All the Dead Fathers

by David J. Walker

  “You want Carlo,” she said. “I think you’ll have someone there to meet him when he comes out.” He merely shrugged, and she went on. “I want him, too. And I can use him to get to the one you want even more.”

  This clearly surprised him, but he recovered quickly and shrugged again.

  “The one you really want is Debra, more than Carlo. Otherwise, you and I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  “Debra?” he said. “Who even knows if she’s living or dead?”

  She could tell he was more interested than he was trying to appear. “She’s alive, all right,” she said. “I mentioned earlier today that I’m in touch with her. But it’s more accurate to say that she’s been in touch with me. She intends to kill me.”

  If that meant anything at all to him, he didn’t show it. He stood up and walked away from her, toward his bodyguard and the door. She wanted to call him back, but though she’d disregarded Cuffs’s advice and asked Polly Morelli for help, she wouldn’t go so far as to beg him. She said nothing.

  He didn’t leave, after all. Instead, he whispered to the lizard, who left the room and closed the door behind him. Polly came back and sat down. “Okay,” he said, “tell me what you’re talking about. And include what’s in it for me.” With him suddenly speaking more openly, she wondered if maybe the lizard was the one who was wired.

  “You have a big score to settle with Debra. You know she’s far more responsible for anything she and Carlo did than he is. But you have no idea where she is, and no real hope of ever finding her.”

  “And you do?” Behind his phony blank expression she sensed excitement, anticipation.

  “Debra wants revenge against me,” she said, “and killing’s not enough for her. She’s toying with me. Sending weird messages. She hopes I’ll freeze up. Instead, I’m going after her.”

  “So? How does Carlo fit in?”

  “Carlo’s the one person Debra cares about in this world,” she said. “I’ll use him to draw her out into the open.”

  “Really. And why would he cooperate?”

  “Because I’ll be offering him an alternative to you, the uncle who hates him. Once you make sure he doesn’t know where Debra is—and we both know he probably doesn’t—Carlo’s life is over. He’s not very bright, but even he knows that.”

  Polly didn’t bother to deny it, but said, “I still say why would he trust you, the one who lost him his leg and sent him to prison?”

  “Because you’ll help me create that trust.” She went on to tell him what she had in mind for the day of Carlo’s release. When she finished she said, “If it’s done right, he’ll be thrilled that I showed up.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But you haven’t said yet how you’d actually catch Debra, after you ‘draw her out,’ as you say. And what about the cops?”

  “This will be my party. No cops invited. Not you, either. In fact, wherever she is, if anyone follows me I won’t go.”

  “Which means,” he said, “that there are complications, that there’s a lot you’re not telling me. Right?”

  “Wrong.” But in fact she wasn’t telling him about Dugan, or her plan to trade Carlo for Dugan, or that capturing Debra would be a bonus she didn’t have high hopes for. “It’s not complicated at all. It’s simple. It’s just that it’s gotten to be … a personal thing.” Something this psychopath might relate to. “Between her and me.”

  He seemed to consider that for a moment. “My niece,” he finally said, “is a formidable woman.”

  “Uh-huh, but so am I. And I’ll never be able to walk down the street in peace until I get her out of my life.”

  “If you kill her,” he said, “you’ll deprive me of a certain … satisfaction. So, like I said, what’s in it for me?”

  “I’m not out to kill anyone. I’ll use Carlo to make her careless, to get her to show herself.” She’s the one who was lying now, but she knew no other way. “When she does, I’ll grab her.”

  “And then?”

  “Then, after I’ve shown her who’s more … formidable, I’ll hand her over to the cops. That’s the part they’ll play, in answer to your earlier question.”

  “And that’s what’s in it for me?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “You’ll know where she is. You can … follow up however you like. You didn’t seem to have a problem getting close to Carlo in jail.”

  “That’s not enough,” he said.

  “It’s what I can offer.”

  He stared at her in silence for a few seconds and then said, “I’ll play the game the way you suggested, and let you take Carlo. And then, if you do capture Debra, you’ll bring her to me, not the cops.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “You know I can’t—”

  “That’s the first alternative. And because, like I said, there’s a lot you’re not telling me, here’s the second alternative. If you don’t capture Debra, then you’ll return Carlo to me.” He was watching her, and maybe he saw something in her face, because he said, “And if you don’t bring one of them back, and you’re still alive? Then I’ll deal with you in a way that would make Debra proud. I guarantee it.”

  “Look, you can’t—”

  “Take Carlo or don’t,” he said. “You decide. And oh … by the way, his release date has been moved up from Wednesday. It’s Monday now.”

  “What?”

  “They made an error in calculating the days to chop off for good behavior. I had a lawyer check the date, and he caught it.”

  “The day after tomorrow? I don’t—”

  “The wedding,” he said, “it’s taking place during Mass.” He stood and pointed up toward the church above them. “And I don’t like to miss taking Holy Communion.”

  52.

  Kirsten called Cuffs’s number the minute she got home from the cathedral. She didn’t want to. Right then she probably hated pleading with Cuffs more than Cuffs hated pleading with Polly Morelli. But she needed him. Dugan needed him. What she got was his voice mail.

  The message said he’d be away and unreachable for a few days, but to leave a name and number after the beep and he’d return the call when he got back. Then, after the beep, a disembodied female voice said, “This mailbox is full.”

  She forced herself to eat something. And to slow down her mind and think. It hadn’t been sixteen hours yet since that morning’s phone call, and Debra said she’d call again “in a few days.” Cuffs was right. If she was holding Dugan against his will she couldn’t take a commercial flight, and chartering a plane seemed equally unlikely. So she was almost certainly driving. It would have taken her this whole day to get from Asheville to Chicago, and it would be about the same to Detroit. And a couple of hours more to the farm—if that’s where she was going.

  The farm was the best bet, Kirsten thought, and surprise was her best weapon, so she would go there, too. She’d have Carlo with her if things went her way—which meant she’d have her own transport-of-prisoner issues, so she called Leroy Renfroe at home. It was Saturday night and he was out, but her message was one he couldn’t ignore, and he called her back about midnight. He obviously wished he hadn’t when he heard what she wanted.

  “The car’s one thing,” he said. “And the shotgun I can arrange for you to pick up. But the Panther baton, that’s a real problem. I keep some on hand for testing purposes, but they’re—”

  “By tomorrow afternoon, then?”

  “The problem is their use is legally restricted, and—”

  “Leroy, listen to me. I need this.” She went on to lay a little guilt on him, and he finally agreed. “And about the car,” she added, “how long will it take your guy to disengage the thing? And to make sure it can’t be reconnected somehow … or opened some other way?”

  “Forget about my guy. It’ll be Sunday afternoon and I’ll have to do it myself. An Impala? Fifteen minutes, I guess. But Jesus, a rental car?”

  “You can reverse it before I take it back,” she said. “And if you can’t, I�
�ll buy them a new goddamn car. I can’t tell you why, Leroy, but it’s that important. Really.”

  “Okay, okay.” He must have realized she wasn’t going to give up. “Tomorrow at three. Go to the bay doors, around back. I’ll be there.”

  And she knew he would. She’d been there for him when he needed it. Besides, he secretly loved this clandestine stuff. She hung up, exhausted, wondering if she could sleep. Ever again, until this was over.

  She went to the living room window and looked down at the street. She walked back and sat at the kitchen table and disassembled the Colt .380, cleaned and oiled it, and put it back together. She packed a few clothes in a backpack and put it, and a Kevlar vest, by the door. Then she took a long, warm, aromatic bath … and came out just as tense as when she’d gone in.

  * * *

  An hour later she was still wandering around the apartment. She forced herself to sit down. She did her fingernails, very carefully, as though it were important. And then her toenails. She tried the herb tea and the scented candles that always had a soothing effect, but that night they only made Dugan’s absence more acute.

  A glass of wine might help her sleep, but she was afraid she wouldn’t stop at a glass. She’d never felt so alone. She had brothers, yes, but they weren’t that close, and she wouldn’t even hint at any of this to them. When she became a cop she’d drifted apart from her high school and college girlfriends, until now they were little more than names on a Christmas card list. And when she left the department she left behind the people she’d known there. She’d been close only to Dugan … and Michael. And then just Dugan.

  Now she was desperate for someone to talk to, and there was no one. Not even Cuffs, for God’s sake. And not Michael, either. What could she do but encourage him not to drink and warn him again to be careful? Telling him about Dugan would only disturb him, and he might tell someone else, or even alert the police—and she had to avoid that. No, Michael was safe for now, and she wouldn’t call him until Dugan was safe, too.

  Getting Dugan back was all that mattered. She would trade Carlo for him. If she succeeded, she wouldn’t have Carlo to bring back to Polly Morelli. And even if she managed somehow to capture Debra in the process, no way would she deliver either one of them to that creep. Debra she’d take to the cops so they could pin the priest killings on her. And Carlo could go … wherever. She’d have to figure out how to deal with Polly.

  But that was a problem for later. Right now everything depended on him. He was a stinking chunk of waste, wending his way through society’s sewer. Still, she was counting on him to keep his word. And she? With Dugan’s life in the balance, she had no intention at all of keeping hers.

  53.

  On Monday morning Kirsten drove through the rain down I-55, headed for the Pontiac Correctional Center, about a hundred miles southwest of Chicago. The previous afternoon Renfroe had done his thing on the Impala and loaned her a Panther baton with a belt holster. He’d arranged a shotgun for her, too, and on her way she picked it up at a gun shop in Lyons.

  * * *

  The prison was an eyesore squatting in the heart of corn country, built during the first term of President Ulysses S. Grant. The designation “Correctional Center” fooled no one. It was a place to lock people up and brutally punish them. It may have provided jobs and revenue for the town of Pontiac, but it held little in the way of correction for anyone. Maybe Carlo felt at home there.

  She remembered Carlo as a tall, broad-shouldered man, with large hands and a dark complexion that showed scars from a bad case of acne. His black hair had been pulled into a ponytail back then, but mostly she remembered his eyes. They were frightening eyes, because they held no expression at all. At their first meeting he had forced her out of a room with little more than a stare. But she’d seen him again just a few days later, sitting on the floor with his hands pressed to his thigh to keep the blood from spurting out, screaming, begging his sister Debra to help him. And Debra, bleeding herself, had left him and fled into the night.

  Kirsten stopped at a gated guardhouse and was directed to parking area C. When she got there she went to the opposite end of the lot from where she was told friends and family members would gather. The prisoners were scheduled for release shortly after noon and she arrived at eleven-fifteen, before any of the others. The cold, constant rain had faded into a gray drizzle. With binoculars she scanned each vehicle as it came into the lot. Eventually there were ten of them, parked just this side of a guardrail separating them from a wide road that ran along the brick wall of the prison building.

  Debra was a fugitive. Kirsten didn’t expect her to be there, and she didn’t see her. She did spot the car she was looking for, though. It was a four-door sedan, a blue BMW 7-Series, with two men in it, and the one in the driver’s seat was Polly Morelli’s tough guy, the lizard. She was confident Polly would have instructed his men, but she wouldn’t know whether her plan would work until she made her move.

  Noon came and went, and at twelve-twenty a white Dodge van, with STATE OF ILLINOIS, D.O.C. stenciled on its side, drove up along the prison wall and joined the group. Directly across the road was an opening that looked about ten feet tall and twenty feet wide in the otherwise solid two-story wall. The gate the prisoners would come through was set in a section of chain-link fence that stretched across that opening. Kirsten stayed put, occasionally raising her binoculars to her eyes.

  Pontiac was one of the ten oldest—and without a doubt, she thought, ten ugliest—prisons in the country. It housed about fifteen hundred prisoners, all men, primarily problem offenders. But it also had a so-called “Level 4 Medium-Security Unit.” That was probably where Carlo did his time, away from the murderous Chicago street gangs that roamed the rest of the facility.

  At twelve-thirty, two uniformed guards and about a dozen prisoners finally appeared behind the gate. The prisoners, wearing jeans and brown, hip-length jackets and carrying gym bags, stood in a tight, single-file line. They shifted from one foot to the other, apparently not interested in conversation. Most of them were dark-skinned: African-American or Hispanic. The three who were obviously white were at the end of the line and she couldn’t see well enough to tell whether Carlo was one of them.

  Suddenly there was a short burst from what sounded like a very loud school recess bell, and one of the guards unlocked the door-sized gate in the fence and pulled it inward. A chain at the top of the gate kept it from opening very wide and the now former prisoners came out one at a time, turning sideways to slip through the narrow gap.

  By then people were out of their cars and up at the guardrail. Like Kirsten, they must all have been warned when they came in not to go nearer the gate than that, but they waved and called to friends and family members among the men coming their way. Kirsten sat with the binoculars glued to her eyes.

  The last one through the gate was Carlo. She was sure of that now, although he looked different than she remembered. Thinner, paler, his hair cut army-short. She couldn’t see his eyes very well, but she doubted they’d have changed. It surprised her how slight his limp was, even though he’d lost his left leg somewhere above the knee.

  Carlo ignored the welcoming committee and headed straight toward the van, which Kirsten knew was a shuttle to the bus station in town. He was just about to climb in when the lizard’s partner got to his side. They had a brief conversation, after which the thug took Carlo’s arm and guided him to the BMW and both of them got into the back seat.

  The vehicles started filing out, and she slipped into line two cars behind the BMW. They drove out of the lot, went under the raised barrier at the guardhouse, and left the prison grounds. The drizzle had turned back into rain, and it was so dark that headlights were a necessity.

  In a few minutes she was trailing the BMW along the northbound entrance ramp onto I-55, headed back toward Chicago. But two exits later, they abruptly left the interstate. She followed them as they drove past the only reasons anyone but a local would ever have exited there, a
chicken restaurant and a gas station. Then, on a long, straight stretch of paved road with cornfields on both sides, she drew up close behind the BMW, flashing her headlights and sounding her horn. The Beemer slowed, went another hundred yards, and pulled off where the shoulder widened into a gravel parking area. They were by one of those little fenced-in-squares where a natural gas pipeline poked up out of the ground for inspection and service.

  Kirsten pulled behind the stopped car and her hand started toward the button to open the trunk. But of course Renfroe had disengaged the opener, so she hurried back and unlocked it with the key, then ran up to the BMW on the driver’s side. The lizard lowered his window and she flashed him an ID case which held nothing but her driver’s license.

  “FBI,” she yelled. “Stay in your car, sir. It’s Mr. Morelli we want.”

  She saw Carlo staring at her, and could tell he recognized her. When he spoke—a raspy, half-whispered version of speech—she couldn’t hear what he was saying beyond “lying bitch.”

  The lizard answered Carlo without even turning his head. “Whoever the fuck you think she is, crip, her badge says fucking FBI, and I’m not going down for an asshole like you. Polly waited this long to cut off your other leg, he’ll wait a little longer. Get the fuck outta the car.”

  By that time she had the back door open and Carlo had no choice. The man beside him pushed him out and she met him, the Colt in her right hand.

  “Hey, crip!” the lizard called, and Carlo turned toward him. “Sorry we didn’t get to have our little chat, but we’re not through with you, okay? And Polly’s not, either. You’re gonna—”

  “Federal officer!” Kirsten yelled. “Shut up and move on!” She slammed the back door and the lizard turned the Beemer around and sped off toward I-55. She’d managed to seize the one chance she had to save Dugan. And she was trembling.

  She walked Carlo at gunpoint to the rear of the Impala. In her left hand now was Renfroe’s stun baton … the smaller Panther model, three hundred thousand volts, and that would be plenty. There were no cars coming from either direction, and beside the open trunk she told him to drop his gym bag on the ground and turn all his pockets inside out. He did.