“I’m staying at Beth Kessler’s place.”
“Seriously? Well, lucky you. Life is cruel to me, making her my first cousin.”
“Do you need me to come in to the store tomorrow?”
“Yup. In fact, I need you to go and visit someone with Robert after the game ends today. It’ll be straight time pay. I don’t do weekend overtime.”
“This afternoon? Who are we visiting?”
“You need to see Beth’s and my great-aunt Mildred, a lovely woman. How are your acting skills, Tomahawk?”
“They’re kind of limited.”
“That’ll be enough. I assume Robert’s watching the Packers. After the game ends, bring him to the store with you and I’ll give you the scoop.”
****
Tom was reaching for the knob on the little black and white television in his bedroom when a knock came on the door. Reluctantly, he crossed the room and opened up to face Renada Schneider.
“May I come in?”
He was startled because the request was polite, tentative, almost whispered, and for all those reasons out of character.
“Sure.” He indicated she should take the armchair, and he perched on the end of the bed facing her. “What’s up?”
“I feared the dead man was someone I know, someone who would harm me. That is why I had to see the body. I made up the part about seeing a fat man at the road so you would take me with you to the morgue.”
“I was wondering about that. Was it the man you know?”
“No. But still I worry. I ask you to tell me at once when you learn his identity. My life could be at stake, Thomas.”
“Huh? You think some East German hit man is after you?”
She gave a massive, theatrical shrug. “You try to make a joke, but it is not a joke.” She twisted a cheap lace handkerchief. Her hands looked very strong. “I was with a man named Horst before I left the East, a fat man, but not grossly so like the dead one.”
“So you were afraid your chubby ex-boyfriend followed you here to kill you?”
“Yes. I know too much about him. He talked in his sleep a lot, about his work.”
“And that was what?”
She got up from the chair. “I hear your skeptical tone of voice. I apologize for disturbing you. I am a fool. I will go now.”
“No, wait a minute. You waltzed in here and told me someone may be trying to kill you. What did your boyfriend back home do, and what did he tell you about his work?”
“He was in ‘investigations’ for the Stasi. You know the Stasi?”
“The East German secret police?”
“Yes. He threatened if I left him, he would have to kill me. The Stasi have many agents in West Germany and he could find me easily there. It is the reason I agreed to come here and meet Robert.”
“Oh. All right, I think you should go to the police.”
“No. I do not trust the police.”
“This isn’t East Germany.”
“You are naive. No police.”
Tom didn’t want cops around either and let the matter drop. “Maybe you should go back to West Germany.”
“I came here because I felt unsafe there. Now that I know Robert, perhaps I should have stayed and taken my chances. So, I have told you my story. It is your turn. What is it you are afraid of, Thomas?”
“Pardon me?”
“Men like you, men who have always been in confident control of themselves and their lives, think they control their fear too. It is actually easier to see the fear in people so unaccustomed to being afraid. So what is your fear?”
Tom willed himself not to squirm around on the bed. “I think you imagine it, Renada.”
“Indeed? I see your face. You claim you are in no danger and no one pursues you, only me. I do not believe your claim. So, Horst still may come and Robert will be no help. Apparently his employer has angered your red Indians and now he sees them behind every tree. But you, you are a real mensch. Take this in case he comes, Thomas. This is a picture of Horst.”
Horst was a little overweight and homely under striking platinum hair. There was scant similarity to the river corpse. Tom reassured her. “I’ll keep an eye out for your Horst. I promise.”
“Wonderful. In that case I have something else to give you. I must go to my room for it. Please wait here for me.”
She was gone before he could answer. She returned and said, “You say you are in no danger yourself, and probably don’t believe I am. But take this.” She handed him a small pistol.
“What is this for?”
“If something happens that makes it clear to you that you were wrong, I need you to have it.”
Why wasn’t he surprised she had a handgun? But why would she give it to him? “Renada, given what you think the situation is, shouldn’t you keep the gun yourself?”
“I have one too. It is an extra gun that I offer you. Will you accept it?”
She had two guns. Now that was surprising. A gun would be nice. “If it makes you feel better, sure, I’ll keep this gun.”
“Excellent. I suggest we not tell Robert about any of this.”
She’d finally said something he readily agreed with. “Right. It’s our secret.”
“Wonderful.”
After she had left, and only because he had the gun, he felt better about his situation. A little better.
Chapter Eight
Tom slumped in the armchair, which was still warm from Renada’s body. She seemed as paranoid as Robert, just tougher. Was that why their families saw the chance of a match? Regardless, she was either genuinely afraid or a skilled actress. He toyed with the little gun. It had a nice feel. Maybe when the fat man failed to report in, Tony would give up on assassinating Tom. Maybe the fat man had nothing to do with Tony and was just trying to sell Beth some life insurance. Maybe he’d been a Jehovah’s Witness or a traveling vacuum cleaner salesman. Did they still have those?
There was a tapping on the door. Had Renada changed her mind? Well, he wasn’t giving up the gun. He slipped it in a drawer, dragged himself back to the door and opened it. Dani kissed him on the lips and pushed him into the room.
“What the hell?”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, Tom. I thought we had a strong connection and I was doing the right thing, but I wasn’t sure. I thought you were interested in Beth, silly me. But when I heard you’d pretended at the morgue that you’d never seen Angelo, I wanted to kiss you right then. It was the right thing to do. The cops can’t protect us. Oh baby, we’re going to be so good together.”
“Who is Angelo?”
Her jaw fell open. “What do you mean, ‘who is Angelo’? Angelo, the beach, you know.”
“No, I do not know. Are you talking about the guy down at the river? What’s up, Dani?”
She collapsed into the chair he had just vacated. “Oh shit. You don’t know him, then? You didn’t lay him out where Beth found him?”
“No! Were you not listening to me this afternoon? What is going on?”
“I’ve made a mistake. Forget it. I’ve got to be going now.”
“No, you are not. Sit back down and explain this to me.”
She sat. He waited while she decided what to tell him and reviewed the timelines. She had gotten here shortly after he did. She had come on to him in an alley. His dorm room had burned hours after he’d made a crack to her about how a fire was the only way he’d get out of there. A second fire disabled his means of transportation.
“Dani, you were sent here to look for me.” She nodded her head. She was crying now. He nostalgically remembered Renada’s visit as an interlude of calm and sanity. “What are you to Tony? Who was Angelo?”
“Ah, shit, Tom. Tony was my, uh, boyfriend. Angelo was his driver. They’re both part of the, you know, the business. I thought you’d have met Angelo when you worked at the pizza parlor.”
“I worked there for two days, Dani. I met Tony, a nymphomaniac waitress, the cook, and a half-stoned dishwasher, but no
Angelo. So let me get this straight. You came here looking for me. You told them you’d found me, and they sent Angelo to clean up their witness problem?”
“No! I mean, they sent me, but I saw it as a chance to get out myself. I didn’t tell them I’d found you or where we were. I didn’t tell them anything. I don’t know how Angelo found us.”
“Fair enough. Let’s pretend I believe all that. Beth found him by the water, maybe after someone fought with him. Was that you?”
“No. I just told you, I thought you did it. I don’t know how he got down there in the first place.”
“What do you mean, ‘first place’?”
“I need to go now.”
“I get it now. You did something after Beth saw him. The cops reported he’d been bashed on the head at least twice. I’m betting you did the second bashing. Come on, Dani, what’s your story?”
“It’s like this. I came home and saw Beth heading down to the river. I started to go into the house and remembered the last time I’d seen you, you were walking down there. I went down and she wasn’t there, but I found Angelo lying on the beach with some fishing gear. It scared me to death. I pulled that old rowboat down into the water, put him and the fishing gear in it and pushed it off. It might not have been the best thing to do, but it was all I could think of at the time. I guess maybe I murdered him.”
Bad news: she had, maybe, drowned a man. Good news: it was to his benefit. “It’s not certain Angelo drowned, Dani. He might have fallen off the bridge. The cops are figuring it out. Could he have told anyone we are here?”
“Maybe he did, maybe not. He is—was—a loner. Tony’s group likes to work in pairs to do the heavy lifting, like to strangle people, but Angelo liked to work alone.”
Charming. Tom had wondered why Tony’s pizzeria had so few customers. Was all this real, or had he fallen into a Woody Allen movie? “Dani, you’re not making any of this up, are you?”
“No. The twins will blame me for Angelo. I know they will.”
“Twins?”
“Uh-huh. Harvey and Marvin, Tony’s younger twin brothers. They go by Harv and Marv.”
“Those are not very Italian names.”
“I know. In spite of the family name, they’re mostly Swedish. They’re pretty sensitive about it.”
“Weird. Tony’s locked up and this Angelo is dead, but I still have a Harv and a Marv to worry about. Who else? How big is Tony’s family?”
“Small. Tony’s really pretty small-time. He just doesn’t know that. There’s one first cousin I’ve never met who did the books long ago. He’s long gone and is legit now, a white sheep in the clan.”
“Have you ever seen Wyatt Stone before?”
“What, the skinny young guy? No, of course not, that’s silly. He’s got nothing to do with our problem. Tony eats guys like that for lunch.”
“Dani, did you set the fire in my Quonset hut room?”
“Uh-huh. I couldn’t let you stay there. They would have found you there right away.”
“And you rigged the engine fire in the Nash?”
“Hey, that idiotic car sticks out like a sore thumb. You’re hiding, remember, Tom?”
“It wasn’t yours to burn.”
“It’s an English car with an English electrical system. They all catch fire sooner or later. I just speeded up something that would have happened anyway. That thing isn’t safe and anyone who sees it remembers it. I’ll do anything to protect you, Tom. You are so much better in the flesh than the crappy Polaroid photo Tony gave me. If you were an inch or two taller, we would be perfect together.”
“Dani, I’m not your boyfriend.”
“Not yet.” She squared her chin. “Anyway, Angelo found us and he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. We need to get out of here now or we’ll both be murdered. Tony will send Harv and Marv after us when Angelo doesn’t call in.”
“Dandy. How about describing the brothers to me?”
“Uh-huh.” She started rummaging in a purse. “I got a Polaroid of them when the pizza parlor opened. They’re identical twins. Here.”
It wasn’t much of a picture, but the faces were clear enough. The brothers were stocky and either tanned or dark-skinned if the color on the Polaroid was correct. Their black hair was streaked with gray, but they still looked as much Nordic as Italian. Noses were small, almost delicate. Eye color was not distinguishable.
“What eye color, gray, green, blue? How tall?”
“Uh, the twins have blue eyes. Tony’s five-five, so Harv and Marv are maybe five-eight.”
“Your old boyfriend is five foot five, and I’m too short for you at six-one?”
“You’re a little stuck on yourself, do you know that? It’s just that when I trade up I like to really trade up. I like to wear heels when I’m out with a guy. Actually, your height’s fine for me.”
“Is there anything else particularly important I should know about Tony and his brothers if I want to stay alive? Especially I want to warn Claire.”
“Oh, her. God, I forgot about her. Have you talked to her?”
“They wouldn’t let me call from the safe house in Arizona. I reached her once from a drugstore pay phone for a minute. I called from here and left one message. Now I can’t reach her at all.”
“You left a message. You told her where you were?”
Tom didn’t like where this was going. “So?”
“Ah, shoot, Tom, think about it. Think how you got the pizza job. Think about how you could have been found in Phoenix. You telephoned her. She was on Tony’s payroll.”
“Claire is with the mob? No.”
“Well, maybe not with them. More like on retainer. I happen to know she’s disappeared. I hope for her sake she’s done a better job of hiding than you and me.”
“Well, that’s great. I suppose maybe it does explain how this Angelo got here. Claire. Damn it.”
“So she’s history. Now focus on our problem, will you?”
Good point. “What else do you know about Harv and Marv?”
“Not much that matters here. They hate each other, but they’ll work together to kill us. We should leave now.”
“And go where? I’m broke. No car.”
“I have a good car.”
“Money?”
“Not really, thanks to Gary screw-up Grant.”
“Then broke, we’re safest here for a couple days. By the way, someone may be after Renada too.”
“Aw, come on.”
“No, she thinks a guy she was with back in Germany will come after her. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her patrolling the grounds.”
“The woman is delusional to think that she’s hot enough that a man would follow her.”
“It can help us though. And as soon as Robert calms down about the tribal elders, I expect her to put him on watch too.”
“Somehow I don’t see us putting our lives in the hands of those two.”
There was something else he had to clear up. “Thursday, you had a fight with Gary at the front of his store. What was that about?”
“How would you know? Oh, now I get it! You’re the one who knocked me out.”
“I thought you were robbing him. He indicated you were. I mean, his body language did when I came up behind you.”
“Gary lies in English, Indian and ‘body.’ No, Tom. Like I said, even before I met you, I’d decided I wasn’t going to help Tony and his boys terminate you. I was going to bail out. I bought a so-called new identity from Gary. But the documents bounced the first time I tried to use them and he wasn’t going to give me my money back, the little prick. Then you kept me from collecting.”
“All right, I’m sorry. I don’t normally go around braining women.”
“It’s cool. I guess it shows what kind of guy you are. Maybe that’s one thing Gary and I agree about. That’s why we’re so good for each other, you and me.”
“We’re not a couple, Dani.”
“Not yet. We’ve both got a lot to th
ink about together, though. In particular, are you willing to kill someone to avoid being killed?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I’d say it’s the question. If we’re going to sit around waiting for Tony or his brothers to find us, we can make out our wills right now. I’m sorry if it offends your Marine-officer, college-boy sensitivities, but you need to be thinking in terms of ‘kill or be killed.’ I’m leaving now.”
Flushed with anger, he ushered her out and tuned the tiny television to the Green Bay game. He picked up the photograph of Harv and Marv and stared at it. They didn’t look dangerous. But neither did Tony, or a lot of serial killers, rapists, and pedophiles pictured in the newspapers. Kill or be killed, huh?
****
The pink telephone interrupted a game of Solitaire Harold was about to win. He almost always won since he almost always cheated. He picked up to hear Lester Stone identify himself. He spoke as rapidly as his nephew had the night before.
“Harold, we’ve got a problem. You’re going to have to level with me about what we’re doing with this Tom Hawk guy.”
Uh-oh. This was trouble. “What seems to be wrong, Lester?”
“Last night Wyatt found a fat guy prowling an area where Hawk had just been. He came after Wyatt, and Wyatt kind of panicked and brained him.”
“Yeah, he told me about the fisherman. He killed him? The cops came?”
“No and no.”
“So what’s the big deal?”
“The guy did show up dead later, but not at the place where he fought with Wyatt. I can’t let my brother’s kid get in trouble with the cops on his first case, Harold. What are we doing up there?”
“Lester, I can’t tell you that.”
“Then I’m pulling Wyatt out.”
“No! Wait, I’ll tell you. It all has to do with my worthless cousin Tony. I told you how when I was, you know, sick, the Reverend Timmy-Bob came to the, to that hospital, and showed me the One True Path. One thing he wanted me to do was to make up with my family, all of them. So I went to see Tony. We had a nice dinner and I took him to see that damn Godfather movie.
“He wigged out about the movie. He wanted to be remembered like Marlon Brando. He made a tape of his life going way back and gave me a copy. I’m named in it. Hell, maybe you’re named in it. I didn’t listen to all of it.”
Hiding Tom Hawk Page 10