From the other side of the office partition, we heard the phone trill. Mulvaney answered it before the first ring was completed. “Southeastern District Robbery-Homicide, this is Lieutenant Mulvaney. . . . Okay, so now you know who I am. I need you to check your outbound passenger The False-Hearted Teddy
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list. Last name is Fielding—common spelling—and first name is Carolyn, and I don’t know the spelling, so it could be ‘i-n-e’ or with a ‘y’. She’s supposed to be flying to El Paso this afternoon. The next name is Wintle . . .”
Delcambre looked up from the computer. “I was thinking about that. A major toy company headquartered in El Paso? Isn’t that kind of strange?”
“Not really,” I replied. “The corporate offices are in El Paso, but I’ll wager the factories are just across the border in Ciudad Juarez, where they don’t have to pay that annoying American minimum wage or provide any benefits.”
“Dung beetles.”
“Yep. I’m going to go back and see what the lieutenant’s learned.”
Delcambre clicked on the “print” icon and his laser printer began to whine. “Yeah, I’ll be with you in a second.”
By the time I returned to the other cubicle, Mulvaney was bent over and writing on a note pad. “They’re on what airline? Has the flight left yet? No? When? Okay, we’re en route now, ETA driving time from downtown.
Please listen carefully: I want you guys to contact all four people in that travel group. They are material witnesses in a homicide that occurred earlier this morning and I need to talk to them.”
Delcambre walked past, headed toward the interview room. He asked me, “Success?”
“It seems they’re still on the ground.”
“Thank God for bad weather. I’ll get Swift to sign this thing and get him out of here.” Delcambre went into the interview room.
There were a few seconds of silence as Mulvaney listened and rolled her eyes. Clearly losing her patience, she said, “Yes, I realize that they’re just witnesses and you have no legal right to detain them. All I’m asking for is a little cooperation . . .”
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“May I?” I held out my hand for the phone and Mulvaney slapped it into my palm. I said, “Hi, this is Inspector Callahan. This is what we want your officers to tell the Wintle travel group: we’re coming out to ask them some potentially embarrassing questions about a murder and we can either do that in the first-class lounge in front of all the other Martini-sipping social elite or more privately in the State Police offices. We’re easy. Got that?”
The woman on the other end of the line said, “Yes, sir.”
“
Muy excellente.
When you hear back from your officers as to what the Wintle group has decided, call Baltimore City Police dispatch and have them relay us the information over the radio because we’re about to make a code-three run to your location,” I said, using the California police expression for driving with emergency lights and siren on.
“Yes, sir.”
I was hanging up the phone as Delcambre opened the interview room door and motioned with his hand for Tony to come out. The detective said, “Let’s go. As much as it disgusts me to say it, you’re a free man. Follow me to the lobby.”
“How do I get back to the hotel?”
“Walk. Call a cab. Swim through the sewers, for all I care,” said Delcambre.
“Don’t go back to the hotel,” I cut in.
“Why not?” Tony demanded.
“Because, whatever your faults, I know you really did love your wife and you’ll go back there to kill Todd.”
“You can’t tell me what to do or where I can or can’t go! That little bastard killed my wife and I’m going to tear his head off and—”
I glanced at Mulvaney. “I’m not telling you what to do, but I’d lock him back up until we’re done.”
“For what?” Tony and Mulvaney asked simultaneously.
“How about deliberately providing false information The False-Hearted Teddy
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to the police in a murder investigation? As I recall, he told you that I was the killer.”
There was a flash of ruthless merriment in Mulvaney’s eyes. “That’s right, he did say that. Anthony Swift, you’re under arrest for willfully interfering with an official investigation. Turn around so we can handcuff you.”
“I’m not going back to that cell. You released me.”
“For murder. This is a new and different charge,” said Mulvaney.
“Oh, and please resist arrest, because I know the three of us would enjoy using only that physical force necessary to overcome your resistance,” added Delcambre, making what I suspected was a quotation from the Baltimore Police regulations sound extraordinarily menacing.
Like all bullies, Tony was a yellow cur at heart. He apparently saw something in our faces that he didn’t like, because he turned around and put his hands behind his back. Delcambre handcuffed him and started to lead him away.
“We don’t have the time to fight traffic to get to the airport, so on your way back from the cells, grab a set of keys to a marked cruiser,” Mulvaney told the departing detective.
“I’m driving,” Delcambre called out as he led Tony around the corner.
Noticing Mulvaney’s lips twitch ever so slightly, I asked, “Is that not a good thing?”
“Do you like amusement park thrill rides?”
“Not particularly.”
“We won’t actually go upside down, but it may feel like it. Let me go and grab my coat,” said Mulvaney, heading for her office.
“Speaking of coats, you wouldn’t let me bring mine when you arrested me. Do you have a spare jacket or something here?”
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“Let’s see.” Mulvaney slowed her pace and began to visually inspect each work cubicle. Then she darted into one and came out with a blue coat. The jacket had Baltimore City Police patches on the shoulders and the word police in bright yellow block letters on the back. She tossed it to me saying, “As long as you’re impersonating a Baltimore cop, you might as well look like one.”
A couple of minutes later, we crossed the parking lot to the police cruiser. The rain was no longer coming down in a blinding torrent, but it was still fairly heavy, which didn’t bode well for a high-speed journey to the airport. I lowered myself into the backseat of the patrol car, while Delcambre got behind the wheel and Mulvaney belted herself into the front passenger seat. Delcambre fired the engine up with a roar and I was a little disturbed when I thought I heard him chuckle.
Racing through the parking lot, he turned the overhead emergency lights and siren on, and made a right turn onto Eastern Avenue. Then Delcambre accelerated in a fashion very similar to an F-14 Tomcat fighter jet being catapult-launched from the deck of an aircraft carrier. We went from zero to seventy in about seven seconds and I was slammed back into the seat by the insanely abrupt increase in speed. Then, without warning, he blew the red light and made a sluing right turn onto another street.
Several high-speed turns later, we were southbound on Interstate 895, otherwise known as the Harbor Tunnel Thruway. Now that we were off the city streets and on a freeway, Delcambre apparently decided he could really open it up and fly. However, there was a problem with that theory. Under optimum circumstances, other drivers are usually completely oblivious to the approach of an emergency vehicle, and our current conditions were awful. It was raining and all of the other motorists had their car windows up, so nobody could hear the siren and visi-bility was so poor that no one could see the flashing blue The False-Hearted Teddy
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and red lights until the very last second. This tended to cause panicked reactions from the other drivers when they suddenly realized they had a cop car careening past them on the left . . . or right . . . or in the breakdown lane.
I noticed that Delcambre wasn’t partial to any particular path.
We ran into heavier traffic at the junction of the Tunnel Thruway and Interstate 95. Most sane people would have taken this as an unmistakable sign to slow down, but Delcambre simply increased the frequency of his zig-zags. Not long afterwards, we descended into the Harbor Tunnel, where the roadway narrowed and Delcambre was actually forced to reduce his speed to
Star Trek
impulse power. However, he stomped hard on the gas pedal when we came out on the south side of the harbor, and when I idiotically looked over the detective’s shoulder, I saw that we were doing a cool eighty miles an hour when we flew past the tollbooth plaza.
Not that I could hear anything in the backseat and over the siren, but I guessed there was a radio call for Mulvaney, because she snatched the microphone from its holder on the dash. There was a brief exchange of mimed conversation and then Mulvaney shouted back to me,
“They’ve agreed to talk to us until three o’clock when their jet begins boarding, and they’ll meet us at the state police offices at the airport!”
“It’s two-twenty-five now, but please don’t hurry on my account!” I yelled back.
We were about two miles from the interchange with the Baltimore-Washington Parkway when traffic began to clog and the roadway seemed filled with a solid brake-light wall of eighteen-wheelers. The rain was coming down hard again and so fast that the windshield wipers were almost useless. Delcambre swerved hard to the right, shot into the slow lane, and right there in front of us and nearly at a stop was a huge cement mixer truck. We were going 206
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maybe seventy miles an hour and I realized there was no room to stop and that we were about to die.
My brain was filled with a sudden and peculiar mélange of practical and esoteric questions, all occurring instantaneously. Was this going to hurt as much as I anticipated? How was Ash going to take the news that after all those dangerous years of cop work and with the joyful prospect of several decades ahead of us making teddy bears together, that I’d gone and gotten myself killed in a car accident? Why was this truck even out here, because what sort of fool pours cement in heavy rain? Was there a heaven? And more importantly, if there was and if, on account of some angelic paperwork mix-up I actually got in, would St. Peter be willing to explain to Ash, when she finally arrived, that she shouldn’t be too cross with me?
After all, except for the fact that I’d knowingly gotten into a car driven by an amateur auto stunt driver, and was aware in advance that we’d be traveling at breakneck speeds on a series of wet, slick, and crowded highways on one of the rainiest days of the year, I really
had
tried to be careful.
I shut my eyes, yet the expected collision didn’t happen. Don’t ask me why, since the only answer I can come up with is that Delcambre secretly possesses some sort of superhero powers that allow him to alter the flow of time or maybe the physical properties of the universe. It’s the only thing that makes sense, because although there wasn’t any room to maneuver, he somehow did. I heard a truck’s horn blare, we veered hard to the right, and at the last second we swerved into the right-side emergency lane.
The other amazing thing about the episode was that Mulvaney didn’t so much as grimace as we narrowly avoided being the guests of honor at a police funeral. I was impressed. And now that I knew her a little better, The False-Hearted Teddy
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I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and at-tribute her stoic reaction to steady nerves and not face-paralyzing cosmetics.
Once we were clear of the tie-up and back on the highway, Delcambre looked over his shoulder at me. “Scared?”
“Not so you’d notice,” I replied through clenched teeth.
“You need to do what I do.”
“What’s that?”
“Keep your eyes shut,” he said with a giggle.
“You’re killing me, Shecky. Hey, Lieutenant?”
“What?” Mulvaney said.
“I’ve got an embarrassing request to make.”
“Do we need to stop at a restroom?”
“No, worse. Can you call ahead to the airport and have one of those golf cart things standing by for me? By the time I hobble to the State Police offices, it’ll be five o’clock.”
“I’ll take care of it . . . and it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” said Mulvaney, reaching for the radio microphone.
“Thanks.”
We made the transition onto Interstate 195 and in the distance I could see the tall parking structures that stand in front of Baltimore-Washington International Airport.
Delcambre asked, “Are the State Police offices on the ground or upper level?”
“Upper,” said Mulvaney.
Delcambre nodded and got into the lane marked for arriving flights. A moment later, we skidded to a stop in front of the terminal. There was a Maryland state trooper in a rain jacket, sheltering beneath an overhang and watching the flow of traffic. Noticing the arrival of the cruiser, she jogged over. Meanwhile, Delcambre opened the police car’s back door and helped me out.
“I’m supposed to lead you guys to the office,” said the trooper.
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“Did you receive our request for the handicapped transportation?” asked Mulvaney, getting out of the patrol car.
The trooper pointed through the sliding glass doors.
Inside the terminal, I saw a small white golf cart. It had a rotating yellow light mounted on its front bumper and a cheerful purple-haired lady who looked old enough to be my mother sitting behind the wheel. Knowing that the vehicle would also make a shrill beeping sound throughout its journey, I suddenly regretted having asked for the special transportation. However, there was nothing to do now but swallow my pride and accept the ride to the State Police offices.
We went into the terminal and as I clambered aboard the cart, the driver said, “Hi, hon.”
“Pleased to meet you”—I squinted at her name tag—
“Thelma.”
“C’mon,” said Mulvaney, as she, the trooper, and Delcambre began jogging through the concourse.
“Hey, can you do a tail job?” I did my best Humphrey Bogart, complete with facial tic.
Thelma grinned, obviously remembering the scene from
The Big Sleep
where Bogie asks the woman taxi driver to follow Joe Brody’s car to the Randall Arms.
“I’m your girl.”