Stealing the Countess

by David Housewright

  Heavenly glanced at her watch. She had been doing that every few minutes since we arrived at Citizens Bank Park. I told her to stop.

  “One of the great things about baseball, it doesn’t have a clock,” I said.

  She kept looking anyway. It wasn’t going to make the bottom of the third inning come any sooner, though, when we were scheduled to meet Dr. Tim Young. I wondered if his nickname had anything to do with Hall of Fame basketball player Dr. J—Julius Erving—the greatest 76er of them all. Heavenly picked the ballpark, yet it was Doc who selected the exact location, the condiment island in the open area behind section 141 and to the left of Harry the K’s Broadcast Bar & Grille. I had already examined the ground, taking careful note of the restrooms, escalator, and food stands; it’s where I found the Schmitter. I was particularly interested in the nearest exit—the left field gate behind the Schmitter, where a man in a hurry could dash, hiding himself in the huge, crowded parking lot beyond.

  I finished the sandwich and licked the sauce off my fingers, disgusting Heavenly even more. I wiped my hands with a couple of napkins and deposited them and the remains of the meal beneath my seat. I lifted my beer out of the cup holder, took a long pull, leaned back in the seat, and sighed contentedly.

  Heavenly looked at her watch.

  “Would you relax,” I said.

  “Did it ever occur to you that Doc Young might shoot us on sight?”

  “The man’s a professional. He’s here to conduct business. He’s not going to take the risk of killing us in front of twenty-five thousand baseball fans—I’m surprised the Phillies are drawing so well, being ten games back in the middle of July. Anyway, if he shoots us, it’ll be after we leave the ballpark.”

  “So we have that to look forward to.”

  “You’re awfully jumpy given what you do for a living.”

  Heavenly adjusted her sling.

  “I’ve been reviewing the situation,” she said.

  “Isn’t there a song…?”

  “McKenzie…”

  “You’re just upset because you set off the alarm when we entered the ballpark.”

  “Do you know how many places have metal detectors at the door? Every time I walk through one I’ll need to explain myself.”

  “The rent-a-cops supervising the detectors—they seemed happy to talk it over with you.”

  “I see my future. It’s already old.”

  Heavenly made a production out of looking at her watch again, tugging at her sling, folding her good arm over it, and staring out at the field. It was the top of the second, two outs, with the Marlins trying to get something going. She smiled slightly when she caught me looking at my own watch out of the corner of my eye.

  * * *

  Bottom of the third inning, the Phillies coming to bat. The concession stands were as quiet as they were ever going to be—most fans were in their seats, many of them finishing up whatever food or beverages they had purchased before the game began. They wouldn’t be queuing up to get more until after the Phillies recorded their third out. Given their offensive output lately, I figured that might come in a hurry.

  Only one man was standing at the condiment island. I recognized him as we approached—Marcus Camby. He had a pleased expression on his face that quickly turned to concern when he saw Heavenly’s sling.

  “What happened?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

  “I zigged when I should have zagged,” Heavenly said.

  The explanation didn’t seem to please him at all.

  “The man who followed you last night.”

  The way Camby spoke—it was a promise of retribution. Heavenly heard it, too. She rested her hand on his wrist.

  “It happened before I came to Philadelphia,” she said. “I didn’t wear the sling last night because I didn’t want you to worry.”

  She’s the best, my inner voice told me. She lies even better than you do.

  Camby flung a nod in my direction.

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “Just that—a friend.”

  A small, frail-looking old man approached the island; he was dressed as if he were playing golf. Two men who looked like bouncers at the kind of joint that uses velvet ropes to keep the unfashionably attired at bay stood on each side of him.

  “Where’s my $50,000, Petryk?” he asked. “Where’s my violin? I should have one or the other from you.”

  Heavenly’s response was to study him for a few beats.

  “Are you staring at me?” the man asked. “Why are you staring at me? Stop it. I said stop it. Marcus, she’s staring at me.”

  “Heavenly,” Marcus said. “You know better.”

  She moved her gaze to me.

  “It’s not him,” she said. “He’s not the Voice.”

  “No. He’s just a cog in the machine.”

  “Machine?” the old man said. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

  “Doc,” Camby said.

  “That’s right. I’m Tim Young. Cog in a machine? I could have you fucking killed where you stand.”

  He spoke loudly enough that the home plate umpire could probably hear him, but being used to such language allowed the game to continue.

  “Where’s my goddamn money?” Doc wanted to know.

  “Shhh, Doc.” Camby rested his hand on Young’s arm the way Heavenly had rested hers on his. “We’re here to talk.”

  “Then somebody had better start talking pretty goddamn fast.”

  “You’ve already told me everything I need to know,” I said.

  Young pointed at me.

  “Who is this asshole?” he asked. “Why is he staring at me?”

  “Friend of Heavenly’s,” Camby said.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah—McKenzie.”

  There’s no doubt now, my inner voice said.

  “You’re being played, Doc,” I said.

  “You fucking talk to me like that? You come to my town and talk like that?”

  His fists were clenched, and he bounced up and down on the balls of his feet; his face was red with exertion. He looked to me as if he were having an aneurysm. There’s dangerous and then there’s nuts. I decided Doc Young was both. I wondered how he ever managed to secure a position of responsibility.

  “Stealing the Countess Borromeo, I thought that you might have been the one who commissioned it, Doc,” I said. “I was hoping it was you. It wasn’t, though. The question you just asked proves that it wasn’t.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Heavenly had volunteered to return the $50,000 when she realized the Countess wasn’t to be had. Instead, someone shot her and stole the money from her room. You would have known that if you were the Voice, what Heavenly calls him.”

  “Wait,” Camby said. “He shot you?”

  Heavenly nodded; the lie I told did not register on her face.

  “Sonuvabitch,” Camby said.

  At least he believed me, I thought. But Doc …

  “Bullshit,” he said.

  “Real shit,” I told him. “Trevor Ruland and Heavenly were hired over the phone. Ruland was supposed to acquire the Countess; Heavenly was supposed to pay him off and deliver it to … well, to you, apparently. You know all this, though. They didn’t know who their employer was, but you—you don’t like conducting business on the phone.”

  “Fucking NSA, fucking FBI, ain’t no privacy anymore.”

  “Uh-huh. This Voice came to you personally with his offer. He was going to drop a four-million-dollar Stradivarius in your lap, negotiate with you to sell it back to the rightful owners for half of its insured value, and split the proceeds. I bet the two of you did the exact same thing sometime in the past.”

  “You can’t prove that.”

  “All the Voice required to put the plan into motion was fifty large in seed money.”

  “Fifty-five.”

  “Only the plan went to hell when someone beat him to the violin and the insurance company announced that it wouldn’t pay
a ransom. It should have ended there. The Voice should have returned your money. Oh, well—better luck next time. Except he really wanted that violin. So he convinced some dumb schnook to pony up a $250,000 reward and convinced another dumb schnook to go after the real thieves. Problem was—what to do about you? You have a volatile personality, Doc, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “If the Voice had recovered the Stradivarius and sold it back for a paltry quarter mil—without sharing—I bet you’d be offended. And he wasn’t going to share. He killed Ruland and tried to kill Heavenly partly to keep them from kibitzing; he knew they both would have snatched the violin if they could. But mostly it was to convince you that it was someone else who ruined your day.”

  “That’s not the way I heard it.”

  “The Voice suckered us both, Doc. I was supposed to find the violin and return it for the reward so you’d think I was the one who fucked you over and not him, and if that didn’t work, guess what—he would have had you killed, too.”

  Doc shook his head as if I had fumbled the punchline of a good joke.

  “You believe this?” he asked.

  Camby didn’t answer. Doc gestured with his head at one of his thugs.

  “Get ’im,” he said.

  The thug left the island. The crowd cheered. I glanced at the scoreboard. The Phillies had scored two runs and had two on base with nobody out. Funny what you miss when you’re not paying attention.

  A moment later, the thug returned, Vincent Donatucci following closely behind. The old man moved easily. Apparently, he was in better shape than I had thought.

  “Hello, Vince,” I said.

  “You don’t look surprised to see me,” Donatucci said.

  “I knew you were here last night when you sent your punk to kill Heavenly—”

  “He did what?” Camby asked.

  “Let me guess—Paul Duclos told you I was coming to Philadelphia,” I said.

  “The man’s been calling me twice a day; wants his violin back,” Donatucci said.

  “You disappoint me, Vince. But then, I always hate to see a good man go bad.”

  “Vince? What happened to Mr. Donatucci?”

  “You don’t deserve a mister.”

  “They owe me, McKenzie.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “Enough,” Doc said.

  “What did he tell you?” Donatucci asked.

  “Exactly what you said he’d tell me.”

  “He knew the story because it’s the truth,” I said.

  “McKenzie, McKenzie, McKenzie—where’s the violin?” Donatucci said. “And don’t you dare tell me that you don’t know.”

  “If I did, I would have turned it in by now just like I promised.”

  “Hell you woulda,” Doc said.

  “Why not? What do I have to gain besides the $250,000?”

  “We could hold out for more. Find a foreign buyer. Lots of possibilities. You tellin’ me stories? I’ll tell you a story. You stole the Countess from Vince—”

  “Is that what he said?”

  “You killed the asshole in Duluth after he did his part, then you and Petryk here, you went into business for yourselves. Together, you came to my town to see if I’d make the same deal with you that I made with Vince; half of whatever we get for the Strad. But McKenzie, I don’t fuck over my friends.”

  Wow.

  “I suppose it would be useless to try and convince you otherwise,” I said.

  “Convince me,” Camby said. “Why did you come here?”

  I pointed at Donatucci.

  “I came for him.” To play off Camby’s obvious affection for her, I added, “And to protect Heavenly in case the good doctor thought she was the one playing him.”

  “He’s lying,” Donatucci said. “He didn’t know I was the one on the flip phones.”

  “I guessed a long time ago. I wanted Doc to confirm it. He did.”

  “I promise you, McKenzie and Petryk have the Countess. They’re just trying to shake you down.”

  “I’ll make it easy for you.” Doc was still bouncing on the balls of his feet when he spoke; his face was still flushed. “You deliver the violin, I’ll not only let you both live, I’ll let you keep the fifty.”

  “Fifty-five,” I said.

  I had to give Heavenly credit. Throughout the entire episode, she didn’t bat so much as an eyelash. She nudged me with her good arm.

  “Hungry?” she asked.

  I nearly reminded her of the Schmitter. Instead, I said, “I could eat.”

  “Let’s get a cheesesteak.”

  “Pat’s or Geno’s?”

  “We’ll decide on the way.”

  “You think you can just walk away?” Doc pounded his chest. “From me?”

  “We don’t have your violin, Doc.” I pointed at Donatucci. “He does. You don’t believe us—there’s nothing we can say.”

  I directed Heavenly toward the left field gate.

  “What are we going to do?” she whispered.

  “Get as far away from these guys as possible.”

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  “Don’t do this, McKenzie,” Donatucci said. “Don’t you do this.”

  “How far do you think you’ll get?” Doc said. “How far? This is my town.”

  The inning had ended, and many more fans were moving to the food stands and restrooms, which might have been why Doc’s thugs didn’t attempt to stop us. We weaved around them, walking briskly. When we reached the gate, I threw another glance over my shoulder. The two thugs were standing next to Doc Young, who was talking to Camby; Camby was nodding his head. Donatucci was on his cell phone.

  I was about to say, “Run,” but Heavenly broke into a sprint before I could.

  I hadn’t parked in the stadium’s lot. Instead, I rented a spot at the Holiday Inn at Tenth and Packer just across from the stadium, partly because it was cheaper, but mostly because it allowed us to get out on the street quicker. Unfortunately, it was also much farther away. We had to cut through the stadium lot to reach it.

  Running wasn’t doing Heavenly’s shoulder any good; she braced it with her right hand, but I knew it was hurting. I kept glancing over my shoulder; I couldn’t see anyone following us, couldn’t see anyone in the parking lot at all, and thought maybe we could slow down. It was because I was looking behind me that I didn’t see Weldon Lamm until he was ten feet away and standing between us and where we wanted to go.

  That’s who Donatucci was calling on his cell, my inner voice told me—long after the information would have been useful.

  Lamm was carrying a rifle.

  I stopped when I saw it; I would have bet the ranch it fired a .243 Winchester slug.

  Heavenly and I were trapped between parked cars with nowhere to go, Heavenly in front of me. I wanted to get past her, put myself between her and Lamm. She wouldn’t move. Instead, she straightened up, almost as if she were accepting the situation, and slid her right hand into her sling.

  Lamm brought the rifle up.

  “I said I’d fuck you up,” he said.

  Heavenly shot him three times.

  The bullets tore through her sling.

  They lifted Lamm up and threw him onto the asphalt.

  She pulled the Smith & Wesson out from under her sling and centered the sights on his unmoving chest.

  At the same time, she shook her left arm; empty shell casings fell out of the sling.

  “That hurt,” she said. “Hot.”

  I thought, Heavenly couldn’t fool the metal detectors at the entrance to the ballpark, but she had no trouble at all fooling the rent-a-cops that supervised them; they’d hovered around her, convinced that it was the bullet in her shoulder that set off the alarm, the poor woman.

  “Don’t move.”

  The order came from behind me.

  I turned toward it.

  Donatucci was standing there; he was breathing hard, and his face was flushed.


  He was holding a handgun as if he knew how to use it.

  C’mon, my inner voice said. You’re supposed to be too old to run.

  “Drop the gun, Petryk,” he said. “Drop it now.”

  Heavenly let the S&W slip from her hand onto the pavement.

  “Goddamnit, McKenzie—if you had just done what I asked,” he said.

  I was hoping to buy time with conversation, maybe convince him to let us go.

  “We can still make this work,” I said.

  “You made your choice.”

  I gestured at his handgun and said, “Times have changed.”

  “Where’s the violin?”

  “In Bayfield.”

  “Where in Bayfield?”

  “Give it up, Mr. Donatucci. If your wife knew what you were doing—”

  Marcus Camby shot Donatucci in the back of the head.

  He didn’t say a word, just walked up to the old man from behind, pointed his own gun, and squeezed the trigger.

  Donatucci’s body lurched forward.

  He fell at my feet.

  I was surprised by the lack of blood.

  Heavenly dove for her S&W.

  “No, no,” Camby chanted. “Leave it.”

  Heavenly straightened and moved away.

  Camby brushed past me, bent at the waist, and picked up the gun.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Heavenly told him.

  “I got this.”

  “Marcus—”

  “You and McKenzie, get out of here. Get out of Philadelphia. I’ll smooth it over with Doc, tell ’im Donatucci confessed before I shot him, so you won’t need to be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life.”

  Heavenly hugged him as best she could with her damaged arm.

  “Thank you, Marcus,” she said.

  “Call me in a couple of months. We’ll go dancing.”

  * * *

  We walked to the Holiday Inn as casually as we could manage, found the Ford Focus, and fired it up. I drove randomly for half an hour to make sure we weren’t being followed; drove longer than was necessary. It gave me a sense of control that I badly needed.

  Heavenly suggested we stop at a tavern she knew near Logan Square. We ordered drinks, yet barely sipped them while we watched the rest of the Phillies game on the TV above the bar. The home team won; good for them.

  “You knew Donatucci was the Voice all along,” Heavenly said.