The Client (52 page)

Ionucci produced a hammer from a pouch on his waist, and Leo began tapping lightly on the dirty pane just above the doorknob. “Watch that corner,” he said to the Bull, who crawled behind him and looked in the direction of the Ballantine home next door.

Leo pecked and pecked until the pane was broken. He carefully removed broken pieces and tossed them aside. When the jagged edges were clear, he slid his left arm through and unlocked the door. He turned on the flashlight, and the three eased inside.

Barry said he remembered the place being a mess, and Clifford obviously had been too busy to tidy things up before he passed on. The first thing they noticed was that the floor was gravel, not concrete. Leo kicked at the white rocks beneath his feet. If Barry had told them about the gravel flooring, he didn’t remember it.

The boat was in the center of the garage. It was a sixteen-foot outboard ski rig with a heavy layer of dust over it. Three of the four trailer tires were flat. This boat had not touched water in years. Layers of junk were piled against it. Garden tools, sacks of aluminum cans, stacks of newspapers, rusted patio furniture. Romey didn’t need a garbage service. Hell, he had a garage. Thick spiderwebs were strung in every corner. Unused tools hung from the walls.

Clifford, for some reason, had been a prodigious collector of wire clothes hangers. Thousands of them hung on strands of wire above the boat. Rows and rows of clothes hangers. At some point, he’d grown weary of running the wire, so he’d simply driven long nails into the wall studs and packed hundreds of hangers on them. Romey, the environmentalist, had also collected cans and plastic containers, obviously with the lofty goal of recycling. But he’d been a busy man, and so a small mountain of green garbage bags stuffed with cans and bottles filled half of the garage. He’d been such a slob, he’d even thrown some of the bags into the boat.

Leo aimed the small light at a point directly under the main beam of the trailer. He motioned for the Bull,
who eased onto all fours and began brushing away the white rock gravel. From the waist pouch, Ionucci produced a small trowel. The Bull took it and scraped away more gravel. His two partners stood over his shoulders.

Two inches down, the scraping sound changed when he struck concrete. The boat was in the way. The Bull stood, slowly lifted the hitch, and with a mighty strain rolled the front of the trailer five feet to the side. The side of the trailer brushed against the mountain of aluminum cans, and there was a prolonged racket. The men froze, and listened.

“You gotta be careful.” Leo whispered the obvious. “Stay here, and don’t move.” He left them standing in the dark beside the boat, and eased through the rear door. He stood beside a tree behind the garage and watched the Ballantine house next door. It was dark and quiet. A patio light cast a dim glow around the grill and flower beds, but nothing moved. Leo watched and waited. He doubted the neighbors could hear a jackhammer. He crept back inside the garage and aimed the flashlight at the spot of concrete under the gravel. “Let’s clear it off,” he said, and the Bull returned to his knees.

Barry had explained that he’d first dug a shallow grave, approximately six feet by two feet, and no more than eighteen inches deep. Then he’d stuffed the body into it. Then he’d packed the pre-mix concrete around the body, which was wrapped in black plastic garbage bags. Then he’d added water to his little recipe. He’d returned the next day to cover it all with gravel and put the boat in place.

He’d done a fine job. Given Clifford’s talent for organization, it would be another five years before the boat was moved. Barry had explained that this was just
a temporary grave. He’d planned to move it, but the feds started trailing him. Leo and Ionucci had disposed of a few bodies, usually in weighted barrels over water, but they were impressed with Barry’s temporary hiding place.

The Bull scraped and brushed, and soon the entire concrete surface was clear. Ionucci knelt on the other side of it, and he and the Bull began chipping away with chisels and hammers. Leo placed the flashlight on the gravel beside them, and eased again through the rear door. He crouched low and moved to the front of the garage. All was quiet. The chiseling could be heard, all right. He walked quickly to the rear of Clifford’s house, maybe fifty feet away, and the sounds were barely audible. He smiled to himself. Had the Ballantines been awake, they could not have heard it.

He darted back to the garage, and sat in the darkness between a corner and the Spitfire. He could see the empty street. A small black car eased around the bend in front of the house, and was gone. No other traffic. Through the hedge, he could see the outline of the Ballantine house. Nothing moved. The only sounds were the muffled chippings of concrete from the grave of Boyd Boyette.

CLINT’S ACCORD STOPPED NEAR THE TENNIS COURTS. A RED Cadillac was parked near the street. Reggie turned off the lights and the engine.

They sat in silence and stared through the windshield at the dark soccer field. This is a wonderful place to get mugged, she thought to herself, but didn’t mention it. There was plenty to fear without thinking of muggers.

Mark hadn’t said much since dark. They had napped, together on one bed, for an hour after the pizza had been delivered to their motel room. They had watched television. He had asked her repeatedly about the time, as if he had an appointment with a firing squad. At ten, she was convinced he would chicken out. At eleven, he was pacing around the room, and going back and forth to the bathroom.

But here they were at eleven-forty, sitting in a hot car on a dark night, planning an impossible mission that neither really wanted.

“Do you think anybody knows we’re here?” he asked softly.

She looked at him. His gaze was lost somewhere beyond the soccer field. “You mean, here in New Orleans?”

“Yeah. Do you think anyone knows we’re in New Orleans?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

This seemed to satisfy him. She’d talked to Clint around seven. A Memphis TV station had reported that she was missing as well, but things appeared to be quiet. Clint hadn’t left his bedroom in twelve hours, he said, so would they please hurry up and do whatever the hell they were planning. He’d called Momma Love. She was worried, but doing okay under the circumstances.

They left the car and walked along the bike trail.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked, looking around nervously. The trail was pitch black, and in places only the asphalt beneath their feet kept them from wandering into the trees. They walked slowly, side by side, and held hands.

As she took one uncertain step after another, Reggie asked herself what she was doing here on this
trail, in these woods of this city, at this moment, with this kid whom she loved dearly but was not willing to die for. She clutched his hand and tried to be brave. Surely, she prayed, something would happen very soon and they would dash back to the car and leave New Orleans.

“I’ve been thinking,” Mark said.

“Why am I not surprised?”

“It might be too hard to actually find the body, you know. So, this is what I’ve decided. You’ll stay in the trees close to the ditch, you see, and I’ll sneak through the backyard and into the garage. I’ll look under the boat, you know, just to make sure it’s there, then we’ll get out of here.”

“You think you can just look under the boat and see the body?”

“Maybe I can see where it is, you know?”

She squeezed his hand tighter. “Listen to me, Mark. We’re sticking together, okay. If you go to the garage, then I’m going too.” Her voice was remarkably firm. Surely, they wouldn’t make it to the garage.

There was a break in the trees. A light on a pole revealed the picnic pavilion to their left. The footpath started to the right. Mark pressed a switch, and the beam from a small flashlight hit the ground in front of them. “Follow me,” he said. “Nobody can see us out here.”

He moved deftly through the woods without a sound. Back in the motel room, he had recounted many stories of his late night walks through the woods around the trailer park, and of the games the boys played in the darkness. Jungle games, he called them. With the light in his hand, he moved faster now, brushing past limbs and dodging saplings.

“Slow down, Mark,” she said more than once.

He held her hand and helped her down the ditch bank. They climbed to the other side, and crept through the woods and underbrush until they found the mysterious trail that had surprised them hours earlier. The fences started. They moved slowly, quietly, and Mark turned off the flashlight.

They were in the dense trees directly behind Clifford’s house. They knelt and caught their breath. Through the brush and weeds they could see the outline of the rear of the garage.

“What if we don’t see the body?” she asked. “What then?”

“We’ll worry about that when it happens.”

This was not the moment for another long discussion about his options. On all fours, he crawled to the edge of the thick underbrush. She followed. They stopped twenty feet from the gate in thick, wet weeds. The backyard was dark and still. Not a light or sound or movement. The entire street was sound asleep.

“Reggie, I want you to stay here. Keep your head down. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“No sir!” she whispered loudly. “You can’t do this, Mark!”

He was already moving. This was a game to him, just another jungle game with his little buddies giving chase and shooting guns with colored water. He slid through the grass like a lizard, and opened the gate just wide enough to slide through.

Reggie followed on all fours through the weeds, then stopped. He was already out of sight. He stopped behind the first tree, and listened. He crawled to the next one, and heard something. Chink! Chink! He froze on his hands and knees. The sounds were coming
from the garage. Chink! Chink! Very slowly, he peeked around the tree and stared at the rear door. Chink! Chink! He glanced back at Reggie, but the woods and underbrush were black. She was nowhere in sight. He looked at the door again. Something was different. He crawled to the next tree, ten feet closer. The sounds were louder. The door was open slightly, and a windowpane was missing.

Somebody was in there! Chink! Chink! Chink! Somebody was hiding in there with the lights off, and he was digging! Mark breathed deeply, and crawled behind a pile of debris less than ten feet from the rear door. He hadn’t made a sound, and he knew it. The grass was taller around the debris, and he crawled through it like a chameleon, very slowly. Chink! Chink!

He crouched low, and started for the rear door. The ragged end of a rotted two-by-four caught his ankle and he tripped. The pile of debris rattled and an empty paint bucket fell to the ground.

Leo bounced to his feet and darted to the rear of the garage. He yanked a .38 with a silencer from his waist, and scooted in the darkness until he was at the corner, where he squatted and listened. The chiseling had stopped inside. Ionucci peeked through the rear door.

Reggie heard the racket behind the garage, and fell to her stomach in the wet grass. She closed her eyes and said a prayer. What the hell was she doing here?

Leo sneaked to the pile of debris, then cut around it with the gun drawn and ready to fire. He squatted again, and patiently studied the darkness. The fence was barely visible. Nothing moved. He slid next to a tree fifteen feet behind the garage, and waited. Ionucci
watched him closely. Long seconds passed without a sound. Leo stood upright and crept slowly toward the gate. A twig snapped under his foot, freezing him in place for a second.

He moved around the backyard, bolder now but with the gun still ready, and leaned against a tree, a thick oak with limbs hanging low near the Ballantine property line. In the unkempt hedgerow less than twelve feet away, Mark crouched on all fours and held his breath. He watched the dark figure move between the trees in the darkness, and he knew if he kept still he would not be found. He exhaled slowly, his eyes glued to the silhouette of the man by the tree.

“What is it?” a deep voice asked from the garage. Leo slid the gun into the waist of his pants and eased backward. Ionucci was standing outside the door. “What is it?” he repeated.

“I don’t know,” Leo said in a half-whisper. “Maybe just a cat or something. Get back to work.”

The door closed softly, and Leo paced silently back and forth behind the garage for five minutes. Five minutes, but it seemed like an hour to Mark.

Then the dark figure eased around the corner and was gone. Mark watched every move. He slowly counted to one hundred, then crawled along the hedgerow until it stopped at the fence. He paused at the gate and counted to thirty. All was quiet except for the distant, muffled chiseling. Then he darted to the edge of the brush, where Reggie was crouching in terror. She grabbed him as they ducked into the heavier undergrowth.

“They’re in there!” he said, out of breath.

“Who?!”

“I don’t know! They’re digging up the body!”

“What happened?”

He was breathing rapidly. His head bobbed up and down as he swallowed and tried to speak. “I tripped on something, and this one guy, I think he had a gun, almost found me. God I was scared!”

“You’re still scared. And so am I! Let’s get outta here!”

“Listen, Reggie. Wait a minute. Listen! Can you hear it?”

“No! Hear what?”

“That chinking noise. I can’t hear it either. We’re too far away.”

“And I say we get farther away. Let’s go.”

“Just wait a minute, Reggie. Dammit!”

“They’re killers, Mark. They’re Mafia people. Let’s get the hell out of here!”

He breathed through his teeth, and glared at her. “Settle down, Reggie. Just settle down, okay. Look, no one can see us here. You can’t even see these trees from the garage. I tried, okay. Now, settle down.”

She fell to her knees, and they stared at the garage. He placed his finger to his lips. “We’re safe here, okay,” he whispered. “Listen.”

They listened, but the sounds could not be heard.

“Mark, these are Muldanno’s people. They know you’ve escaped. They’re panicking. They’ve got guns and knives and who knows what else. Let’s go. They beat us. It’s all over. They win.”