That left one more room on our floor, which proved to be unlocked, but showing no sign that anyone had slept there. Probably the room Goldman would have used, if he hadn’t bailed.
On the second floor, we encountered a locked door. We knocked, got no answer. Probably a room without a guest, including both categories—living and dead.
The next door was locked too, a replay of the previous one.
But another unlocked room came next, only the bed was rumpled, obviously slept in. No sign of a current occupant. So, presumably, one of the seminar participants wasn’t in his room.
The last door we tried was ajar on a room offering up another sleeping beauty, only not a beauty and nobody who could be woken with a kiss. Thin-faced Joe Field, in shiny brown pajamas too big for him, appeared to have been shot in the head in his sleep, like Callen. Also a side sleeper, but the other side. Also resting on a blood-soaked pillow.
For the moment, we returned to our room. Sat on the bed with our guns in our laps.
She asked, “Somebody have keys to the rooms? A passkey maybe?”
“Maybe. Or just as likely got let in, because the person knocking was another seminar participant, stopping by for some conversation or whatever. Who then left the door unlocked without the occupant noticing, or taped it to prevent locking.”
She seemed confused, not afraid. “So what do we do? Call the cops?”
“You’re funny. No. You notice who isn’t among those present? And dead?”
“Poole. The room with the rumpled bed is obviously his. You must be right about him.”
I nodded. “And he’s probably disappointed he didn’t add us to his tally. He could be downstairs waiting.”
She shook her head. “No, he would have taken us out when we got here.”
“Probably. Shall we risk that?”
“…Maybe not.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “We’ll go down and check the lower floor. Make sure that we’re alone. You haul your travel bag along. Because then, you’re leaving.”
“I am?”
“You are. You can meet me at my A-frame or head back to St. Paul, as you please.” I got my car keys from my jacket pocket and handed them to her. “Just don’t take my Firebird with you if you head back to the Twin Cities, okay? Get some use out of that Camaro.”
She nodded, smiled.
We checked the main floor out.
Nothing, nobody.
It was possible we’d just played out a bedroom farce with the shooter, with us coming up and going into our room, and him then coming out of a victim’s room and going down. Fawlty Towers with guns.
Finally we hustled from the chalet into the parking lot to the nearby Firebird, staying very fucking low.
Then she was gone, with a throaty roar of my car’s engine, and I went back in.
Just me and the dead.
FOURTEEN
I called the front desk at the main lodge and got put through to Dan Clark, who was staying in a room there to be handy in case anything came up at the chalet. I felt like this qualified.
I met him at the door. He’d come over in his dark blue Jaguar sedan, which he didn’t look as spiffy as. His short dark hair managed to stick up a little on one side, where he’d slept on it, his face appeared a little puffy, eyes lacked their usual sharpness, and he looked like a guy who’d been woken up in the middle of the night. Which he was, although at after two AM, this really was morning, wasn’t it?
He looked more irritated than alarmed by this summons, as he came quickly but unenthusiastically from the parked vehicle to the doorway where I stood, his breath smoking with cold. He hadn’t taken time for a topcoat. He was back in the tan tailored suit and yellow, open-collar shirt, but they’d been thrown on.
All I’d told him on the phone was: “Get the hell over here. Quick. Bring nobody.”
“What is it?” he’d asked.
“It’s bad. Get over here.”
Now here he was, and I ushered him in. I’d turned a few lights on but the chalet remained underlit, although while I’d waited for him I’d lighted a fire in the big fireplace downstairs.
“Okay, Jack,” he said, “so what the fuck?”
“I’m going to give you a little tour of your facility,” I said. “There’s been some dramatic remodeling.”
He frowned, taking in the emptiness, which didn’t back up my implied crisis. “Where is everybody? Asleep?”
“You could say that.”
“Do we need to be quiet?”
“Not really.”
I showed him around the impacted rooms in the order that Lu and I had made our discoveries, starting on the third floor. Seeing pudgy Kraft in his pj’s on his back with a hole in his forehead, and that big blossom of blood framing his noggin, got an immediate reaction out of Dan. Well, a two-part immediate reaction. First the lodge manager froze, deer-in-the-headlights style. Then he ran into the bathroom and knelt at the porcelain altar and made an offering.
I was in the doorway of the john as he stood at the sink, running cold water and splashing it on his face. He toweled off and looked at me, horrified, the angular features of his narrow face twisted into a grotesque grimace, his handsomeness M.I.A.
“Do the others know?” he asked.
“Probably not. You okay?”
“No I’m not okay!”
“There’s more to do.”
He gripped my arm. “We’re not calling the cops. You haven’t called the cops, have you, Jack?”
“I have not called the cops. What are friends for, Dan? Come on. We’re just getting started.”
“What?”
I didn’t bother answering, just led him past the corpse and out into the hall.
My poker pal took in Callen’s bed-bound corpse, and Field’s, more stoically. He clearly had nothing left to puke up, and his comments ran to what you might imagine: “Jesus…oh my God… Christ!” Which sounds more religious than it was.
Then we were downstairs, him on one blue couch, me facing him on the other, with the fire crackling and snapping between us at my right and his left, its warmth providing a bizarre coziness, aided and abetted by the moonlight pouring in the tall windows.
I was sitting back, an ankle on a knee, arms along the top edge of the cushions behind me, the lined black leather jacket unzipped. Numb, Dan was sitting forward, knees apart, folded hands draped between his legs, shaking his half-hanging head.
Then something occurred to him, his chin snapping up, the eyes sharp again. “What about Poole?”
The shock of having three corpses as chalet guests finally dulled enough for him to realize the body count was off by one.
“Not here,” I said. “Room’s empty. I believe he did this.”
“What about your girl?”
“Mrs. William Wilson? I sent her off where she might not find things so unpleasant. Hey, things could be worse.”
“How in hell?”
I shrugged. “Those guys up there could have shit themselves.”
He covered his face with both hands. Not crying or anything. Just wishing this would all go away, I guess.
Then, getting himself together, he dropped his hands to his thighs and sat up straight. He was a professional, after all. An executive.
“Listen, Jack. With your…shall we say, ‘veterinarian drugs’ business…you certainly don’t need the kind of official scrutiny this thing could bring.”
“No argument there.”
“And if this became known to the public…my God, we’d be finished here. This lodge would be over, unless somebody figured out how to market a Manson Family vacation. And who would ever want to hire me?”
“It’s a pisser.”
He made a face. “These people…I don’t have to tell you. You were Vanhorn’s ‘silent partner,’ you said?”
I nodded.
Eyebrows high, he held two palms out, surrender-style. “I don’t want to know partner in what!”
“Well, crime of c
ourse.”
“Don’t tell me any more, Jack! Don’t tell me any fucking more. I know that these people—yourself included—are…connected. In a way, so am I. Chicago money is behind the lodge, you know that, right? And you know what kind of Chicago money I mean.”
“I do.”
He cocked his head, his voice quiet, reasonable. “So what I propose to do is call a number. I will report what the situation is here, and a clean-up crew will be dispatched. Before anyone gets a whiff of this, before the sun comes the hell up, this will be taken care of. Those things upstairs…” He pointed upward. “…will be gone. Disposed of. Do you understand?”
“I not only understand,” I said with a pleasant little smile, “I approve.”
He stood. Clapped once. “I’m going to make the call now.” He nodded toward the moon-swept parking lot out the windows. “Then I’m going to personally drive you home. We can talk later, but the short version is—none of this ever happened.”
“Fine by me.”
He sighed, smoothed his suitcoat, which could use it, and went off to the kitchen to use the phone. He spoke softly and I didn’t catch exactly every word of what he was saying, but the call was as he described it. Took him no longer than ordering a pizza.
He came back and sat down on his couch across from me, the fire reflecting orange and blue on him. Said, “Won’t be more than an hour before they’re here.”
“Works for me.”
He sucked in a bunch of air, then sighed it out. Half-smiled, in that shared private joke way. Then his expression darkened and his forehead tensed.
“Jack, what do you think this was about? Why would Poole have done all this?”
“Your seminar guests were all in the same business, with the same Outfit ties.” I was careful not to say what that business was. “But in a way they were competitors, too. I think it was a power play.”
He nodded, smiled tightly. “Starting with taking out the Envoy.”
Well, that told me that something I’d suspected had been right on the nose, so I got the nine millimeter out of the deep jacket pocket and pointed the gun at him. No silencer, but the chalet was well enough away from the rest of the facility that one little gunshot wouldn’t matter much. And that Jag was waiting for me outside for an easy getaway.
All I had to do was squeeze the trigger.
And in retrospect, I should have. It wasn’t hesitation over Dan being a poker buddy, though that made this a little sad. No, it was my own goddamn, innate curiosity. I wanted confirmation.
I said, “Had you said ‘Vanhorn’ and not ‘Envoy,’ I wouldn’t have been sure. I was fairly sure, just finding out that this resort is an Outfit property and you’re their fair-haired boy. And I think I know why you’d hire to have me killed. But do me a favor and tell me I’m right. And how you knew.”
He was shaking his head, frowning even as his eyes grew big. “Knew what? What the fuck are you talking about, Jack?”
“You want Wilma’s Welcome Inn. Or the property it lies on, and the rare zoning it enjoys. Shit! You even want my little A-frame and the lot adjoining Wilma’s! That would make a real moneymaker, a brand spanking new lakeside facility. Family friendly! In various senses of the word.”
“You can’t really believe that. Get serious, Jack! We’re friends!”
“Right. Because you wormed your way into my poker group six months ago.”
He said nothing.
And I knew what he’d been thinking, or at least thought I did. He came around my corner of the world often enough, dropped by the Welcome Inn for a meal and/or a drink. He was no stranger. Must have asked Charley what kind of family I had, and my loyal employee must have known about my old man being my heir. I’d been kidding myself that the old reprobate wouldn’t get curious and look inside that envelope I’d left in his safekeeping. Not that safe, apparently.
“Okay,” I said. “So you know about my old man in Ohio, who would have no reason not to sell the property and make his own killing. Do you know why I’ve had no interest in selling, though?”
Now his curiosity kicked in.
“No, Jack,” he said, dropping all pretense. “No idea. It was stupid of you not to.”
“So then you don’t know,” I said, “who, or what, I am.”
He shrugged. “I do now. You’re just another filthy drug dealer.”
I laughed. “No! I’m another filthy contract killer. That lakeside A-frame is my retreat. I’d never sell it.”
The blood drained from his face.
“The so-called Envoy knew who and what I was,” I said. “I thought maybe he’d told you. Tell me, Dan. Did your Chicago friends just advise you to do your best to pry my property out of me? Or were they behind the contract itself?”
Again, he said nothing.
“I’m guessing the contract was your idea,” I said. “I’m guessing you wanted to pick my property up for a relative song, and then go partners with the Outfit.”
Had anyone ever moved so fast?
He came at me, and I fired, but the slender son of a bitch only got grazed along his side, gouging his Pucci suitcoat and maybe not his flesh at all, and he’d flung himself at me so hard, he lifted the couch half-off the ground. Both his hands were on the wrist of my gun-in-hand and he twisted the nine mil from my grasp, sending it clattering to the wood floor beyond the hunting rug. I was blocked by the couch arm but he wasn’t, and he dove to the floor and had the gun in his hand now. He swung the big automatic toward me and I leapt over the facing couch as two bullets thunked into the cushions.
I was scrambling now, and the door to the outside was right there, and I reached up for the knob, twisted it, opened the door and clambered out of there. The cold was startling, like a splash of ice water, and the world was an ivory thing in the moonlight, dark but not dark. In front of me was the parking lot, and beyond that the frozen sort of a lake that was the golf course waterhole.
With no immediate route of escape, which took me a millisecond to compute, I tucked to one side of the door, which I’d left ajar, and waited. He came through moving fast, and you know what? I tripped the motherfucker. He skidded face down on the pavement of the parking lot and I jumped on his back, jamming a knee into the base of his spine. He yelped in pain and now it was my turn to try to wrest my nine millimeter free from his grasp, my hands tight and twisting on his wrist. His fingers managed to fling the weapon rather than give it up and it went skittering across the slightly icy pavement and disappeared under his parked Jag.
I scuttled off him to retrieve the gun and knelt to see where the thing had gone—it had spun to a stop under the car. I tried to reach it and something tragic happened: a bullet whanged into the side of the Jag, puckering a beautiful door.
He was still down on the pavement, looking dazed the way you do when a kick in the head hasn’t quite knocked you unconscious, but pushing up on his left hand and pointing a little gun at me, a .25 auto I think. Hadn’t thought he might be packing, even if it was a dainty little fucking thing like that.
I couldn’t reach the nine mil and he would only get less dazed and take better shots, so I had to get away from him fast, and the parking lot and frozen waterhole were shit options.
But off to my left was the start of the thickness of pines that climbed the so-called mountain, and I headed into that cover, fast, thinking only of putting something between me and my pursuer that wasn’t cold air.
A ski path angled through the forest of firs, some other non-conifer trees mixed in, skeletal spectators, but it was easy enough to avoid that openness, and the trees weren’t planted so close together that I couldn’t wind through them. Not to where I could run, but I could manage a jog, all right, and periodically pause behind a tree, many of which were substantial enough for cover.
No additional gunshots had rung out since I had fled frantically into the trees, but I could hear him back there, feet crunching through the snow, not running or jogging but moving quickly enough to stay a threat.<
br />
The cold was not a problem—it kept me alert—but running in it was taxing. My breath soon came hard, and plumed in front of me, as if I were one big punctured tire oozing air.
“Jack!”
Not close, but closer than I would have liked.
“Jack, stop! Talk to me! We can work this out!”
He never could bluff worth a damn.
But without a weapon, I had no goal in sight. Being in first place in a race with a guy in second place who had a gun was no way to win. Maybe I could double back around behind him. The semi-snow-covered ground was a problem, though—especially the leaves and pine cones beneath the snow, which gave away movement. After all, that was how I could have a sense of where, and how far back, Dan was.
So I started working my way over toward the winding ski path. If I stayed along the edge, I wouldn’t be so exposed, and anyway Dan wouldn’t be expecting me to head back down, not yet anyway. And the going should be less noisy, with fewer pine cones and leaves.
That proved to be the case, while at the same time Dan’s crunching grew louder, as he came closer to my new position, but unaware of doing so. I paused when his footfalls got loud enough to indicate he was passing me.
That was when I spotted the broken wooden ski pole, snapped in two. I paused, picked up the half with the metal tip, tossed the other half away, and headed back up, again hugging the side of the ski trail.
The crunching of Dan’s feet up ahead grew louder.
Gaining, I cut through the trees and moved toward the sound. When I saw him in the moonlight, his back to me, I slipped in behind him—he was maybe ten yards up there—and walked in his footsteps. Which was easy—they were distinct impressions.
He paused, listening for me.
I paused, holding my breath, giving him nothing to hear.
Then, when I was a few feet behind him, I said, “Hey!”
He swung toward me.
Had I been him, I would have shot as I swung around. Like I said, immediate response is what keeps you alive in combat.
But he didn’t shoot as he swung round, and as soon as he faced me, I jammed the half-a-ski-pole’s spike into the hollow of his throat, while my other hand slapped that little .25 out of his hand, where it dropped like a doe turd in the snow.
Killing Quarry Page 14