I looked up into Shell's eyes. He was wondering, and I was, too, if he should kill me right then and there. That might have been much easier. It would have certainly been safer.
But he didn't know anything about the cemetery except that the gates were locked.
"Where's this place?" he asked.
I shook my head.
"I want out of this," I said.
"Who you working for?"
"The girl."
"You told the people at Regents that you were part of a group."
"Just me and Brennan, man. Just me and him."
55
It was daylight by the time we made it to Hicksville. We went in a dark-green Lexus. Leo the Mammoth was driving, with Shell riding shotgun. I was on the floor in the back, bound hand and foot and happy to be so misused.
Happy because the only alternative to my discomfort was death.
"Okay," Shell said. "We're at North Broadway. Where to now?"
"Go four more blocks to Lathrop and turn right. Follow the street past the houses and keep on going until you get to a big stone wall that has a gateway."
The number I had called was the number. I got the idea when Alphonse Rinaldo had given me that special 911 number for the elite NYPD SWAT team. I thought that I should have my own personal emergency number.
I got special phones for me and Hush dedicated to this purpose. We had come up with passwords, like little boys initiating a clubhouse. Mine were Tolstoy, Nikita, Dimitri, and John-John. Anything else meant, "Get me out of here!"
This was taking a big chance. I didn't want to be involved with killing, if at all possible. Hush knew this, but he was also a psychopathic killer, by nature and by trade--even if he was retired. We were friends and he respected me but still the urge to kill was a natural place for him to go and I had called that number for the first time.
The car came to a stop.
For two minutes there were no words spoken.
"I don't like this," Leo grumbled.
"Who is this Brennan guy?" Shell asked me.
"He does bodyguarding for me sometimes. His cousin manages this cemetery."
Actually the place was managed by a man who, after sizing him up for a week, Hush decided to let live. It was a long and convoluted story that had to do with a dog and a little girl. The man paid Hush a fortune and the assassin helped him to create a new identity.
"Do you trust him with your life?" Shell asked. "Because we're going to have guns on you."
"He'll have a gun too," I said. "But he'll talk before shooting."
These words paved the way to a few more minutes of silence.
I used that time to make my peace with what was going to happen to Mammoth and Shell. I wasn't angry with them. They tortured me, but I'd done the same to Patrick.
And I'd done worse.
Once, many years before, I'd destroyed the life of a young girl who grew up into a woman self-named Karma. Karma kept coming back, from a restless grave, to give me as I had given.
But this wasn't about me. It was about Angie and her persecution. Shell was a part of that, and he'd have to meet his own fate. I'd save him and his woolly friend if possible, but what could I do with my hands and feet bound?
"Get back there and cut him loose, Leo," Shell said.
The big man cut the heavy tape that bound me. Then he showed me a long-barreled six-shooter, an anachronism in a caveman's hand.
"You fuck up, buddy," he said, "and I will give you all'a these here caps."
I nodded, did a sit-up, and pressed myself from the floor in the back of the car.
THERE WAS AN INTERCOM system at the gate of the old Quaker Cemetery. The last body had been interred nearly a century before. Visitors rarely came and the few who did made appointments.
I pressed a button.
"LT?" Hush said through a haze of static.
"Hey, Bren," I said. "I got a couple'a guys wit' me might help the girl."
"Come on in," the electric voice crackled.
The car-wide gate rolled open.
In the backseat again, Shell sat next to me with a gun muzzle pressed against my side. The tension in the car was palpable. I was afraid that they'd off me before we got to Hush; that he'd slaughter them before my eyes if I made it that far. They were afraid of the unknown that lay ahead of them. Working for Sanderson, no doubt, Shell had already messed up with Angie three times. The thug had fallen short in his attempt to intimidate her. The men in front of her apartment, obviously his, had failed to grab her. Later, his hired assassins had also missed the mark.
The car rolled down a cobblestone lane between silent pines until it got to the stone chapel at the end. We got out of the car. Leo took the lead, with Shell at the back, his gun nudging my spine.
Some kind of bird made a strangled cry off in the woods as we stood in the secluded circular driveway in front of the silent yellow-and-white stone building.
Half a minute passed.
"Call him," Shell hissed.
"Hey you!" someone screamed from my right.
The pressure left my vertebrae and I heard a loud thunk.
Shell groaned and fell to the ground.
"What?" Leo grunted as he turned his old-fashioned gun to the right.
Another thunk and the big woolly man was on his knees, something like a small white pillow bouncing away from him. He was hit in the diaphragm by another pillowy round and joined Shell in painful semiconsciousness.
"Hey, LT," Hush said, coming from the blind of trees. He was holding a canister gun, like a miniature bazooka. "Crowd-control device they use in Taiwan. Knocks a normal man out with just one shot."
He went to the fallen men and secured their hands and feet with flex-cuffs. We dragged them into the chapel and carried them down into the basement, where we secured them behind a heavy oaken door.
Leo weighed two fifty at least, but I'm a light heavyweight in training and Hush is much, much stronger than he looks.
HUSH LED ME TO the study on the second floor of the old building. There was plenty of sunlight coming in through clear and stained-glass windows. My savior gave me a first-aid kit and a snifter of brandy.
After dressing my face and downing the liquor I told Hush what I knew.
"You should'a killed Patrick," was his first observation.
"He never saw my face clearly."
"But Rinaldo left a trail by having him arrested. He might find a way back to you. You know, this isn't a game, LT. It's not like you can take a piece off the board and he stays in the box. These are killers, flawed men who go out after money and revenge."
"How long can we keep 'em down there?" I asked, to change the subject.
"Ike's closed the cemetery for a few days," Hush said. "He's going to have to change jobs unless you want to use an empty crypt in the north corner."
"I thought you gave up killing."
"I haven't killed anybody, have I?"
That bought him a wry grin.
"But let me ask you something," he said.
"What?"
"How deep do you plan to dig this hole before you gonna let 'em bury you in it?"
56
Leonid?" my wife of twenty-three years said.
She was standing at the door of my den, soon to be Gordo's sanatorium. I was sitting on the daybed, staring at the floor.
"Yeah, babe?"
"What happened to your face?"
"Nothing."
She crossed the threshold dressed in a plush purple nightgown. I gestured and she sat down next to me.
"Does it have to do with Dimitri?"
"No. He's fine. I got an e-mail from Twill. They're both down in Philly for a day or two more. Don't worry. He'll be home when I said."
My voice was thick. Night had come and my plans were made--for better or for worse.
Angelique had called at four-thirty, as planned. Mardi patched the call through to me and I told my client that I had found Shell and planned to meet with him the next day. That seemed to satisfy h
er for the moment.
"What's wrong?" Katrina asked.
"I wish that there was some kind of guy I could hire. Some detective who I could just give a list of all my problems--Gordo and Twill, a misspent life and . . . and everything else."
"You can talk to me." She even put a hand on mine.
I looked at her, wondering if I would mention her young lover, if she could read the knowledge in my eyes.
"Thanks for letting me bring Gordo here," I said.
"The children love him."
I looked down again.
"Come to bed, Leonid."
"You go on, Katrina. I have to think. I got a big day tomorrow and everything has to go just right."
A moment passed and then another. Katrina stood up and walked away. The wind was whistling outside the windows of my den. The nights were getting longer.
WHERE'S THAT OTHER SUIT? Lucy had asked when she was pulling down the zipper of my pants.
I hate it, I'd said, holding my breath after.
I thought it was kinda cool.
So I donned the ochre suit before leaving the house. I got my car out of the garage and headed for Long Island City at six the next morning.
She was on a lower floor of a Best Western, number sixteen. One of the many benefits of Bug's expertise was my being able to hack into almost any database--including the occupancy floor plans for almost any chain hotel.
I knocked and waited, knocked again. I was just getting nervous when she opened the door. Her dress was a fluid mixture of cranberry and blueberry hues. Her feet were bare.
"Mr. McGill?"
"Hi."
"What happened to your face?"
"It's a special interrogation technique. I beat myself until my prisoner can't take it anymore and has to tell me what I want to know."
I walked in, pushing the door only enough to make room for my bulk.
"How did you know where I was?" she asked.
I sat on the bed heavily. My face and left arm ached, and I hadn't been to sleep in well over twenty-four hours.
"The reason you did well to hire me," I said. "All I had to do was trace the expenditures on the card and I found this place."
"But how did you find my room?"
"Trade secret."
"Do you have news?"
"Yeah."
"What is it?"
"I found a guy who has all the answers. We just have to go see him and everything will be cleared up."
"I don't know if I should go with you," she said. "I called John last night and he said that you can't just trust somebody that you meet in a coffee shop."
"You shouldn't have called your boyfriend. Call could have been traced. And not just somebody--a private detective, like me, who's good enough to know that your real name is Angelique Tara Lear and that you, against all odds, stabbed and killed an armed assassin in your friend Wanda Soa's apartment."
Angie backed away from me, toward the door.
"Look, kid," I said. "If I wanted to grab you or hurt you I wouldn't be sitting here. I told you that I'd figure out what happened, and I have. But in order to explain it to you, and to get you out of trouble, I have to bring you to an office in lower Manhattan. Come with me and you can go back to your old life."
"I'm afraid."
"Nothing wrong with fear. It keeps the eyes open and your feet ready to run."
For some reason this made her smile.
"WE NEED TO GET a few things straight before we talk to this guy," I said when we were headed east on the BQE.
"What?"
"The man who killed Wanda was named Adolph Pressman."
Angie turned from me and looked out on Brooklyn.
"I know how he found you. I figure that he knocked at Wanda's door with some pretext. You hid and he came in with a gun. Somehow he didn't see you and you went at him with the kitchen knife you were holding for self-defense."
When she turned to me the tears were flowing from her eyes.
"And I murdered my best friend," she cried.
"You have to hear me on this one, Miss Lear," I said in the calmest of deep tones. "That man came to your house with the express intention of killing you. He would have killed Wanda too. You tried to save your life and hers. You did your best. The murderer, the man who killed your friend, is dead."
"But why?" she moaned.
I couldn't help but think that this utterance was the bedrock foundation of all philosophical inquiry.
I gave no answer and she expected none.
"What did you do with the gun?" I asked after the proper interval.
She turned back to the window and fiddled with her hair.
"Come on, now," I said. "If I can figure it out you know the cops can, too."
"I left it at John's. He said that he'd get rid of it the next time he goes out to Long Island."
"Why didn't you toss it into a river?"
"I was afraid that somebody'd see me."
I thought that we should drop by Prince's apartment and pick up the weapon. That was a loose end that needed to be tied. But I was very tired. So much so that any detour seemed beyond comprehension.
WE TOOK THE STAIRS to the seventh floor of the nondescript downtown office building. I walked her down the dowdy green corridor to a door with no signage on it.
"Where are we?" she said.
"The man in this office," I replied, "is a very powerful person who likes his privacy . . . maybe a little bit too much."
I knocked and waited.
The door clicked open on a bare reception room. There, behind a maroon metal desk, sat a slender, posture-perfect, middle-aged black man wearing silver-rimmed glasses and a thin aqua tie. The lapels of his suit jacket were almost nonexistent. His sensual lips had never smiled, would never do so, for me.
This was Christian Latour, the Important Man's first lines of defense and offence.
"You don't have an appointment, Mr. McGill."
"I bet you that tie he'll see us."
"I see that you've brought Miss Lear," Christian said without even looking at Angie.
"Push the button, Chris."
It wasn't a good idea to bait Latour but I was tired and he was a prig. I liked the guy, but sometimes he had too much attitude.
There was a small black box on left side of Christian's desk. The hole in the top suddenly shone a brilliant blue.
"He will see you," the exasperated receptionist said.
A door behind him opened automatically and I ushered my client through.
THE WALLS WERE ROYAL BLUE and the carpet burgundy. An ever-changing gallery of Renaissance masterpieces on loan from the Met hung along the walls on our way to the Big Man's desk.
Rinaldo was standing in front of the desk (something he had never done for me alone) when we got to him.
"Mr. Brown?" Angie said hesitantly. "Is that you?"
"Hi, Tara." There was an unfamiliar smile on his lips.
"What, what are you doing here?"
"This is my office."
"Are those paintings for real?"
"Why don't we all have a seat?" he offered.
ANGIE WAS LOOKING AROUND the office, seated on a seventeenth- century French chair, while I watched her from my favorite perch: a chair of carved lava stone that was once a pre-Columbian sacrificial altar.
"Mr. McGill?" Alphonse Rinaldo said. If you didn't know him you might not have perceived the threat.
"Sandra Sanderson the Third," I replied.
"Oh."
"Who?" Angie asked.
"Mr. McGill has informed me about your situation," Rinaldo said in a soft and very understanding voice. "He's brought the problem to me and I have resolved to straighten it out. You'll have to excuse us for a few minutes if you don't mind, Tara."
"I don't understand, Mr. Brown. What do you have to do with any of this?"
"I'll explain after Mr. McGill and I confer. Can I get you something to drink or eat while you wait?"
"I haven't had breakfast yet."
>
Rinaldo picked up the phone and waited a beat. Then, "Mr. Latour, the young lady in my office needs breakfast. Come in and get her order. Mr. McGill and I will be in the library.
"Come with me, Mr. McGill."
He stood and so did I. I followed him to a shadowy corner on the north side of the office. There we passed through a door into a good-sized room that was lined with bookshelves and books. There was a round ash table in the center of the room surrounded by four red-velvet padded chairs.
"Have a seat."
I did so. It felt really good to sit down, like I'd been extremely tired and up to that point unaware of the extent of my exhaustion.
"Nice suit," he said.
"Yeah. My wife bought it for me. I hated it at first. But now it's kind of growing on me."
"I specifically instructed you not to speak to Tara."
"Sometimes a good agent has to make decisions on his own."
"You should have called and asked me before taking such action."
"There was no time to call."
"You should not have brought her to me."
"It's the only place I could be sure that she wouldn't be killed."
That caused him to cross his legs, right over left.
For a moment there my future was in question. I had disobeyed. Even in his weakened position he was that caged lion and I a mere mortal on the wrong side of the bars.
"Give it to me," he said at last.
I laid it all out. The assailants, all six of them, and the threats. I told him about Shell and Leo locked in a cellar in Queens and Sandra Sanderson's obvious involvement. I explained how I decided the only way to approach the problem was to put Angie first as my client.
He listened very closely to my story.
Usually when we spoke he was in some kind of hurry. An ambassador from some foreign nation or an insistent billionaire was in the waiting room in line for a meeting. But that day I could have gone on for hours.
"Your actions have put a strain on our relationship, Leonid," he said when I had finished. "Even if I am pleased with the outcome, I won't be able to put my full trust in you again."
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