“But isn’t it dangerous to take it all to him?”
“No more dangerous than to keep it here,” he said, and then he lifted his shirt to show a gun in his belt. “Don’t worry, Charlie, I got it covered. Give me a hand. I need to take everything.”
“Everything?”
“Yeah, the paintings, too. I got to give the one up to my contact.”
“Okay, but why the other one? I thought you said that was our insurance policy?”
“We don’t want to leave anything here,” said Teddy. “This place is getting too hot. I’ll take it all someplace safe.”
“Do the guys know about this?”
“Absolutely, I cleared it with them all. Just help me load up, okay?”
“Sure,” said Charlie, even though he wasn’t sure, wasn’t sure at all. There was something wrong with Teddy, something off. Charlie thought about calling Ralph at work or going to get Joey, but Teddy brushed through the door and started reaching for the stuff that was scattered about, the jewels and bars of metal. Uncertain about what else to do, Charlie pitched in to help put everything in the boxes. They were halfway finished when the girl slipped through the open door and into the basement.
They hadn’t noticed her at first, they kept on loading the stuff into the boxes as she watched. They even talked about it, the paintings and the jewels, the whole operation. They spilled it all as she stood, motionless, just to the side of the doorway.
And then she stirred, and they both turned their heads, and there she was, the girl, staring at them with her wide eyes.
She was no stranger, this girl, dark-haired and pretty and impossibly young. She was one of the children who had been drawn by Teddy to the alleyway with candy and little gifts. First there was the boy, her older brother, and then he brought the girl, and then others showed up, like pigeons drawn to crumbs. Teddy liked having them around, their laughter, their unalloyed greed, the way as soon as they got some candy in their mouths they asked for more, and he liked this girl most of all. There wasn’t anything more to it, nothing sexual or weird, but even when the others suggested it might not be the best idea to have them around, Teddy persisted. He said the kids gave them all a cover, made Ralph’s place a more integral part of the neighborhood, but that wasn’t the real reason, they could tell. Teddy had some desperate need to be worshipped, and these kids were his congregation.
And now one of his flock, his favorite, was in the basement, wide-eyed and innocent, but not as innocent as she’d been just a moment before.
“Hi, Chantal,” said Teddy.
“Hi.”
“What are you doing in here?”
“I came to say hello. I heard voices.”
“You didn’t knock. You should always knock.”
“Okay. I will. Next time. I promise.”
“As long as you promise. We’re just packing up some stuff. Come on over, I want to show you something.”
“What?”
“Come on.”
She did. She stepped forward.
“Look at this,” said Teddy, holding out something big and glistening. “You know what this is?”
She shook her head.
“It’s a diamond,” he said. “Isn’t that something? Isn’t that cool? You want to touch it?”
“Okay.”
“Here, touch it.”
“Teddy,” said Charlie. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Shut up, Charlie. Here, Chantal. Touch it.”
She reached out her hand, petted the diamond as if petting a cat, even let out a little purr, and as she did, her eyes sparkled.
“Do you want one?”
“Oh, yes,” she said.
“Remember I gave you that lighter you liked? I could also give you a diamond. Just a little one. If you make a promise. Can you make a promise, Chantal?”
“Yes.”
“Will you promise not to tell anyone what you saw in here today?”
“How little?”
“About as big as your fingernail.”
“Really?”
“Sure. But can you promise?”
“Okay. Why is there a hole in the floor?”
“Just a plumbing thing. But you promise, right?”
“I promise.”
“Good, Chantal. Now Charlie and I are going to put some stuff in the car, and then I’ll give you your diamond, okay? Can you sit on that box and wait?”
“Okay.”
“Good. Let’s go, Charlie, let’s load it up.”
And they did, put everything in the car. It was heavy, but the volume was surprisingly small after Ralph and Hugo had melted down the metal, and the whole stash fit in the small trunk of the sports car.
“All right, Charlie,” said Teddy when it was all packed up. “Go take a test drive, nice and slow. Maybe buy some gas. I’ll walk Chantal home and meet you back here in about half an hour.”
“She knows,” said Charlie.
“She won’t tell anyone.”
“Of course she will, she’s a kid.”
“She won’t,” said Teddy. “Let me give her the diamond, walk her home. Be back here in half an hour.”
“Maybe I should just stay.”
And there it was, in Teddy’s eyes, something hard and cold, a look not of anger but of shared understanding of what was going to happen. Charlie tried to shake his head, but he couldn’t, he was frozen. And he felt, in that moment, all the euphoria and good feeling and hope, most of all the hope, bleed out of him as if a vein had been slashed.
“Go on, Charlie,” said Teddy.
“I don’t think I should.”
“Stop thinking, then, and go.”
“Teddy?”
“Just go.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Hey, Charlie, you know the painting, the one we took for insurance, in case something went wrong? I think maybe you should hold on to it for us all.”
“Where will I put it?”
“I don’t know, you’ll figure it out. But go on now, go for a drive. I’ll meet you here in half an hour.”
And he did just that, Charlie. He got in the car, and he drove away, and he filled up the tank, and he drove around, and when he came back, Teddy was waiting for him under the deck. He told Charlie he took the girl home. He told Charlie it was all right, that he could guarantee she wouldn’t say a word. He told Charlie that he’d meet them all back at the house that night with the money, and they’d divide it up, and they’d have a party. And then as Charlie stood under the small deck, with the rolled-up painting in a carton tube in his hand, Teddy Pravitz drove away with all the fruits of their great and noble act of self-creation.
And Charlie never saw him again.
65
It was dark now, with only the flickering of the citronella candles and the intermittent headlights sweeping across the landscape illuminating our faces. But even in that strange, uneven light, I could see the tears, on Charlie’s face, on Monica’s cheeks, welling in Joey’s hard eyes. Only Rhonda seemed distracted, keeping watch on her tape player, taking notes by candlelight.
“How come you didn’t look for him?” said Rhonda.
“We thought he’d contact us,” said Joey. “At first we was scared something happened. But when there was nothing in the papers, we figured he’d give us a call sometime.”
“He said something before about going to Australia,” said Charlie, wiping at his nose with his wrist. “What was we going to do, head off to Australia? But in the end I’m not sure we really wanted to find the bastard. He didn’t flash that gun just to show he was prepared. It was a warning, too.”
“Australia was just a feint,” I said. “He was planning to rip you off from the start.”
“What about Chantal?” said Monica. “What else do you know? What did he do with her?”
Charlie looked at Joey, who glanced back and then down.
“What is it?” said Monica. “Tell me.”
“We was burying everythi
ng connected to the crime in the basement, our clothes, the guns, the equipment we used to melt the metal,” said Joey. “Everything they could use to identify us. We thought it was safer than chucking it into a landfill. Early on, we had bought the cement and some sand and gravel to mix up with it to slather on top. The day after Teddy disappeared, when we started filling in the hole, we saw it.”
“What?” said Monica. “What did you see? Exactly.”
“The edge of a sheet. Holding something, covered by chunks of cement and piled-on dirt. I knew what it was right off.”
“Oh my God,” said Monica, breaking into tears. “All this time. But I would have known. I would have felt it.”
“What did you do, Charlie?” I said.
“What could we do? The four of us, we buried everything and tried to forget.”
“That’s really why we didn’t hunt so hard for Teddy,” said Joey. “Would you?”
“But it ruined everything,” said Charlie. “All the dreams, they died with her. Hugo left a few weeks later, Ralphie and Joey just hung on. I knew someone who knew someone, and I figured I was only good for one thing anymore, so I passed the word about locks and safes, and soon I was doing it all again and again with them Warrick brothers, but it never felt the same.”
I was sure it didn’t. There was something so ecstatic about the story of five neighborhood guys pulling off the crime of the century that the aftermath had never made much sense. Teddy and Hugo had altered their names in an attempt to obliterate their pasts, and now I knew why. Ralph and Joey hadn’t moved forward at all in their lives, and now I knew why. Charlie’s life had turned into an absolute wreck, and now I knew why. At the heart of their effort to reinvent themselves was the worst of all crimes, the murder of a child, and how could anything bright and shiny come from that?
I lifted my arm to the candlelight, checked my watch. “We have to go. Do you have what you need, Rhonda?”
“Sure. Thank you. It’s quite a story.”
“Hold it like you promised,” I said. “And when I’m ready, I’ll tell you who Teddy Pravitz became in his new life after the robbery.”
“Will it be interesting?” she said.
“It will be on the front page, is what it will be, and get you your full-time gig. Now can you do me a favor and take Monica home?”
Rhonda turned to Monica, who was still in tears and who seemed lost in some strange emptiness. “Of course.”
“No,” said Monica. “I’m staying with Victor.”
“It’s going to be dangerous. I don’t want you around.”
“Are they going to dig up that basement tonight?”
“Probably,” I said.
“Then I’m going.”
“Monica—”
“Don’t even, Victor,” she said. “It’s my sister. Someone from her family should be there.”
I thought about it for a moment, realized there was nothing I could do to change her mind, and nodded.
“Go on ahead,” said Rhonda. “I’ll clean up.”
And so we left her at the table as the four of us made our way slowly to the back of the ruined shed and climbed into the borrowed green taxicab. Monica sat in the back, leaning against the door and as far away from Charlie as she could. Charlie leaned forward, wringing his hands. Joey nervously tapped the wheel with his fingers. I pulled out my cell phone.
“Where to now, Victor?”
“Home,” I said as I pressed the button for Beth’s cell. Just as we were about to pull away, I saw Rhonda, clutching her pocketbook and coming toward the car. “Hold up,” I said to Joey as I closed the phone.
Rhonda leaned into my car window, her elbows on the sill. “Can I ask one more question?” she said. “Something I forgot to bring up?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Charlie. You said that Teddy gave you the Rembrandt, but you never said what you did with it.”
I turned to look at Charlie, shook my head. “He doesn’t know what happened to the painting,” I said. “It disappeared.”
“Really?” said Rhonda. “No idea?”
“I have an idea,” said Charlie. “A pretty damn good idea.”
“Charlie, be quiet.”
“No, Victor. Joey don’t want nothing more to do with that painting, and neither does I.”
“Are you sure?”
“Let it go back to the damn museum. Every penny would only make me sick. You told me I can’t start new without paying for my past. How could I start new with a wallet full of cash from what happened?”
I thought for a moment, let the familiar disappointment roll through me, and then I realized how right he was. “Okay, Charlie. Go ahead and tell her.”
“So where is it?” said Rhonda.
“Is Ralphie’s workbench still in the basement?” said Charlie.
“Yes, it is,” I said.
“It was made up of plumber’s cast-iron pipes and wooden beams. I pried up a beam, slipped it in one of them pipes, and hammered the beam back down. It should still be there.”
“How fabulous,” said Rhonda.
“That doesn’t get printed until I give the okay.”
“I promise,” said Rhonda.
Just then she leaned forward into the window, leaned in and faced me as if to give me a huge kiss. I felt a little awkward about kissing her in front of everyone after everything we had heard, but then her face kept moving until it was past me. She reached out, grabbed the car keys with her right hand, killed the engine, pulled back with the keys in her hand until she was once again leaning on the car window.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“I’m sorry, Victor, but I can’t let you go.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s not what I get paid for, sweetie,” she said as she reached her left hand into her purse, pulled out a neat automatic, and placed the tip of the muzzle right at my head.
66
I figured it out right away, exactly what was happening. As Charlie cursed at the sight of the gun and Monica gasped and Joey laughed, the truth of it clicked in my head, left, right, left, oh, crap. I might not be the sharpest spade, but put a gun to my head and I sharpen considerably.
He had sent her from the start, Teddy had. She was the friend from Allentown. Rhonda, not some old grizzled vet, she was the left-handed dispatcher of both Ralphie Meat and Stanford Quick, now here to wipe out Charlie, and Joey, and then me. Monica had met Teddy in California, so she’d have to go, too. Who’s next? We were next, the four of us, and I had delivered us all to her like sacrificial lambs on the altar of my stupidity.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t checked her out. I had called Newsday, I had asked if there was a Rhonda Harris who reported for them on the art beat, they assured me there was. But I hadn’t asked for a description, and how hard is it for a clever hit girl to steal an identity for as long as it takes to get the job done? And I should never have doubted, for even an instant, that someone was out there to wipe away Teddy’s problems in his old hometown. The one thing I had learned about him was that he never went with just a single option. Always have a backup plan, kid, or the vultures here will eat you alive, had said Theodore Purcell, and now his backup plan was pointing a gun at my face.
“Does this mean you’re not writing a book?” I said as I frantically tried to figure out what the hell to do.
“Why would I worry over words when this is so much simpler?” she said.
“No agent? No proposal? No advance? I thought we had a future together.”
“Oh, Victor,” she said as she waggled the gun at me. “We do. It’s just going to be very short.”
“What’s going on?” said Monica. “Victor?”
“She’s going to kill us.”
“Of course she’s going to kill us. But why?”
“It’s payback for what we done to your sister,” said Joey. “Karma with a gun.”
“Chantal wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“But it’s what
she’s getting,” said Rhonda. “And after what I heard, I think I’m doing everyone a favor.”
“You look good for a Korean War vet,” I said.
“That’s my father,” she said. “But with two false hips, he doesn’t get around so well anymore, so I took over the family business. One step up from animal control.”
“You led them to me again, you idiot,” said Charlie.
“I guess I did.”
“As a lawyer you might be okay, Victor,” said Charlie, “but as a bodyguard, you’re the—”
Before he could finish, I jerked up the door latch and slammed the door with all the strength in my shoulder. I expected to feel the weight of her bang away from the taxi, but she did a graceful sidestep as the door swung wildly open. I almost tumbled to the ground, held up only by my seat belt, when the door swung back and smacked me in the head.
She pulled the door away from me and kicked me in the chest, so I was flung back into the taxi.
“Let’s not make too big a mess,” she said. “The cleaners are already on their way.”
With her side to the now-open door, she pointed her gun toward Charlie in the backseat. And then we heard it.
An engine revving nearby, a rustle of weeds behind us.
Rhonda looked up just as a small, dark car burst out of the vegetation and headed right for us.
Rhonda’s gun arm swiveled.
The onrushing car’s high beams burst on.
She threw up an arm.
The car jumped forward.
There was an explosion near my head. And then, with a blast of hot air on my face, with a jumble of red hair and white limbs, with an aborted cry and the dying scream of torn metal, the car came upon us and beside us and rushed past us.
And just like that, the gun, the open car door, and Rhonda Harris had all disappeared.
67
Well, not quite disappeared. They lay about fifteen yards away, in a jumble of blood and bone and metal, all the elements mercifully indistinct one from the other in the darkness. To the side of the mess was the little car, its motor still running, its lights now washing across the weeds at the far side as it slowly started turning around.
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