The Sixteenth Man
Page 22
“Okay.”
“Believe me, Nikki, I---”
“Uh-huh. Goodbye, Daddy. Johnny’ll call you when it’s done. And have a nice Thanksgiving. I’m gonna go straight back to Bennington.” Nicole placed the phone in its cradle, faced Ciccone and Borgese. “Both of you, get out of here.”
Santo DiMartini stood at the window of his bedroom, stared out at the live oaks, their black shapes not nearly as dark as his thoughts. Jesus fucking god, who could have foreseen, guarded against, someone happening to take photographs in that isolated, nothing place?
DiMartini had seen his trusted capo’s enmity build from the moment the photographs arrived. And he understood. Ciccone had had to clean up after him before, back when DiMartini incurred the disrespect of the Families by helping them set up his boss. Sure, they’d been delighted to nail Vito Genovese – but it raised, forever after, the question of DiMartini’s trustworthiness. Some in the organization wanted him iced, and it was Ciccone’s intervention – calling in some serious markers – that saved DiMartini’s ass, resulting in his being awarded New Orleans.
It was near dawn the previous morning when Ciccone prevailed, finally convincing the weary, distraught DiMartini that going to Moab, even in some sort of disguise, even on another plane, would only pose more of a threat to Nicole’s life. “Santo, how can I put it – this guy with the pictures is either very goddam clever, or committable, or likely, both.”
Alex Moffat, sober for almost a day, leaning till then in the opposite direction, conceded: “He’s right, Santo. Anybody who’d try a stunt like this has got to be inherently unstable.”
Ciccone spread his palms in an I rest my case gesture. “So I beg you – do not fuck with him.”
DiMartini wondered if in part he’d gone along with Ciccone to placate the man. He was vividly aware of how distasteful it was for Johnny to be forced into extricating him from this particular mess. He’d been angry since that day two months earlier when DiMartini disregarded his advice, agreed to take part in the Dallas operation. Johnny had fervently counseled against it, insisting that Langley and the Pentagon and their fat-cat armament contractors should do the job themselves, since they stood to be the big winners. He was right, but DiMartini felt that by accepting the job, he might mitigate the fallout from his Genovese betrayal, and possibly put himself in line for a larger piece of the drug traffic beginning to flow into the country from Southeast Asia, courtesy of the people in Langley. Which would definitely dry up if Kennedy went through with his plan to pull the troops out. As far as brother Bobby, unlike Detroit and Chicago and Miami, DiMartini doubted the nasty little turd would get the message. And Cuba? If the organization ever got it back, an event he figured was unlikely, they were welcome to it.
DiMartini’s first inkling that he should have listened to Ciccone was when General Butler saddled him with that psycho, Oswald, maintaining that Langley demanded they use him. Butler, a whacko in his own right, insisted that was the no-option deal, that he had no time to debate the matter. DiMartini subsequently learned from other sources that Butler had his hands full clearing the Dallas parade route of troops and security, plus covering his ass for the inevitable questions that would follow. Sure, they backed down when DiMartini insisted on recruiting the other shooters, but the damage was done. You didn’t have to be Sigmund Freud to know Oswald – with all that lunatic intensity of his – was a world-class fuckup.
DiMartini understood that letting Johnny talk him out of going to Moab entailed a further downside for his friend; having to cope with Nicole. Over and above disapproving the extravagant way she’d been raised, Johnny bore a fundamental long-term animus toward the headstrong young woman. DiMartini forgave him; it was oil-and-water. The old-school, woman’s role thing. Ciccone would feel different if he had children of his own.
And now, standing at his window, Santo DiMartini knew he had made perhaps the biggest mistake of all. He should never have let Nikki go, not even with the reinforcements they’d gathered. He should have gone to Moab, handled the matter himself.
On the desk beside the window was a framed photograph of an exuberant Nicole, age eight, but already with that knowing, precociously grownup face, laughing with her pretty mother, Isabella.
Ogod. If anything goes wrong tomorrow...
TWENTY-THREE
Present Time
Wednesday
Packard hurried across the RV Park, Kate struggling to keep pace. They spoke in urgent whispers.
“Dammit, Packard—”
“I said no.”
Most of the assorted RV’s, trailers and motor-homes were dark, their TV’s and stereos off for the night, or muted. That Dorothy had chosen a pad as far as possible from the entrance was, to Packard, another example of the lady’s gift for self-preservation.
“I’m coming with you.”
Packard stopped, his patience gone, causing Kate to almost collide with him. “Look, that woman is the only one they don’t know about. This is the safest place for you.”
Back in the RV, Kate’s lament that they couldn’t display the incriminating photos for the world to see had triggered the same thought in all of them – and virtually the same simultaneous words: “The web.” “The Internet.” “Online.”
Excitedly, they outlined a plan. The photos would have to be translated into computer files. Rudy Sanchez had a scanner at his apartment, along with a heavy-duty computer, and he was eminently web-hip. The pictures would immediately be disseminated worldwide. Out there. No matter whose ox they might gore. Nobody, no matter how highly motivated, could stop it. It would mean borrowing the prints for a couple of hours. Simple, quick, relatively safe, and it would require bringing only one more person into their dangerous loop.
“So – you won’t have to go to your office or your townhouse.”
“Right...” Packard liked the way Dorothy’s mind worked. But, he added, he’d have to contact Rudy, arrange to meet, and it was a sure bet someone was covering the 7-11, waiting for him to retrieve the Cherokee.
Dorothy offered: “I’ll drive you.”
“No. You two stay here. I’ll have Rudy pick me up out on the road – somewhere nearby. Someplace I can walk to.” He started to autodial Rudy’s number on his cell, stopped. “Jesus.” He powered down the phone.
Packard and Kate found the public telephone where Dorothy said it would be, on an outside wall of the small, white stucco building they’d passed on the way into the RV Park. It was dark except for a little neon OFFICE sign in the window. Near the road, the Owl Creek RV Park logo glowed atop its pole. Packard groped for pocket change; he’d already decided that using his phone card would be as unwise as calling from his mobile phone.
“I mean it, Kate. Case closed. I don’t want a repeat of what happened to Meg Brady.”
Kate didn’t argue, which he assumed was at best temporary. He lifted the handset, stared at it, wishing there was a way to avoid bringing Rudy into it, placing him in jeopardy. Suddenly the phone, the wall of the building, his hand, went bright orange, followed in less than a second by the sound of an explosion. Behind them, flame shot upward from the opposite corner of the park, another blast, and more flame. The ground shook, the office structure groaned. The metal sign vibrated overhead. Packard’s throat constricted. He knew what it was.
“Ogod...”
A smaller explosion followed as he and Kate dashed across the oiled gravel. Lights went on in most of the vehicles, people jumping out, some in their underwear, some in robes, pajamas. The large oak tree was ablaze. Engines were being started, gearboxes crunching as neighboring vehicles were hastily moved away from the fire, two already exiting the park.
Kate and Packard emerged from between a Winnebago and an old VW Microbus, and there it was. What little remained of Dorothy Purviance’s RV was engulfed in flames. He and Kate shared a brief glance, the message tacit and terrifying: had Kate chosen not to argue with him, not to pursue the dispute across the RV park – she too would be dead.<
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A man in shorts and tee shirt was attempting to kill the blaze with a water-hose, another wearing only jeans, with a small extinguisher. Neither had any effect, and the heat drove them back, the flames igniting the adjacent Airstream. Packard heard someone remark that it was probably a bottled-gas explosion, a possibility that for an instant he silently conceded; just before he and Kate headed for the telephone, Dorothy had said she would start a pot of coffee. But on a gut-level, he knew it was not an accident, and felt the same impotent, stomach-sick fury he’d experienced at the dig-site – was it really only two days ago – standing there in the motor-home, looking at Meg’s blood, the chaos, trying – as a kind of penance – to imagine the horror of her final moments. Knowing he couldn’t come close. He hoped Dorothy’s were mercifully brief.
Kate started to move out into the open, toward the gathering crowd. Abruptly, Packard grabbed her arm, yanked her back into the shadow of the Winnebago. He saw her initial angry expression dissolve quickly to a question, then change once more – to one he also read correctly: she knew – roughly – what he was going to say.
He said it anyway. “In case they think you’re dead, let’s keep it that way.”
“You mean us.”
“Maybe. Or maybe they want me alive and angry – long enough to find their goddam negatives for them.” He looked off at the flames, then, bitterly: “I’m just about there.”
Still gripping her arm, he headed them back in the direction of the office. At the far end of the Winnebago, they paused, peered out. A barefooted woman carrying a blanket-wrapped infant ran past, away from the spreading fire, followed by two small, very excited boys, also shoeless. The shorter one, bringing up the rear, yelled, “Hey, Mom, Jerry won’t wait up!” Packard and Kate started to cross to the next row of RV’s, but they were stopped by an insistent, familiar sound.
“Mmerrp? Mmerrp?”
They looked down, saw Pekoe peering out from beneath the Winnebago, talking anxiously, as if trying to tell them what had happened. Kate scooped her up, stroked her. Dorothy Purviance’s cat was singed in several places, clearly spooked but otherwise healthy.
A hundred yards down the far side of the unlit rural two-lane that bordered the RV Park was an all-night gas station. The only other nearby structures were a diner and a furniture store, their dark closed-for-the-night facades reflecting the fireglow. No vehicular traffic. Not yet, but distant sirens were whooping, growing louder. Kate, with Pekoe in her arms, followed Packard along the drainage ditch till they were opposite the gas station, where a bearded attendant was gassing a black Buick. He and his one customer, a slender, balding man in slacks and corduroy jacket watched the blaze, spoke animatedly, presumably debating whether or not to get involved. A sudden brightening of the flames seemed to spur their decision. The attendant hung up the filler nozzle, shut off the pump. The pair dashed across the road toward the RV Park entrance. The readiness with which the customer abandoned his car satisfied Packard that there was no passenger. When the two men disappeared into the park, he clambered up the slope to road-level, gave Kate a hand, and they ran straight for the Buick. The sirens were louder, probably less than a mile away. Kate clambered into the passenger seat, hanging onto the struggling Pekoe with some difficulty. As Packard slid in behind the wheel, he caught Kate’s look at the handful of paper towels he’d grabbed from the dispenser on the pump-island. “Fingerprints. I’m already thinking like a thief.” Grimly he fired up the engine, wheeled the car out onto the road, headed north, driving fast. Rounding the first curve, two pumper trucks, an ambulance and a pair of patrol cars raced past them toward the Owl Creek RV Park.
“What happens when they only find one body?” Kate released the wriggling Pekoe, who scrambled onto the rear seat-back, excitedly checked the view from various windows, chattering about it.
Packard’s eyes were on the winding road, which he was negotiating at close to the limit of the Buick’s uncertain suspension. “They come after us.”
“Moab.”
“Yeah.” The photos were gone. They had nothing they could take to the law – nothing to convince anyone else that Dorothy Purviance’s death was anything more than yet another coincidence. Only a very farfetched story. “If they’re still around, the negatives I mean, they’re probably the only remaining link to all this. We’ve got to try and get our hands on ’em before they do.”
He reached across, found her hand. “I’m sorry you got stuck in this.”
“Hey, I looked you up, remember?”
“I didn’t say I was accepting any blame.”
“Good.” She grinned at him. “Keep it that way.”
Packard returned from the payphone, got behind the wheel of the white Mercury. “...Talk shows, Newsweek – twice – even The London Times. About the old bones.” He fastened his seatbelt, started the engine. “But Barbara Litton had something big---”
“The other stuff is not?” Kate asked wryly.
His jaw tightened. “The guy with the knife. She contacted some law enforcement telecommunications outfit. They found a man that answers his description...” Packard thrust a scrap of paper at her on which he had scribbled a name. “He’s got to be the sonofabitch that murdered Meg Brady.”
Kate held it near the side-window, in the glow of the mercury-vapor light above the phone booth. “‘Matanza, Desiderio Jesus.’ What’s ‘NO?’”
“New Orleans...” Packard glanced at his outside mirror, steered the big sedan out onto the road, moved around a slow-moving semi. “Cuban. Kills people. Suspected, anyway. Supposedly works for some major mob-boss down there.”
“The man in the pictures – in the suit?” Kate sighed audibly.
Packard, nodded, slowed as they approached the Route 50 onramp. He was feeling his weariness, something he couldn’t afford. He took a swig of the coffee they’d picked up at the airport. His early disdain for Charlie Callan – anger, really – had been mitigated by Dorothy’s perception of the man. Even discounting her obvious bias, it was now difficult to believe he intentionally caused so much pain and grief. The steps he’d taken to protect her; it wasn’t much of a leap to assume he’d done his best to shield the others as well. Certainly, his daughter. Packard was a touch dismayed by this glimmer of unexpected compassion he’d begun to feel for Callan.
So – what went wrong? What? He got their money – why didn’t they end up with the film? Did he double-cross them? Is that what cost him his life...?
Packard accelerated onto the highway. They were less than an hour from the I-70. Pekoe was curled up in Kate’s lap, purring. He smiled as yet another irony occurred to him. His empathy with Callan was not, as Packard had thought, all that detached, objective. No, he was actually identifying with the man. A sense that he and this long-dead private eye were, on one fundamental level, brothers.
Like a lot of people, credentials and accomplishments notwithstanding, a part of Packard secretly believed he was faking it. That sooner or later they would be onto him, that he would be stripped naked before the world, found out for the shabby fraud he truly was.
He recognized the dynamic, knew it wasn’t rational; he’d proven – over and over, to himself and others – that he could do what he claimed he could do, and do it better than well. But that pervasive little demon, the furtive self-doubt, never quite went away. When asked how he was doing, his usual answer, accompanied by a casual grin, was a breezy: “Still fooling ‘em.” It wasn’t a lie.
That’s what he was beginning to like about Charlie Callan. At heart, a fellow bullshitter.
The feeling of connection bolstered Packard’s conviction that if he could acquire just a little more insight into the man, into his mental processes, the who of him, it might indeed lead them to the negatives. If there was time. They had abandoned the stolen Buick in the Montrose County Airport parking lot after a hasty paper-towel pass at their fingerprints. With luck, it would be a day or more before the police found it. He was less optimistic about how long before he w
ould appear on his adversaries’ screens; in order to rent the car he’d had no alternative but to use a credit card, show his driver’s license.
Phone pressed against his face, the man watched from the blue Taurus as the big yellow-and-white pumper truck exited the RV Park, headed north. A Sheriff’s car was at the gas station, the Deputy taking statements from the attendant and the corduroy-jacketed owner of the stolen Buick. The man cranked up the engine, switched on the headlamps, pulled off the shoulder, also headed north. “Where?”
The voice on the phone repeated the location. “Montrose County Airport. About forty miles north of your position. Ten minutes ago. Amex transaction. Hertz rental, seven days. White Merc sedan. Plate number niner-five-George-four-eight-six. And four minutes later subject’s answering machine was beeped from a payphone, same location.”
Traffic was mercifully sparse. Packard increased his speed. “Oh, and there was another message. Rudy Sanchez. Surprise, surprise. Someone broke into the bone lab. Crocker arrested Kevin LaPierre, the kid who was orchestrating the demonstration this morning.”
“You think it was him?”
“Right.”
“Shit. Speaking of remembering things...” Kate reached into her bag. “I brought your mail like you asked.”
“Anything interesting?”
She turned on the light. “Bill, bills, junk, junk, junk. Here’s one. Regal Features Syndicate. Isn’t that---?”
“Open it.” Packard tried to sound offhand, but it didn’t come out that way.
She ran her finger under the flap, pulled out the letter, read it in silence. And beamed. “Ogod, this is so cool. They love Giddy and Smythe. They want to talk contract.” She watched him expectantly.
Packard didn’t speak for several seconds, then: “Christ.”