We got into Danny's Rambler and pulled out. It was quite a car. He had it fitted out with a radio and a red flashing light that sat magnetically on the dashboard, and he said there was a siren. The light was removable because the insurance costs less that way. He didn't explain why. We drove out Highway 99, and the traffic was heavy so we didn't talk much. Then we went past the cemetery, and there was the neon sign "BABY-LAND," and I thought about my three-month-old kid in there and how maybe if he had lived things would have been different, and I didn't feel much like talking. I also wondered if I wanted things different, but I decided I did.
The traffic thinned out. Danny got a cigarette going, and I lit my pipe and said, "Do you know Carole Halleck?"
"Little. She's Jim Randall's girl. Or he says she is. Says he's teaching her real good, but she wasn't much when he met her. Made out she was a virgin."
"She stays around Randall and he lets her, but Danny, you know Randall has been telling us for eight or nine years now he's teaching some girl fantastic bed techniques. To hear him, he's educated every girl in Seattle."
"Maybe he has. They like him enough. Yeah, I remember Carole. She was with him at the last poker game Randall showed up at. Seemed a little nice for that crowd. I kept thinking somebody ought to get her away from them. Maybe I'll try it one of these days. Junior in sociology. I see her in class once in a while, had coffee with her in Commons the other day. Too bright for that group, but too involved with ending the war for me."
I took a long pull on my pipe. "Funny thing, Dan.
She followed me out of Eileen's tonight. John Murray's back and they were all talking to him, and when I left, she did. Couldn't shake her for a couple of blocks, but she didn't have anything to say. Hell, I hardly know her. Wonder what she wanted?"
Danny cut around a truck, dropped into second and screamed up a hill, and got back in the left lane. "Heh. Wish I had your problem. Look her up and find out. Randall can't have ruined her much. I always did want to know if he really did teach them anything; you tell me."
We laughed, and drove on. Lathrop is off the main highway on the old highway, inland about five miles from a dinky little port that used to be part of an army training camp. The only excuse for Lathrop's existence is dairies. There are a lot of them there. One of these days the new freeway will be finished and they'll start putting in houses, but we're slow about these things in Seattle. Which is nice. We swung off the highway and onto a side road, and then onto the old highway. Just after we got on it a kid in a year-old Ford screamed past us. Danny grinned.
"Three miles to my jurisdiction. Let's follow him, I bet he won't slow up when he gets to the city." He pushed the Rambler up to sixty and then eased faster to be closer. "Plug that red light in, but don't hit the switch until I tell you."
I found the wire and saw it fitted the cigarette lighter outlet. Then I saw there were three outlets on a little plate below the one that came with the car. Next to it was a switch marked "Siren." We were just entering Lathrop then. The kid didn't slow down, and I asked Danny if I should hit the light.
"No. Wait until he's downtown. Might as well let the folks see they have a marshal. I'll pull him over just past the main strip."
Up ahead I could see a few houses, then we got into a three-block long store and bar area. I thought I saw about seven taverns in the three blocks, which looked like a lot of taverns for the distance. Then Danny told me to hit it, and I turned on the switch and the siren.
The light flashed, and the kid started pulling over right then.
Danny went to the driver's side and I went around to the other in the best TV professional manner. The kid was obviously scared, and it was pretty plain why when Danny checked the registration. It was in his mother's name, and he didn't have much of a story about where he was going. Danny talked to him while I went back for the ticket book, which I handed over. Danny kept on talking.
"Yeah, sure," he was telling him. "Sure I believe your mother let you take the car. Now I'll tell you what's going to happen to you." The kid looked more scared than ever as Danny opened the ticket book. That blue uniform—I forgot to mention Danny had on an old Seattle police uniform he had worn when he was a police reservist, but with the Seattle patches taken off and his Chief badge on his breast. With the gun and handcuffs and nightstick, and a cartridge pouch on his belt, he looked pretty tough. Anyway the uniform and ticket book had the kid scared.
"Here it is," Danny told him. "Get back in that car and go home. Now. And if you're seen out again tonight you'll go to jail for the rest of it. Get."
The kid looked at him, then said "Thanks" about eight times, and got in his car. When nobody stopped him, he made a U-turn and drove slowly off. Danny laughed.
"That'll cost Lathrop a fine it could have got," he said, still laughing. We got back in his car. "But the kid'll go home too, and I don't think he'll take the car without his mother knowing it for a while. No point in giving him a ticket."
I might have said something about being softhearted, but I knew Danny hated even to be kidded about that. He was a soft touch, but he wanted people to think he was a ruthless bastard. I knew better. Once he staked a rather dumb girl, who had managed to get to be the next thing to a prostitute, to enough money to get her back to her hometown before she really got into trouble. He wanted anybody who knew about it to think he took it out in trade, but he didn't. Soft touch or not, though, he was also capable of making an arrest in the toughest bar in Seattle. He'd done that, too.
After we saw the kid off, we went to the house of the Honorable E. Sundesvall, mayor of the thriving city of Lathrop (Pop. 1032). His Honor was watching a crime show on TV, his shoes off and his feet propped up on a cheap coffee table. A dairy farmer, of course. Only kind who could be elected mayor of Lathrop. Dan Ackerman had already filled out a card saying I was a deputy marshal, and after a few pleasant words and a refused offer of beer, His Honor signed it. After we got outside, Danny turned to me and said, "Raise your right hand." I did. "Do you solemnly swear?" he asked. "Quite often."
"Congratulations." We got in the car.
So now I was a duly authorized officer of the law, at least inside the town of Lathrop. But the badge was genuine, even if I had to shell out two bucks fifty to pay Dan for the cost of it, and who knows, I figured, I'll put it in my wallet with my driver's license. Maybe next time I'm stopped for speeding they'll see it and let me off . . ."
We rode around a while, gave out four or five tickets to people who didn't slow down at the town limits, and then parked and walked through the main district. We stopped in every tavern. In each place, the bartender had something clever to say about baseball or the weather or something, and in between taverns we rattled doors to see they were locked. Just like the Western movies. I got the sights of the town pointed out to me, and a couple of times we talked drunks into driving slow when they went home, and it was dull as hell. Then we stopped at the police station, which was also the town hall, and I got to see the damndest thing ever: the jail. It was a cage about eight feet square, with an iron bunk in it and nothing else. It looked just like it was off a Western set. Dan explained that the town bought it from another town that had had it since before the turn of the century and finally got around to modernizing. God knows what Lathrop had before it got that thing. Anybody detained for more than overnight was taken to the county jail in Seattle, so it really wasn't as bad as it looked. I guess. But I sure as hell would hate to be locked up there.
Finally it came two o'clock and we closed up the taverns, or rather rattled the doors after the barkeeps had closed them up, and that was it. My fling as a policeman was about over. Exciting.
It was nearly three when we drove off. Nobody saw us come into town, nobody saw us leave. I remarked on that, and was told that nothing ever really happened there anyway. But it was a living, and Dan figured it might look good on his record to have been a chief of police if he ever got his degree. He figured to be a real chief of police in some small town somewhere—small, but bigger than Lathrop. Or maybe work up to being a prison warden.
"How you making out?" he asked me.
"Fine. I get enough work. More than most consulting engineers get for the first few years. And I get a little money from some patents, and now Lois and I have split up, what's there to spend money on? Got a fat fee last week for a bridge I designed for a logging road, got another one coming for some drainage suggestions for the same outfit's land. Then there's . .." I never got to finish. The radio made some noises I didn't hear, Dan reached over and started the siren and light, and off we went. That radio had been going all night, but he had it turned so low I couldn't hear anything. A couple of times he had called the county dispatcher to let him know where he was, and when he did I listened close and could just make out what came in, but I wasn't used to the thing.
"What in hell you doing?" I asked. I thought it was a pretty reasonable question, because we were screaming down the highway at eighty or more.
"Didn't you hear that? Officer needs assistance down at Richmond Landing. That's only a couple or three miles from here."
Richmond Landing is that crummy little boat harbor west of Lathrop. I had put in there a couple of times when it was just rotten piers, before somebody bought it and started renting out berths to people living on the coast around there. Some developments had gone in that general area, and maybe the guy was making money, but there sure wasn't anything at the Landing I could think of. Just a shack of a general store and the docks. I couldn't even remember any particularly good boats there.
By the time I'd remembered everything about the place, we were coming up on it. Ackerman could sure drive, I'll say that for him. The headlights picked up a sheriff's deputy car with the doors open. Then we saw a uniformed deputy lying in the road, one arm still inside the cruiser. Right after that there was a flash off to the right, and another just ahead of us. The flat crack of pistol shots came with them.
"What the hell? "I yelled.
Dan whipped the car off to the left side of the road, popped open his door, and was out on the ground a second later. I wasn't behind him by much. Policeman I never had been before, but I was glad to see that what I learned in the army was still with me: Hit the dirt when there's shooting.
I got out the Luger while we took stock of the situation. The big knee made a satisfactory click when I cocked the piece, but I still hadn't the foggiest what to do with it. Then we heard a yell from whoever was off to the right."
"Peterson, sheriff's office, here. They're in right ahead of you. Watch them, they got my partner." The deputy's voice had a strain in it. He's been hit, I thought.
Dan waved me off to the left. He was impatient as hell, and I didn't have time to tell him I didn't want in on this. "Ackerman, Lathrop police here. Heard your call. We'll move in on them." Dan got up to a crouch and started down the shallow ditch by the left side of the road. There was another flash from the deeper ditch on the right side just ahead of us, then another from somewhere behind that, so I knew there were two of them.
It wasn't my night, but hell, you can't run out on friends. I like to tell people stories about when I was in Vietnam, but I usually neglect to mention that I was an advisor on construction and never saw a Cong to know one. They took a few shots at me, but from a long way off and the only times I ever shot back I was sure I hadn't hit anything. So this was my first real combat as opposed to training exercises, but it was a little like a drill. When Dan threw himself flat and started shooting toward the gun flashes, I moved parallel to the road and on ahead of him till I was past them. When I got in position, I took a shot myself, and Dan lit out across the road after them. He got to the ditch and somebody stood up. Danny shot him and went past, and there were two shots from the bushes and Danny was down, and the guy who called himself Peterson was in the road shooting. There was another shot from the bush, and I emptied the Luger into the spot where the light came from. Feeling stupid for firing myself dry, I got the magazine out of the Luger and started to push cartridges into it. I had the thing half-loaded when I realized it was awful quiet.
I finished loading and slapped the magazine into the Luger. The weapon's designed for quick reloads. When it's emptied the knee stays up until you put a magazine with shells in, after which you can push it home and she's ready to fire again. Waving the thing in front of me, I looked around the road. Nothing moved. Dan was sprawled in the ditch, and the deputy was right in the middle of the road, and both were still as hell. The guy Danny had shot was also in the ditch, almost touching Dan's feet, and I couldn't hear a thing from the bushes.
This was a hell of a situation. I figured I ought to wait until somebody else responded to the radio call, but that could take ten or fifteen more minutes. The whole firefight hadn't lasted two or three. In fifteen minutes Dan might be dead, if he wasn't already. So I did the bravest thing I've ever done. I stepped out of my cover and ran across the road, plunged past it, and charged up behind the bush where all the shooting had come from.
There were two people there, and they weren't moving. I didn't know if I had hit both of them or just one, but it seemed safe to make a light, and I turned on the big flashlight. They had on faded denims and sport shirts, and one had a poplin jacket on, and they still didn't move. I went out to see Danny, but I didn't bother to stop. He had a hole where his left eye had been and it wasn't pretty at all. I went past him to Peterson.
Deputy Peterson was still breathing, but it didn't look good. He had a big stain all over the lower part of his shirt, and I think he must have been hit before Dan and I arrived. How in hell he called to us and got up is beyond me, but I once saw a Vietnamese villager walk in from two miles out with two bullet holes in his chest, so I guess it can be done. While I was trying to figure out something to do, he gave a kind of jerk and every muscle in his body contracted at once, and he was dead too. That bastard in the bushes must have been some shot, I thought. I was sort of glad I had emptied the gun at him. Then I went off in the bushes myself and got rid of all my dinner and everything else and wished I had eaten more because it wouldn't stop and wouldn't stop.
I don't know how long that kept up. There was still nobody around, but I thought I could hear sirens off in the distance. I went back to Dan, but I didn't look at him. The punk lying near him stirred a little, and I thought, well, at least there's one survivor. He was too close to Danny though, so I went back to the other two and looked around. Neither one of them was moving. Then I noticed a little leather bag, like the ones doctors carry. I guess I thought it might be a doctor's kit and maybe I could do something with it. Anyway I opened it. It was full of little packages in waxed paper, and when I opened one of them it spilled out a white crystalline powder. I've never seen the stuff before, but I've heard it described often enough. Heroin. The bag weighed over five pounds. That made it over two kilos of heroin. I was holding about a hundred thousand dollars.
I could begin to see why these guys had started shooting, even if I wasn't sure what the sheriff's boys were doing down here. Boys. Then I remembered there had been two deputies, and I ran back to the police car, still carrying the bag. By now I could hear sirens back down the road, and I was pretty sure it wouldn't be long before I had help. I put the bag in the deputies' car and started to look at the other cop. It was hard to see what was wrong with him. He seemed to be breathing all right. I looked at him carefully and saw a neat little hole in his midsection, but there wasn't much blood. I didn't figure I could do anything for him. With gut shots there isn't much an untrained man can do anyway, or so they told me in the first aid courses we had to take in the army. The sirens were getting louder, and somebody who knew what he was doing would be there pretty quick.
The whole thing was getting to me. From where I stood I could see three dead bodies, a wounded cop, and a bag of heroin. My little tin badge was perfectly legal, provided I could get somebody to listen to me tell about it, but it was a pretty thin story. On top of it all, I was starting to get sick again, and the last thing I wanted to do was talk to the police, and probably spend all night telling them about something I didn't know one damn thing about: Danny was dead, and I'd just killed a man I never saw before. All in all it was too much for me.
What I'm trying to do is explain something I can't explain to myself. Call it shock, call it being in a daze, but I wasn't, or just say I was sick of the whole scene, but having done the bravest thing I'd ever done, I proceeded to do the stupidest. Leaving the bag in the deputies' car, I walked into the bushes, found out I wasn't quite going to be sick, and instead of coming back out on the road, I started away from there just as I saw headlights and a flashing emergency light round the curve up the road. As the car stopped next to the deputies' cruiser, I took off away from the whole scene.