[2010] The Violet Hour

by Daniel Judson

  “Listen, we don’t have a lot of time here, Cal. We need to know everything you know, and we need to know it now. Do you understand?”

  “Okay,” Cal said. “Let’s talk.”

  “Is there somewhere your friend might have gone?” Tierno said. “Someone he would go to if he were in trouble?”

  “He knew a lot of people, but I don’t really know where any of them live.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Cal shrugged. “He had a lot of... lady friends, but I don’t know their last names or where they live or anything. Anyway—” He stopped short.

  “What?”

  “Most of them were married. I can’t imagine him showing up at their doors in the middle of the night, no matter what kind of trouble he was in.”

  “You’d be surprised what a man will do when his life is on the line,” Tierno said. “That’s all your friend is right now, a man desperate to save his own skin.”

  Cal said nothing to that.

  “Maybe one of those husbands is out of town,” Messing suggested. “It would have to be someone nearby, though. If all that blood was his, he couldn’t have gotten far.”

  “It’s his blood,” Tierno said. His tone was decisive.

  Before Cal could ask how Tierno was so sure all the blood was Lebell’s, the agent continued.

  “I’m curious, did your friend talk about what he did before he moved out here? Where he came from?”

  “No, not really.”

  “You worked side by side with the guy, but he didn’t once talk to you about his past.”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “You didn’t find that unusual?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I got the sense early on that he liked to keep certain things private.”

  “He was secretive.”

  “No, just... private. Protective.”

  “Protective of what?”

  “I don’t know. The women he was seeing, I guess.”

  Tierno thought about that, then said, “Did he ever mention a friend of his named Pearson?”

  Cal didn’t remember ever hearing the name and said so.

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  Tierno paused. He took a breath, then said, “Three weeks ago a guy named Pearson was murdered. Before he was killed, though, he was tortured. Several of his finger joints were crushed. It’s a pretty old-fashioned method of persuasion, but effective. Pearson made a living providing false identities. Names, Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, everything anyone would need to start his or her life over. He and the man you know as Lebell grew up in the same neighborhood. They were old friends.”

  This bait Cal was unable to ignore. “What do you mean, the man I know as Lebell?”

  “Your friend’s name isn’t Lebell,” Tierno said. “His fingerprints in that apartment confirm this. His real name is Militich. Technically, it isn’t even Militich, but don’t worry, I’ll get to all that.”

  Cal said nothing for a while, then, “Look, I really don’t care about any of this. I’ve told you everything I know, so just let me out, okay?”

  “You should know what kind of man your friend is,” Tierno said. “The piece of filth you’ve been palling around with, the trouble that you’re in now because of him.”

  “Seriously,” Cal said. “I want to go. Now.”

  No one made a move to let him out.

  “Ever hear the name Militich?” Tierno said.

  “Just open the door.”

  “Ever hear the name Militich, Cal?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me tell you a thing or two about your buddy, because my guess is you know where he is and you’re trying to be a good friend by protecting him. Nothing wrong with being a friend, it tells me you’re a decent guy, which makes me want to help you and gives me hope that maybe we can actually work together on this. But there’s more going on here than you know, a lot more, and what you think is the act of a friend, my boss is going to see as a simple case of someone harboring a fugitive. So believe me, Cal, I’m trying to be your friend here. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  It took him a moment, but Cal eventually nodded. He glanced at Messing’s reflection one last time. They looked at each other, but the detective said nothing.

  “A few years ago,” Tierno said, “your buddy, the guy you know as Lebell and I know as Militich, worked for a man named Donny Cleary. Ever hear that name?”

  Cal said he hadn’t.

  “Cleary was a member of a gang called the Westies. They worked out of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City, did enforcement work for the Gambino crime family. They murdered, we think, about a hundred people, many of whom were tortured first. Grisly shit, savage. The Westies began back in the sixties, were most influential in the eighties, and pretty much disappeared by the nineties. Some went to jail, some died or were killed, others pulled a Whereabouts Unknown. Cleary was one of the ones who went to jail, and when he got out eight years ago he partnered up with a Yugoslavian named Militovich. Militovich had a son who later on changed his name to Militich. This was your friend’s first disappearing act. He’s had a few.”

  Tierno paused to let this sink in, then continued.

  “Cleary and Militovich worked as a killer-for-hire team, were responsible, we think, for at least twenty torture-murders over eight years. That’s a lot. No one knows anything about Militich’s mother; we doubt even he knows. He was raised by his father and Cleary, whom he knew as Uncle Donny. In fact, Militovich did two years in prison for assault, during which Militich lived with Cleary. He was thirteen, and Cleary put him to work in one of the other family business, a chop shop on the West Side. He cut up stolen cars, thousands of them over the years. When Militich was twenty, his father was murdered, and Uncle Donny promoted him from body-shop worker to body man. Do you know what a body man is?”

  Cal shook his head.

  “A body man is the person who disposes of corpses. Murder victims. He chops them up, gets rid of the pieces, some here, others there, and cleans up all the incriminating evidence. That’s what your friend used to do. That’s the kind of man he is.”

  Tierno again paused to let that sink in.

  “A few years ago we got a break, arrested another Yugo thug who was eager to make a deal for himself. He confessed to killing Militovich, said he had been hired to do so by none other than Uncle Donny. We saw our chance, brought Militich in, told him what we had, and offered him a deal if he testified against Cleary. He of course agreed to—I mean, what son wouldn’t want to avenge his father, right? He entered the Witness Protection Program, was given a new identity, a place to live, a job, everything. This was his second disappearing act. Shortly after he testified in court, though, he gave the U.S. marshals the slip, disappeared one more time. We’ve been searching for him ever since, and by the looks of his place tonight, it seems we aren’t the only ones after him.”

  “Who other than you guys would be looking for him?” Cal said.

  “That’s what we need to find out. It isn’t all that difficult to orchestrate a hit from prison, not for someone like Cleary. One man—Pearson—is already dead, and another—your pal—might already be. I didn’t spend years putting Cleary behind bars so he could continue his work from his cell. To uncover what remains of his operation and shut it down, I need to know who came after your friend. His blood trail just ends, so maybe he only got so far before whoever came after him caught up with him again, pulled him into a car. If that’s the case, then we lose, he’s dead. If not—if he managed to get away and hasn’t bled to death somewhere—then I need to find him. I need to know what he knows, and I need to know it now.”

  “I wish I could help,” Cal said, “but I really don’t have any idea where he is.”

  “You don’t understand, Cal,” Tierno said. “Whoever was sent to kill Militich didn’t just show up
last night and knock on his door. They watched him, closely, for a period of time, learned his routine and patterns, the places he went and the people he associated with. A lot of work to just let him slip away. If they can’t find him, they’ll do what we’re doing, rely on the person closest to him. But they won’t just ask questions. They’ll wring from that person whatever information they can get. Just like they did with Pearson. They found that guy, tortured him till they got Militich’s new identity, then killed him. With that information, they were able to track Militich to here somehow. I can assure you, Cal, you don’t want to be the one they come after next. I’d feel for the person who had nothing at all to tell them. Nothing to make them stop the pain.”

  Tierno let the final image he had created linger for a moment. The silence was eventually broken by Messing.

  “Is there anything you can tell us, Cal? Anything Lebell might have said, anything you might have seen over the past year?”

  “No.”

  “Have you had any strange visitors recently, anything like that? Seen someone lurking about, hear any weird clicks on your phone, maybe?”

  Cal looked at the detective.

  “What?” Messing said.

  “I got a call last night.”

  “From whom?” Tierno demanded.

  “A woman.”

  “What did she want?”

  “She kept asking for Lebell. She wanted to know if he was there.”

  “Where is there?”

  “The garage.”

  “What time was this?”

  “After one.”

  “What were you doing there so late?”

  “I was working.” No reason at this point to tell Tierno that he lived there. The address on his driver’s license was a Southampton post office box.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her he wasn’t there.”

  “Then what?”

  “She wanted to know if I knew where he was.”

  “She asked for Lebell, not Militich?” Again, Tierno was demanding more than asking.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yes.”

  Tierno fell suddenly silent. Messing was watching him in the rearview mirror.

  “They don’t have him,” the detective concluded. “He got away.”

  “At least they didn’t have him last night,” Tierno said. “But have they found him since?”

  Tierno studied the cell phone in his hand, thought for a long moment. Finally, he said, “If the woman who called you last night is part of this, and it’s pretty obvious to me that she is, then right now your life is in danger. They know who you are, that you’re his friend. They’ll be coming after you—maybe even have you under surveillance already. If you help us, we’ll protect you.”

  “How can I help if I don’t know where he is?”

  “He’s in trouble, so there’s the chance he might try to contact you. That makes you our only chance of finding him.”

  “We can’t leave him out in the open like a piece of bait,” Messing objected.

  “Then take him into protective custody,” Tierno said.

  “How will his friend get in touch with him?”

  “You don’t have a cell phone of your own, correct?” Tierno asked Cal.

  “I don’t, no.”

  “Does your friend have this number?” Tierno was holding up Heather’s cell.

  “No.”

  “You have a phone where you live, though, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And he has that number?”

  “Of course.”

  Tierno said to Messing, “Put him in a motel room, have all calls to his landline forwarded there and monitored.”

  Messing waited a moment, glanced briefly at Cal, then nodded. “Yeah, all right,” he said.

  “Look, I can take care of myself,” Cal said. He was speaking to both men, to anyone who would listen.

  “Maybe,” Tierno said, “but this isn’t just about you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The agent held up the cell phone again. “This belongs to a friend of yours, correct?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Close friend? Girlfriend, maybe?” Tierno asked.

  Cal didn’t answer.

  “If they can’t find you, they’ll find the person closest to you. That’s how it works. They’ll either extract what they can from her or use her to lure you out into the open. Or, and this is actually the most likely scenario, they’ll do both, just to cover all the bases. Do you really want that, kid? Do you want to get a call tonight from Ms. Heather Pamona, hear her screaming on the other end, in agony, pleading for you to help her? Because that’s exactly what’s going to happen if you don’t let us help you.”

  Before Cal could ask the obvious question, Tierno, looking away again, provided the answer.

  “You think we didn’t run this number, find out to whom it’s registered?” He paused, then said, “I’m offering to take you and your friend into protective custody, for as long as necessary. Who knows, maybe after sitting around in a motel room for a while you’ll remember something that can help us. In the meantime, you and she will be safe. Like I said, one man is already dead.”

  “There isn’t a lot of time to think about this, Cal,” Messing said. “We’re a day behind them as it is. It’s now or never, son.”

  Tierno held up the phone, this time offering it to Cal. He said in a flat voice, “So what’s it going to be?”

  What other choice did he have?

  “Heather’s sister is staying with us,” Cal said. “She has to come, too.”

  “No problem.”

  “Who else knows about her? Heather, I mean?”

  “Just Messing and me. Why?”

  “It’s important that no one else knows she’s with me.” Cal’s father wasn’t the only one with a distrust of the police.

  “No reason at this point for anyone else to know. Just tell us where they are, and Messing will send a patrol car right over.”

  It was only then that Cal remembered Heather’s plan to go out and pick up a new cell phone. It hit him like a shock.

  His heart suddenly pounding, he reached out and grabbed her old phone from Tierno’s hand. Quickly entering the number of the garage’s landline, he noticed the smell of his sweat again.

  It had finally overpowered the cologne that, up till now, had masked it.

  A flurry of activity, phone calls and radio calls, arrangements made, cops hurrying about. Throughout, Cal’s heart pounding as though he were running for his life.

  Amanda had answered, which meant Heather had already left. As Cal spoke to her, Tierno exited the patrol car, stepping away to make calls of his own. Messing, still in the front seat, gave instructions to Cal, who passed them on to Amanda.

  Patrol car will pick her up, take her to a local motel, Cal will be there waiting for her. Pack for a few days, just to be on the safe side.

  Amanda had nothing to pack, of course, and neither, for that matter, did Heather. Cal didn’t bother to correct the detective. He did, though, have some instructions of his own.

  The alarm had to be deactivated so the door could be opened, then reactivated when she left.

  He made Amanda promise to remember to turn the system back on, had no choice but to give her the secret code—even Lebell didn’t know it—while Messing listened.

  Messing had remained to make certain only the one call was made. Once Cal was done, the detective got out of the patrol car, had Clarke take his place in the front seat and keep an eye on Cal. The detective stepped away and made calls of his own, but he was close enough for Cal to hear him through the glass. He dispatched a patrol car to the garage to retrieve Amanda and another to Bridgehampton Village—there was only one cell phone store in town, he assured Cal—to find Heather.

  There was nothing for Cal to do after this but wait and watch—and be watched by the cop in the front seat. He thought of
Heather out there alone, thought of her husband looking for her, determined to find her. Panic began to grow, and it took all he had to keep it from taking him over.

  He wanted out of that car, saw himself hopping into Lebell’s Mustang and going off to find Heather on his own. He didn’t care if it meant being chased by every cop on duty tonight, didn’t care about the consequences, as long as she was safe.

  Foolish thoughts, but he knew himself well enough to know that there was nothing he could do about them. They would spin, and his heart would race, till he saw her again.

  At one point, Messing and Tierno were off their cell phones long enough to stand face-to-face and talk. What they said to each other, Cal couldn’t hear, but it looked to him like Tierno was giving orders.

  Shortly after that, Tierno left the scene, and Messing waved Spadaro over and spoke to him. Passing on the orders, no doubt, Cal thought. When Messing was done, Spadaro stepped away, leaving the detective standing alone on the street.

  Messing then approached the patrol car and tapped on the window of the back door with the knuckle of his middle finger.

  Clarke turned the ignition halfway to draw power from the battery, then pressed a button on the door-mounted console. The window lowered and another burst of cold air immediately filled the interior.

  It quickly erased the smell of cologne and sweat.

  “Clarke here is going to take you to the motel,” Messing said. “An officer just left the garage with Amanda. They still haven’t found Heather yet. Once they do, they’ll bring her to you.”

  Cal nodded, didn’t know whether to thank the man or not.

  “Everything’s going to be okay, son. We’ll take care of you and your friends. I give you my word.” Messing reached into his pocket, removed a business card, handed it to Cal. “If you hear from your friend, or if you think of anything you want to tell me, give me a call, okay? Call my cell anytime, day or night, it doesn’t matter.”

  Cal looked at the card, then slipped it into the pocket of his peacoat.

  Stepping back, Messing tapped on the roof with the palm of his hand. Cal’s window went up; Clarke started the engine and drove them from the scene.