Killer (18 page)

chapter 28

present

The only light inside the house came from the kitchen. I crouched outside one of the windows and watched while a man in his thirties sat alone at a small Formica table, one of his legs tapping anxiously as he chain-smoked his way through half a pack of cigarettes. He had a much skinnier body type than Sal Lombard, but there was enough resemblance in his face – especially that familiar cruel mouth – to know he was Lombard’s son. It was possible there were other people inside the house, but I didn’t think it was likely. Anyway, it didn’t much matter if there were.

I went back to the front door and knocked. I heard footsteps, then the same voice that had been calling me on my cell phone yelling through the door, “Yeah?”

I muffled my voice with my coat, and doing my best to impersonate one of the wiseguys, said, “Fucksake, Nick, it’s Joey. We got your merchandise. Open the fucking door.”

“You got a death wish talking to me like that?” the man inside yelled back out. There was nothing but mottled fury in his face as the door flung open, then a stunned dumbness as he stood staring at me. Before he could react I tapped him on the forehead with the butt of the gun I was holding, and he sat down hard on the floor. I let myself in and closed the door behind me.

“Hands behind your neck.”

He blinked stupidly at me for a few seconds before complying. I patted him down but he wasn’t carrying.

His eyes darted left and right before settling on me. He asked, “Where are my men?”

“They’re in their car,” I said, “and they’re not in any position to help you.”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, trying poorly to force a bravado. I raised a finger to silence him.

“It’s not going to work that way,” I said. “Right now I either kill you, or the two of us figure out a way so I don’t have to.”

The way his lips twisted, he was about to make a snide comment, but something about my expression made him look away from me instead.

“What do you suggest?” he asked without much hope.

“First some questions. Why’d you wait until now?”

His mouth weakened momentarily. He lowered his gaze. “The FBI was watching you,” he said. “They were using you as bait hoping I’d go after you. It was only last week when I found out from my source that they dropped their operation.”

I remembered the blue Chevy sedan that Sophie had run up to warn me about. I could almost see the faces of the two men in it. I remembered the other times I’d catch glimpses of other cars waiting for me after work. It made sense that it would’ve been the Feds watching over me.

“Why wait even a week?” I asked.

He made a face. “I wasn’t sure until today I was going to go through with this. I was trying to get past what you did, ratting us out and putting my pop and my brother Al away, but then seeing you being built up like a hero was too much.”

“Did your boys search my apartment?”

“I don’t know where you live,” he said. “If someone searched your place it wasn’t us. Probably the Feds.”

I considered that for a moment, then asked, “Was the plan tonight to torture and kill me?”

A hitch showed at the side of his mouth. “I was first going to get some information out of you,” he said.

“That office building hired me for you?”

He nodded. He was trying hard to keep his composure, but he was cracking. His voice wasn’t quite right, and a tic had started to pull at his left eye.

“Why the anonymous calls to my cell phone?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I was trying to let off steam, but it didn’t do much good. In the end I had to have you brought here.” He hesitated for a few seconds, then asked, “Any ideas yet so you don’t have to kill me?”

His skin color wasn’t looking too good, neither was that tic pulling on his eye. If I kept him sitting there much longer he was going to expire on me. I had him get up and sit on a loveseat, and I pulled up a wooden chair so I could sit opposite him.

I said, “The only thing I can think of is for you to give me something incriminating enough so you can’t afford to let anything happen to me.”

He gave it some thought and nodded. “I’ve got something like that,” he said. “It’s back at my house.”

“You also have to pay me something. A lot actually. How much cash can you get your hands on tonight?”

“Maybe twenty grand,” he said.

I whistled softly. “Twenty grand? That’s how little you value your life?”

I raised the gun to level it at his chest and his eyes bulged at the sight of it. He told me then that he had over a hundred grand that he could give me. “It’s buried right in this basement,” he said in a voice that showed fear, but also how disgusted he was with himself. “I keep it there as an emergency fund.”

I followed him downstairs and watched as he pulled back a section of the carpeting. He then removed a part of the subflooring that had earlier been cut away and started digging with a shovel. The stress of the situation was getting to him, weakening him, and it wasn’t too long before he was sweating and his arms were shaking like they were made of rubber.

“Take a deep breath,” I said. “Concentrate on what you’re doing. As long as the money’s there and you’re not lying to me you have nothing to worry about.”

“The money’s there,” he grunted. His breathing remained labored as he struggled to lift each shovelful of dirt. “You should rot in hell,” he said angrily, tears mixing with his sweat. “Pop died in prison because of you. After everything he did for you, you gonna betray him like that? He gave you a Rolex, even had it personally inscribed, you rotten sonofabitch!”

“Yeah, he did,” I said. “It was a nice one too. And someone in his organization tipped off the Boston Police to what was going down at the docks. So fuck your pop, and fuck your brother Al, too.”

Nick’s face was locked in a hard grimace. Sweat poured off of him as he shook his head. “The tip didn’t come from us, you paranoid fuck,” he said. “It came from South Boston.”

I thought about what he said and decided it probably made sense, but still, Lombard should’ve had better control of the operation and not shared it with the South Boston crowd.

“Well, my mistake, then,” I said. “But fuck it, no use now crying over spilt milk. And watch your goddamn mouth with me. I’m not warning you again.”

He clamped his mouth shut after that and focused on his digging. It was another twenty minutes before he hit a wood plank. He pried it out with the shovel, then reached in and pulled out a valise. Inside were packets of bills wrapped in cellophane.

“You can count it if you’d like,” he said. “There’s over a hundred grand in there.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Let’s go get your incriminating evidence.”

I followed him up the stairs and out of the house. Nick Lombard saw the Cadillac parked off in the distance.

“Let me check on my guys,” he said. “I want to see they’re okay.”

I waved my gun at him, dismissing the idea. “For now they’ll keep where they are.”

He had a red Mercedes sports coupe convertible parked off to the side. I took the passenger seat while he got behind the wheel. It was a shame it was too cold to put the top down. When we drove past the Cadillac, I could see the worried glance he gave it.

chapter 29

1992

Sal Lombard pours both of us glasses of Dewar’s. While I’m sipping my scotch, he takes a couple of Montecristos from a box and offers me one. I decline and he cuts the end off his and lights up. After several puffs, the room’s clouding up with the pungent smell of tobacco. I was never one for cigars. Not much for scotch either.

Sal and I are alone, although he’s got several of his boys in the room next door. The two of us both went through a lot of trouble to make sure we weren’t followed to this hotel suite. It’s important that we keep our association hidden from the authorities, which is why we rarely meet face to face. When we do, it’s usually at a suite like this one. Lombard has several of them rented anonymously throughout the city, and he takes the necessary precautions to make sure the Feds don’t have a clue about them.

“Lenny, what’s so fucking urgent?” he asks, his eyes bugging out to show his impatience.

I can’t help feeling that he already knows what I’m going to tell him, and I remember the other hit man in his employ that I took out years ago. I know he’s not going to let me retire. I know why his boys are sitting in the room next door. Still, Sal’s smart enough to know that before they’d get to me I’d have his jugular sliced open.

I drain my scotch and start to tell him how screwed up things went with Marzone.

“Don’t worry about it, Lenny,” he says. “Marzone was always a slippery fucker, but you finished the job. That’s all that matters.”

I shake my head. “This job was cursed from the beginning,” I say. “When I finally catch up to him my piece of shit Luger jams on me. Then the sonofabitch takes off and runs me a good mile through the streets of East Boston before I catch up with him for the second time. How the fuck I wasn’t spotted that night, I still don’t know. Sal, I think this was a sign for me to quit this shit.”

I sit quietly after that with my hangdog expression. I don’t tell him about the girl in the bulky green parka, or what I had to do to her. I don’t tell him how young and innocent she looked or how I’m haunted every night now by the memory of what I had to do to dispose of her body. Or how hard it is for me now to close my eyes without seeing her. If I told him any of that I’d be dead. We’d both be dead.

Sal’s appraising me quietly. All at once he breaks out laughing. It’s a quiet laugh, his body convulsing with it. It’s a while before his body stops shaking like jelly. Once that happens, he wipes a few tears from his eye and smiles broadly at me.

“You telling me because of a couple of bad breaks you want to quit?” he says. “I don’t believe it, Lenny. I know you, I know what’s in your blood. You can’t quit this. You’d be fucking miserable.”

“It’s a sign, Sal—” I try telling him.

“Fuck that. It was a few tough breaks, but you nailed the motherfucker in the end. Right now you’re feeling sorry for yourself. You’ll snap out of it. Take your wife and kids to Florida for a few weeks. You’ll be as good as new when you come back.”

I shake my head. “I can’t do this any more. I’m sorry.”

He grows very quiet, his eyes nearly lifeless as he studies me. Finally, he says, “I can’t let you quit, Lenny. I know you’re smart enough to know that.”

I nod, but don’t bother saying anything. We’re both staring at each other now. He knows what I’m thinking just as I know what he is. He knows what will happen if he calls out for his boys in the next room.

“Where does this leave us?” he asks softly.

“I don’t know.”

“Is it only the hits you don’t want to do? What about still working for me?”

“It depends. What do you have in mind?”

Sal pours himself a fresh glass of Dewar’s. He takes his time drinking it, all the while giving me a hard look.

“I’m starting up a new business by the docks,” he says. “It needs a smart guy in charge, which you fucking are even if you’re going to give me this bullshit about you not being a killer any more. You still up to some rough stuff if necessary?”

“If necessary.”

“Okay then.”

He fills up my glass and we drink a toast to our new venture. Whatever moment of danger that had existed between us has passed.

chapter 30

present

Sophie had an ancient-looking Volvo parked outside the coffee shop Saturday morning. I threw an overnight bag into the back seat, then joined her up front. She handed me a large coffee and a muffin that she had bought earlier at the shop, which I gladly took from her. The weather had turned colder – the type of cold where you can see your breath – and I held the coffee with both hands to warm them.

“Thanks for this,” I said, acknowledging the food and coffee. I looked hesitantly at the interior of the car, adding, “You sure this tin can can drive? This car has got to be at least thirty years old.”

Sophie smiled at that. It was a nice smile. With no makeup on, her thick hair pulled back into a pony tail, and wearing a ratty sweatshirt and a torn pair of jeans, she still looked more gorgeous than most women would look dolled-up and dressed to the nines.

“Not to worry,” she said. “My friend promised me it will get us there and back. I also rented us a laptop computer. As long as we can figure out how to use it we’ll be playing writer this weekend. Excited?”

“Sure.”

She put her hand on my arm and gave me a slight squeeze. “You don’t look too excited. Come on, Leonard, cheer up, this is going to be fun. An adventure.”

“I am glad we’re doing this,” I said.

“So am I,” she said. She handed me a piece of paper with hand-written directions scrawled on it. “The first few hours we’re just going straight up Route 93, then the directions get a little complicated and I’ll need your help... Leonard, darling, what’s so amusing?”

I waved it off. “Nothing,” I said. “Just some random thought.”

She gave me a funny look. “Save those for the book,” she said. “A little humor won’t hurt.”

She had a small stack of cassette tapes, and smiled as she told me they came with the car. She asked me what I wanted to listen to and I told her to choose, and she plugged in The Grateful Dead. For most of the trip I sat back deep in thought over what had happened during the past few days and what was going to be happening in the near future, and was barely aware of the music Sophie was playing or the scenery we were passing. Every once in a while I’d look over at Sophie. The excitement burning on her was palpable, and I don’t think she had ever looked more beautiful.

After we got off Route 93, the directions did get a little tricky, but we were able to navigate to the cabin, which really was in the middle of nowhere. I ignored Sophie’s protests, and loaded myself up with the laptop and all the other baggage and food that she had brought, leaving her to carry only her handbag.

“This is ridiculous, Leonard,” she told me. “I’m not some weakling. I can carry some of that.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” I said, puffing only slightly from my exertion.

After she unlocked the cabin door, I went in first, telling her I’d find the kitchen and put the stuff in there. Instead, though, I put it all down quietly and stood just inside the door so I was behind her when she walked in, taking a canister out of her handbag. She never even knew I was there until I had her arm twisted behind her back and forced the silver canister out of her hand.

“Leonard, please—” she started to say.

The canister had no markings or labels printed on it. I sprayed it in her eyes. A small stream came out of it, and Sophie immediately went into convulsions. I let her drop to the old-fashioned pine-board floor. I could smell immediately that she had emptied her bowels.

Her handbag was one of those large affairs, almost like a small duffel bag. I went through it and found other items of interest. Scalpels, things that looked like dental instruments, and other tools that looked like they could induce great pain. Sure enough I found what I was searching for: a roll of masking tape. Sophie was still going through convulsions when I taped her wrists behind her back and her ankles together. I noticed her nose had started bleeding and a thin stream of blood leaked out of one of her ears. I pulled up a rocking chair and sat and waited until her convulsions stopped. It took a while, but eventually she settled down.

“A nerve agent?” I asked her.

She nodded. “A mild one,” she said in a hoarse, weak voice. She was obviously drained from what she had just gone through, and her skin color was awful, but she looked like an entirely different person. She was still beautiful, but there was an iciness about her, almost like she was made from metal. Whatever warmth and vulnerability she had displayed before had been stripped away. I know this must sound funny since she was probably never more vulnerable in her life, but what I saw lying there was more machine-like than human. Beautiful, even still.

“Does it have any long-term side effects?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was there ever any attraction between us?” I asked.

“None. I never found you anything but repulsive. It was all an act.”

She didn’t say this to be mean or hurtful, nothing more really than giving me the facts. Besides, she wasn’t telling me anything that I hadn’t known all along, at least on some deep subconscious level.

“Let me guess, you were never sexually abused as a child, nor did you ever serve time in prison,” I said.

“I had a happy childhood. And no, I never did time.”

“You put on a damned good act,” I said.

“Thanks, but obviously not good enough. What gave me away?”

I shrugged. “I never told you I was working as a janitor, yet you made a comment about me cleaning toilets for a living.”

Her eyes dulled as she digested that. Of course I could’ve told her I’d researched her name at the library and all I could find was an obituary for a girl in Minnesota who had been killed three years earlier in a hit-and-run. I could have also told her how at some gut level I knew the instant I saw her what she was. I might’ve been in denial about it, but I must’ve known then. I saw no reason to make her feel any worse than she did so I didn’t tell her any of that.

“Why’d you go through this whole elaborate set-up?” I asked her. “You had so many opportunities to kill me before this.”

“I’m not sure that’s true,” she said. “I had researched you enough to know how difficult it would’ve been if I didn’t gain your trust first. Even if I were camped out on a rooftop with a high-powered rifle, from what I know about you, you probably would’ve sensed it. Besides, I wasn’t hired just to kill you. My job was more complicated than that.”

“What were you hired for?”

“To find out what you did to my client’s sister. Then to make you suffer pretty badly before killing you.”

She winced as blood from her ear dripped into her eye. “Does the name Sally Hughes ring a bell?”

I thought back on the girl in the bulky green parka. Back then I didn’t want to know her name, so I never looked inside her pocketbook. “No,” I said.

“It should. You murdered her in 1992 and made sure her body was never found.”

“I never killed a woman before,” I said.

She smiled weakly at that. “Leonard, I’m being straightforward with everything I’m telling you, you can show me the same professional courtesy. Seven months ago, when my client found out that you had murdered Fred Marzone, she knew that you had murdered her sister also. Sally was working at a hospital nearby where you had left Marzone’s body. Judging from where she lived, she would’ve been cutting through that same parking lot if she was walking home after work.”

She broke into a coughing fit. It didn’t sound too good, and after it stopped, she smiled weakly at me again. “My client tried to get the police to reopen their investigation into Sally’s disappearance, but they refused to. Their reason was that you would’ve added Sally’s murder to your confession if you had actually done it. Leonard, I’ve been curious about this. Why didn’t you admit to killing her? With the deal you had worked out there would’ve been no consequences for it.”

“I didn’t kill her,” I said.

Sophie’s eyes went blank. “Okay,” she said, flatly.

“A few weeks ago you searched my apartment, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. I was looking for any trophies you might’ve taken off of Sally. I didn’t find any. I did find the money you taped inside your radiator, but I left that alone. I also saw all your little matchsticks and other safeguards, but I figured you would come to the conclusion that Lombard searched your place, so I didn’t bother replacing any of it.”

“Is the sister coming here?”

Sophie hesitated for only a second before nodding. “She’ll be here in an hour,” she said. “She wanted to watch while I inflicted pain.”

“My own curiosity – how much is she paying you?”

“A lot.”

“How much is a lot?”

She gave me another weak smile. “A quarter of a million dollars. Leonard, I’d like to make another request for professional courtesy. I’ve soiled myself and I’m bleeding from my ear and nose and I’m nauseous like you wouldn’t believe. Can you make this quick, and end this already?”

“Sophie, I don’t want to kill you,” I told her. “I want to somehow get through this without having to do that. What I’m going to do is move you to one of the bedrooms, then wait for your client to show up. I didn’t kill her sister, and I’ll find a way to convince her of that, and...”

And fuck it.

There are only so many lies you can stack on top of each other before they come tumbling down on you. Early on most of the lies were to myself. Deep, deep denial, you know. As much as I tried convincing myself otherwise, I knew on some subconscious level why I had to stay in the Boston area after I was released from prison. I had to be there for Lombard and his boys to make a play for me. And if not them, then someone else holding a grudge.

You see, I’m not a madman. I’m not some psychopathic killer who can just grab their victims at random. I don’t get sadistic pleasure from my killings, and I certainly don’t enjoy seeing my victims suffer. But I do need to kill. It’s something ingrained deep in my core. Until recently I’ve been trying to pretend that wasn’t so; I wanted badly to hold on to this idea of me being a different person, but I can’t do that any more. That’s okay. I can deal with what I really am as long as the killings are the result of a job or my acting in self-defense. As long as I’m not just some crazy lunatic running around slaughtering people.

For years I tried to convince myself that I was only doing a job for Lombard, that I could’ve just as easily ended up a bartender or a construction worker, or working any other nine-to-five job. I tried to hide from the knowledge of what was really inside me, and I think all of that denial and self-delusion was what caused my headaches. Even though I didn’t understand it at the time, the need to kill again was the real reason I defended Lucinda inside her diner – I must’ve been hoping that that dirtbag would be waiting outside for me and would give me my excuse. It was the same reason I must’ve also broken up that robbery outside the liquor store. Yeah, those punks attacked me, but they were so feeble at it that I wouldn’t have been able to justify self-defense if I had killed them. Maybe to a court, but not to myself. And I guess that was the same reason I let myself get hooked up with Sophie and build this idyllic fantasy about her.

And now for the lies that I haven’t just been telling myself. The way I had already described it with the two wiseguys was mostly true. But after I had them in the trunk, I didn’t tie them up. I shot them both in the head. And Nick Lombard? After he dug up the money for me, I put two bullets in his chest and left him dead in the cellar. Anything else would’ve been insane.

And Sophie...

She’s in another room now, but that’s only so I don’t have to smell her. I ended it for her right after she asked me to. And I made it quick.

Now I’m sitting here waiting for Sophie’s client. Sally Hughes’s sister. When she gets here I’ll be killing her too, but I’ll make it fast. She’ll be gone before she even knows what happened. I know what some of you are probably thinking, that the decent thing would be for me to tell her about Sally, but I don’t see it that way. It wasn’t pleasant how I disposed of the body, and I don’t see why I should burden her with that knowledge. Why ruin her last few moments like that? Better for her to hold on to the thought that she’s entering the house to see me tortured.

It turns out there was over a hundred and twenty thousand in the valise that Nick Lombard dug up for me. After all my lawsuits are finished with I’ll use that money to change my identity and set up shop where I can continue my profession. Fuck any book deals and fuck any interviews. Eventually I’ll slip back into anonymity. I might look a little familiar to my clients, but not enough where they won’t hire me.

I realize I’m content. My headaches are gone and have been ever since Thursday, and I know they’re not coming back. It’s a relief when you finally admit to yourself what you are, and in my case, that I’m a killer. I wish I had told Sophie what I found so funny earlier when she explained the route to the cabin, since she’s one of the few people who could’ve appreciated the humor – that she was trying to have me give directions to my own execution. In a way it was a shame I had to do to her what I did – we could’ve made a good team. Even if she did find me repulsive.

As I sit back I can smell the scent of death saturating my skin. That’s fine, it doesn’t bother me any more, and nobody else has ever seemed to notice it.