Jerry Labriola - Murders at Hollings General

"Anyone here call for a cab? Come to think of it, I had to use it one time."

"And who would I be?"

Musco scaled David's height. "My bodyguard," he said.

David handed him five twenties which the cabby wound on a roll of bills he had taken from his pocket.

"See," Musco said, "I told you no questions-I didn't even count them." His eyes crinkled above bared gold-edged teeth.

"You're bad," David said. "Thanks, pal, I'll be in touch." Musco left.

David guided the door open and walked into a narrow laundry and utility room which stretched half-way to the front of the house. The air reeked of detergent. He placed Friday-heavier since its additions-on a washing machine, yanked off his boots, and put his scarf and gloves in his pockets. David looked into the dimly lit garage through the door window on his left and froze when he saw what he had never expected to see. He knew immediately that the car parked there belonged to Victor Spritz. Then where the hell is he?

Minx.22 drawn, he tested the door and, finding it unlocked, probed the garage from where he stood, then quietly closed it. He cracked open a door on the right and said softly, "Victor? Hello, Victor?"

On tiptoes, David would bump his head on any doorframe made. He ducked and skated through the doorway, then bounced on his toes into the kitchen and advanced toward the living room, raising his voice a notch. "Victor, it's me, David Brooks. Are you here?" He didn't know how he would explain his presence. If Spritz is on the lam though, who needs to explain? The silence had a sound to it because it was so intense, but then he heard the buzz of a leftover housefly which eventually dive-bombed onto a lampshade. At home, David would have attacked it with a folded newspaper.

He was surprised at the illumination in the rooms he could see, anticipating a grid but finding confluence, and finally determining the house had more slots than other houses had conventional windows. He played with the theorem that the slots concentrated the sun penetrating his face; or was it merely the flush of readiness?

He took his normal giant steps and quickly covered the first floor, looking in but not examining a small alcove off the living room. It contained a desk, chair, computer and copying machine, and he reminded himself to return to it after he had searched upstairs.

David yelled out Spritz's name again as he ascended an open staircase, pulling on a railing, bridging two steps at a time. He found the bed in the master bedroom made up, but the bed in an adjacent room was a hammock of books and magazines. Piles of rumpled clothes encumbered the floor. He peeked behind a shower curtain and prolonged a sigh after he had opened a final closet door and returned the Minx to his shoulder rig.

David backtracked, taking the shortest route to the alcove below, and after bracing his weight on the surface of the desk, sat and wiped away the palm print he made in the dust. The ceiling was low, a single slot window had no curtain and the sound of adjusting in the chair echoed off bare walls. He pawed through the desk drawers, saving the lower right-the one he thought most popular for valuables-for last. There, a composition book in a black-and-white marbleized pattern caught his attention. He sifted through it, finding page after page filled with dates, initials, units of weight and, repeatedly, the notations, "CARCAN" and "CANCAN." He studied the lettering and, in his mind, reverted to those messages he'd received before, most vividly the one taped to a stone.

He jotted down the notations in his pad, but he also retrieved Friday from the laundry room and took Polaroids of several sample pages.

In the oil stench of the garage, David held his breath while flinging open a window, then another. He switched on the lights and scrutinized all four sides of a late model Toyota, squatting at each tire to examine its treads. He placed his palm on a cold hood, bent an ear to the trunk and while inspecting the car's interior, noted the odometer reading. He slipped on a two-foot-square piece of cardboard beneath his feet and had to regain his balance against a fender. David kicked the cardboard against a wall and checked his shoe for oil stains while questioning why a Toyota with 6,200 miles would have a leaky crankcase.

His eyes lingered back on the car as he sauntered to the rear of the garage, toward a room he believed to be a storage area, one which he might give only a cursory glance. He opened the door, flipped down a wall switch, and flinched at a fireworks of light: a central cascade drenching the spacious enclosure, ensuing bursts at the periphery, a closing gallop up the walls from below. Then, the onset of a soft "Semper Fidelis."

The room was congested with glass-covered display cases of guns, guns and more guns, seven or eight tiers high and, as David sidestepped along tight aisles, he had to rise up to view them all. On three walls, American flags adorned the spaces between world maps whose shaded areas were color-coded with specific display cases, all of which were also labeled.

David felt as though he had stumbled onto a magician's secrets as he moved slowly among the rows, reading each label, studying most of the guns and rifles and rigs and spare parts and ammo. Quickly, he understood that, whereas his own collection was based on manufacturer, this one, perhaps ten times larger, was based on wars and military skirmishes. Only one case-marked "MISCELLANEOUS, 90' S"-had an assortment of more current weapons, all handguns.

The section marked "Spanish-American War" was stacked with Mauser rifles. "World War I" was divided into Germany with its Lugers, Modell revolvers and even Spandau machine guns; the Austro-Hungarian Empire with its Steyer-Hahn M.12; and Italy with its Mannlicher Carcano rifle which David recognized as having achieved notoriety in the John F. Kennedy assassination. "World War II" featured Gewehr rifles for Germany, Breda machine guns for Italy and Japan's Sniper Rifle Type 97. When David came across this representative weapon for Japan, he hardened, thunderstruck. Sniper Rifle 97? Coughlin? He remembered Sparky's description. That's the one! That's it. Or one like it.

Unattentive, he raced along the cases devoted to the Korean and Viet Nam wars and to the Warsaw Pact and hurried back to the "World War II" aisle. He had overlooked a newspaper clipping set back on its own pedestal under glass but now read the simple sentence, "Nazi Germany is overrun with racist supermen and especially raving homosexuals." It was dated September 22, 1943.

At the Japan case, David ran his hand along the lower edge of glass and discovered the seal intact. He opened Friday, removed the utility knife and pried off the case's external hinges. He unwrapped the terry cloth from his Blackhawk Magnum and, looking around at no one, gently lifted Sniper Rifle Type 97 with the cloth.

He tucked it under his arm and as he gravitated toward the door, noticed a recessed, glass encasement in the wall. It was brightly illuminated from within and contained a single sheet of paper with the letterhead:

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY

Washington, DC

In the upper left corner was an official seal: Department of Defense, United States of America. The brief message read:

April 12, 1972

Dear Mr. Spritz:

I regret to inform you that you have been denied admission into the United States Army.

By direction,

James H.B. Simmons

Under Secretary of the Army

Scrawled in red ink across a margin was: FUCK YOU. V.S.

Open-mouthed, David stood at the door and gawked back at the hoard of guns for one last full minute. He considered himself slapped in a crisscross of emotions, uncertain what to feel and what to think. Alarm? Relief that he had discovered likely evidence? Confusion over American flags guarding the weaponry of only enemy nations? Or over the image of Spritz's limp wrists combined with a faded newspaper's reference to homosexuals and a rejection notice for military service during the Viet Nam War?