaning my sore, motorcycle-jarred back against an SUV’s front tire, and tried to ignore the spreading spasms.

An hour or more later, the detectives emerged from the elevator.
 
I sprang to my feet and cut them off steps from their own vehicle, my Glock waving back and forth between the two.

“Hands up!” I said.
 
“Away from your weapons!
 
Don’t make me shoot!”
 
Together, and without haste, they dropped their folded umbrellas and showed their palms to me.

“Hello again, Mister Ward,” said Mona Strecker, her eyes more like a hunter’s than prey.

“Glad you found us,” said Gary Fellows.
 
“We need to talk.”

“Arms higher,” I said.
 
They complied.
 
I stepped toward the man.
 
“I’m going to frisk you now, and take your weapons.”

Fellows said, “Knock yourself out.”
 
I took his gun.
 
I didn’t find any hidden back-up piece.
 
I moved on to the woman.