by John Lutz
She strode along the sidewalk almost at a run, but after a few blocks, when she realized how hard she was breathing, she slowed down.
Maria hadn’t set off with any particular destination in mind, but since she was walking toward Columbus Circle she decided to go there. If the scream that was like an itch in her throat had gone away by then, she’d walk back to the apartment and see if she could make it a while longer before going out and taking the risk of trying to make a buy.
Columbus Circle, then back. Then, if the need returned…
At least she had a plan.
Plan or go mad!
Maybe, once she made it back, she wouldn’t go out again at all tonight. She could drink some booze—not at all her drug of choice—and watch some crummy TV on the lousy little set in the corner of the living room until she was tired enough to sleep. She knew Palmer Stone was right, that the smart thing, the only thing that made sense, was for her to bide her time and keep a low profile.
But Palmer Stone wasn’t the one with the scream caught in his throat.
What the hell was she up to?
Nancy Weaver, who’d been watching the new Madeline’s apartment building from across the street, saw her leave the building, dressed casually in brown slacks, white joggers, and a red tunic gathered at the waist by a thick brown belt with an oversized buckle. On the opposite side of the street, Weaver began to shadow her.
After only a few strides she knew it wasn’t going to be easy. The woman was damned near running.
Weaver was the shorter of the two women and was wearing clunky black cop’s shoes instead of joggers. Every once in a while she’d have to take a few skips to keep pace with Madeline; otherwise she’d have to break into a jog. She wasn’t dressed for jogging, what with the leather shoes and the skirt and blazer. She’d attract a lot of attention. Some of it might be Madeline’s.
Finally, on Broadway, Madeline slowed down.
Weaver stayed well back, huffing and puffing and wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist. She didn’t want to screw up this temporary assignment. Quinn believed in her, and he was about the only one left. She knew if things went right he’d put in a word for her. He was a tough guy and a real cop, and he recognized her talent for being a detective. And he had pull. He could get her back in plain clothes permanently. She could take it from there. Sure, she’d been dumb before and gotten herself all jammed up and back in uniform. It wouldn’t happen again, though. She’d make sure of that.
Madeline had slowed down even more and was kind of ambling. It was almost as if she’d been trying to get away from something and had finally found some relief. Working off tension. Weaver had been there herself and understood. She just wished Madeline didn’t have those long legs. Wished she had those long legs. A cop with legs like that could get herself promoted.
Following Madeline became progressively easier at this slower pace. Weaver fell into the other woman’s rhythm. It was almost as if she were inside Madeline’s mind and knew ahead of time what she was going to do, where she was going.
They were almost to Columbus Circle.
Gloria hadn’t had much trouble keeping up with Maria Sanchez, a.k.a. Madeline Scott. She was glad, though, that the bitch had finally slowed down. They were almost at Columbus Circle. That would be good. Plenty of traffic. Rush hour. Everybody in a hurry. Careless.
Gloria had shoved the first Madeline off the subway platform just as the train was roaring in. Even if someone in the crowd edging toward the train had noticed, it would have seemed only a slight, accidental nudge. They wouldn’t have guessed the technique and power in it.
Not a subway this time, Gloria had decided. A street vehicle. Preferably a cab, but an ordinary car or truck would do. A bus might work well. She was confident Maria Sanchez’s stay on this earth was fast coming to an end.
If Gloria didn’t have the opportunity this time, she’d wait for another chance. It would come. She had patience. God would provide.
After Victor had related to her his conversation with Palmer about Maria’s phone call, Gloria knew something had to be done, and she had to be the one to do it. Victor and Palmer would agree that Maria had to be deleted, she was sure, only not soon enough. They were men, and this bitch knew how to string men along. For the safety of all of them, for the company, Maria had to go soon, before she did damage they couldn’t control.
Watching the woman striding ahead of her—the erect posture; long legs; slender hips; and tight, round ass—Gloria momentarily considered doing things the slow way. But she soon reconsidered. This was business and nothing to play with, however enjoyable it might be. It needed to be fast, and look like an accident.
No problem. Gloria smiled, remembering not only the first Madeline, who’d been too breathless and shocked to scream, disappearing beneath the speeding subway train, but also the many hits she’d made for a long-ago insurance scam. She could make this work. Bringing about other people’s accidental deaths used to be her specialty, and it was a skill you never forgot.
Weaver saw Madeline slow down near the traffic circus of Columbus Circle. Cars, trucks, buses coming fast and from odd angles as traffic lights signaled in the dying light. A person had to be careful crossing the street here, but even with care, things happened.
Madeline stopped at the curb among a knot of about a dozen people waiting for the light to change. Several more pedestrians joined the crowd, edging in tight, closer to each other. Some of them leaned slightly forward, as if the traffic light would signal the beginning of a race.
Weaver slowed her pace. She didn’t want to reach the intersection too soon. Better to keep some distance between herself and Madeline.
She felt a tingling pain in her right calf, and her left foot was sore from her shoe being a little too tight. All that high-speed walking had taken its toll. And apparently it had all been for nothing. It wasn’t as if Madeline was late for an appointment. Weaver felt a twinge of aggravation with this woman who was taller, more attractive, and irritatingly blond. And with those legs.
The light changed, and waiting parallel traffic roared and sprang forward. The charge was led by a gleaming white stretch limo. Pedestrians could cross now in the direction of the flowing traffic, but they had to wait for right-turning vehicles to give them a break. This being New York, right-turning vehicles didn’t.
Gloria was standing directly behind Maria Sanchez when the signal changed. She could smell her shampoo and perspiration, feel the heat emanating from her lean body.
Exhaust fumes suddenly overpowered all other smells. A bus. That would be perfect!
Gloria had both fists bunched, ready to plant them between Maria’s shoulder blades and give a short but powerful shove. But the man next to Maria for some reason glanced over at Gloria. Gloria kept a poker face and let the bus rumble around the corner.
The man was looking forward again, concentrating on the traffic.
Gloria waited, mentally ticking off the seconds, aware of everything around her, knowing she had to synthesize time, movement, and her target’s inattention so that it all added up to sudden death.
Her meat.
Here came a cab.
Weaver picked up her pace and moved toward the intersection, knowing there’d soon be a break in the flow of right-turning traffic and the pedestrians straining to go would step down off the curb and claim their territory between the white lines.
She heard the screech of rubber on blacktop. There was a flurry of movement ahead as people waiting at the curb surged across, moving around something. Most of them kept walking, glancing behind them and down, as if at an object they’d dropped that wasn’t valuable enough to stop for and retrieve. Several were looking deliberately away from something.
Uh-oh!
Weaver could see the yellow roof of a stopped cab with its service light glowing.
She stood on tiptoe and saw Madeline well ahead of her, among the throng of people striding across the street. Damn! Weaver would hav
e to hustle to catch up.
As she stepped off the curb to make her way around the cab, she saw what everyone was staring at. A dark-haired woman wearing a red scarf lay in front of the cab. There was a pool of blood beneath her head.
Weaver couldn’t stop. She had to hurry to keep pace with Madeline. She made her way through the stalled traffic as drivers rubbernecked at the downed woman. As she walked, she fumbled in her pocket for her cell phone so she could call and get the woman some help, but a siren whooped nearby and she saw a radio car on the other side of the street. It was making its way toward the scene of the accident. She slid the phone back into her pocket.
Whatever had been compelling Madeline to walk must have worn off. Weaver followed her down the concrete steps to the subway stop at Columbus Circle.
They rode in a stifling, crowded car back to within a few blocks of Madeline’s apartment. Madeline, looking despondent and exhausted, sat between a scowling black youth wearing dreadlocks and a black leather jacket despite the heat, and a bearded man studying a tabloid newspaper printed in some language Weaver didn’t recognize. Weaver stood gripping a steel pole for support, looking everywhere but at Madeline.
With Madeline safe inside the building, Weaver took up her observation position in the doorway of a closed tailor shop diagonally across the street.
She leaned her back against the heavy plate-glass door, crossed her arms, and let herself relax. The new Madeline was in her apartment, tired, and unlikely to go out again soon. Weaver figured everything was under control. At least for a while, the excitement was over.
The lettering above her head on the inside of the door read RIPS AND TEARS OUR SPECIALTY.
56
Tom Coulter climbed up into the F-150 and followed the two meth guys, Joe Ray and Juan, from Rodney’s Roadhouse. They drove a couple of miles back into the swamp, over rutted, muddy roads sometimes so narrow that leaves brushed the windshield. Coulter thought it was creepy and saw no reason why anyone would choose to live like this. The heat and humidity made you sick, and the damned weird-looking bugs were bigger than the roaches in New York.
The Dodge pickup slowed and made a right onto a narrow dirt road that turned out to be a driveway. Coulter stopped before following it and looked the place over.
No big surprise where a couple of swamp turkeys like Joe Ray and Juan lived. It was a flat-roofed, clapboard house that looked as if it had never been painted. Vines grew up the front wall and much of the side wall that Coulter could see. A sagging gutter ran across the front of the house, its drainpipe disappearing into a wooden barrel. About a hundred feet off to the side was an outbuilding more rickety than the house. Coulter figured that was where they had their meth lab.
He waited until they’d gone inside the house, then rolled the F-150 up the drive, pulled it close behind their rusty Dodge, and gunned the engine and tapped the horn a few times. He wanted to get them out of the shack so they could see the difference in the two trucks. They were dealing big-time here, not junk vehicles and money under the mattress.
The two of them came ambling out the front, Joe Ray first, and let the screen door slam behind them. They stood on the porch, looking surprised and wary. Coulter was getting a kick out of it. Neither man displayed a weapon. Pair of yokels against a genuine desperado. His confidence soared. This should be easy.
Coulter got out of the truck and walked over there, then he casually reached behind him and drew the Glock out from where it was tucked in his belt at the small of his back. Whoa-ho! The two meth guys came hyperalert. Their eyes darted this way and that, making Coulter think of trapped animals. There was no direction they could move without Coulter bringing them both down. He wouldn’t have drawn the Glock otherwise. He smiled inwardly. Organization was the key to success.
Then the two of them, seeing the hopelessness of their situation, seemed to calm down.
“What the hell you want?” Joe Ray asked, showing a little bravado.
“He wants to get hisself killed,” Juan said.
“My, my,” Coulter said and moved the gun barrel over to point at Juan. Juan looked scared, but held his ground. What else could the dumb schmuck do?
“It ain’t love makes the world go round,” Coulter said. “It’s business. We’re all businessmen. I want to talk a deal.”
“What kinda business you in?” Joe Ray asked.
“Right now, far as you’re concerned, the truck business.” Coulter almost giggled. “And I guess you could say the travel business.”
The meth guys said nothing.
“We’re gonna trade trucks,” Coulter said. “Your bucket of rust for my almost-new Ford F-150.”
Joe Ray looked off to the side and spat. “Now why am I thinkin’ that ain’t your truck?”
“’Cause it ain’t. That’s my problem. But you got a problem, too.”
“Which is?”
“Me. And I got the solution for both of us.”
“You’re one smart asshole,” Juan said.
Coulter grinned. “Maybe I should shoot you in the knee.”
Juan went pale.
Joe Ray said, “Let’s all ease up here.” He looked with wary, level eyes at Coulter. Maybe a spark of helpless anger in those eyes. “Let’s quit jerkin’ each other off. Say plain what you come here to say.”
“I’ll take your truck with its legal license plate. You keep the Ford, paint it up, get yourselves a salvage VIN and a legal license, and you’re way ahead of the game. You boys smart enough to follow that?”
“We follow,” Joe Ray said. “We ain’t sure we like where it might lead.”
“Cops lookin’ for that truck?” Juan asked. He was staring with longing at the sleek black Ford with its oversized tires. Even dusty as it was, the bruiser of a vehicle was obviously a quantum leap trade-up.
Coulter gave them his best desperado grin. “Let’s say the rightful owner would like to have it back. I guarantee you he’s in another state and won’t be a problem for you. Me, I need transportation. I drive outta here in the junk Dodge, and I won’t be a problem for you, either.”
“Way you tell it, we part company and nobody’s got a problem.”
“Congratulations. You finally caught on.”
Juan glanced at Joe Ray. “It don’t sound like a bad deal.”
“Don’t shit yourself,” Joe Ray said, staring at Coulter.
“Well, there is one more thing,” Coulter said. “I want the meth money you’ve been raking in at Rodney’s.”
“What the hell is meth?” Joe Ray asked.
“What I can smell coming from that outbuilding over there, where you cook the stuff.” Coulter shifted his weight. The Glock was getting heavy. “It still ain’t a bad deal for you. That’s a thirty-thousand-dollar truck, easy. You got that much meth money?”
The two men exchanged a sly look.
Coulter smiled. “I guess you do.”
“I don’t like the deal,” Joe Ray said.
“Doesn’t matter a bit. I drive away with rusty and the money; you stay here with your new truck. You call the law on me, they pick me up, and you’re toast. Same thing the other way around. So we’re both safe. That’s the beauty of the proposition. We got no choice but to trust each another.”
“You musta gave this a lotta thought,” Juan said.
“Thinking happens to be my specialty,” Coulter said. “That’s why this deal’s gonna work. Now, next thing happens is you two yokels lead me to where you got the money stashed.”
“Ain’t likely,” said a woman’s voice.
Coulter looked to where Cathy Lee from Rodney’s Roadhouse was standing hip-shot near the corner of the shack. She must have come out a back door. She had on a stained gray robe, was barefoot, and her frizzy blond hair was flattened on one side as if she’d been sleeping on it. Her boobs were hanging halfway out, and she was holding a double-barreled shotgun. The effect was alarming.
“You boys don’t watch the news,” she said, motioning with her head
toward a small satellite dish on the corner of the shack’s tarpaper roof. “This is the guy killed all them people in New York.”
“Killed people?” Juan said, looking at Coulter with new respect.
“The Torso Killer. He’s probably the most wanted man in the country.” Cathy Lee smiled at Coulter. “Ain’t you just proud of yourself?”
Coulter couldn’t stop staring at the shotgun.
“There’d be a reward out for him,” Juan said. “Prob’ly a big one.”
“I ain’t interested in no reward,” Joe Ray said. “What I’m interested in is burying him.”
The shotgun wavered. It was a long gun. Heavy, for a woman. Coulter wondered, how strong and quick could she be, little country whore? And her eyes looked all red and swollen. She might have been napping and could still be half asleep.
She was holding the shotgun low now, its barrels at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground.
Her mistake. Coulter’s only chance.
He’d barely started to bring the Glock to bear on Cathy Lee when the shotgun came up astoundingly fast and she fired.
He was on his back in the mud. The pain in his chest made him gasp. His heart started banging irregularly, like an engine running crazy on empty just before it quits.
Everything went spinning, and then everything went dark.
They say the last thing that goes when someone’s dying is his hearing. Coulter heard distinctly the sucking sound of a boot sole in the mud, very near his head. Joe Ray’s voice from high above:
“Both barrels. You surely made a mess here, Cathy Lee.”
“My bad,” Cathy Lee said.
Joe Ray, Juan, and Cathy Lee studied on it for a while, then decided not to bury Coulter nearby. He was, after all, the most wanted man in America. If the police traced him to the area, they’d eventually find the body. On the other hand, the meth guys and Cathy Lee sure couldn’t say they’d killed him and try to claim any kind of reward. The farther away Joe Ray, Juan, and Cathy Lee stayed from the law, the better for them.