Marked Man (35 page)

I figured it out
right away, exactly what was happening. As Charlie cursed at the sight of the gun and Monica gasped and Joey laughed, the truth of it clicked in my head, left, right, left, oh, crap. I might not be the sharpest spade, but put a gun to my head and I sharpen considerably.

He had sent her from the start, Teddy had. She was the friend from Allentown. Rhonda, not some old grizzled vet, she was the left-handed dispatcher of both Ralphie Meat and Stanford Quick, now here to wipe out Charlie, and Joey, and then me. Monica had met Teddy in California, so she’d have to go, too. Who’s next? We were next, the four of us, and I had delivered us all to her like sacrificial lambs on the altar of my stupidity.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t checked her out. I had called
Newsday,
I had asked if there was a Rhonda Harris who reported for them on the art beat, they assured me there was. But I hadn’t asked for a description, and how hard is it for a clever hit girl to steal an identity for as long as it takes to get the job done? And I should never have doubted, for even an instant, that someone was out there to wipe away Teddy’s problems in his old hometown. The one thing I had learned about him was that he never went with just a single option.
Always have a backup plan, kid, or the vultures here will eat you alive,
had said Theodore Purcell, and now his backup plan was pointing a gun at my face.

“Does this mean you’re not writing a book?” I said as I frantically tried to figure out what the hell to do.

“Why would I worry over words when this is so much simpler?” she said.

“No agent? No proposal? No advance? I thought we had a future together.”

“Oh, Victor,” she said as she waggled the gun at me. “We do. It’s just going to be very short.”

“What’s going on?” said Monica. “Victor?”

“She’s going to kill us.”

“Of course she’s going to kill us. But why?”

“It’s payback for what we done to your sister,” said Joey. “Karma with a gun.”

“Chantal wouldn’t have wanted that.”

“But it’s what she’s getting,” said Rhonda. “And after what I heard, I think I’m doing everyone a favor.”

“You look good for a Korean War vet,” I said.

“That’s my father,” she said. “But with two false hips, he doesn’t get around so well anymore, so I took over the family business. One step up from animal control.”

“You led them to me again, you idiot,” said Charlie.

“I guess I did.”

“As a lawyer you might be okay, Victor,” said Charlie, “but as a bodyguard, you’re the—”

Before he could finish, I jerked up the door latch and slammed the door with all the strength in my shoulder. I expected to feel the weight of her bang away from the taxi, but she did a graceful sidestep as the door swung wildly open. I almost tumbled to the ground, held up only by my seat belt, when the door swung back and smacked me in the head.

She pulled the door away from me and kicked me in the chest, so I was flung back into the taxi.

“Let’s not make too big a mess,” she said. “The cleaners are already on their way.”

With her side to the now-open door, she pointed her gun toward Charlie in the backseat. And then we heard it.

An engine revving nearby, a rustle of weeds behind us.

Rhonda looked up just as a small, dark car burst out of the vegetation and headed right for us.

Rhonda’s gun arm swiveled.

The onrushing car’s high beams burst on.

She threw up an arm.

The car jumped forward.

There was an explosion near my head. And then, with a blast of hot air on my face, with a jumble of red hair and white limbs, with an aborted cry and the dying scream of torn metal, the car came upon us and beside us and rushed past us.

And just like that, the gun, the open car door, and Rhonda Harris had all disappeared.

Well, not quite disappeared.
They lay about fifteen yards away, in a jumble of blood and bone and metal, all the elements mercifully indistinct one from the other in the darkness. To the side of the mess was the little car, its motor still running, its lights now washing across the weeds at the far side as it slowly started turning around.

I unbelted and stumbled out of the now-doorless entranceway of the cab. My knees were shaking so hard I lost my balance and fell to the ground, ripping my pants, before I climbed to my feet again. The night smelled of exhaust and cordite and terror, coppery and hard. And something else, too, something vaguely sweet and vaguely familiar. I looked around. The others were now out of the taxi also, looking as dazed and confused as did I. The three stared at me. I shrugged. Slowly, we approached the little car. We approached hesitantly, with undue care, as if it were a wild animal, turning so that it could gather us into its sight and leap ferociously at our throats.

I tried to peer inside the little car, but the headlights were now shining brightly in my eyes, and even with my hand up to shield me from the sharp light, I could see nothing but the dented bumper, the bullet hole in the windshield, and the cracked glazing over the twin beams that were coming ever closer.

Then the car stopped, the door opened. Out climbed a silhouette, small, dainty. It stepped forward into the light.

Lavender Hill.

“Toodle-oo, Victor. Isn’t it a beautiful night? Reminds me of the bayou, not that I am a habitué of the bayou, mind you, I have all my
teeth, and I have never had leech stew, but this little stretch of New Jersey does have that unpredictable scent of violence about it, doesn’t it?”

“Lav, dude” was all I could muster.

“Yes, well, always one with the quip, aren’t you, Victor? You must tell me all about your trip west. Did you see any stars? Alan Ladd, now, that was a star. Is he still alive, do you know?”

“What are you doing here, Lav?”

“You told me you were bringing your client home so he could sell me the painting. I thought I better make sure you all arrived safely. Is that him there?”

“Charlie Kalakos,” I said, “let me introduce you to Lavender Hill.”

“Yo,” said Charlie. “Thanks for—”

“Saving your life? Oh, it was nothing.” He turned to look at the remains of Rhonda Harris. “Well, maybe not nothing.”

“But how did you get here?” I said. “How did you follow me, with all the precautions I took?”

“I’m sure your precautions were stunning in their design, though, of course, seeing that you ended with a gun in your face, not quite as effective as you might have hoped. But no, I didn’t follow you, dear Victor.”

“Then how?”

“I followed her,” he said, indicating the mass of bone and blood on the ground. “From the start I sensed she was trouble. I know the type. I am the type. Didn’t I tell you she was a killer?”

“I thought you were speaking metaphorically.”

“I’m a very literal person, Victor. You should know that by now. I followed her to this spot. I realized she was setting up a rendezvous. I slipped my car into a clearing in the woods and waited. Just me, my car, and my long-distance microphone. Quite the clever gadget, but one I would never use out in the open. The headphones make me look like Princess Leia.”

“So you heard about the girl,” I said.

“Yes, I heard. Too sad for words, actually, so why even try to speak of it?” He glanced at his watch. “But the woman with the gun mentioned something about cleaners coming. I assume she means Charles’s friends from the Warrick gang, hurrying this way as we
speak to dispose of your bodies. So maybe we should cut our little gabfest short. Charles, are you ready now to sell?”

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry, and I think I owe you, what with you saving our lives and all, but I’m not going to sell it. I just want to give it back.”

“Are you sure? I’ve already made arrangements to dispose of the item without its going to your old friend.”

“I don’t want nothing good to come from what happened, ’cause it’ll only turn out bad, you know what I mean?”

“Not really, no. And what about you, Joseph? Are you willing to let such a payday disappear after all these years?”

“Good riddance, I say,” said Joey.

“Ah, the disappointment, but it seems there is little I can do. A wave of cheap sentimentality has seemed to overcome you both and I wouldn’t dream of crashing the party, though I’m quite shocked that you, Victor, have not endeavored to change their minds. But it would have been a pretty thing to gaze at before I delivered it on, don’t you think? All right, then, take my advice, all of you, and flee, madly. I too need rush off. There is a Fabergé egg available in a trailer park in Toledo. Imagine that. Toledo. The provenance is not quite clear, but with a Fabergé egg it never is, don’t you know. I mean, the last true owner was killed by Lenin in a pit. After that, it’s open season, don’t you think? Ciao, friends.”

We watched as he climbed back into his dented car, flicked his lights as if in farewell, and pulled around the taxi, past the picnic table and the collapsing shed, and onto the narrow two-lane road, heading west, toward Ohio, I assumed. He’d swept into my life, threatened it, saved it, swept out of it again. Funny the kind of people you meet in this business. I’d almost miss him.

“We have to get out of here,” I said.

“Back in the cab,” said Joey.

“There’s no door,” I said.

“I can drive without a door.”

“Maybe you can,” I said, “but how far we’d get before the cops stop us is another thing entirely. And then she probably told the cleaners what kind of car we had. If we pass them on the road, they’ll figure it out and spin around after us.”

“But it’s Hookie’s car. I can’t just leave it here.”

“We’ll retrieve it later, patch it up, I promise.”

“It’s a piece of crap anyway,” he said.

“Then how do we get out of here?” said Monica.

“We’ll take her car,” I said, gesturing toward the pulpy mass on the ground. “Let’s find her bag.”

“Is this a time to be rummaging for spare change?” said Charlie.

“We need the keys,” I said. “And her phone. Joey, check her car and see if the keys are there. The rest of us will comb the area, the bag should be somewhere around.”

The gun was off to the side. I picked it up carefully by the trigger guard and placed if in a jacket pocket. Joey came back, reporting that the car was locked, and we continued our search, moving slowly toward the heap of metal and flesh.

“She had nice hair,” said Monica, as we passed the corpse. “I always wanted red hair.”

Beyond the body, beyond the door, almost to the edge of the gravel lot, where the woods had already encroached, we found the bag. Phone, wallet, but no keys.

“They must have spun out in the crash, flying somewhere into the woods,” I said. It could take us another hour to find them.

“I could just pick the lock of her car,” said Charlie.

“Don’t they have electronic gizmos?”

“I can get around them,” said Joey.

I turned to stare at them.

“Hey, you were the man with the plan,” said Joey. “We was following you.”

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said.

A minute and a half later, we were in Rhonda’s rental car, the engine humming, Joey Pride pulling us out of the lot.

“Go east,” I said.

“Back to the shore?”

“Back to the parkway and then the Atlantic City Expressway,” I said. “It might take a little longer, but I don’t want to pass any goons on this little road on our way back to Philly.”

He did as I said, and then I made my calls.

I didn’t know I was
in a race.

I should have known, of course, it was all there in front of my face. But at the time I was a little preoccupied with staying alive. So we took the roundabout route to Philadelphia as I called McDeiss. I gave him the last phone number Rhonda had called, so he could track down her accomplices, and a description of Fred and Louie. He promised to have a squadron of New Jersey state troopers converge on the site of Schmidty’s deserted farmer’s market and pick up whoever showed in response to Rhonda’s call.

“And when the cops finally arrive,” I said, “there will be a little treat waiting for them. A dead body.”

“Damn it, Carl, what the hell is going on?”

“You know the guy who you think killed both Ralph Ciulla and Stanford Quick?”

“The guy from Allentown?”

“Well, you were right about him doing the killings, except he wasn’t a guy.”

“Get the hell out of here.”

“I cleared two of your cases, you should be thrilled. I even have the murder weapon sitting in my pocket. And when you figure out who she really is, pick up her father. He was in the business before her. Now, are you ready for us?”

“We have a cordon around Mrs. Kalakos’s house, and we have a phalanx of black-and-whites ready to pick you up at the mouth of the
Tacony-Palmyra Bridge and escort you to her street. You’re still in that green-and-white taxi?”

“Not anymore,” I said.

“What happened?”

“We had a little accident. We’re driving something new.”

“Just picked it up off the street?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Mind telling me what it is?”

“Yes, I do. Last thing I want is a phalanx of police cars pointing out to everyone in the city exactly where we are. How many in a phalanx anyway? Can two be a phalanx if they’re really, really big?”

“Don’t be a hero, Carl,” said McDeiss.

“Little chance of that. But don’t worry, there will be a green-and-white cab meeting your phalanx.”

“Come again?”

“Just have your phalanx meet the cab and flash its lights and escort the cab to the Kalakos house. Have it pause there for a moment, and then lead it back to the Roundhouse. That should be safe enough. But the Kalakos house is not where you and I are going to meet up.”

“Then where?” said McDeiss.

“Someplace else. I want you to show up quietly, no black-and-whites, no commotion or press. Wait until the noisy procession begins and then slip in unnoticed. Just you and Slocum and Hathaway and a team from your CSI unit to process a body. Can you do that?”

“We can do that. Where?”

“Ralph Ciulla’s basement. And remember that pickax you found in Stanford Quick’s car?”

“We still have it.”

“Maybe you should bring it along.”

“What the hell’s down there?”

“Unfinished business,” I said.

It was Monica who drove us into the city. I didn’t know who’d be looking for us, but I figured, even in the rental car, they’d be less likely to identify us with a pretty woman at the wheel.

When we reached the Walt Whitman Bridge, I called Beth on her
cell. It was time for her to play decoy. Earlier she had gone to the railroad station, picked up a green-and-white cab, and been cruising around the city. The driver didn’t know what he was in for, but I figured the police protection and the hundred Beth slipped him would cover it. Now, while we headed over the Delaware, she headed to the western mouth of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge.

As we drove north on I-95, Beth phoned in her reports. It was like a parade, she said, with the police cars, the lights and sirens. McDeiss had even put in a few motorcycle cops for effect. The man knew how to build a phalanx. But there was no effort to stop her, no opposing army of thugs, no shots, no danger. Apparently Rhonda Harris had called off those dogs before Lavender Hill had silenced her but good.

We got off I-95 at the Cottman Avenue exit, took a nice calm drive into the Northeast, circled counterclockwise to the back alley behind Ralph Ciulla’s house. Nothing looked strange, nothing looked out of place. Monica pulled the gray rental car into the spot beneath the little backyard deck.

I got out, patted the heavy metal thing in my pocket as I looked around. Nothing. I stepped to the closed basement door and slowly pushed it open. It was dark inside.

“Hello,” I said softly.

“Hello yourself,” came McDeiss’s whisper.

“Any news from New Jersey?”

“They found the body and picked up four suspects at the scene, including two that matched the descriptions you gave me over the phone.”

“Terrific. All right, give us a second.”

I stepped back, waved to Monica. She climbed out. Then I tapped the windshield, and two figures popped up from hiding low in the backseat. I motioned them out. They scrambled quickly out of the car, as quickly as two old guys bent stiffly at the waist can scramble out of a car, and then slipped through the basement door. Monica and I followed.

When the door closed, the lights suddenly clicked on and we could see the whole setup. Two CSI technicians, with their briefcases. Two
uniforms, pump-action shotguns at the ready. Slocum and Hathaway together off to the side. And McDeiss, leaning on the handle of a rusted old pickax, standing smack in the center of the room.

“Welcome home, Charlie Kalakos,” said McDeiss in a booming voice. “We’ve been looking for you for quite a while.”

“I been away,” said Charlie.

“We’re going to have ourselves a chat,” said McDeiss.

“In due time, Detective,” I said. “In due time. But first we have some serious matters to take care of.”

I turned to take a peek at the workbench and then did a double take. Slowly, I walked toward it. The first of the wooden boards that made up the tabletop had been pried off the pipe frame. The front pipes on either side had been yanked forward. I looked inside each. Both were empty.

“How long have you guys been here?” I said.

“About ten minutes,” said Slocum.

“Was the basement door locked or unlocked?”

“Unlocked.”

“Crap,” I said. “Now we know why he was in such a hurry to get to Toledo.”

“Who are we talking about, Carl?” said McDeiss.

“I’m talking about a little guy who goes by the name of Lavender Hill. I didn’t know we were in a race, but he did. He was the one who took care of our friend from Allentown, Detective, and after he did that, and after listening in on his microphone to everything Charlie had to say, he rushed up here to seize the painting. The Rembrandt has been stolen once again.”

“We’ll find him,” said McDeiss.

“I doubt it,” I said. “But the painting all along has been just a sideshow. Hasn’t it, Jenna?”

“All along,” she said.

“Time to take care of the main event? Are all the terms of our agreement still in place?”

“They are,” said Slocum.

“Okay, then. Joey Pride, do you remember where the pit was?”

Joey looked at me and nodded.

“Go ahead,” I said.

He looked around the basement and stepped toward the rear. He cleared some boxes and pointed at a cracked portion of the uneven cement floor. “There,” he said.

McDeiss lifted the pickax and held it toward the CSI guys in the corner. One of them stood and started toward McDeiss when Charlie spoke up.

“Can I do it?” he said. “It’s been haunting me for half my life, that hole in the ground. Can I open it up?”

“Like lancing a boil?” I said.

“Something like that.”

I looked at McDeiss. He thought about it some, looked at the CSIs, who shrugged. McDeiss turned to offer the pickax to Charlie.

“I’ll help, too,” said Joey Pride, pushing away some cartons that were piled around the spot he had pointed to.

Then we all stood back as Charlie Kalakos hoisted the pickax in the air and let its sharpened point drop into the floor. The cement was thin, brittle, it cracked easily under the weight of the heavy metal tool. Charlie pulled it loose and hoisted it again. When he started breathing heavily, Joey took hold of the pickax. One of the CSIs stooped down to lift up the loose chunks of concrete. Then Joey raised the pickax high in the air and let it fall.

Slowly they worked, Charlie Kalakos and Joey Pride, clearing the cement that covered the crimes of their past, blow by blow, bit by bit, as Slocum and McDeiss, Jenna Hathaway and Monica Adair, as all of us looked on, some with stoic faces, some with tears, looked on knowing exactly what we’d find and dreading it all the while.