“It’s Lenny, Jack, you know, broken-nose Lenny.”
“Where’s Roger?” Nightmarish scenarios exploded in my mind.
“He’s unable to talk, right now.” She laughed and said, “The blood’s coming, Jack. I’ll see you later—shall we say an obscure route called Seawatch Road?” The phone went dead.
I dropped inside my Porsche and started the engine. As I pulled away, I saw in my rearview mirror the dark shape of a woman in the distance getting out of a car and walking toward the apartment.
10:00 p.m.
The narrow drive to Roger’s house was crowded with emergency vehicles, swirling rainbow hues against the surrounding houses and trees. The fiery, glowing lights slammed into me like blows to my head. When I made my frantic call to the police moments earlier, the dispatcher told me that a call had already come in regarding Roger’s address. After my insistent questioning regarding the call, the dispatcher revealed that the caller was female.
“With any discernible accent?” I asked. “British or Irish?”
“From what I could tell,” the dispatcher replied. “I’d say Irish.”
I parked my car. My senses became gripped with terror; seizing me, hurting me. I couldn’t feel the car, the ground; nothing seemed to be anchored to earth. I watched the swarms of lawmen, the flashing badges attached to shadowy figures, uniformed and plain clothed, drawing a perimeter around the house. I exited my car and headed for the front door. A uniformed cop flashing three stripes on muscular khaki braced me at the garage. “You can’t go in there sir,” he commanded. “Sir, wait, you can’t—sir!”
I pushed my way in the way any man would when rescuing his brother from a burning house. I started down the corridor toward his bedroom, toward the broad white uniforms of the Emergency Medical Team that blocked the doorway and readied themselves to leave.
“The coroner needs it now,” sounded the attendant in the radio.
A man stepped out from an open doorway in the corridor. It was Frank, tall and virtuous and in my way. Mick stood in a nearby room holding a notepad and lacking any emotion.
“Jack,” Frank said. His voice was like a muted orb suspended in darkness.
Ignoring him, I rushed past the E.M.Ts and saw the walls of Roger’s bedroom, the dark-red splatter. My mind rushed to a similar place that happened twenty-five years ago, inside the guest quarters of an old Victorian house—a nightmare glistening in moonlight. But now in Roger’s bedroom an orgy of blood-letting had soaked the sheets that draped down into a fluid amulet of dark cherry red, pooling atop a mahogany floor... What lay in bed was Roger. His eyes were open, gazing, as if he was going to move at any moment. His body was nothing more than a long, dark shape…a slashed bloody corpse.
The voice came again, “Jack...Jack.” A hand gripped my shoulder, steering me around the corridor until I stood in the living room next to the same sofa I had laid my friend on just the morning before.
Frank’s eyes did what any good friend’s eyes would do when the initial consoling was to take place. They skipped and glanced, trying to act as a buoy. But shock is a field of force that’s impenetrable, and so Frank let go and allowed me to float the best I could.
Dutiful men and women marched in and out of the house. Their hand-held, shoulder-set radios chirped with orders from dispatch and commanders. The forensics team came in, first, the coroner, a pretty mortician with black bag in hand for the last house call. Next, the scientific lawpersons, slight in physique and more sophisticated than the grunt policemen. They asserted themselves politely through the house with large cases in their hands and cameras around their necks, to view, open up, to document another piece of evidence in this binge of murders.
I decided not to concede to Frank’s questions. I left the house and stood outside, trying to breathe, trying to think.
10:40 p.m.
I steered my Porsche onto a narrow partially paved access road called Seawatch Road. It was an obscure semi-private back road that cut through the canyons and was used for fire trucks in the event of brush fires. With no street lamps and hardly a passing vehicle, a rematch with Lena on this dark and quiet corridor was dangerously ideal.
I looked down at my cell phone and thought about the name, the last caller I.D. I had to block it out or it would ruin me. My mind kept drifting back to Roger’s bedroom: his unrecognizable, bludgeoned body. Every impulse inside me wanted to, needed to, set my anguish free and wail out a primal cry for my friend.
Instead I kept the only thing I understood at the moment burning in my mind. I had to keep my head in this or none of it would work. I dimmed the annoying dash light and thought about the darkness outside and how strong and ready my hands were and how I was going to finish it. It’s going to work. Inside my car's storage compartment was my trusty Glock.
I parked my car in a turnout where I’d seen patrol cars parked before waiting for speeders. The violators were mostly teenagers hauling ass through here in their rice burners and on their crotch rockets. I killed the headlights and lowered the windows. I scanned the dark open fields and rolling hills, studying the shadowy, shimmering haunts of moonlight. I tuned my ears acutely toward the distance. I needed to hear it, the whine of the Ferrari echoing through the hills.
Then a subtle breeze, like a gentle, passing spirit, blew against my face, carrying with it a scent of wild sage and memories...a best friend lying in a cold county morgue, and a good detective lying in a cold, London morgue. Tonight Ms pale-skin cunt was going to feel it; tonight the bitch was going to stare down the barrel of my judgment gun.
My advantage was to lie in wait. This time the Ferrari’s superior horsepower wouldn’t overtake me. She was injured and high on painkillers, and her vision would have to be impaired from her broken nose.
Then I heard it, that sound, faint and slithering through the hills, not traffic on the distant highway. I knew that unique pitch and whine that only a high-precision Italian motor car could make.
My view of the road was elevated just enough to reveal for a few hundred yards in both directions any oncoming traffic, a perfect spot for ambush. Being the local boy that I was, I entered the road via a series of obscure dirt roads instead of the one and only entrance off the main road. I was fairly certain Lena would not be privy to my flanking maneuver.
Then, like a 32-point white lights on a moonlit sea, distant headlamps flickered steadily inside the black distance. I pulled the pistol from its concealed spot and propped it just within reach. I started the engine, keeping my headlamps off. With the aid of the bright moon, I was able to see well enough to roll down the turnout, then the road, pacing the oncoming lights until she would be around the last bend, making her blind to me until it was too late.
By the rev of both engines, I estimated that I was traveling the same speed as she, about 35 MPH. Around the bend she finally appeared, straight on, rolling toward me and unaware of the roadblock about to confront her. Three hundred feet, two hundred feet, then one hundred feet—I switched on my high beams. She careened sharply out of the lane and spun the Ferrari 180 degrees across the road and onto the shoulder where it settled in a cloud of dust.
I accelerated down the road and passed the Ferrari, then stopped about a hundred feet from it, waiting for her to pull out. She pumped the gas pedal hard, powering the engine in taunting revs. I continued down the road with the red devil now on my tail. My speed was steady, and I kept her in check by controlling the turns carefully. She rode my ass, though, trying to pass, but I wouldn’t let her. She hung the handgun outside the window and began firing. In the rearview mirror I could see the red-firing pulses from the short barrel.
Increasing my distance and my odds, I accelerated ahead. Fortunately the shots were all misses. They were 9 mm rounds from Victor’s Glock 19, and I knew the gun well because Victor and I had purchased the same guns from the same vendor. The Glock was a fine weapon, but any pistol firing from a moving position at a moving target, and especially at night from a right-handed pe
rson shooting with her left hand, would be practically all misses. I was betting too that the swerving vehicle ahead of her, swimming inside the crippling pain of her broken nose, had to be a maddening target. I pulled ahead more, hoping to God that the increase in distance would diminish her aim.
I counted at least five shots. Then two more popped rapidly, one of which pierced the rear of my Porsche and through the fabric of the convertible top. Then two more snapped through the windshield, missing me by just inches.
“Sonofabitch!” I belted out. Like a soldier pinned down by enemy fire, I hunkered low in my seat. The bitch’s aim was improving. I swerved more dramatically from one side of the road to the other. Fully loaded, the pistol had fifteen rounds in its magazine, but a few rounds of the gun had already been discharged I knew from Victor’s close encounter with an enraged husband just days before. But how many rounds? I couldn’t be sure, but I needed her to completely discharge the ammunition inside her gun.
She approached me fast and hard. I calculated the shots warily and rendered myself inside the point of view of a psychopath who may or may not be in possession of a now empty gun. Nine shots, so far, less six, depending on how many rounds Victor had unloaded into the stucco of a Newport Beach mansion. I was betting that Lena emptied the magazine and, being familiar with Victor’s car, knew where to find a spare magazine inside the consol. Only this one, hopefully, would be the same empty magazine I chided Victor about the other day.
I veered to the shoulder and cringed as the red devil passed and took the lead. No shots were fired, leaving me with a dual assessment: she knew her gun was empty and needed to reload and hadn’t done so yet, or she loaded the magazine, fired at will, and realized that her Mandingo lover’s feckless storage of an empty magazine had just put her in a compromising position.
I pulled off the road and stopped on the shoulder. Her brake lights beamed bright red; the engine roared as she brought the car to a quick stop.
I concealed my gun between the small of my back and the belt of my pants. I stepped out of my car, hoping to God she loaded that empty magazine into the butt of Victor’s gun. I walked toward her. She climbed out of the Ferrari, holding the gun straight along her side. We both stopped and stood in the middle of the road and squared off at about ten paces. The headlamps from my car acted like spotlights.
“What say you, Jacky boy? Taking a bit of a chance standing there like that, aren’t you?” Her voice was pure Irish and way over confident. “Quite rash behavior to die like this.”
I was quiet.
“You know I can’t let you take our princess away, Jack. I should have known that she came to this end of the earth for a reason other than business. The fucking bitch was going to sail away and leave me holding the bag. We were hunting, as usual, but she was hunting something more—an escape—and with you, Jacky boy. I don’t know why, either. You’re such a pussy of a bloke.”
My Glock pushed against my kidneys, ready to be drawn and fired.
“Did you enjoy the show at Roger’s house? I even tipped off the police to add character to it all when you arrived. He was such a sweet lad, but an even better piece of chum. Shredded chum now, I’m afraid.”
My firearm was now a hot, steel rod; my finger ached for the trigger.
“It seems you have a bounty on your head, Mr. Kidd. As soon as I got back from London, I get an earful from some people here in Newport Beach. You have something they want, that pretty garden of yours, and they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
It made sense, how she was able to slip from the hotel infirmary tonight. Turner and company needed their wildcat locked and loaded and out for revenge.
Lena moved a few steps closer. The headlights reflected a dull gleam off the black pistol in her hand. She went on, “All I had to do was eliminate your friend and put a bullet in your head. I was going to do it anyway, but now I can double my pleasure. Your life for my freedom. It’s a good exchange, wouldn’t you say?”
My heart was a jack hammer, pounding inside my chest. Her pale, wounded face made a perfect target. “You’re one smart bitch, Lenny.” My words were tactful, restrained, filled with pure hate.
She cocked her head and twisted a smile. “You seem a bit confident, Jacky boy. You think I’m out of ammo, is that it?”
“Possibly.”
“I may have another magazine—a backup—as you yanks call it.”
“You could.” Bingo.
“I think now would be a good time for you to drop to your knees and beg for mercy, Jacky boy. Or perhaps a prayer is in order.” With one last evil stare, she lifted the gun, aimed, then pulled the trigger. The pistol clicked benignly. I had calculated it superbly.
I reached behind my back, lifted the Glock, and aimed it across the arena. Three pulls of my finger squeezed back smoothly, sending three rounds through the barrel. Two bullets pounded against her upper torso with the third finding a sweet spot right between her eyes. The bitch collapsed into a mound of something limp.
I walked to the body and verified the unmistakable look of an attractive, dead woman. Rivulets of blood streamed from the head wound, pooling inside a pair of lifeless, glass-blue eyes.
“Victor never had a backup,” I said as I pulled the gun from her dead hand. I then heard Detective Sullivan’s voice in my head, “Dead on in the forehead, Jack. Hell of shot for an amateur.”
I let go a sigh of relief as I ejected the empty magazine from the pistol, the same magazine Victor had lazily, but blessedly, tossed back inside the console of his car.
I walked to the Ferrari and dropped numbly into the seat. The engine was still on, purring like a large, powerful cat. I drove away, leaving my wrecked and bullet-ridden Porsche on the side of the road.
R.I.P., Silver Bird.
50
I pulled the Ferrari into a driveway and parked in an open garage. I got out of the car, carrying the pistol in my hand. Desmond stood inside the garage and closed the garage door. He looked at the gun, then me. “It’s one o’clock in the morning, mate. What took you?”
“Some final business.”
“I see you switched your transport.”
“Things came up.”
“I suppose driving a vehicle like that would be rather pretentious. Are you sure no one saw you?”
“I’m not sure of anything, Desmond.”
“Of course, Jack. Come in and ready yourself. Everything should be in place.”
I opened the storage compartment of the Ferrari and grabbed a large handbag. Inside the bag were the jerry-rigged gloves with the razors that Lena had used to kill Roger. They were clean and washed of any blood, in Roger’s shower, no doubt.
“Ghastly things,” Desmond said. “Evidence?”
“Not anymore.” I dropped Victor’s pistol inside the bag and closed the compartment door. “Is she here?” I asked.
“Inside sleeping. She sleeps easily, considering what sort of day it’s been. Then again, most sociopaths sleep well through anything. Are you sure about all this, Jack?”
I nodded, avoiding eye contact with Desmond. I followed him into the house, a house located in Dana Point, a harbor town ten miles south of Newport Beach. The house belonged to Yuko Akagi. She allowed me keys to both her properties with this one having a perfect proximity to the open sea.
Throughout the house were pictures of Yuko, and only Yuko, placed on tables and hung on walls. In the living room hung a large framed photograph of her standing nude on a beach with her nicely rounded bum showing in the warmth of the setting sun.
“Your client-friend has quite a case of self-absorption,” Desmond remarked.
I grinned tiredly. I saw through the back door my 42 foot yacht docked inside the private slip.
“I’ll go and rouse the princess from her sleep, Jack.”
“I’ll do it, Desmond. Thanks for all this.”
“I do hope it plays out for you. You’re taking a big risk. A narrow escape it was for me, slipping Catherine off the island
and into your yacht. It took a tad over an hour to motor your vessel down here. I brought one of my beauties.” Desmond nodded toward a woman curled asleep on a couch in the living room. “The whole time she had a watch on things. It didn’t seem any boats followed us. I topped off the tank with more petrol, and you should have enough provisions stowed away. I went down your list pretty carefully.”
“I’m sure you did. Which bedroom is she in?”
“The one on the left. I laid out a change of clothes for you.”
I entered the bedroom and saw that Catherine had just come out of the shower and was rustling through a suitcase for her clothes. She turned toward me, smiled, and said, “You made it.”
“Made it?”
“Here, to our jumping off point. Lena wasn’t too difficult was she?”
My tongue, my thoughts, suspended abruptly. A page had just turned, boldly, succinctly, declaring—of course.
“I’m glad to see you made it, too, Cat. I see your dirty dance with Conrad Turner proved useful.”
“Claws around a man’s scrotum do work like a charm.”
Catherine approached me and brought her index finger to my lips, quelling my words, my desire to turn and run. She kissed me lightly on the mouth. “Please, let’s not talk anymore about the past, John.” Her voice was blameless and perfect. “The important thing is that we’re both here. Tonight we begin anew.” She went back to her luggage and continued rummaging through it.
I noticed a pair of dungarees, a lightweight sweater, and a pair of deck shoes on a chair. I began dressing. “Are you almost ready, Catherine?”
“I need to dress, that’s all. You’re different, John. You called me Catherine, as if it was easy for you to say my name; that makes you different now.” She dropped the bath towel and stood naked in the room. We both dressed alongside each other, carefully, methodically, buttoning up for the final act.
“How far is our destination?” she asked.
The Irresistible Muse of Jack Kidd Page 31