The Dead of Winter

by William H Hallahan

  The article reported that Reece was reputed to be able to recite complete short works by Poe, Twain, Whittier and all of Sorab and Rustum.

  Lyons withdrew the photographs from the envelope. Family pictures. Reece with two young girls. Possibly sisters. A woman. Possibly a mother. Photographs of a young woman. Vivian Dropcek written in ink on the back. Pictures of Vinny and Vivian holding hands and a large corsage—a wedding picture? Reece in Navy blues. Big, muscular. White hat canted over one eye. Tailor-made bell bottoms. Smiling.

  “I’m glad I shot that son-of-a-bitch.”

  There was, finally, a ring of keys. Probably a duplicate of the set Vinny carried. Now why would a desperate searcher leave a ring of keys? Answer: Maybe the keys were all readily identifiable.

  Lyons read them, one at a time. This one is for the front door of the apartment building. This one unlocks Reece’s apartment door. This is for the mailbox. This is a car key and this is a car trunk key. And this—he stuck it into the broken lock of the metal box—used to lock the broken metal box. And this—hm-m-m. Well. Now.

  An unidentified key. Somewhere in the wide, wide world was a lock that matched that key. Now. Where?

  Lyons decided he knew where.

  A stiff, flag-snapping breeze blew off the harbor along the lower Atlantic Avenue streets, along old cobbled streets and alleys near the piers. A tug haled a barge up the East River.

  The restaurant was locked and the sign in the door window said CLOSED. The offices of Mt. Aetna Importers were nowhere to be seen.

  Lyons walked down the alley at the side of the restaurant, feeling now the full thrust of the chilling breeze. The tug gave off two short and one long blasts.

  At the rear of the building was a double row of caked garbage cans. A pair of old wooden steps led up to a wooden platform and doorway on the second floor. On the back wall someone had written in irregular black letters: AETNA. UPSTAIRS.

  Lyons went up to the wooden landing. He paused and looked around. The whole area of the piers was silent. Just wind and sunshine. Sunday. He tried the doorknob. Then knocked. Then knocked louder.

  He took Reece’s key ring out of his overcoat pocket and tried the odd key. It slid in easily. And turned. Lyons pushed the door open completely and stepped inside.

  An old office. Old rickety furniture. Some typewriters and desks, old-style filing cabinets. Bare wooden floor and dirty windows. In a small room a single desk, a chair and a wastebasket with a single chewed toothpick in it. And on the desk a plastic sign, VINCENT REECE.

  In a large room next to it a large old wooden desk, telephone, wall safe, some spare chairs and a rickety old coat rack.

  Lyons sat down in the chair and dialed. “Hello, Roger Basche, baby. This is your friendly local housebreaker. I am calling from the office, yea verily, from the actual cotton-picking desk of …” He picked up the plastic sign on the desk and read it: “Charles Ha Ha.”

  5

  It was the barking dog that bothered Tyler.

  Somewhere behind the house in the dark, cold winter night the dog was penned or chained, and it barked. Endlessly.

  Three, then two. Barkbarkbark. Barkbark.

  Tyler sat in the back seat of the cold car with the golf bag and studied the house. Every brick bought with a bent arm, an extracted dollar, the fierce stink of fear. The house of a social hyena.

  The result of relativism. Anything goes. Up yours, Jack, I got mine. Who cares? Relativism.

  Barkbarkbark. Barkbark.

  He wiped his wet hands on his pants, weary with waiting.

  The grounds around the house were brightly lit. Shrubs, low-cut and thinned, trees with low-hanging branches removed—the whole setting had a nakedness to it and, with the lights, a garish summertime festive quality. Without people.

  “Something’s funny here,” he said. “Something’s going on.”

  “What?” demanded Basche.

  “Something. All those lights and nobody around. Just that barking dog. Where is everybody? Where’s Ha Ha?”

  “Oh, he’s in there. You saw him drive in.”

  “People like him don’t travel around alone. Doesn’t he have a bodyguard or something? This is too easy.”

  “Let’s take another turn around the block,” said Dan Lyons. “We can see the back of the house through those trees.”

  Tyler’s eyes returned to the house. It didn’t fit the office —both couldn’t fit the same man. Ha Ha’s office was rickety, dust-filled—a musty antique, an abandoned loft. The house stank of sleek money, from the herringbone brick sidewalks to the too precious gas lamps and the leaded-glass windows.

  Tyler shifted and sighed. In the darkness he practiced slipping the safety back and forth on the handgun he held in his lap.

  As the car rolled slowly around the block, Tyler thought of Fleagle with satisfaction, flung back on the freezing wet ground, with that enormous gorilla’s torso limp as a rag doll, defeated at last, cast down. More, more, more: armies of dead criminals in a row. Society tearing the strangling hands of criminals from its throat.

  Three, then two. Over the sound of the engine he could still hear it. He longed to kill the dog. How do the neighbors stand it? A piece of meat with ground glass in it.

  Basche rolled along slowly. The houses of the neighborhood were all large—estates on large parcels of land, set well back from the road.

  The lights in the windows seemed warm and serene through the winter-bare trees.

  Basche halted on the street behind Ha Ha’s house. They could see a large one-story wing, brightly lit, that projected from the back of the house and a long, separate brick carriage house and a covered-over swimming pool. Tyler’s searching eyes also found a large dog pen. There was more than one dog in it. Naked trees, in silhouette, rocked in the gusty night wind.

  Thoughtfully Tyler fingered his mustache. He longed to rush in, shoot and hurry away. He took another deep breath. Basche was taking forever to drive around the block, studying the house every few yards.

  Finally, the car turned onto Ha Ha’s street. “Well,” said Basche, “Ha Ha seems to be alone. What do you say?”

  Tyler nodded eagerly. “Let’s go. Let’s go right in.”

  Lyons nodded curtly.

  Basche turned the steering wheel, and the car drove purposefully into Charlie Ha Ha’s driveway.

  The back building was a large brick garage, enough for six or seven cars and built to resemble a carriage house. The entire Ha Ha property was carefully overlit—including the pool, glum under long sheets of black plastic that fluttered their ends in the winter wind.

  “This place is lit like an amusement park,” said Basche. He stopped near the high brick back wall of the main building. Ahead was a single-story wing; it seemed to be a large room with multiple windows. It resembled a medieval refectory. It, too, was brightly lit.

  The dog now had escalated his challenge. Seven and three. And the pitch was higher. Tyler could see him now—one of three Dobermans. And only one barked. The other two cruised restlessly along the chain-link fence that held them.

  “There he is,” said Basche.

  Through the window Tyler saw a white, almost hairless egg-shaped head.

  “How do you know it’s Ha Ha?” demanded Tyler. His hands were stone-cold. Clammy. And they trembled lightly. In his stomach was a lump of ice.

  “It is,” said Lyons.

  “How do you know?” Tyler felt his voice rising.

  “I recognize him.”

  “Let’s find out,” said Tyler, trying to speak in a baritone.

  Basche opened the car door and stepped out. Lyons followed, then Tyler. Don’t let me chicken out, thought Tyler. The three dogs began to bark wildly.

  They walked toward the wing of the building, going the length of the drive along the garages. As they approached the building Tyler could see an exceptionally large meeting table, with several dozen chairs around it. At one end, near the door, sat the man, chin cupped on palm, staring empty-eye
d the length of the room. In front of him was a single glass of water and a glass water pitcher. He was idly toying with something in his hand. Tyler examined the table.

  There was a yellow pad and a freshly sharpened pencil at every seat. It all looked as dull and proper as an impending meeting of the Suffolk County Society of Practicing Accountants. On a serving table along the opposite wall were several dozen bottles, canisters of ice cubes and assorted glasses.

  “You sure that’s Ha Ha?” whispered Tyler.

  “Yes,” said Lyons.

  Tyler felt a drop of perspiration roll down his spine under his damp clothes.

  Roger Basche tried the side door carefully. It opened, and he stepped through.

  When he turned around, Charlie Ha Ha showed his egg-shaped face. It was particularly flushed and hectic across the cheeks. His eyes showed exhaustion—the spent attitude of an animal run to earth. His suit jacket sagged like a fallen tent around his body, and his molded shoes looked particularly elephantine.

  He turned and looked at the three silent faces ranged behind him—turned his face to them almost indifferently, with unutterable weariness.

  His fingers snapped and unsnapped the cap on a cylindrical glass pill container.

  “What do you want?”

  “You Charlie Ha Ha?” asked Basche.

  The fat man turned further in his seat to look at them. He looked at Tyler’s face and mustache, at the impeccably dressed Basche and then at Lyons. Particularly at Lyons. He answered the question to Lyons.

  “What do you want to know for?”

  “We may have a mutual friend.”

  Charlie Ha Ha snorted and shook out several pills in his soft plump pink palm and slapped them into his mouth. He took a swallow of water.

  “Yeah? Who’s that?”

  “You have a cold, Mr. Ha Ha?”

  “Heart,” said the fat man. “Who’s this mutual acquaintance?”

  “Fleagle.”

  “Fleagle. This is some kind of a friend of yours?”

  “Probably more like a friend of yours,” said Basche.

  Ha Ha shrugged. “What do you know about Fleagle?”

  “You paid him to kill Vinny Reece.”

  Ha Ha shook his head. “When Reece died, I died. He pulled me into the grave with him.” His hand began a slow massage of his chest and he made a pain-filled face.

  “You don’t look very dead.”

  “Appearances are deceiving.” He shook out a half dozen more pills and cupped them into his mouth. His lips made a sucking sound as he sipped water. He swallowed noisily. “In about five minutes twenty-three men are going to arrive here for an important business meeting. I wouldn’t advise you to be here when they walk in that door.”

  Tyler glanced at Lyons’ deeply frowning face, then to Basche’s impassive expression. He eased the pistol from his belt with the long, long silencer screwed onto the end. He slowly began to raise it.

  “Won’t they be surprised to find you not here, Mr. Ha Ha?” said Lyons.

  “Oh, I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “That remains to be seen. Would you mind getting up and coming with us?”

  Charlie Ha Ha pushed his two arms forward on the long table and laid his head down sideways between them as though he were unutterably weary. His entire hairless head had turned pink like a baby’s. He lay there without moving, seeming pink and newborn.

  “Good guys,” he murmured. “You’re just animals like everybody else.”

  The barking was reduced to the one dog again, the obligatory three-and-two code.

  The three waited, shifting their feet.

  “Let’s go, Ha Ha,” said Basche.

  Charlie Ha Ha kept his head on the table.

  “Hey. Ha Ha. Let’s go.”

  Lyons walked over to Charlie Ha Ha and cocked his head sideways to look into his face.

  Tyler watched his own right hand with fascination. His thumb slipped the safety catch and his eye squinted as he sighted down the long barrel of the silencer. The gun went off with an abrupt phoo! Charlie Ha Ha never moved, although there was now a black hole in his back just below the collar of his coat. The empty pill bottle rattled on the floor and lay there.

  “Let’s go,” urged Tyler, wagging the gun at them. “Let’s go. Quick. Quick. Quick!” He backed toward the door. He watched horrified as Lyons stooped and picked up the glass cylinder and then frowned at Basche and then at Tyler. “I think we just witnessed a suicide.” He held the cylinder out to Tyler. “You shot a dead man.”

  Basche turned the corner and, with the car lights out, pulled up to the curb of a side street.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Tyler.

  “Wait. Wait,” said Basche. “I want to see who these twenty-three guys are.”

  Tyler squirmed. He was wound as tight as a banjo string.

  And that never-ended dog had him frazzled. Three. Then two.

  He wanted to get somewhere quiet to loosen things slowly. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  He was shivering like a man freezing to death.

  “Patience, patience,” said Basche.

  “Here come some cars,” said Lyons.

  They watched the cars cross the intersection, turn in at Ha Ha’s driveway and roll slowly to the back of the building. Five limousines. They parked parallel to each other, hidden from the street.

  A man got out of the first car. In a winter coat. Hatless. A huge man. He walked slowly, alertly, to the doorway of the meeting room. His eyes searched the rooftops, the shrubs, the shadows along the garage wall. He looked through a window into the room, then quick-stepped back to the first car. He talked into a car window and hurried back to the doorway and entered. In a few seconds he was back again.

  Now other men stepped out of the cars. Cautiously, alertly, aggressively. Doors slammed. Whunk. Whunk. Whunk.

  The three dogs howled and barked without cease.

  One group of men entered the building. Another group searched the grounds and returned. Then they, too, entered. One man hurried out of the building and talked to someone still inside the first car. He talked and nodded into the window. The other men came out and stood in the driveway, talking and waiting.

  The man stepped away from the car and ran toward the house. He waved an arm at the other men to follow him. Quick-stepping now, they re-entered the building. Lights began to appear in every room of the house. Two cars backed down the driveway and went to opposite intersections, slowly, prowling.

  The sacking of Charlie Ha Ha’s house began. In every room they searched, destroying as they went. They moved rapidly, cleaning out closets, dumping out drawers, slashing open stuffed furniture, pulling up rugs. At whiles, one of them appeared carrying various papers and files. These were hurried to the first car and quickly dumped onto the floor in the rear. Three or four armloads cleaned out the house. Through a second-story window Tyler watched a cloud of pillow feathers puff into the air.

  “This makes Reece’s place look like batting practice,” said Tyler. He pictured himself with an automatic rifle, cutting them down—all of them. “Animals! Scum!” Rat-tat-tat.

  “Oh. Oh,” said Basche. “Down on the floor.” A sudden flood of full headlights entered the car and they heard the soft pulsing of the limousine’s motor as it crept toward them. Tyler eased the pistol from his belt and waited. He was trembling and fought the great need to rise up and commence firing. The limousine came parallel to their car and stopped. The engine pulsed.

  They waited. Tyler listened for the latch of the opening door. The pulsing engine continued.

  Suddenly the engine began to whine and the noise receded. “Don’t move,” said Basche. “They’re backing up. Don’t move.”

  They waited. And waited.

  “What’s happening?” demanded Tyler.

  “Wait!”

  Abruptly, the car was brightly lit again as the driver put on the limousine’s full headlights.

  “Cagey bas
tard!” said Basche. The car went dark again. “Don’t move. I’ll take a look.” After a bit, Basche exhaled. “O.K. Come up. But be ready to duck again.”

  “Basche, goddam it,” said Tyler, “let’s get the hell out of here!”

  “Easy, Joey, easy. We can’t leave now. I have a feeling they’re going to scram themselves. Hold tight.”

  As he spoke, the men hurried back, out of the house, to the cars in twos and threes. The concussion of car doors slamming sounded again. Finally, the first limousine turned around and hustled down the driveway. The others followed. And the caravan slipped away as quickly as it had come, leaving Charlie Ha Ha’s corpse in the midst of a brightly lit cataclysm.

  Basche started the car and drove after the limousines.

  Tyler sat, arms folded, legs folded, in the corner of the back seat. He was exhausted and the car’s heater made him drowsy. He watched the hypnotic stream of oncoming automobile lights as the car gently skimmed along the expressway. The limousine caravan was driving at a very high speed, and Basche was racing to stay with it. His eyes kept glancing through the rear-view mirror for patrol cars.

  Tyler thought about the hole in Ha Ha’s back. He’d done it. He’d shot him and believed that he’d killed him. There had been no clap of heavenly thunder, no sudden clang of doom inside his head, no sense of irrevocable loss. Just a certain feeling of accomplishment.

  He’d done it.

  Well, almost. Ha Ha had put on a modern re-enactment of Socrates sipping his hemlock and calmly taking his leave. Escaping across the border.

  He felt his eyelids flutter.

  “I don’t know,” said Roger Basche.

  “Well, don’t you think it’s important?” asked Lyons.

  “What?” asked Tyler, raising his head.

  “Why Ha Ha killed himself.”

  That goddam mind that never shut down. Question. Question. Question. Tyler scowled at the endless traffic scurrying under the black night sky. Of course: Why?