He gave her a sideways glance as they pulled away. “Looks like I’ll be testing that notion.”
“How do you mean?”
“I think I know where they’re holding my friend, Henrik. But I don’t think me crashing through a window is going to get him out of where they have him.”
She started out the windshield, glossy streams of reflected light bright against the glass. “What do you plan to do?”
He paused then, “Make some noise.”
“Huh?”
He explained what he’d found. As they neared his place he asked her, “Circle the block, would you?”
“Okay.”
As she did so, he spotted the tan Chrysler parked toward the far end of the block. He didn’t see anyone in the car. “Park up here, okay?”
“What’s up?”
“Seems a couple of eager beavers might have dropped by unannounced. And you know how I’m a stickler for etiquette.”
She looked at him askance and parked.
“I’ll be right back.”
“Oh no you don’t, Mr. Henson. I’m not getting cut out of all the action.”
“This could be dangerous.”
“I know,” she said, squeezing his knee.
“Then follow my lead, got it?”
She saluted. “Aye, aye, captain.”
Walking up to his apartment building, he put a finger to his lips and pointed up at his window overlooking the street. The shade was down, and the lights were off. But a beam from a flashlight briefly shone in the gap of the end of the shade and the windowsill.
“Who’s up there?” she whispered.
He told her about the Mutt & Jeff team who braced him.
“You can’t go stormin’ up there and beat on them, Matt. They’re government men and could shoot you without breaking a sweat, even in the heart of Harlem.”
He wondered whether they were only searching his place, or lying in wait to waylay him and carry him off to work him over. “Let’s see if I can flush them out. Come on.”
They entered through the front door, but instead of going upstairs, he guided her along the passageway to a door tucked away in the dark under the stairs. He took out his skeleton keys, and unlocked it.
“How many keys you got?” she said in his ear.
Growling, he said, “I guess all that time in the Arctic taught me the Grim Destroyer can come at you from any direction. All around town I keep stuff socked away that might come in handy one way or the other. Never know when you’re going to be in need.”
On the floor, in the compact supply closet, Henson had another of his shoeboxes with a few smoke bombs in it. He got this and a cleaning rag out. They had to step back into the street as he didn’t dare turn on the hallway light. But under the glow of a streetlamp he modified one of his bombs, explaining to Stevenson what he was doing— he swapped out the igniter and, using a torn strip of the cleaning rag, made a fuse he stuffed into the smoke bomb.
. They returned to his building and up the stairs they went. Tiptoeing to his door, he put his ear to the panel, and could hear the two going through his place. Maybe, he figured, they weren’t too worried about him suddenly coming home and finding them, given they were G-men and, really, what could he do about them burglarizing his place?
“Light it,” he said to Stevenson, holding the canister.
She struck a wooden match and got the makeshift fuse burning. He set the device down against the door and the two crept back to the stairwell, Henson counting to himself. Heading back down, he signaled Stevenson.
“Oh my God,” she wailed.
“Fire, fire,” Henson yelled.
They pounded down the stairs, wanting to be heard. They then rushed back outside. By now smoke was filling the hallway.
Upstairs at his door, the bulldog government man snatched it open, a sap in his other hand. “What the hell?” he snarled, the smoke bomb falling inward. The taller one came out of the bedroom in his fedora.
Somebody put on the lone overhead light in the hallway, and several sleepy-eyed tenants came out of doorways in their underwear, pajamas or hastily putting on robes. Light spilled from behind their forms. The two white men stood out like giraffes in a dog pound.
“Shit,” The bulldog one said, picking up the now depleted smoke bomb. “That goddamn sneaky darkie.”
“Who you callin’ a darkie, cracker? And what devilment are you two up to in Matt’s apartment?” Edna Mullins demanded, her hair tied up in a scarf. She pointed at the object in the shorter one’s hand. “And you set that thing off pretending there was a fire? What you two pales up too, huh?” she repeated.
The bulldog one was inclined to argue. His colleague intervened. “Let’s get out of here before you cause a riot.”
The two stared away, Mullens and several others glaring at them as they went.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Okay, try this,” Destiny Stevenson said, handing a throwing star she’d modified to Henson. Inset in the center was a copper disk the size of a quarter. “Use that plank of wood I set up,” she added.
Henson hefted the weight in his hand and spun the shuriken at the plank. He bit his bottom lip as he did so. “I didn’t compensate correctly.” Nonetheless, the star struck the wood and electricity crackled after the center piece split open.
Henson said, “Wow.”
“The problem is the casing is…temperamental, let’s say. I’m worried if you walk around with that thing up your sleeve, it might break and shock you.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Right out of whaddya call it?” an impressed Bessie Coleman said.
“Science fiction,” Stevenson said.
“Yeah,” Coleman said, snapping her fingers. “I read one of those stories once, all about metal men and half naked blondes screaming a lot.” She
