Pulp Ink Part 13

"You know. I've written it all down for you in my study."

"Okay." She pressed the phone into the palm of her hand and turned to Meeker. "I don't know what else to do. I'm afraid he's ready to go through with it."

"Try asking him to open the door."

She nodded, her voice softening. "Daddy?"

"Yes, Coconut."

"Can I give you one last hug?" Anna pleaded, breaking into big tears.

After a moment. "Yes, baby. But tell those people out there to stand back. I have my rifle."

Anna held the phone away from her ear and murmured, "He's going to open the door but asked everyone to stand back he has a gun." She put the phone back up to her ear, "Okay, you can unlock the door," and then hung up.

She took a deep breath and shivered as the ma.s.sive door unlatched with a loud clunk and swung open.

"Oh, Daddy!" Anna rushed into the shelter, her arms reaching out. She touched her father's shoulder and then knelt down in front of her mother's wheelchair. She held her mother's cold hands in her own and rubbed them. The silver-haired woman stared vacantly ahead.

The officers peered around the sides of the door, watching the family reunion while sizing up the situation. They looked at each other with a sigh of relief the old man, arms quaking from age, pointed a Red Ryder BB gun at them.

Willis raised a foot to enter the shelter when Ian shouted, "I'll shoot you both."

The chief looked to Meeker and shrugged with a smirk. As they walked in, tiny steel beads greeted them and bounced off their vests.

"Stop! You're just going to upset him more." Anna begged the policemen, "Can I please take my parents out of here myself?"

The chief nodded, sympathy inscribed on his face.

She stood and grasped the handles of the wheelchair and began pushing it toward the entrance. "C'mon, Daddy, it's time to go."

Ian, arms still shaking, kept an icy gaze on the officers. "Fine, but no one is taking my rifle." He fired two more shots that ricocheted off Meeker's forehead.

Anna smiled, sniffling through her tears. "No one is taking his gun, right Chief?"

"No, of course not."

The old man stopped in front of Willis and hard-eyed him, "Lucky for you, G.o.d came down from heaven and stopped the bullets."

Anna guided her parents out of the shelter, leaving the officers behind.

"I wonder what he meant, stopped the bullets?" Meeker rubbed the red welts growing larger on his brow. "Remind me not to get old."

"You ain't kidding." Willis moved into the next room with shelf after shelf stocked with canned goods and other supplies. "I wonder where that d.a.m.n teakettle he kept talking about is."

"Who the h.e.l.l knows." Meeker chuckled as he followed in behind the chief. "Must be in here somewhere."

Both men heard a sharp beep, beep that repeated several times in rapid succession.

"Ah, maybe that's it," Willis said turning to the shelf behind him, his eyes tracing over the boxes.

Another series of beep, beeps.

He gasped. At the far end of the shelf sat a bundle of dynamite wrapped with a motley set of wires and a timepiece counting down with just three seconds to go.

Outside the fallout shelter, gawkers watched as the Spauldings talked with the doctor at the back of the ambulance when a hushed explosion and smoke rippled out from the shelter entrance.

"What was that?" Anna quickly looked from one person to the next for an answer.

The World War I bomb specialist, sweeping the hair away from his wife's empty face, calmly replied, "I guess they didn't turn off the teakettle."

David Cranmer is editor and publisher of the BEAT to a PULP webzine (http://beattoapulp.com/). He lives in Maine with his wife and daughter.

The Wife of Gregory Bell.

By Patricia Abbott.

I didn't start out to be a criminal. Does anyone? But in my case, it made no sense. I was raised by upper middle-cla.s.s people in a nice suburb of Philadelphia. There was no gang or disreputable friends to lure me into a life of crime. No incidents to jade me. My parents did all the right things and my two sisters are virtuous if slightly dull women.

It seems likely I was a genetic mishap because something inside me was restless and twisted from the start. Even as a child, if I could find a way to avoid work, I did. If I could discern an easy way out, I took it. If an opportunity to acquire something I wanted presented itself, I seized it. Yes, I wanted things and was particularly susceptible to things of beauty, seldom resisting a cashmere sports coat, a prom queen, a sports car. I took all of them out for a spin.

Neither particularly handsome nor excessively smart, I survived on the benefits of a pleasing personality, and such a gift goes a long way with most people. So I cultivated that one gift, honed it to where people believed me to be both handsome and smart.

Not everyone was fooled.

"It might be just as well if you attend a college in another state, Greg," my father suggested. He'd intuited that someone else had sat for my SATs. Clearing his throat, he added, "Be good for you to see a little of this country."

Before I ended up behind bars, he probably thought, but I was too taken aback to say much that day. If he'd been wiser, he'd have exposed me for what I was then. Instead, he sent me to Stanford where it wasn't difficult to use similar methods to be a successful student, to procure a good first job.

"Gregory Bell, right?" my first boss said, picking up my paperwork. "This is one of the most impressive transcripts I've ever seen, Mr. Bell. It's as if you tailored your coursework to fit the needs of our firm."

Indeed I had, altering the records to match that of recent hires. My reference letters were bought or forged as well.

But my crimes were inconsequential until shortly after my twenty-ninth birthday. I was at a wedding, the sort of affair people threw before the bottom fell out of the world. Events where the host puts up the wedding party and out-of-towners at a luxury hotel, where a hospitality basket with expensive items awaited your arrival.

"Greg, it wouldn't be a party without you," the prospective groom said via email.

"Charming single men are in short supply," added the prospective bride on the phone.

A Stanford man marrying a Sarah Lawrence girl. The guest list must have topped 600.

Let's say the wedding was at The Plaza in New York. I arrived late and talked my way into a suite. I can't deny this sort of thing happened to me more than with most people. As I said earlier, personality goes a long way, especially with people behind desks or counters. And such luck or opportunity drives men like me toward evil. Sometimes it's gambling that attracts them. But I liked games with fewer risks, only putting down money on myself.

At the time, I was a middle-management employee of a large real estate firm. I specialized in lightning-quick a.s.sessments of commercial properties. We all had jobs like that back then.

"We need to put a bid in by day's end, Greg. Is the neighborhood on the way up or down? How long till we can sell it for a profit?"

That was my typical a.s.signment. Despite all the statistics and data I waved around, it was often just guesswork. Or no work all guess. It'd be years before I was proven wrong (or right) and I expected to be somewhere else by then.

Anyhow, I was sitting in my suite at The Plaza, drinking a complimentary bottle of champagne between wedding events, when I knocked my pen down into the upholstery. I don't know why I even took a pen out of my pocket with the laptop perched in front of me, but life wasn't so paperless then. I reached down into the deep s.p.a.ce between the cushion and the chair's frame and instead of coming up with the pen, I came up with an address book.

It was an expensive and thick address book, the b.u.t.tery kind of leather you don't often come across in such a trivial item. And a name was embossed on the cover. A famous name. You'd know it in a flash. I'd no doubt who the book belonged to and sat with it unopened in my hands for a minute, wondering if merely opening the book would get me into trouble. Was this a test I was set up to fail?

Oh, those names and addresses. I still get a chill remembering that moment. And phone numbers: both landline and cell in those days. Also noted in various colors of ink were personal facts information such as where each family summered and their birth dates. The names of their housekeepers, their children, their brokers. What schools those kids attended. It was more than an address book; it was a journal of a social circle.

In some cases, directions to the house were penned into the margins. Codes on how to open their iron gates or garages. This coterie lived across the country, across the world. There were villas in Europe, summer houses on the Vineyard, condos in Aspen, Palm Springs, Lake Tahoe, Manhattan. The handwriting was faded in places shakier but newer in others; this book had to have been around since the sixties. The names inside numbered in the hundreds. Many were familiar to me. A former vice-president, a CEO of an oil company, a baron, an actress, a renowned architect, the owner of a Preakness winner, a hotel magnate. Hundreds more. I was suddenly privy to a world I'd only dreamt about. I shook off my state of near ecstasy and began to think.

It was certain my suite had undergone a thorough cleaning before my arrival so it was miraculous the address book had been overlooked. Instinct told me it was time to check out. The only event remaining was the post-nuptial breakfast, which I could easily skip. The hotel could still track me down when the book's owner missed it, but if I wasn't on hand to debate its location, things would go easier. A hotel maid would probably take the blame. I put a message on the groom's cell and took off.

"Hope there was nothing wrong with your suite, Mr. Bell?" the desk clerk inquired when he saw I was leaving early. (Was I still using my true surname then?) "Not a thing. Lovely room, but I need to get back to my office."

"Duty calls, huh?"

I nodded.

For the next five years, I used the information in that address book to help me insinuate myself into the lives of the upper echelons: to cheat, to rob, to pilfer. I quit my job and created a less humble past for myself. But my intersection with a current quarry lasted only for a day or two, or even an hour. Just long enough to lift a piece of jewelry, a wallet, a painting. Now and then I'd use my entree to get onto their computers and move money from their accounts into the dummy ones I'd set up. I changed my routine enough not to set a pattern. I also varied my appearance, my name, everything.

When it came down to it, I was a cat burglar who learned his trade through practice, instinct and the helpful ruminations in books by a few of my fellow feline felons. I was nimble and quick, willing to do a little research to reap bigger rewards. The Stanford education, as cursory as it'd been, was an a.s.set. Much as their brochure had promised me a decade earlier. But I'd learned more about the behavior of the very rich on the West Coast than of chemistry or French history.

At a c.o.c.ktail party in Chicago, I met Leila, a college friend of the host's daughter someone I'd met at an opera gala earlier that week. No indication Leila was anything more than a middle-cla.s.s woman in her late twenties. Off-the-rack clothing, shoes from a few years back. No one I'd follow home to rob.

But I found myself unable to do my usual research, my usual stealing, because I couldn't take my eyes off her. This was a wholly new phenomenon and one that made me uneasy.

"David," the host's daughter said, "this is Leila Olson. We were at Northwestern together." She saw me staring at her friend and I could see her fumbling for my last name.

"David Greenlaw," I said, pausing a moment. I was too gob-smacked to remember it immediately.

"Greenlawn?" Leila asked.

For a second, I wondered too. "Greenlaw," I finally said.

Leila stood before me, the picture of perfection. I won't describe her: Insert your own idea of flawlessness. A second later, she laughed at something our hostess said, and I was completely undone.

"Can I get you a drink?" I asked as our hostess drifted away.

"White wine?"

We spent two hours comparing histories. Of course, mine was completely fict.i.tious. But for Leila's sake, I stuck as close as possible to what my life would've been if I hadn't found the address book. To what would approximate a normal life.

Leila was a buyer for a chain of children's clothing stores. "I spend a lot of time in France, Italy, places like that. Our clients prefer clothes not made in China. And not in the U.S. for that matter." She laughed, embarra.s.sed at the superficiality of the rich.

A trait I shared, of course. I decided then that it was on Leila's buying trips that I'd peddle my trade. Once we were married, that is. And six months later, we were.

Three months after our nuptials, Leila went to London on a buying trip. I'd prepared myself for two quick jobs over her five-day absence. Both went well, and I quickly disposed of an emerald-studded watch and an antique clock, dating from the 1800s. I'd used an exclusive fence, specializing in high-end items for years.

Leila arrived home on Tuesday and she wasn't inside the house fifteen minutes when I noticed she'd chipped a tooth.

"It's just the tiniest chip," she said, peering into the magnifying gla.s.s I held in front of her face. "Must've been when I b.u.mped heads on the tube."

"You were on the underground?" I asked. "Don't you have an expense account?"

I was more than a little agitated at both the chipped tooth and her dismissal of it. Hadn't she looked at herself since the collision? Didn't her bathroom in London have a mirror?

"The tube's the fastest way to travel." She put down the mirror and began to unpack. "I never take taxis. You know how I feel about things like that."

I shook my head. "You'd better call your dentist. See if he can fit you in."

I was having trouble looking Leila straight in the face because it was quite a large chip despite what she thought. Funny how such a small thing can disturb a beauty like hers. On a normal face, it might be inconsequential.

"Tomorrow," she said. "I need some sleep. Jet-lag." A large yawn ended our discussion.

While she slept, I called the dentist and arranged for an early morning appointment. Leaving a note about the time of the appointment, I disappeared and didn't see her again until the next evening.

"The dentist said he could hardly see it either," she told me when I came in. "But he filed it down."

She opened her mouth and I was relieved to see it was gone. Almost. "Where have you been anyway? Your cell was turned off. "

"Perfect," I said, anxious to be done with it. "Oh, you know work."

I could tell from her tone that in some inchoate way, she was disappointed in me. That I'd shown her a side of me she hadn't seen before. But in a few weeks, it was forgotten. I was the adoring husband; she the adored wife. I worked hard to keep my adulation under wraps though. Worked hard not to shower her with the things I wanted her to have things she would've despised me for giving her.

Her trip to Milan came six weeks later. I was anxious for her to go because a rare opportunity had presented itself. A valuable painting was going to be "available" for my acquisition. A piece of art that would allow me to stop scrambling for cash for a few months. Even with declining prices, the painting would fetch a hefty sum.

"Stay off the tube," I said as I dropped her at the Delta Airlines door. I hopped out of the car and removed her bags.

She started to smile and then realized I wasn't joking. "My hotel is very near the places I need to go. I'll probably walk."

The porter was loading her bag onto his trolley and she hurried after him without even a goodbye kiss. I called her a few minutes later, a.s.suring her it'd been a joke. It took some convincing and I wondered, not for the first time, why I chose a woman who fled from all the things I craved. Perhaps I harbored a desire to please the parents who'd cast me aside. They'd have adored her if they ever met.

The theft went well. I had impeccable contacts at every point of the heist. My fence promised me a considerable sum within the month. I spent the rest of our time apart, thinking of ways to please Leila. I stared at our wedding pictures, at our honeymoon snapshots, hardly believing this woman was mine.

A few days later, Leila returned. She was barely inside the house when I swooped down on her, showering her with kisses. I stood back to take her in and noticed the left side of her face seemed to droop. Her eye and mouth were definitely at odds with their counterparts.

"A touch of Bell's palsy," she said before I could open my mouth. "The doctor in Milan said I was lucky to get off this easily. He gave me an injection of corticosteroids and said I should look normal within a week or two."

I felt she was watching me closely to gauge my reaction. I managed to smile and pat her arm. "I'm sure you'll be as right as rain soon. Lie down and I'll get dinner started."