rolled-up towel under my arm, I looked like I was going to the Y for a work-out.
I wasn’t. I was on my way, in my rental Buick, to Davenport, via the free bridge at Moline; traffic was brisk, but that was to be expected on a Friday night. In Moline I made a stop at a 7-11 and bought a roll of wide adhesive tape and a plastic-wrapped packet of clothesline. Soon I was cruising four-lane River Drive, which connected Moline and Davenport, and to my left was the Mississippi, its shiny black surface reflecting the lights of the cities across the way, and to my right was a slope on which perched various homes, many of them mansions or anyway near- mansions.
Werner’s was a big white would-be Tara, with six pillars in front, its slope of lawn winter-brown at the moment, unmarred by sidewalk. I drove up the nearest side street and found you entered via an alley, off of which was the house and its three-car garage. But the place was dark. Well, it figured. Friday night.
I left the car several blocks away and walked back to Werner’s and waited. I waited in the shrubs near the garage. I never did do home invasions. That wasn’t my style. I always worked as part of a two-man team, one of whom would do most of the watching, the surveillance, getting the target’s pattern down before choosing the right time and place, when the other team member would do the actual hit. Which was usually me.
But home invasions, no, and so I had only the most rudimentary experience with things like alarm systems. A connected guy like Werner would have a sophisticated one, too, and possibly a live-in bodyguard or two, though after an hour no one checked the grounds.
The night was overcast and cold and a little foggy up on this higher ground; the streetlamps in the alley glowed like halos. I should have been chilled, in the light jacket, but for some reason I couldn’t feel it much. I felt dead, even if my breath in the cold air indicated I wasn’t.
Finally, just after midnight, a security company car crawled down the alley. One of the two uniformed, brown leather-jacketed men got out and walked the grounds with a flashlight, while the other waited, sipping steaming liquid from a styrofoam cup. It was only a half-hearted effort, the one with the flash not even brushing the bushes where I hid with his beam. Good thing. Coldinspired laziness had saved a couple of lives.
And at one-thirty-something, a jade green Lincoln coasted down the alley and pulled in the drive; one of the three doors of the garage swung up upon electronic command, and the big boat of a car docked itself within.
The door shut itself, and a man in a camel’s hair overcoat and a woman in a mink exited the garage via a side door. The woman was in the lead, a harshly attractive blonde in her late forties who was staying perhaps too thin in an effort to hold onto her youth. The man was shorter than his wife, and in his mid-fifties though his hair was jet black; he had a round, youthful face, but his mouth was a tight gash. He was pulling on his gloves.
“We’re going to the game,” Mr. Werner said, irritably.
“You’ll go alone,” the apparent Mrs. Werner said. Her voice was as icily crisp as the air.
“Isn’t it enough I give those phony bastards my money? Do I have to…”
She turned and pointed a finger in his face; she was wearing black leather gloves. “The Arts Council is the most important thing in my life. Don’t louse it up!”
“We don’t have to be at every goddamn meeting…”
“Well, I do,” she said.
By this time they were at the back door. The woman stood with her arms folded, tapping her foot as if to some inner and no doubt unpleasant tune while Werner worked a key in the lock.
“I’m going to that game,” he said. “I didn’t spring for season tickets to stay home.”
“I’m co-chairperson, Vic. Don’t forget that.”
“Would that I could.”
He had the door open, now. The whine of an alarm system sounded.
“Doesn’t mean a thing to you the Hawks are number one in the nation, does it?” he asked, as he reached around inside to work another key in a wall socket, turning off the alarm.
With a patrician downward glance at him, she said, “I enjoy the games. Driving all the way to Iowa City doesn’t thrill me, but I’m as much a Hawk fan as you are…”
“I doubt that.”
“I just have my own priorities.”
So did I.
They stepped inside and I stepped in with them, putting the nine-millimeter’s silenced nose in the back of the woman’s neck.
“God!” she said.
Werner was looking at me through narrow eyes, as if trying to comprehend that I was really standing there. The kitchen was dark, but the alley was well lit and that made for some visibility.
“Don’t turn on the lights,” I told her, “and don’t turn around.”
“Don’t rape me,” she said. “Please don’t let him rape me, Vic!”
“Shut up,” he said.
I tossed him the packet of clothesline.
“Tie her in that chair,” I told him. To her I said, “Keep your back to me. Don’t see me.”
“All right,” she said timidly.
“Sit,” I said.
She sat.
Werner, moving with slow, quiet disgust, tied his wife into the chair. I watched him carefully and he performed his task well, making it tight enough and knotted well enough to get her bound, but not hurting her. Despite their bickering, he seemed to care for her.
While he was doing that, I asked him: “Anyone else in the house?”
“No.”
“No children?”
“We have two kids, both at college.”
“Neither home at the moment?”
“Neither home at the moment.”
“Any live-in help?”
“No.”
“No bodyguards?”
“No. I used to have live-in help like that. No more.”
“Why?”
“I’m a respectable member of the community. Respectable members of the community don’t go around with bodyguards.”
He got up from where he’d been kneeling to tie her legs to the chair and said, “Now what?”
“Her mouth,” I said, and tossed him the adhesive tape.
He sighed and put a slash of tape across her mouth. I saw him smile reassuringly at her, squeezed her shoulder once. Said, “Don’t look at him, Virginia.”
She nodded.
“Now what?” he asked.
“How often does the rent-a-cop car come by? Don’t lie.”
“Twice a night.”
“When?”
“It varies.”
“Usually.”
He shrugged. “About midnight. Then again around three.”
“Let’s go outside.”
“Why?”
“I have the gun. The one with the gun gets to ask the questions.”
“Right,” he sighed. He turned to his wife, whose back remained to us. “Just sit there,” he said pointlessly. “Don’t try to do anything.”
She nodded again, which was about all she could do, anyway.
And her husband and I went out into the cold foggy air. The distance from house to alley was moderate, but the yard was wide and protected from neighboring houses and their big yards by walls of shrubbery.
