When They Come for You

by James W. Hall

  After the killings, he’d followed Harper and the wavy-haired guy over here. Waited around for a while, then headed back to the Marriott, where he was staying, got some sleep, did some Internet work, and learned the dark-haired guy was her brother, Nicholas Roberts. Crack of dawn, he stopped at a convenience store, bought a morning paper with Harper’s photo on the front page. He filled his ice chest with Gatorade and beef jerky and Ritz Crackers, and came back over and found a parking spot in the guest zone, excellent vantage point to watch the entrance.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. He’d never behaved like this before. Always the consummate pro, same routine each time, doing his due diligence, scoping out his target, choosing the most advantageous time, then executing the job. Afterward, he’d pick up his envelope of cash and move the hell on, put a thousand miles between himself and the scene of the crime.

  The plain fact was he missed his daily dose of Harper. Spying on her routines, shower, dress, making meals in the tiny kitchen, kissing her husband, playing silly games with her kid, all the trivial things. The woman had snuck into Spider’s central nervous system, taken up residency. Harper, the virus.

  Four days and no sign of her. He was starting to think she’d left the condo when he was back at the motel, but then early that afternoon the same fat cop who’d questioned her at the fire showed up, same dumpy clothes and gray Mercury four-door. Which meant she had to still be in there, probably grieving, immobilized.

  Ten minutes after the cop arrived, brother Nick headed out for a jog. In the valet area, a couple of Latina chicks stopped and watched Nick run past. That kind of guy.

  A half hour after that, the slobby cop left.

  Brother not back yet, Harper all alone in there.

  Spider was jittery, feeling like he was building up to doing something he wasn’t sure what.

  He got out of the car without a plan.

  Spider always had a plan. But look at him now, walking across the parking lot, heading to a side door that someone left propped open. He was going inside that building, heading upstairs to the eleventh floor, 1101, where Nick Roberts lived, where Harper was shacked up. Crazy Spider. Out-of-control Spider.

  Halfway to that side door, goddamn if Harper didn’t emerge from the front entrance. So close he could see the coffee brown of her eyes, but she didn’t glance his way. She was wearing a red plaid lumberjack shirt, baggy jeans, getting into a taxi. A strained look on her face. Not the serene woman he’d been watching on his iPad. This Harper was gaunt, dead eyed, stiff, walking with a delicate tread, like someone wearing a bomb strapped to her chest.

  Spider hustled back to his rental.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  On the sidewalk outside Sal’s apartment, Harper paid the cabbie and sent him on. When she was done with Sal Leonardi, she had no exit strategy, no picture of the future, only a blank, endless wasteland stretching into a hazy forever.

  Sal’s apartment was on the first floor of a two-story building on the corner of Lennox and Fourteenth, west of Flamingo Park. Ten blocks east was the beach, four west the bay. The windblown stench of low tide and rotting seaweed filled the air. Inhaling that heavy breeze, Harper fought back a sharp-edged memory of her last beach outing with her family. But the harder she pushed it away, the more insistently it returned.

  At Crandon Park on Key Biscayne, Leo gurgling with delight. Coated in sunscreen, half-hidden under a floppy hat, waving at the seagulls. Ross was hugging his bare knees, staring out at the water, at the bright streamers of Sunday sunlight ricocheting off the flat sea.

  It was just over a week ago. Ross must’ve been finished with his piece about Sal and was working on the chocolate story. Maybe at that moment he was debating whether to confess to Harper what he was so worried about, and when his eyes strayed off to the flat sea and went vague and unfocused, he was struggling to reconcile his longstanding habit of hiding his story subject against his growing concern.

  Or maybe he was oblivious to all that and was just fiddling with the prose. Rewriting in his head. She didn’t know that part of Ross. As she stood outside Sal’s apartment on the empty sidewalk, she grappled with this recognition: that she’d never fully known that vast quadrant of Ross’s interior. His work, his compulsion to expose.

  She pushed open the iron gate, walked down a narrow sidewalk, and turned right at the first apartment. Sal’s place. A year ago, this same season of the year, Deena had pointed it out. Driving past, on the way to a photo shoot on South Beach, she’d said, “That’s where he lives. Right there. Apartment 101. Like a normal citizen. Like everybody else.”

  Without another word, Deena had braked hard, swerved into a parking space, staring at the white building with the green trim.

  “What’re you doing?” Harper said.

  “The son of a bitch. He’s in there watching TV, jerking off, or whatever the hell he does with his time.”

  Deena threw open her door, staggered into the middle of the street, and halted, the traffic easing around her. She screamed out his name. She screamed it again and again until faces appeared at windows of the neighboring buildings. Deena howled some long syllable of pain until Harper got out and quieted her, getting her back into the car.

  “He’s in there,” Deena said as Harper drove them away. “The son of a bitch is in there smiling.”

  “Did he do something to you? Is that what this is about?”

  “He never touched me,” her mother had said. “But he tainted everything. He stank of cigars, stolen money, and fresh blood.”

  Harper went to the door of 101, her mother’s howls echoing between the buildings like a tortured spirit riding an ancient wind. Overhead, a gull squealed. Cars passed on the street. Twenty years since she’d seen the old man. A Christmas visit unannounced, Sal arriving at the front door with an armload of gifts. Deena blocked his way. Ordered him to leave. Still in her pj’s, Harper stood a few feet away. Sal looked past Deena, his eyes on Harper. He had shrugged his helpless apology to her, turned, and walked back to his black Cadillac.

  Now she gripped the aluminum doorknob. Twisted it, found it unlocked, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

  Sal was sitting at a small desk, typing on a laptop. He wore a blue terry cloth beach robe. Beneath the desk, his legs were spindly and hairless, white flip-flops on his feet. His bulky body had dwindled in the years since that Christmas morning. He’d acquired a hunch, a forward tilt of the neck and shoulders, as if the burdens he carried were deforming him.

  Peering over Sal’s shoulder was a young Asian man in swim trunks and a tie-dyed T-shirt.

  They both noticed Harper at the same moment, and Sal reached out quickly and shut the lid of the laptop and stood.

  He spoke quietly to the Asian man. Bowing to Harper several times, the young man edged past her and exited.

  “My neighbor,” Sal said, rising to his feet. “No social skills, but a good kid. Been teaching me some computer tricks.”

  Harper hadn’t prepared a speech, hadn’t prepared anything. She stood in Nick’s clothes. Out of body, out of mind.

  Sal studied her for a long moment, then drew a breath, his face looking suddenly tired.

  “Come in, come in. Good to see you, kiddo, even at a bad time like this. My sympathies, by the way.”

  Harper broke free of her paralysis and shut the door. She stepped closer to him. Maybe she appeared menacing to the old gangster, or maybe Sal felt a pang of modesty, because he tightened the belt on his beach robe, pulled the lapels together across his pelt of white chest hair.

  “You’re mortified. Your grandfather, the mobster. The newspaper article, it blindsided you.”

  “Mortified? Like I didn’t know all that already?”

  “Your mother tried to poison you against me.”

  “That’s not why I’m here.” She took two steps toward him. Sal holding his ground. “People are saying you murdered Ross because he exposed you. This was your retribution.”

  “You believe that?” />
  She blew out a breath. “Not even you are coldhearted enough to kill your great-grandson.”

  “I appreciate your high regard for me. So what brings you?”

  “I need to know something.”

  “For you, doll, I’m an open book.”

  “Ross interviewed you for that piece, didn’t he? You two talked face-to-face.”

  “A half dozen times, yeah. A good kid.”

  “And in all that time, did he ever mention chocolate?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I don’t know from chocolate. But yeah, we talked, I told him my story. He took notes. But no, I don’t know anything about any chocolate.”

  “It’s what he was working on next, a story related to chocolate, cacao beans. You’re sure he didn’t mention anything?”

  “That why you came to see me? You playing detective?”

  “Somebody has to.”

  “Well, hey, glad to hear it.” He looked away, running something through his head, then coming back to her. “Look, since you’re poking into things, something maybe you should see.”

  He moved to an ancient TV cabinet and plucked out a small object.

  “Know what this is? Ever see one before?”

  He held it out: a white disk the size of a shirt button.

  “Recognize it?”

  Harper came forward, took the object from his hand. A piece of electronics, charred on the edges and partially melted.

  “That little piece of shit was in your house,” Sal said.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “It’s a spy cam, that’s what I’m told. See that little aerial, like a cat whisker? It’s a 1080p HD. Twenty feet away, it can read the time on your wristwatch. The shit they can do these days, it’s scary.”

  “In my house?”

  “In the rubble. My guess is there’re more in there. This one, it’s from the master bedroom, the master bath, one of those.”

  “How’d you get it?”

  “Contacts I got.”

  Harper shook her head, trying to focus through a sudden whirl of light-headedness. She set the spy cam back on the TV cabinet.

  “Contacts in the Miami police department?”

  “There, yeah, other places too. Should see my Christmas card list.”

  “Somebody in the police department gave you a camera they found in the remains of my house.”

  “It’s not like anybody volunteered. But, yeah, I called around, talked to some people, let them know my granddaughter was the one who lost her husband and her little baby, and was there anything they could do behind the scenes, a courtesy to an old friend. Maybe later on I could assist in some capacity, use my resources.

  “Guy shows up yesterday, stands where you are, hands me this. Says the camera was up on a wall, in a corner. Sent video and sound to your Wi-Fi.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Maybe Ross put it in, like a security thing. Didn’t tell you.”

  Harper held to the back of a chair as the floor swayed. “He wouldn’t do something like that without consulting with me.”

  “Just so you know, that newspaper article, it was my idea. I called Ross, invited him over, laid out my deal. Made him lunch. We talked over pastrami on rye. Took a while to convert him, show I was serious. He thought I was scamming him. I liked that young man. A smart kid. Skeptical, a nose for bullshit. Knew what he believed, had values. You picked a good one, Harper. A good, solid man.”

  “And why’d you do that, call Ross?”

  “I’m getting old. Got some medical bullshit going on, so I know the clock is speeding up. I wanted to come clean, see if there was a possibility of a second chance.”

  She shook her head, not getting it.

  “Second chance with you. What’s left of my family. Your mother, shooting herself the way she did, it was a kick in the gut. Made me start thinking about things. Like it might be nice to see my great-grandson from time to time.” He raised a preemptive hand. “Oh, I’m not crazy, I knew you weren’t going to invite me over for Thanksgiving, nothing like that. But I thought, I don’t know, maybe you and me could come to an understanding, reconcile. If I put my ugly past out there, it might get things rolling. A public confession like they do in AA and that bullshit. Stand up, ask for forgiveness. Ross thought it might do the trick.”

  Sal went over to the TV cabinet, picked up the camera, studied it.

  “I’m not sure there’ll ever be another Thanksgiving,” she said. “But if there is, sure, you’re on the list.”

  He looked at her, his face softening, and he nodded his thanks.

  “I keep thinking about this thing,” he said. “Somebody wanted to kill Ross, okay, maybe it was some dirt he dug up on a cop, some guy on the take, I get that. The boy was a hard-ass. He knocked over some hornet nests, made enemies. But when I run it through, I keep getting stuck on this little camera.

  “A hit man, now there’s a trade I know about, but I never knew a pro hiding cameras around the house of his target. Why’d he do that? What’s he trying to find out? That’s where to start. That little piece of plastic. Where it came from, why it’s there. Anything it could tell us.”

  Harper took a measured breath and looked into Sal’s eyes. The old man was smiling at her.

  “You follow? I think that little camera is where to start.”

  “The camera.”

  “Where you start digging. I got no confidence in the cops. I mean, sure, plenty of times I been the beneficiary of their ineptitude, yeah, yeah, lucky me. But this time’s different, this killer, I want this asshole. So what I’m doing, I’m making it my project to nail the guy’s ass to the wall. It’s how I got started in this business in the first place, things coming around full circle, personal vengeance, pure and simple. You interested?”

  Though she knew the answer, Harper asked the question anyway, wanting to hear the words spoken aloud, complete the choral response, this chilling ceremony they were performing.

  “Interested in what?”

  “You and me join forces, find the lowlife that did this. You want in?”

  NINE

  February, Miami Beach, Florida

  On the sidewalk outside Sal’s apartment, Harper tried to catch her breath. The old man had offered to drive her back to Nick’s condo, at least call a cab, but she wanted to walk, burn off the manic shivers.

  She set off fast, a block, another block, steering east toward the beach. Minutes later, when she arrived at the water’s edge, crossing Collins over to the white stretch of sand and the boardwalk and the breezy palms, she found the ocean still as a lake.

  She crossed the boardwalk and slogged through the soft dune sand and kept walking toward the water’s edge. Her heart had lost traction, skipping and wallowing without rhythm.

  At Sal’s apartment she’d come looking for information. A long shot that Ross let something slip about his chocolate story. A few minutes later, Harper made a pact with the old man. Partners now, they would track the killer, uncover the motive, and when they found him, they would execute whatever grim justice they decided on.

  At the end of their meeting, Harper had shaken Sal’s dry, bony hand, agreed to speak later, to share what evidence she could obtain from Alvarez, with Sal doing the same. He’d activate his network of cronies and former associates, call in more favors. Between the two, it might take a week or a month or a year, but they’d succeed.

  The foamy surf curled around her ankles, soaked her shoes. She waded forward, up to her shins. The sand loosened around her feet. She could feel the alluring undertow calling out the names of the weak and willing.

  She thought of Deena in the palatial Crillon Hotel, the slug blasting apart the muscles of her heart.

  She looked out at the spread of the ocean and imagined disappearing into the blue foam, taking a long pull of the brine and being finished with the pain. Join Deena and sweet Leo and Ross in the darkness, in the vast empty room o
n the other side.

  “Good god,” came a voice behind her. “You’re her. You’re Harper.”

  She halted, turned to look into the face of a tall, red-haired man with pale-blue eyes. He wore white slacks and a loose Cuban guayabera and was holding out the front page of the Miami News, the issue from three days ago with her photograph on the front page.

  “Look, I hate to intrude,” he said. “But this is you, right? Harper?”

  She stared at him a moment, then nodded.

  “Oh, man, I’m so sorry. My deepest sympathies. I was just reading what happened, these crimes, and I look around and there you are. I couldn’t help saying something. I can’t imagine your pain.”

  “Thank you. But I’m okay.”

  He took a long, worried look at her.

  “Well, I’m sorry, but you don’t look okay. You seem a little, I don’t know, you seem lost. I don’t want to be forward, but is there anything I can do? Call a friend. Maybe give you a ride somewhere.”

  “I said I’m okay.”

  She turned from the waves, mounted the hard-packed slope, passing by the man. He was silent, staring down at the newspaper in his hand, at her photo. He seemed flustered by his own forwardness, holding himself stiffly, an awkward grip on the paper.

  Back on the powdery sand with the sunbathers and vacation revelers, Frisbees in the air, jarring music, the scent of coconut oil, she plodded across the boardwalk, found an empty bench beneath a cluster of palms and could go no farther. She sat.

  The man had tagged along and was standing a few feet away at the far end of the green bench.

  “My name is Harry, by the way. Though my friends call me Spider.”

  She nodded, giving the man a longer look. His pale-blue eyes seemed tranquil and faraway. A poet’s eyes. A mystic’s.

  “Look, I’m sorry I bothered you. I apologize.”

  He folded the paper, tucked it under his arm. She’d registered something about him, an echo of another face, one she’d seen before, one she’d seen recently. She couldn’t remember the context, couldn’t pluck that single image from the harrowing flurry of the last few days.