Without remorse - Tom Clancy [97]
'Hello? I'm calling about the ad for the car ... that's right,' Kelly said. 'Right now if you want ... Okay, say about fifteen minutes? Fine, thank you, ma'am. I'll be right there. 'Bye.' He hung up. At least something had gone right. Kelly grimaced at the inside of the phone booth. Springer was tied up in a guest slip at one of the marinas on the Potomac. He had to buy a new car, but how did you get to where the new car was? If you drove there, then you could drive the new car back, but what about the one you took? It was funny enough that he started laughing at himself. Then fate intervened, and an empty cab went driving past the manna's entrance, allowing him to keep his promise to a little old lady.
"The 4500 block, Essex Avenue,' he told the driver.
'Where's that, man?'
'Bethesda.'
'Gonna cost extra, man,' the driver pointed out, turning north.
Kelly handed a ten-dollar bill across. 'Another one if you get me there in fifteen minutes.'
'Cool.' And the acceleration dropped Kelly back in his seat. The taxi avoided Wisconsin Avenue most of the way. At a red light the driver found Essex Avenue on his map, and he ended up collecting the extra ten with about twenty seconds to spare.
It was an upscale residential neighborhood, and the house was easy to spot. There it was, a VW Beetle, an awful peanut-butter color speckled with a little body rust. It could not have been much better. Kelly hopped up the four wooden front steps and knocked on the door.
'Hello?' It was a face to match the voice. She had to be eighty or so, small and frail, but with fey green eyes that hinted at what had been, enlarged by the thick glasses she wore. Her hair still had some yellow in the gray.
'Mrs Boyd? I called a little while ago about the car.'
'What's your name?'
'Bill Murphy, ma'am.' Kelly smiled benignly. 'Awful hot, isn't it?'
'T'rble,' she said, meaning terrible. 'Wait a minute.' Gloria Boyd disappeared and then came back a moment later with the keys. She even came out to walk him to the car. Kelly took her arm to help her down the steps.
'Thank you, young man.'
'My pleasure, ma'am,' he replied gallantly.
'We got the car for my granddaughter. When she went to college, then Ken used it,' she said, expecting Kelly to know who Ken was.
'Excuse me?'
'My husband,' Gloria said without turning. 'He died a month ago.'
'I'm very sorry to hear that, ma'am.'
'He was sick a long time,' said the woman, not yet recovered from the shock of her loss but accepting the fact of it. She handed him the keys. 'Here, take a look.'
Kelly unlocked the door. It looked like the car used by a college student and then by an elderly man. The seats were well worn, and one had a long slash in it, probably by a packing box of clothes or books. He turned the key in the lock and the engine started immediately. There was even a full tank of gas. The ad hadn't lied about the mileage, only 52,000 miles on the odometer. He asked for and got permission to take it around the block. The car was mechanically sound, he decided, bringing it back to the waiting owner.
'Where did all the rust come from?' he asked her, giving the keys back.
'She went to school in Chicago, at Northwestern, all that terrible snow and salt.'
'That's a good school. Let's get you back inside,' Kelly took her arm and directed her back to the house. It smelled like an old person's house, the air heavy with dust that she was too tired to wipe, and stale food, for the meals she still fixed were for two, not one.
'Are you thirsty?'
'Yes, ma'am, thank you. Water will be just fine.' Kelly looked around while she went to the kitchen. There was a photo on the wall, a man in a high-necked uniform and Sam Browne belt, holding the arm of a young woman in a very tight, almost cylindrical, white wedding dress. Other photos cataloged the married life of Kenneth and Gloria Boyd. Two daughters and a son, a trip to the ocean, an old car, grandchildren, all the things earned in a full and