Dead Street

into the leather La-Z-Boy lounger and watched the downpour wash away the dirty sins of the big city.

The apartment seemed practically new. When I lost Bettie, I got out of my old place that we’d shared briefly, where too many memories hung like a sweet smell in the rooms, and came here, a comfortable little warren with all the goodies of easy solitary living I could use and a few pieces of Bettie’s furniture that had been handed down to her by her maternal grandmother. I slept in her four-poster bed and kept some of her clothes in my closet. Next to me was her favorite piece, a desk built back in the seventeen hundreds by a remote ancestor and just right for a small bar with eight bottles of assorted liquors. They were all full. Only the Canadian Club bottle had been opened. I stared at it for a few seconds, dipped a few ice cubes out of the miniature icemaker Bettie had given me, stirred in some CC and ginger and sat back to watch the pretty girl on the weather channel.

There were other faces when the commercials came on, and more faces when the news program started, but none were the face I was looking for. It was there, hidden someplace in the back of my mind. It was a face that I could recognize from then, but this was now and I’d have to add twenty-some years to it.

I sipped at the drink, finally finished it, turned the light out and went into the bedroom. Tomorrow I’d have to start thinking like a cop again.

It had been one hell of a long day, longest since I walked away from the Job. But with Bettie back among the living, and back in my life, I was ready for more.

Chapter Two

It took another two days for the cop thing to really kick back in again. The walk that started out in the damp mist of an early morning wound through areas I was hardly aware of. Four times people remembered me and said hello with a small wave and I waved back and answered them, wondering who they were. None were very young. I had been away from this neighborhood for a long time.

The street sign didn’t alert me. It was the store on the corner. It used to be a great deli where the salami was for real and the hard rolls fresh out of a bakery across town.

Now it was a small saloon with its own peculiar stink and a pair of cheap alcoholics waiting impatiently outside, squatting on small garbage containers. Unless they kicked the door in they were going to have to sweat out another four hours before the place opened. Legally, that is.

And suddenly there I was. Without conscious direction, my feet had taken me there, right down the sidewalk until I was standing outside the building that Bettie and I had lived in and I felt an unnatural coldness walk its way up my spine and I licked the dryness from my lips and breathed deeply for half a minute.

I had been walking in a fog. Time hadn’t seemed to pass at all. It had been two hours since I left my place and I had hardly any memory of what streets I had crossed to get here. Nothing came back to me at all until I was outside the old apartment building where Bettie had been torn away and jammed into the back of a light truck.

It had been parked right beside the spot where I was standing. I hadn’t been home that night, and I always wondered who knew I was on duty, because normally I was on days and had been filling in. The guys had come down the stairs carrying the rolled up rug with Bettie nearly smothering inside. They slid the old rug into the vehicle, slammed the doors shut and pulled away from the curb with the wheels screaming on the pavement.

The memory of it was almost as if I had seen it. Too many times the ugly scenario played out in my mind, but there was a hole there and emptiness is hard to define. The emotions of death and gruesome loneliness made it nearly impossible to penetrate that seeming vacuum.

But those emotions had suddenly evaporated and the big why suddenly appeared and hammered at my mind.

It was an abduction they had planned. Murder wasn’t the objective. Bettie had something they had to have. It was something nobody else could give them. It had such importance that a mid-evening kidnapping had been executed regardless of the risk, but an insidious coincidence had raised its head and death came out of it.

Death for the abductors. They died.

Bettie was still alive!

Squirreled away in a folder in my apartment were all the details of the events of that night and Photostat copies of the official inquiries and the notes on lined pad sheets investigating detectives had made. The information was limited since Bettie had no connections at all with anything or anybody (with the exception of her cop boyfriend, yours truly) that would demand the terrible thing that happened to her.

The abductors’ remains had been found, one body in the wreckage of the truck, the other a floater that turned up near West Point a couple of days later. Both had rap sheets filled up with petty offenses and a pair of entries that got them a few years of prison time, but the offenses were not related. Neither one had a driver’s license or a credit card and according to persons who had known them, both were heavy drinkers, but there was no mention of drug use. One patrolman, who said he knew them both, reported that they’d do anything for a buck.

My notes were extremely sparse. I was officially listed as Bettie’s fiance and had no knowledge of her affairs at work at all. I had listed her occupation as the head of “Computer Input” for a company known as Credentials. Their main occupation was to verify the statements and background of persons seeking employment in reliable companies. A handwritten addendum stated that Credentials was in good standing with the local bank they used and the business outlets they dealt with.

I scowled at the information and shook my head. Twenty years ago that word “computer” might have raised a red flag. But now? Hell, the kids in grade school were using them. I’d even had to learn to use the damn things myself before retirement kicked in.

There was a pamphlet at the bottom of the pages I held. Bettie’s office group had held a party on the twentieth anniversary of Credentials being in business. I pulled out the phone book and looked the company up to see if they still were operating.

They were.

In the Yellow Pages too, and their address hadn’t changed, either.

Bettie’s picture was in the pamphlet. She was the prettiest one there. It was nothing formal, a semi-posed color snapshot and she was wearing a daringly cut outfit that was the sign of the times back then. Two of her lady friends flanked her, their smiles flashing into the camera lens. Kneeling nearby was the paunchy figure of her section boss and off to the side of the picture were three young kids, one in a short-sleeved shirt and a vest, another sporting flashy suspenders and the third apparently lying on the floor fixing something. From what little showed of his face in the photo, he didn’t look happy at all.

There was nothing for me to see in the photo. It was over twenty-some years and whoever had been there then had probably moved on. I muttered “Maybe” to myself. Like Yogi Berra said, “The game ain’t over until it’s over.”

At least Credentials was a starting point. I tucked the pamphlet into my pocket, made a cup of coffee and got back on the street again. The rain had stopped. The clouds were still up there, but the pavement was drying off.

After a five-minute wait at the corner, a cab came by and gave me a ride to where Bettie had once worked. There were no sad feelings this time. Now I had Bettie alive and back in my life. In another day I’d see her. The airline ticket had been reserved and tonight I’d pack my bag.

At the office building I took the elevator up to the fourth floor and when the secretary asked who I wanted to see, I said, “Mr. Ray Burnwald. Is he still with the company?”

“Oh, yes,” she told me. “And what is your name?”

“Jack Stang.”

“You haven’t been here before, have you?”

I grinned. “About twenty years ago.”

She said, “Oh,” like I was an old customer and buzzed the boss’ office. When she hung up she pointed to a door and nodded for me to go on in.

Mr. Burnwald didn’t look like the picture he had taken with the other employees. Age had touched him with a rough brush. Most of his hair had disappeared. His smooth face now drowned under the wrinkles of the years and