'Give us the tape, you get the money,' Carmel said.
'Oh my god oh my god oh my god…'
'The fuckin' tape,' Rinker snarled. The woman put a hand out toward the muzzle, as though she could fend off bullets, and slowly backed away, still looking down at the man.
The tape was in the kitchen, in a cupboard, inside a Dutch oven. She handed it to Rinker, who handed it to Carmel, who looked at it and nodded. 'You didn't make any copies?'
'No, no, no, no…'The woman was staring fixedly at Rinker now. Then the man in the frontroom groaned and Rinker turned and walked toward him.
'He's alive?' Marta Blanca asked. Rinker said, 'Yeah, it happens. Sometimes the bullet doesn't even make it through the skull bone.' She casually leaned forward, bringing the muzzle to within an inch or two of the man's head, and fired three quick shots into his skull. His feet bounced once, and he laid still.
Marta crossed herself, her eyes now fixed on Rinker. 'You're going to kill me, aren't you?' she said, with the sound of certainty in her voice.
'No, I'm not,' Rinker said. She showed a tiny smile.
Carmel, who had been carrying the second gun, shot Marta Blanca in the back of the head. As she fell, Carmel stepped forward and fired five more times. Then she smiled at
Rinker, her eyes bright with excitement, and said, 'We got the goddamn tape. We got the goddamn tape.'
Rinker put the gun back in her jacket pocket and said, 'Let's get a drink somewhere.'
'Let's check the tape to make sure it's right, erase it, and then get a drink somewhere,' Carmel said.
Going out into the hall, they closed the door behind themselves; they took three steps and suddenly a shaft of light fell across their faces. They both looked right, standing in the hall, and then down. A small girl stood there, looking up at them. Their faces were illuminated by the light from the interior. Then behind the girl, a crabby mommy called, 'Heather! Shut that door!'
Carmel was fumbling at the pistol in her pocket, but then another door opened above them, and a male voice said a few unintelligible words; they both looked up, and the little girl closed the door.
'Gotta go,' Rinker said urgently.
'She saw us,' Carmel said.
But there were footsteps on the landing above and Rinker thrust Carmel toward the door. She went, hurrying, Rinker a step behind, out the door, down the sidewalk, the apartment door closing behind them.
'She was just a kid,' Rinker said. 'She won't remember. They might not find the bodies for a week.'
'Why can't this be easy?' Carmel asked. They hurried down the dark side walk toward the lights of Dinkytown, and she added, 'This is just like a dream I had when I was a teenager. A school dream, where I couldn't find my locker and the bell was about to ring, and every time I was about to find it, something else happened to keep me away from it…'
'Everybody has that dream,' Rinker said. 'We're in the clear.'
'Maybe,' Carmel said. She turned to look back; the dark figure of a man was climbing on a bike, and then headed away from them, out on the street. 'But I am on the inside; if anything comes out of that kid, we're gonna have to go back and clean up.'
'Let's get that drink,' Rinker said.
They had several drinks, and two midnight steaks, at Carmel's apartment. Carmel had a rarely used grill on her balcony, and Rinker did the honors, moving the meat and sauce like a professional. 'I once worked in a bar where we had an outdoor grill. Place was full of cowboys, wanted their steaks burned,' she told
Carmel.
'Make mine not-quite-rare,' Carmel said. 'No blood.' Carmel was in the media room, looking at the tape: the whole episode with Rolo was on the tape, while the other tapes had only the final sequence. 'So this is the original,' she told
Rinker with satisfaction. 'Even if there's a copy someplace, they could get me into court, but I'd prove it was a copy and could have been altered and I'd be gone.'
'Still be best if there weren't any copies,' Rinker said.
'You about done out there?'
'All done. Dinner is served.'
'Good. One more thing before we eat.' Carmel stripped the tape out of the cassette by hand, tossed the cassette pack into a waste basket, squeezed the jumbled tangle of tape into a wad the size of a softball, and dropped it onto the hot charcoal in the grill.
'That won't be coming back,' she said as she watched it burn.
'Three people dead because of that tape,' Rinker said, shaking her head.
'Ah, they were nothing, a bunch of druggies,' Carmel said. 'Nobody'll miss them.'
'Even druggies have families, sometimes,' Rinker said. 'I hated my step-dad and my older brother, I don't like my mom anymore, but I've got a little brother, he's out in L.A. and he does drugs, sometimes he lives on the beach… I'd do anything I could for him. I do everything I can for him.'
'Really,' Carmel said, impressed. They'd moved the steaks onto a seldom-used dining table. 'I've never been like that with anybody. I mean, I give to charity and all, but I have to. I've never really been where… I do anything for somebody.'
'Not even for Hale?'
Carmel shook her head: 'Not even for Hale.'
'You killed for him,' Rinker said.
'No, I didn't,' Carmel said. 'I killed for me – for something / want. Which is
Hale. If he'd had his choice, who knows? He might've decided to stay with
Barbara.'
'Mmm,' Rinker said, chewing. She swallowed, watched for a moment as Carmel worked her way into the steak and then asked, 'Would you have killed the little girl?'
Carmel said, 'You make me sound like a monster.'
'No, no. I'm just interested,' Rinker said. 'I'd do it, if it was absolutely necessary. But I'd hate doing it.'
'Why?'
'Because she's a kid.'
'So what? None of this means anything, this…' Carmel looked around. '… this life. We're just a bunch of meat. When we think something, it's just chemicals. When we love something, it's more chemicals. When we die, all the chemicals go back in the ground, and that's it. There's nothing left. You don't go anywhere, except in the ground. No heaven, no hell, no God, no nothing. Just
… nothing.'
'That's pretty grim,' Rinker said. She pointed a fork at Carmel. 'I've seen people like you – philosophical nihilists. People who really believe all that. .. eventually, they can't stand it. Most of them commit suicide.'
Carmel nodded. 'I can see that. That's probably what I'll do, when I get older.
If I live to get older.'
'Why not do it now?' Rinker asked. 'If nothing means anything, why wait?'
'No reason, except curiosity. I want to see how things come out. I mean, killing yourself is as meaningless as not killing yourself. Makes no difference if you do or you don't. So as long as you're not bored, as long as you're feeling good
… why do it?'
'But you'd do it if you had to. Kill yourself.'
'Hell, I might kill myself if I don't have to,' Carmel said.
'Really?'
'Sure. For the same reason that I'm staying now. Curiosity. I can't be absolutely one-million percent sure that there's nothing on the other side; so as long as it's one-millionth of a percent possible, why not check?'
'Man, that's almost enough to bum me out,' Rinker said.
'It does bum me out from time to time,' Carmel said. 'But I get over it pretty quickly. I'm just an upper sort of person.'
'Chemically.'
'Absolutely,' Carmel said. After a couple more bites, she asked, 'How about you?
How do you justify all this stuff.'
'I'm kind of religious, I guess,' Rinker said.
'Really?'
'Yeah. I don't think anything really happens in this world that isn't part of
God's plan. And if God wants somebody to die, now, if that's that person's fate,
I can't say no.'
'So you're just what… the finger of God?'
'I wouldn't put it ex
actly that way. It sounds too… vain, I guess. Too important. But what I do is God's will.'
'Jesus,' Carmel said. Then quickly: 'Sorry, if that offends you, I'll…'
'No, no, jeez, I hang around with Italians, for Christ's sake. Catholics, man.
Nobody talks the talk like Catholics. I'm not exactly religious that way – I mean, I used to work in a nudie bar. It's just that I believe in
… some kind of God. Not in heaven or hell, just in God. We're all part of it.'
'What about stuff like guns? Where'd you learn about that?'
'We always had guns in our house when I was a kid, my step-dad was a hunter.
Poacher, really. So I knew about rifles and shotguns. Then the Mafia guys taught me the basic stuff about handguns, though most of them don't know a lot,' Rinker said. 'I figured that if I was gonna do this – be a hit man – I'd better learn about them. You can get most of what you need from books. There's an ocean of gun stuff out there.'
'So you know all about the bullets and how fast they go…'
'Pretty much. I don't reload – make my own ammunition – because that would be too much of a trademark,' Rinker said. 'Sooner or later they could get me on it.
But factory ammo is as good as anything I could make up for my kind of work, anyway.' 'Are the guns really special? I mean…' 'Nah. Most of them are stolen, and they get passed around. I got a friend who picks them up for me, cuts the threads for the silencers. He checks them mechanically, and I fire them a few times to double check, but basically, all my work is within ten feet or so. Up close. So I use fairly small calibers and fire several times.'
'You carry the silencers separately?'
'Yeah. A little plastic box with a couple of crescent wrenches and a couple pairs of pliers – if you saw them on an X-ray, it'd look like a tool kit.
There's no way to hide guns, though. Not conventional guns, anyway.'
They talked for a long time, nihilism and religion, guns and ammo, and that night, very late, as Carmel was dozing off, she smiled sleepily as she replayed the conversation. She'd gone to college with a lot of finance and law students.
They'd stayed up nights studying, not talking.
This night, she thought, was like what a lot of people did in college, a few beers with friends, talk about God and death.
She drifted peacefully away, and may have had a dream about a coil of videotape going up in smoke. And about guns.
Chapter Eight
Lucas and Black followed the Ramsey County medical examiner into the work room, where the body of Rolando D'Aquila was stretched out on a stainless-steel tray.
'They really fucked this boy over,' Black said, with a low whistle of disbelief.
He'd heard about it, but hadn't seen the body. 'Look at his kneecaps.'
'Look at his heels, if you want to see something that must've hurt,' the ME said. He was a dark, hairy man with a beard. A Rasputin, with a Boston accent.
'So what are these letters?' Lucas asked.
'I've got a photograph for you, but I thought you might want to see it in person,' the ME said. He picked up one of the dead man's hands, and turned it over. On the back of the hand were a series of bloody scrapes that looked like: dew
Lucas and Black squatted, got down close: 'What is it?' Black asked.
'I don't know,' the ME said. 'But he did it himself, because we found the skin under his fingernails. He did it not long before he died – he had blood on his fingertips, which would have been worn away if his hands had been free, and he used them for anything.
So: we think he might have known he was going to be killed, and tried to leave something behind.'
'Like the name of the killer,' Black said. 'Which is probably Dew.'
'Really?' The ME bent over the hand and said, 'I never saw Dew. I was looking at it the other way – I saw Mop.'
Black looked at Lucas: 'What do you think? M-o-p or D-e-w?'
'Beats the shit out of me,' Lucas said, standing up. 'Maybe we can actually see it better in a photo…'To the ME: 'What are the chances he cut himself up just thrashing around? I mean, they were drilling holes in his kneecaps…'
'Who knows, if a guy's being tortured? The scratches look deliberate – the skin looks almost ploughed off the back of his hands. And the shapes look deliberate, not like thrashing or involuntary contraction… I think he did it on purpose.'
'Yeah.' Lucas scratched his head. 'Took some balls.'
'You don't see d-e-w?' Black asked.
'Yeah, and I see m-o-p, and I see something else, too, and I don't know what they hell that might mean,' Lucas said.
'What?' Black and the ME turned their heads, trying the scratches at different angles.
'I can see c-l-e-w – like the British spelling of clue,'
Lucas said. 'But there's no clue. Unless it was something back at the house, near his hands.'
'Aw, man, that's too weird,' Black said. 'C-l-e-w equals clue?'
'Don't you see it?' Lucas asked.
'I see it, but I don't think that's it. I think it's initials, I think…
Hey.'
'What?'
Now Black was scratching his head. 'I was talking to the St. Paul guys. They're looking for Rolando's sister – she lives over by the University, but they haven't been able to catch her at home. Her name is Marta Blanca. If you read the scratches backwards it could be an M instead of a W, and a B instead of a D. ..'
'Then what's all that shit in the middle?' the ME asked, pointing at the scratches.
'I don't know, this is just a theory,' Black said. 'But his hands were chained up… how were his hands?'
'Like this,' Lucas said, demonstrating. 'Over his head.'
'Then he couldn't see what he was doing, he was in all kinds of pain, he's panicked because he knows what's coming. I wonder if he was trying to get us to his sister?'
'Or that his sister had something to do with it,' Lucas said.
'Hey,' Black said, 'It's a clew, with an e-w. Let's go knock on her door.'
A little girl was playing with a plastic dump truck in the hallway of Marta
Blanca's apartment house, in front of an open apartment door.
'Hello,' Lucas said. A mommy's voice called, 'Who's that?'
Lucas leaned over the little girl and knocked once on the door jamb:
'Minneapolis police, ma'am. We're looking for a Marta Blanca?'
'Down the hall. Apartment A.'
Black stepped down the hall and knocked on the Paris-green door at the end. A young woman appeared from the back of the open apartment, carrying a dish towel and a pan that she was in the process of drying. 'Is there some kind of trouble?'
Lucas nodded: 'Yes. Her brother was killed. We need to interview her; just a routine thing.'
The woman's eyebrows were up: 'I haven't heard them out this morning – Heather usually has the door open so she can play in the hall, and Marta usually stops to talk to her.' She looked at Black and then back to Lucas and asked, 'Do you have some kind of ID?'
'Yes, I do.' Lucas smiled, tried to look pleasant, took out his ID case, handed it over.
She looked at it, then back up at Lucas: 'I've heard of you. You only do murders.'
'What's that, mom?' Heather asked. 'Talk to you later,' the mother said to the girl, handing Lucas's ID case back. 'This is a policeman. He catches bad men.'
'I didn't see any men at Marta's,' the girl said.
'Okay,' Lucas said.
Black, at the end of the hall, said, 'Nobody home.'
'They were having a party last night,' Heather said.
Her mother frowned: 'I didn't hear a party – I didn't see anybody coming or going.'
'I heard them popping the balloons. Like at a birthday party,' the girl said.
Lucas looked down the hall at Black, whose face had gone tight. Black said,
'That's enough for an entry.'
'Right,' Lucas said. To the mother: 'You better take Heather back inside.'
'What? Wh
y?' She turned her eyes down to the other door. Black had slipped his pistol out of his holster, and was holding it by his side, where the little girl couldn't see it. The woman looked back at Lucas, suddenly understanding, and said, 'Oh, no, no… Heather, c'mon. C'mon inside with mom.'
When they'd gone inside, Lucas nodded at Black, who lined up on the Paris-green door, then kicked it below the knob. The old door punched open, and Lucas,. 45 in his hand, stepped past Black. One step and he saw the Latino man on the floor. Another step, and he saw the woman just beyond. They were both face down.
'Okay,' Black said, from behind. 'Watch me, man…'
The two of them edged through the apartment, looking for anyone else; but the place was empty except for the bodies. Lucas walked back to the living room. No signs of a struggle, nor had the little girl apparently heard any – but she had heard the balloons popping. These were executions, then, with silencers. He'd seen enough bodies in his career that two more shouldn't have affected him, but these did.
The cool efficiency of the killer, swatting human beings as though they were so many gnats.
He shook his head asked Black, 'Got your phone?'
'Yeah, I'll call,' Black said. He was standing over the man: 'Goddamn, look at this guy's head. Same deal: half-dozen rounds.'
Lucas, slipping his gun away, squatted next to the woman's body. Her face was older than its years, he thought: careworn, but with smile-lines, too. The rims of her nostrils were slightly rough, reddened. Cocaine, he thought. 'Same here,' he said. And he added: 'This takes it away from Hale Allen. He might've been willing to kill his old lady for her money, but this isn't that. This is something else.'
'Yeah,' Black said. 'He was too fuckin' dumb, anyway.' He was holding the cell phone to his ear and said, 'Marcy? This is me… yeah, yeah, shut up for a minute, will you? Lucas and I are looking at a couple of more dead ones in an apartment in Dinkytown… No, I'm not. No, I'm not. I need you to get all the shit rolling over here, huh? Yeah…'
While he was telling her about it, Lucas moved quickly through the apartment. He was going through a scatter of paper on the kitchen counter when he heard a quiet, single knock on the door. He looked up just in time to see the mommy take two steps through the door. She said, 'Did you…' and then saw the bodies. 'Oh, God.'
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