It was a three-hour ride to Providence. Erika spent the journey gazing out the window, taking in the landscape, towns, and cities as they coasted through them, glimpsing countless people going about their lives, wondering about their lives. She had seen only a fraction of the country she had called home, so even a bit more of it intrigued her. Eventually, the soothing motion of the train car lulled her into a light sleep. Betty, never one to miss an opportunity to advance her studies, brought one of her notebooks. It was midafternoon when they arrived in Providence; the train pulled into the large, red-brick Union Station.
Taking down their suitcases from the overhead racks, Erika wrapped the strap of the briefcase across her chest and led the way as they headed inside the station. The main terminal was a vast atrium; vaulted ceilings ornately decorated in colorful motifs, tall windows with bright sunlight poured onto the shiny tile floor. It was far more impressive than either woman had expected from such a modest city.
Erika looked about the grand space, spotting a round information desk, staffed by three women dressed in prim uniforms, handing out maps, giving directions, or otherwise assisting puzzled travelers. The young woman marched over, shoes tapping on the polished floor. She stepped up to the counter, failing to catch the interest of the single idle attendant, a woman standing with her arms behind her straight back, jacket pulled tight, hair immaculate under a small cap, red lipstick highlighting a flawlessly proportional face. If she’d held this pose for much longer, Erika would question if she were a mannequin.
Knocking on the wooden counter, Erika failed to persuade the stoic woman to budge. Was she just being rude? Or was Erika violating etiquette? Was she the rude one banging on countertops? She then noticed a desk bell within reach and pulled it closer. Betty stood behind her, catching sidelong glances from people as they walked by. Erika held her hand over the bell and looked at the stiff attendant, curious to witness her spring to life. Erika struck the bell, and the immaculate woman promptly donned a stilted smile and moved toward her at the counter.
The attendant spoke in a chipper, rehearsed voice. “Good morning, welcome to Union Station. How might I be of assistance?”
“I need an address,” Erika said, “The offices of Max Everhart. He’s a lawyer.”
“We’ll have a look at the directory.” The attendant moved to a shelf below the counter and pulled out a book of unusually large dimensions. The attendant handled it with surprising agility, moving it back to Erika’s position where it landed with a thud that echoed through the entire atrium. Erika flinched, and Betty stepped up beside her, gawking at the size of the directory.
Without a word, the pristine woman opened the massive volume, turning over large stacks of thin paper to reach the table of contents, and then flipped through the individual pages. Halting, she set her left index finger at the top of the left page and ran a finely manicured red nail down the paper, making a scratching noise. She moved to the next page, repeating autonomously, and turned the page again, and down again, this time stopping midway. Drawing her nail across, she noted the page number. Her other hand thumbed the corner of the book, pages whipping by. She paused, then let one more flip by, and slid her hand inside, hefting a thick mass of sheets and turned them over, the tome clunking. Revealed were long lists of names, addresses and phone numbers. The attendant reached to her right and plucked a blank, white, square card from a stack under the counter and set it straight along the top line of the right page and then drew it down quickly before stopping precisely. She pulled a pen from the left breast pocket of her jacket and penned the noted name, address and phone number, her penmanship fast yet elegant. Standing straight, she pulled her jacket taught and handed the card to Erika.
“Max Everhart, Esquire. Turk’s Head Building, Room 713, 76 Westminster Street,” Erika read aloud and then nodded to the attendant. “Thank you.”
The woman nodded in return and then pulled the enormous book shut with a loud clap and moved away to replace it on the shelf.
Erika and Betty picked up their luggage and moved through the station, heading toward what looked like the front of the building. They stepped out onto Railroad Row and hailed a taxi amidst exhaust fumes and the hustle of fellow travelers.
It was a brief ride to the Financial District, driving by tall buildings, grander than Erika had seen since arriving in New York as a little girl. The two women stared out their windows at a mass of uniform men in dark tailored suits and fedoras, women in bright, skinny dresses and small hats. Erika felt amusingly out of place in her pants and plain blouse. She’d never related to these kinds of women, so conscious of their appearance, even if she had to play the part five days a week.
It was only a few minutes from the station before they arrived outside the front of the Turk’s Head building, taking their bags from the trunk of the taxi before it sped off again. They looked up at the tall office building. Wedge-shaped, not unlike the Flatiron Building in New York City, which made Erika wonder which came first. But both buildings mostly just looked like a slice of a cheese wheel.
She looked at the card, room 713, and they headed inside with their bags. Under a two-story tall archway, the ladies entered through the front glass doors into the cavernous, unoccupied lobby. It smelled faintly of cigarettes and a wash of cologne and perfume. The walls of the triangular room were glass, an oddly quiet view of the city outside without its chaotic voice. On one side of the room, near the women, stood a large board, framed in polished silver, listing the building’s businesses and associated room numbers.
Erika walked over, her footsteps echoing, eyes scanning the elegant lettering until she found her brother’s name. “This is the right place,” she announced, glancing at Betty, who remained by the entrance, gawking unflatteringly as she measured the excessiveness of the space. “Come on, let’s head up,” Erika said and led the way to the rear of the lobby, where the room reached its full width with a wall of elevators from end to end and a single blue button at the center. Erika slipped the card with the office address into a coat pocket and gripped the suitcase strap at her side.
She stepped up to the button and pressed it. Immediately, a ding sounded and an unseen door slid open. They took several steps back to find it. More dings followed in quick succession as more doors opened. Erika and Betty hurried inside the nearest one as the dinging continued, seemingly every last elevator arriving in hopes of a passenger. It was empty inside, save for an attendant on a stool, working the lever. He nodded politely to the women.
“Floor seven, please,” Erika said.
The man shut the door and pulled the lever. As they ascended, noise grew from above, filling the shaft. They could hear typewriters clacking, phones ringing, a discord of conversations.
Reaching the seventh floor, the attendant pulled open the gates, and the roommates stepped out, finding themselves at a three-way intersection of wide, brightly lit dark blue hallways. Portraits adorned the walls, along with the occasional bust on a pedestal, all of old men.
“This is where your brother works?” Betty asked, her voice tinted with criticism.
“Don’t hold it against him. He’s supported our mother and me through tough times.”
Betty held up her hands to relent.
On the corner of the wall before them was a floor directory. Erika found “Max Everhart, Esq.” and noted the arrow pointing them straight ahead.
Erika walked faster, pants swishing against her suitcase, her hand tighter on the briefcase strap. Her eyes moved from doorway to doorway, reading room numbers, hearing muffled employees inside, the occasional door shutting, and the patter of footsteps on the carpeted floors. The hall forked, with another directory, the women continuing through more junctions and turns till they discovered among the maze, room number 713.
The door was open slightly. Erika felt her heart quicken. She looked back at Betty. They waited silently for a few seconds, hearing nothing from inside as they carefully set down their suitcases. Erika moved forward and pushed the door further open. The office light was on. Her eyes noted the walls first, patterned in maroon wallpaper, along with framed accolades and diplomas. But then she saw the disarray: the floor covered in papers, file cabinets pulled open, contents dumped and scattered. The secretary’s desk, in the far corner of the small waiting room, next to the door of Max’s personal office, had been knocked over and pulled apart, drawers tossed across the room.
Erika felt sick. Her brother was in trouble. Betty stepped in behind her and put a hand on her shoulder in comfort.
A noise came from Max’s office; the door half-opened. Were they still here? Whoever they were?
The two women stared through the opaque, textured glass of the top half of the separating wall. They could vaguely make out the shape of a person inside. Erika, her anger outweighing her fear, called out, “Hello? Who’s there!”
There was no answer.
She marched toward the door, but Betty grabbed her arm, shaking her head in warning.
Frustrated, Erika called out, “We’re looking for Max. He’s my brother.” She wondered if sympathy might help.
Silence.
“I don’t know why you’re here, but that’s all I care about.”
The person in the room moved to the door, kicking it open but partially hidden to one side of the frame, facing them. The intruder appeared to be a woman, a dark scarf wrapped around her head, leaving only bright green eyes exposed. Dressed in black pants and a gray sweater, one hand holding a pistol at the ready.
Stolen story; please report.
Erika lifted her hands defensively, but Betty didn’t budge. There was silence. Then the mysterious, scarved woman’s eyes darted to the briefcase hanging at the brunette’s side.
“Where did you get that?!” she demanded, her voice carrying an accent.
“What?” Erika responded in confusion, lowering her hands slightly.
“The briefcase. How did you get it?” the woman asked, her accent sounding Indian.
“It was sent to me… I do not know why,” Erika explained. “Why are you-”
A trample of heavy footsteps in the hallway silenced her. The roommates turned to see a group of men dressed in black from head to toe, armed with rifles and facemasks, fill the doorway, weapons drawn.
The roommates froze.
“Whoa! Easy, boys!” Betty called out.
“Drop the gun!” one man shouted.
The mystery woman didn’t oblige; she leveled her pistol and steadied her aim with both hands at the gunmen.
One man, targeting Erika, his submachine threatened to put a quick end to her life, demanded, “The briefcase, hand it over.”
“Okay, just please-” Erika slowly pulled the strap over her head, about to take her first step when the mystery woman fired off two quick shots, bullets zipping between the roommates, impacting directly into the threatening man’s head, snapped it back, splattering blood across the blue hallway wall.
The roommates screamed and dove for cover, Erika behind the toppled secretary’s desk, while Betty scrambled behind the pulled-open file cabinets opposite. The scarved woman ducked back inside Max’s office as the men shouted and responded with a deluge of gunfire. Betty and Erika covered their ears and squeezed shut their eyes amid the storm of muzzle flashes and raining glass as the upper half of Max’s office wall dissolved. Bullet casings flicked from the gunmen’s weapons as they unloaded.
A few seconds later, an eerie silence settled, and a voice from the hall called, “Toss out the briefcase! Now!”
“And then what?” the scarved woman asked, unharmed but hidden inside Max’s office. “And then you’ll kill us?”
“No,” came a response from one man, “only you. The other two can go.”
“That’s not much incentive for me, is it?” the woman continued, “I’m sure your boss wouldn’t be happy if that case got destroyed, and I’m just as happy to do so as let you assholes take it.”
“Wait!” Erika interrupted, her heart racing. “Everyone, calm down! Whatever the hell is in this thing is not worth this.”
“I disagree, darling,” the mystery woman said back, and then Erika heard a clinking sound followed by a thud outside in the hall.
“Grenade!” one man bellowed, and a second later, an explosion.
Smoke and debris plumed into the room. It took a few moments for Erika to collect her bearings, her ears ringing. When she did, the woman was standing over her, pistol at her side. “Briefcase, now.”
“Now wait a minute,” Erika started, “What the hell is going on here?”
A quick series of shots started popping through the wall from the hallway, crossing the room toward them. The mystery woman dropped to the ground, covering her head with her hands, and then rolled onto her back and aimed her pistol at the doorway. A man charged in, and she fired three shots. His body toppled over, hitting the ground with a heavy, furniture-rattling thud.
“I wasn’t expecting this much company,” the woman grumbled, holstering her pistol and crawling to the man’s body. She took his submachine and pulled off the clip to check the ammo. Tossing it aside, she searched the body and found a fresh one, reloading the weapon.
They could hear screams and commotion fill the halls as other floor occupants dashed for the exits.
The armed woman shifted onto her knees and sidled up to the office entrance. She peered out for a split second and dodged back inside just as a barrage of bullets filled the doorway, chipping away at the wooden frame, flecks of wallpaper and debris filling the air. Two more shooters were about twenty feet to the left, beyond the remains of another man who had splattered into bloody pieces by her grenade. To her right, it appeared clear.
Glancing around her, she spotted something she could use. A paperweight had fallen off the secretary’s desk. It was metal, vaguely egg-shaped. She grabbed it and tossed it into the hall, bouncing it off a wall toward the men. She heard a shout and leapt out, submachine gun rattling off, taking out both men as they attempted to find cover from an assumed grenade.
There was a brief silence, a lull, and then Erika heard the sirens of police cars outside.
Betty ran over to Erika, grabbing her arm as they got to their feet amid the wreckage. “We gotta get out of here!”
“But the police are here!” Erika answered.
“Do you know how to explain all this? I’m not sticking around to answer those questions.”
Erika understood where her friend was coming from. She’d seen her experiences with the police before. And these men weren’t mobbed-up goons. This reminded her of military raids back in Germany. “You’re right. Let’s get out of here.”
Betty moved to the bullet-torn entryway of the office and leaned her head out. She saw the woman standing over the bodies of more dead men, her back to them.
Erika looked at the body of the man on the floor of Max’s office. It was only hours ago she had buried her mother on a peaceful fall morning. The body had a handgun holstered on his hip. She hesitated, but instinct told her to take it. Erika pulled it out. The gun was heavy. She turned it over in her hands; she had an idea of how to use it and took hold firmly in her right hand.
Betty exited first, noticing their suitcases and contents blown to shreds by the grenade the woman had tossed out earlier. “Goddamn it,” she said. “You blew up our luggage!” she yelled at the woman who’d just handily killed five well-armed men.
The scarved woman’s pistol holstered, submachine gun in her other hand. She ignored Betty’s insult, squatting between the bodies, searching them. The woman pulled a folded piece of paper from one of the men’s jackets, opened it, and then tucked it into her pants pocket. She then reloaded the appropriated submachine gun with a fresh clip and stood up to face the two women.
“What does all this have to do with my brother!” Erika demanded, standing beside Betty, handgun tightly gripped in her right hand. “I don’t care about this damn briefcase. You can have it. Just help me find him.”
A rush of stomping footsteps sounded from behind the mystery woman. It wasn’t the scramble of fleeing workers.
“We don’t have time to mess about. You need to follow me,” the woman commanded. She set off at a sprint toward Erika and Betty. They hesitated only a moment as another group of gunmen rounded the far corner.
The men opened fire, firing short, carefully aimed bursts as they moved toward them, intent on avoiding the briefcase. Erika and Betty ducked and ran; the scarved woman in front reached the next hallway corner, took cover, and rapidly leveled her weapon at the approaching attackers. The pair moved aside as they raced toward their apparent guardian, and she sprayed a volley of bullets, taking down one man. The remaining halted and concentrated their fire on her.
The roommates barreled around the corner as the mystery woman, her body hidden, blind-fired the submachine with one hand to give them cover.
“Who the hell are these guys?” Betty shouted through panting breaths as they ran.
“Old boyfriends,” the armed woman said as she quickly caught up and passed them, taking the next right and making it halfway down before another group of shooters stormed the far end. Erika nearly fell as she doubled back and fled through a doorway she’d just passed, Betty right behind her, the mystery woman firing her weapon as she retreated inside and slammed the door. It was spacious offices, furniture knocked about as the occupants had fled in a hurry.
Erika hurried behind a nearby desk and pushed it across the carpet against the door. “How many are there?”
“Too many.” She responded as the trio ran to the far side of the room.
“You must really get around,” Erika replied.
The far wall comprised a series of small individual offices. They frantically searched for an exit. A second later, they heard a crash against the blocked entrance as the men attempted to break through.
“If I’m going to get shot, I’d at least like to know by whom?” Erika asked earnestly, heart pounding.
“It’s a bit of a story, dear,” the woman said in return, moving toward the north corner of the room, the two others following. The mystery woman ducked inside an open office, grabbed a wooden door wedge, and tossed it to Betty. “Hold on to this.”
At the end of the row of offices, as she predicted, the woman found an exit. She pushed through and quickly scanned the hall for enemies before setting off to her left. The roommates kept pace as best they could, following the woman through a series of turns, avoiding any more gunfire, until they arrived at a narrow hall with a single door at the end. The woman burst through it, Betty and Erika right behind her. It was a stairwell.
“Give me the wedge,” the woman instructed, and Betty tossed it to her. She dropped it to the ground, and with several hard kicks, lodged it under the door. Not slowing down, she bounded down the stairwell. She waited at the bottom for Erika and Betty, composing herself. She tossed the submachine gun to the cement floor and unwrapped the scarf from her head, revealing a beautiful face with deep brown skin, black hair tied in a bun at the back. As Erika suspected, she was Indian. The woman pulled off her sweater, startling the other two with her immodesty, then unstrapped the holster from her hip with the pistol still inside and secured it around her waist, the gun at her back. She turned her sweater inside out; the reverse a bright purple; and pulled it back on and lastly tied the scarf around her neck. She looked at the two women. “Come along, I’ve got a car.”
“Hold on, we don’t know who you are!” Betty scoffed.
“Meera. And now is not the time for this conversation.”
Erika interrupted, “Where the hell is my brother?”
“I don’t know, but my husband is missing along with him.”
A loud thud boomed from above, the gunmen trying to force the door open.
“What is in this thing?” Erika clenched the briefcase strap across her chest.
A vicious rattling of bullets filled the stairwell with a hideous cackle, and the blocked door banged open.
The Indian woman grabbed Erika’s arm. “We’ve got to go!”
Meera tugged her out through the exit behind them, Betty following.
