“Yeah, the guy robbed me. Same guy got loud in your diner. He’s the one broke the windshield. He probably sent the guy who hit me in front of your house.”
Melinda wasn’t buying it. Something wasn’t right about his ex-wife and the story he’d just told.
“You sure they don’t know each other, your ex and this other guy?” she said.
“What? No way.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Maybe it wasn’t him.”
“Had to be.”
“Maybe it wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t Nancy,” John said. “There’s no way. She’s not smart enough.”
“Unless she wasn’t depending on her smarts,” Melinda said. “Tell me again what happened when you got there? What did she say? What she do, your ex?”
John told her what had happened again. She could tell he was skipping some of it and slowed him down.
“I’m in a bind here,” he said. “I don’t know what to do next. I had any brains, I’d hop a train somewhere.”
“Let’s just figure this out,” she said. “Step by step, what happened? Go slow.”
He huffed a few times in frustration. Melinda coached him along. “She waved you inside, brought you to the back of a tent, then out to a parking lot and grabbed your arm?”
“I was furious when she told me it was a bet,” John said. “I told her she was crazy, then tried to head back to the car. She grabbed my arm and apologized.”
“What do you mean? Why?”
“I don’t know. She was trying to explain herself. She told me about Nathan and the bet she made with him.”
“Did you talk to him, to Nathan?”
“No, why would I? It’s not his fault she’s crazy. He’s a decent guy.”
“And then you went back out and the car was gone.”
“Yeah,” John said. “Why? I don’t get it.”
Melinda sighed.
“What?” John repeated.
“Think about it,” she said.
“I have. I did. What?”
“Unless I’m completely off, John, it sounds like your son being abducted was one big diversion. And your ex-wife getting you inside the tent and then out to the parking lot was the biggest part of it.”
John stared blankly.
Melinda huffed. “Think about it,” she said.
Chapter 40
The note Kathleen had left him was a confirmation of Billy’s worst fears. No matter if the police suspected him, his wife always would. Her fear of being linked to his guilt was apparent. As much as he loved her, Billy couldn’t permit another betrayal.
The first thing he did after reading the note was search the yellow pages for a dog-eared page or pen or pencil mark Kathleen might’ve made. He found several at the top of a page with advertisements for hotels and motels.
Kathleen was beautiful but not very clever. He closed his eyes and imagined her searching the book he held open on his lap. She’d held a pen. Either she’d memorized the number or written it down. Billy stood up to look around the kitchen. He spotted the newspaper on one of the kitchen chairs and set it on the table. A piece had been torn off one corner of the cover page. He leaned over and could see the outline of the number on page three. He used a pencil and lightly brushed the tip over the number until he could read it. He checked the number against those in the telephone book and found a match.
“Bingo,” he said.
The motel was in Sheepshead Bay, less than a ten-minute drive from the house. He could call and ask for her name or make a quick pass with the car, but he preferred to give Kathleen one last chance. If she came home or called and agreed to meet him, they might be able to salvage their life together.
First, though, he needed to kill John Albano. For the sake of speed and efficiency, Billy had already equipped his .308 Savage 99 with a 2X-7X variable power scope. He would be able to make a kill shot from 100 yards.
When the phone rang, he was hopeful Kathleen was ready to come home, but their conversation became a cat-and-mouse game that could’ve been taped. The tone of her voice suggested she was convinced he had killed Victor Vasquez. The fear in her voice suggested she would give him up as the murderer or at least point the police in his direction.
Billy ended their conversation abruptly. He went down to the basement and added a few more weapons to his portable arsenal. Fifteen minutes after he finished packing, Billy made a pass through the Sheepshead Bay motel parking lot. He saw Kathleen’s car parked between a Dodge pickup truck and a recently washed Oldsomobile Toronado.
* * * *
Nick found the bar was unusually crowded for a Sunday night. The atmosphere seemed tense. He recognized a lot of muscle from other crews in the neighborhood and wondered what it was about. Then he was told to see Eddie in his office right away.
He used the kitchen stairway down to the basement and saw the office door was slightly open. He knocked on it anyway.
“Eddie?” he said.
“Come in,” Vento said.
Nick sat in one of the two folding chairs across from the desk. “What’s up?” he asked.
“You tell me,” said Vento, staring hard into Nick’s eyes.
“I had a thing with the family, my sister-in-law,” Nick lied.
“Yeah, and?”
“It took a little longer than I expected.”
“Where’s John Albano?”
“What?”
“Albano. Johnny Porno. Isn’t that what you call him? Where is he?”
Nick shrugged. “No idea.”
“Yeah, well, he’s MIA right now. So’s my money.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I look like I’m telling jokes?”
Nick nearly choked trying to swallow. “What happened? He didn’t call?”
“No, he didn’t. Neither did you until half an hour ago.”
Nick understood. He held both his hands up. “Wait a minute. You don’t think I had something to do with him? I hate that fucking guy.”
Vento continued staring.
“I’ll be the first one to whack him, you want,” Nick added.
“So it wasn’t staged, that little beef you two had?”
“What? No fucking way. He japped me, just like I said.”
“Except everybody saw it said it wasn’t a jap shot. They said you asked for it and he gave it to you. You better live with that story because right now it’s the only reason I haven’t put your fucking legs through a meat grinder.”
Nick stuttered.
“Shut up,” Vento said. “There’s close to fourteen grand out there somewhere.”
“You really think he robbed us?”
“Me, cocksucker. If he robbed anybody it was me.”
“Sorry.”
“His wife called here with some cock-and-bull story about his kid being abducted or some shit. Then Gene upstairs passed the message to Albano and he called back later asking for you. Why’d he do that? He’s not here, you’re not here. All the bullshit between you two makes me wonder.”
Nick’s hands were up again. “Hold on,” he said. “I had to borrow Mike’s car because my wife had ours today. I wasn’t anywhere near Albano.”
Vento went silent.
Nick was too afraid to admit what he’d done to Albano’s windshield earlier, but it might help get him out of this mess now. He was about to tell Vento, but couldn’t. He took a moment to gather his composure, then said, “Look, I have problems with the guy, I’ll admit it, but I’m no friend of his. I had this thing, my sister-in-law, her husband roughed her up a little and my wife got all crazy. I went for the sake of keeping peace at home. As far as Albano goes, like I said, you’re ready to take him out, I beg you to put me on it.”
“Regular tough guy, you are.”
Nick knew to keep his mouth shut.
Vento pointed a threatening finger. “I find out you had anything to do with this you won’t go easy, jerkoff. I’ll feed you to t
he sharks over the aquarium myself. A quarter fuckin’ inch at a time.”
“On my kids,” said Nick, making the sign of the cross. “I got nothing to do with Albano.”
“Get upstairs and don’t go nowheres until I say,” Vento said.
“Right,” Nick said. He got up out of the chair. “You want the door closed?”
“What?”
“The door?”
“What about it?”
“Open or closed?”
“Leave it.”
“Right,” Nick said. He stepped around the door on his way out. He was halfway up the stairs when he thought he heard Vento call him an asshole.
“I must be,” Nick whispered, “working for you.”
* * * *
They had gone to Melinda’s place after John called the bar back and finally spoke to Eddie Vento. The mobster had been too cordial. John suspected he was in trouble. He’d called Nancy’s house a few times since without reaching her. He tried again now but there was still no answer.
In an attempt to ease some of the stress, Melinda joked about different ways he might escape the mob.
“I could drive you up to the mountains, to one of the Catskill resorts,” she said. “I read somewhere it’s what they used to do, hide in the mountains.”
John was preoccupied wondering if his ex-wife had really set him up.
“If you can do a Yiddish accent, I have a yarmulke my ex had to wear at Jewish funerals,” Melinda added. “I’ll put a kerchief over my head and we go up there as a couple.”
“Huh?”
“Or I could drop you off at JFK. You can head for Mexico.”
“I’m afraid of flying,” he said. “Going back to when we were kids.”
“We?” Melinda said.
“Me and my brother,” John said. He realized she didn’t know about Paul and explained, “He was killed in Vietnam.”
“Jesus, I’m sorry.”
“I’ve got to find Louis,” John said.
“What?”
“Nancy’s ex. If she did this, she did it with him.”
“Do you know where to find him?”
“I doubt she does. The guy’s a snake.”
“Would she tell you?”
“She won’t volunteer it. Maybe once she understands how serious it is. Maybe.”
“I like her less and less.”
“I have to assume they’re already wondering about me and the money,” John said. “It won’t be long before they look into Nancy. Then my son won’t be safe.”
“Bring him here. You’ll both be safe here.”
“For tonight, then tomorrow you’ll be in the shit, too. There’s no running away from this. And if Nancy really did have something to do with it, her dopey first husband’s behind it, he’s got the cash and is probably long gone. The only justice in it for her is she’ll never see two cents if she helped him.”
“You can’t still think she’s innocent in this?”
“I don’t know. I don’t. The real problem will be convincing Nancy she’s the one needs to hide. She’s clueless, though. She’ll tell me I’m paranoid.”
“Convince her? You don’t give her enough credit. If she’s still in town, she’s probably scared shitless right now.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe nothing. And if—what’s his name, the ex?”
“Louis.”
“If Louis has the money and takes off, she’ll know she’s been had and she’ll count on what she told you, your mother bailing you out or whatever, but she’ll be a train wreck while she’s waiting for that to happen. She’s not that stupid. By now, if Louis is gone, she knows she screwed up. It’s you I’m worried about, the fact you’re still not sold she had something to do with this. Speaking of which, it’s time to give her another call.”
He tried Nancy’s phone again but there was still no answer. He thought about what Eddie Vento had said over the telephone earlier and repeated it. “‘Hey, buddy, where you been?’”
“You said he sounded friendly.”
“Why I knew I was in the shit,” John said. “Sounded like my best friend.”
“Shit, John. Where might your ex be?”
“I don’t know. Nathan’s maybe, but I don’t know where he’s staying now he’s left. I don’t know he’s got family or what.”
“What about her? Any family?”
John shook his head. “Mother lives in Florida, but they’re not close.”
Melinda could tell he was still struggling with the idea of his ex-wife setting him up. “What?” she said.
“Santorra,” John said. “I can’t get past him.”
“Except why would he draw all that extra attention breaking the windshield?” Melinda said.
“I don’t know. None of it makes any fucking sense.”
“You’re a terrible sleuth, John.”
“Not to mention a dope.”
“You’ve got a good heart. Too good. You wanna believe in people, even Nancy. It’s what she counted on to distract you.”
“On the street they call that a sucker.”
“We’re not on the street now.”
She leaned over and kissed him. It was a long kiss, but when he went to hold her, Melinda held up the telephone.
“Business first,” she said.
John started dialing.
Chapter 41
After his impromptu meeting with Special Agent Stebenow first and Kaprowski immediately after, Levin had spent the rest of the night reviewing surveillance audio tapes. He was close to falling asleep when the doorbell rang. He yawned in Brice’s face when he answered the ring and had to squint to make out the fifty-dollar bill the junior detective was holding against his chest with both hands.
“He left it in my car,” Brice said.
“Kelly?”
“Can I come in?”
“Sure, I already slept it must’ve been two, three minutes.”
Levin stepped back to let Brice inside.
“You want coffee, make it yourself,” he said. “I’m going straight to bed after you leave.”
Brice went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and took a beer. He brought it to the living room and sat on the sofa.
“He wanted me to go out for drinks with him,” Brice said. “After sitting in the car with him all day, he wanted to ‘spend some time,’ the way he put it.”
Levin sat in the armchair facing the couch. “You should’ve offered him a few bucks to go home.”
“Clever,” said Brice before taking a sip of the beer.
“Any callers?”
“What?”
“At Berg’s place. Anybody come back today?”
“Zilch.”
Levin yawned again, this time long and loud. “Why he probably left the fifty,” he said. “Keep your interest.”
“Keep it or feel for it?”
“Both.”
“You know he’s dirty, right?”
Levin rubbed his face to avoid answering the question.
Brice said, “You know because you’re investigating him.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
The detectives stared at one another until Levin lit a cigarette. He took a long drag, exhaled the smoke, and said, “Would it really make a difference?”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m only asking so you think it through, whatever’s on your mind. The man’s dirty, what’s an investigation got to do with anything?”
“If you’re part of it? Plenty, it seems to me. Where do I come in? How’m I being used in this? Are you selling me down the river, too?”
“You give yourself too much credit, kid.”
“And you’re a lying sack-of-shit rat bastard.”
“Hey,” Levin said, “that’s how you feel, there’s the door.”
Brice took a long drink from the bottle this time but didn’t move.
“Kelly say anything?” Levin asked.
“You want to get a tape or you have one running now?”
Levin didn’t respond.
Brice said, “Outside of his normal rants against the Italians, the Jews, queers and the black man? No, not really. Was his usual charming self. I offered to drop him off his car we were done. He mentioned going out for drinks.”
“And left a fifty when he got out?”
“It wasn’t my fifty.”
“It is now.”
“What?”
“You can mention it to him, you found the fifty in your car, but I doubt he’s gonna say it was his.”
“And then I’m guilty of taking a payoff, great.”
“You could wait and see if he mentions it first. Maybe he lost it. It fell out his pocket or something.”
“Yeah, right.”
Both men stared at each other.
“And if I don’t mention it, or if I do and he says it wasn’t his, and then I keep the money, I’m on the take,” Brice said. “It’s a lose-lose from where I sit.”
“Technically, but who’s gonna charge you?”
“What, you won’t? You’re my friend? I can trust you?”
Brice finished the beer. He set the empty bottle on a coaster on the coffee table. “I don’t want Kelly thinking I’m okay with it. I don’t want him assuming that shit.”
“Why it was a clever move, dropping that fifty,” Levin said. “You turn it in, the money, he knows he can’t trust you. You keep it, it’s an implicit acceptance.”
“I don’t want the money,” Brice said. “And I won’t rat.”
“Nobody will need your testimony, kid, so you can get off your high horse. A guy like Kelly, when the time comes, will give himself up and cut a deal before the cuffs are on.”
“That’s true. Or maybe he’ll kill himself and really make your day.”
“I’d rather see that than he cuts a deal. You feel sorry for him, I won’t.”
“Yeah, and what happens to me?”
“Why should anything happen to you?”
“It comes out you’re the guy behind busting Kelly, no matter he makes a deal or not, I was there and nothing happens to me, my rep is trashed anyway and you know it. Either I’m part of the bust or I’m a rat. Thanks a lot.”
“Nobody is gonna be sympathetic to Sean Kelly, I can tell you that much.”
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