The Girl in the Glass

A SWEET DEAL

It was black as a kettle in among the trees near the cabin. Schell had pulled off the road and hidden the car behind a natural wall of brambles some way off from number six. We stumbled through the dark, avoiding trunks and trying to steer clear of the other cabins. Somewhere high above us an owl sounded every half minute. I'd left my trench coat in the car and, wearing only my suit jacket, was freezing.

"I think this is it up here," said Schell as he struck a wooden match to life. The momentary flame showed us the way to the door of the place, and once we were standing in front of the small cabin, he lit another so we could check the number.

"Yeah, you found it," I said.

Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved the key Morgan had given him. He opened the door and we stepped inside. That dank mildew smell made me gag slightly, bringing to mind Charlotte Barnes's body in the tumbledown shack. Schell lit one of the candles on the desk, and the light chased the bad memory from my mind.

"Can you imagine living here?" I said to him, my breath coming as steam in the cold.

"Better yet," he said, "how about hearing someone prowling around outside and having to climb into a hole under the floorboards?"

"She's resourceful, I'll give you that. But she's also…" I was trying to think of a way to describe her eccentric nature without being derogatory.

"…a loon?" said Schell and laughed quietly.

"As a matter of fact," I said, "I think she's very nice, but the singing…" I shook my head.

"My favorite part is the singing," said Schell. "You have that slip of paper?"

I handed him the list. He looked it over and shook his head. "Box with tartan jumper," he said. "What in Christ's name is that?"

I shrugged.

"I'm not going through all of this cargo," he said. "We'll take four boxes, two trips to the car, and then we're giving this place the air."

I grabbed a box and so did he and we headed out. On the return trip it was easier to find the cabin with the candle glowing in the window. Schell had had the trip to the car and back to reconsider his position on the clothes. Once inside the cabin, he took the list out of his pocket and lifted the candle off the desk to get a better look at it.

"Okay, maybe we can actually find some of this stuff," he said.

I walked over to where the boxes were stacked and waited. Eventually, he said, "Here's one that sounds simple enough-box with black dress."

I went to work, moving boxes off the stack onto the floor, reaching in and flipping the folded clothes back to look. I was going to tell him to bring the candle closer when I heard something outside. Schell looked up from the list and turned his head. I froze. A second later, the door, which was unlatched, began to open. The first thing I saw was the muzzle of a gun. An instant later, I could see it was a machine gun. The man who held it, dressed in a black suit, yelled, "Don't move."

Before the gunman could get completely into the cabin, Schell jumped to the side and kicked the door as hard as he could. It caught the stranger in the side, and he went down, the weapon flying from his grasp. Schell wasted no time and kicked the fallen man in the face. At the same time, another fellow was forcing his way in, pushing the door against his partner's body. He managed to get halfway in and began to raise the pistol in his right hand. Schell reached into his suit jacket pocket, took out a handful of something, and threw it in the air. Flash powder. The intruder was about to pull the trigger when Schell tossed the candle into the miasma of powder floating in the air. There was a dull bang and a bright explosion. The second man reeled backward, his gun going off, and the slug hit the ceiling.

"Now," Schell yelled to me, and I leapt across the narrow cabin and followed him out the door. As I passed the machine gunner on the floor, who was scrabbling to his knees, I kicked him again, this time in the ribs. Outside, the other fellow, temporarily blinded by the flash, was furiously rubbing his eyes. He heard us running past him and he squeezed off two shots that went high above our heads. We ran out, around, and behind the cabin, sprinting full tilt.

We'd run for about a minute, luckily not slamming into a tree or tripping on a branch, when something hit me from behind, and I went down. It was Schell who'd knocked me over. "Cover your head," he whispered. And then it came, a storm of machine-gun fire, chewing up the landscape all around us. Bark splintered off the trees and dirt and stones kicked up to the right of us.

By the time the barrage ended, I was dazed and shaking. Schell got up, shoved his arms beneath mine, and lifted me. He offered no verbal command, but I instinctively began running. I couldn't see a thing. Branches were whipping my face, and I tripped and caught myself from falling more than once. We'd gone another twenty yards when we heard the machine gun come to life again. I didn't need Schell to tackle me. We hit the ground, and this time the gunman's aim was even farther to our right. When he stopped firing, in the accentuated silence that followed, I could hear distant footsteps on the fallen leaves, drawing closer.

A voice called then, not from behind us but off to our right. "Hurry, they're coming," it said, and a few seconds later, "This way," from even farther off in that direction. As the machine gun blared again, I realized the voice had been Schell's; he'd projected it in an attempt to confuse our pursuers, a classic sйance technique. The shooting stopped, and we heard the men pass only ten yards from where we lay, heading in the direction of Schell's projected voice. Two or three minutes passed, and we heard the machine gun spray again, but this time at a good distance. The smell of gunpowder was everywhere.

Schell tapped my shoulder, and we got to our feet. He whispered, "Don't run." We moved in the direction of our parked car, cautiously pacing, trying not to make a sound. A single shot from a pistol rang out in the distance, and I imagined a dead raccoon or deer. Wandering through the dark was like a nightmare, and it was only by blind luck that we found the Cord.

Once we were in the car, he said to me, "The minute I start this up, they're going to come running, so stay down." Then the engine turned over and it sounded louder to me than ever before. Without turning on the headlamps he backed out of the hiding place behind the undergrowth, whipped the wheel to turn the car around, and hit the gas pedal. We made the turn onto the road so sharply, I thought the car was going to tip over.

A few yards down on the left-hand side of the road, we saw their car. Schell stopped. He reached down somewhere near his shoe and came up with a switchblade. Pressing a tiny latch on the side, a long thin blade snapped out. "You've got to hurry," he said. "Slash a tire."

I grabbed the knife, jumped out of the Cord, and was beside their car in an instant. I plunged the blade into their right front tire, and the air came hissing out. Schell hit the gas the moment I jumped back into our car, and we took off so quickly the tires squealed.

A shudder ran through me as I handed the knife back to Schell. He folded and locked the blade against his thigh and said, "How I almost died for a tartan jumper," as he finally switched on the headlamps.

"So far I've been chased on the beach, beaten up by that thing at Parks's place, and now shot at with a Thompson," I said. "And we're not even getting paid for this."

"It's a sweet deal, for sure," he said.

"Who do you think those characters were?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. "This thing is so…I can't even think of the right word for it. It makes me wonder if the girl in the glass, who started it all, wasn't actually a real ghost."

"The ghost girl's the easiest part to believe," I said.

When we arrived home, we found Antony in the living room, entertaining Isabel and Morgan with tales of the traveling carnival life. There was a haze of cigarette smoke in the air and a bottle of whiskey on the table.

I slouched down on the couch next to Isabel, and Schell took off his trench coat and jacket, tossing them on a chair in the corner.

"How was the coroner?" asked Antony.

Schell didn't answer but went into the kitchen.

"Kid?" he asked.

I waved my hand to put off the question, leaned over, and took one of his cigarettes from the pack on the table. He looked as if he was going to say something, but I suppose from my expression, he knew I needed it. Instead he silently passed me the lighter. Schell returned from the kitchen with a tumbler and proceeded to pour himself a tall drink from the whiskey bottle. Before even finding a seat, he swallowed a quarter of it in one long gulp.

"Did you get the paisley wrap?" asked Morgan.

Schell took a seat across from her. "I don't know if we got the paisley wrap or the tartan jumper," he said. "We did very nearly get an ass full of machine-gun lead, though."

"At the coroner's?" asked Antony.

"No," I said, "out in the woods, at the cabin."

"Oh, no," said Morgan.

Schell nodded, and in between sips of whiskey, he related what had happened at both of the stops we'd made that evening.

"Sorry I wasn't with you," said Antony.

"That makes two of us," said Schell. He looked over at Morgan. "Those people you were mixed up with in the city that you told me about this afternoon, could this have been them?"

"I don't know," she said. "What did they look like?"

"Two guys in dark suits, hats, with itchy trigger fingers. We didn't stay around long enough to see their faces."

Morgan shook her head and shrugged.