The Comic

Chapter 18

Grace clutched her keys and stopped just inside the door of the garage, moving behind a concrete pillar and watching the man standing by her car. Cop?. She knew instinctively something was up. Her car was completely off the radar. Even the license was a phony? Or was it the car? Maybe they found her somehow and the car was collateral. She bit her lip and forced herself to act. She walked directly to the car and stopped as the man turned around.

"Oh, hi." He said. "You live in this building?"

"Why are you asking?" Grace assumed the pose of a careful, nervous single woman.

"This car. It's the one the cops are looking for. It was on TV and in the paper this morning."

"Really? This car?" Grace moved over to the driver's door.

"Yep. A black Caddy with that weird license, One DO."

Grace moved to the rear of the car and looked at the license. It's I DO. What a bloody bumpkin, One DO. Ass. She reached down and covertly squeezed the trunk open button on her key chain.

"Oh look, it's open!"

"Huh?" The man walked around and stood beside her.

"Maybe there's something about the owner. We could help the police if we found something." She put on her best innocent voice.

He bent down and looked inside, in the corners and up toward the seat backs. As he began lifting out Grace slammed the lid violently down on his head and he fell forward into the trunk. Skillfully, she hoisted his feet and tucked him into the trunk before he got his bearings and slammed the lid shut.

She hurried around and climbed into the car, pulling on a pair of cotton gloves then cranking the engine and jamming it into gear, screeching out of her slot and down the ramps to the street into traffic. She realized she couldn't go home now, not until she found out exactly what her passenger knew and did before she saw him.

She stared out the window at the blur of traffic and buildings, her world, one minute perfect and expanding, the next in danger of becoming a collapsing edifice leaving nothing but rubble. She rubbed her forehead and blew her breath out in an angry burst. Making several turns off the main roads she found herself in an industrial section of junk yards and empty factories.

The air was filled with a smell of rust and decay and Grace wrinkled her nose as she pulled up a long drive beside one of the empty buildings. She stopped and popped the trunk, walking around and lifting the lid. The man stared up at her, eyes wide; a small trickle of blood from his head ran down between his eyes and alongside his nose.

"Tell me exactly what I want to know and we can finish our business."

"I don't know anything!" His voice almost screeched when she opened her purse and assembled the silencer to her gun.

"Didn't talk to anyone? No phone calls, or pictures with your phone?

"No! I swear, nothing!"

"You're sure?"

"So help me! I swear!"

"Okay." Grace shot him once in the forehead.

She closed the trunk and went over the car, wiping it clean with the cotton gloves then she made her way back to the street and began a brisk walk out of the neglected area. When she reach a small commercial section of the street she opened her phone and placed a call to a taxi company.

While she waited she processed all the information about her recent movements and those involved. If the police knew the car they didn't get it from any data base; it was one hundred percent invisible. It had to be an informant and that very quickly whittled down to one source - Mickey.