Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

Olivera nodded. “I expect that a dozen is exactly right. Are you familiar with Street Sweepers?” I said I wasn’t. “They’re semiautomatic shotguns, hold a dozen shells in a rotary magazine. If you’re in a hurry, you can let off all twelve in about three seconds. Ain’t technology grand?”

“Twelve shells.”

“Yeah. Let’s see, there are about twenty-seven pellets per shell. That’s what — over three hundred pellets. Chandler’s lucky he wasn’t walking around in his living room. The guy really hosed the place down.”

“So you’re figuring one guy?”

“Probably. We got one witness, says she saw a guy on a big fancy motorcycle tearing down the street right after the shooting. She didn’t see anybody else.”

“Fancy?”

“She’s sixty-eight years old and doesn’t know from motorcycles. However, after some succinct and penetrating questions from one of our well-trained, attentive officers, it turns out what she meant by fancy was that the front fork was extended way out. A long, shiny chrome fork. That’s what I got, except of course for this pile of work on the desk here.”

I took the hint. “Thanks, lieutenant.”

“You hear anything, you get in touch, Stubblefield.” It wasn’t a request.

At eleven forty-five I drove by the orange dory in front of the Jolly Fisherman, between the huge rusting anchors, past the mural of the cavorting bluefish, and around to Chandler’s room. He cannoned out the door before the car had stopped.

“I’m going crazy in there. They’ve actually painted the room aquamarine. I hate aquamarine! A man cannot formulate lucid, cogent arguments in an aquamarine room filled with blond furniture and fake Picassos. And the damn sink drips.”

Fortunately, it’s only a five minute drive to the station. I dropped Chandler off and told him I’d see him at six. The rest of the afternoon was spent on paperwork and trying to ignore the trumpet lesson that Emil conducts each week for some poor soul who sounds as if he is blowing into the wrong end of the instrument.

A little before six I unlocked the bottom drawer of the desk and hauled out my Sig 9 mm semi-automatic. Fifteen rounds in the clip, one more in the spout. A second clip went into my coat pocket. I’d read somewhere that the average firefight consumes two point five bullets per gun, so I was overloaded. But Olivera could be wrong. There might be more than just one guy with a Street Sweeper. And I tend to be conservative where my health is concerned. Forty-three doesn’t look so bad when you consider some of the alternatives.

Windle was all atwitter with excitement. He led me into a small cubicle crammed with electronic equipment. Chandler followed us in, lit a cigarette, and turned the “No Smoking” sign to the wall. “Let’s hear it, Alfred.”

Windle flipped on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. I heard Chandler’s voice say, “Hello, you’re on VOC.”

A high-pitched nasal voice said, “You lousy pinko. Did you get my message last night?” Some heavy breathing and traffic noise in the background. “No more warnings, you commie bastard. Get off the air, now, or I’ll cancel your show. Permanent.” That was all.

“Naturally, we are equipped with a seven-second delay, so none of it went out over the air,” said Windle.

“Why does he call you a commie?” I asked.

Chandler shrugged. “I guess because I’ve expressed admiration for Gorbachev, and because I’ve heralded the impending reductions in both troops and arms as a return to sanity. To accuse me of being a fellow traveler or a quisling because of that is ludicrous.”

“This guy apparently thinks it’s all a ruse to soften us up so the Rooskies can drop the hammer on us.” Chandler rolled his eyes at that.

“This guy’s a couple of quarts low,” he said.

“Which makes him dangerous,” said Windle. “Very dangerous.”

The weekend was quiet. Chandler wasn’t on the air, but we took meals together both days, out of town and at a different place each time. With an expense account I could avoid the ptomaine towers I usually frequent and indulge myself for a change. Chandler was grateful for the trips. He was planning a show, he said, on how parts of Cape Cod had been turned into a cross between Disneyland and Newark, with special emphasis on the motel industry. It was his intention, he went on, to tear some people’s heads off — discursively, of course.

Monday broke clear and sunny. I delivered Chandler to the station, had lunch at the Windlass, and waded back through “Jingle Bell Rock” to my office thinking that someday I’d find a place to eat that didn’t have a nautical name. Two bikers sat smoking on their machines in front of my building. They probably weren’t any bigger than Gino Marchetti. One of them called, “You Stubblefield?”

“That’s right.” They were dressed in full colors, with “Berserkers M C” emblazoned across the back of their denim vests.

“Soto wants to see you.”

“About what?”