The Last Kind Words: A Novel

by Tom Piccirilli

  My cell phone rang. I’d never heard it ring before and it took me a second to figure out which button to push to answer.

  “Hello?”

  “You heard about Cara Clarke?” Lin asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you really believe that I’m killing those girls in an effort to somehow help your brother?”

  “No,” I said.

  She let out a deep breath. “Then you accept there’s a murderer out there?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m still not sure about that.”

  “What? Why not?”

  I wondered if I should mention Gilmore. But I wasn’t sure of a damn thing. “It looks like Cara Clarke committed suicide.”

  “That’s just the killer covering his tracks and obscuring the facts!”

  “Maybe,” I said. And again, “Maybe. But you don’t know for sure.”

  I could hear the tremor in her voice. “But it’s—it’s so—”

  “Don’t say ‘obvious,’ Lin. Nothing about this is conclusive.”

  “Will you go to the police anyway?” she asked.

  “I already have,” I said.

  “Do you want my files? Something here might help them.”

  “They’ve already gone through your files, right? They’ve already written you off as a nut. I might stop by to go through them again. I’ll call you if I learn anything more.”

  The anger and disappointment seemed to have tightened her mouth. She could barely get the words out. “Thank you, Terry.”

  I snapped my phone shut, sat in my car, and watched the mob thin as the cop cars came and went. I kept thinking I should have done something differently. Cara had been a kid in pain and I could’ve reached out to her more. I could have advised her better. The same was true about my own sister. I needed to watch over her more carefully. I couldn’t make the same mistake again.

  Gilmore.

  I’d memorized his address from the rent receipt in his desk at the precinct. I thought of Gilmore working my kidneys, full of fury but trying to control it. Hating me, maybe the same way that Collie did. A man on the edge who’d been dipping his toe into bloody puddles.

  I drove over to the complex. It was nicer than I remembered, with a large open court full of flowers and trimmed hedges. He had a one-bedroom corner apartment. There were three locks on the door, looked like two of them were fairly fresh. Did that prove he had something to hide? Gilmore should know that putting in your own locks often made it easier for someone to break in. Locksmiths got sloppy, didn’t cut out the perfectly sized holes for the latches and bolts. The work sometimes loosened the door in its frame, giving a little extra play in the setting. There was no one around. I felt strangely calm considering my suspicions. It took me fifty seconds to get through all three locks.

  I crept the place. I searched for anything that might tie Gilmore to the Clarkes or the other women. I checked all the obvious and inconspicuous places. I searched for kill trophies. I checked his cereal boxes again. No cash, nothing. He’d wised up. He wouldn’t keep money around the place anymore. So where was the extra cash that he made off Danny Thompson? Was he flying straighter now or did he have a secure lockbox someplace?

  He didn’t take his work home with him. There were no files, no paperwork. I went through his computer and discovered nothing encrypted. All I found were photo albums of his kids, hundreds of pictures of better times with them and his wife at the beach, trick-or-treating, opening Christmas presents. I found the photos that my old man had taken of Gilmore’s daughters, the two of them standing near their mother’s car, as if waiting to be driven to school. What did that say about Gilmore? Was he obsessing over his kids? Over girls or women in general? And what the hell did it say about my father? Was it as creepy as it seemed? Or was it just further proof that lonely men with too much time on their hands will do strange things to alleviate their average sorrows?

  It wasn’t hard to push a good man off the big ledge. It happened every day. Heartbreak could make you a murderer. So could losing your job, drugs, or having one beer too many. Or maybe nothing at all, like Collie kept saying.

  An hour after I’d entered, I relocked his door and got back to my car. I phoned information and got the number for the television station where Eve and Vicky worked. It took me ten minutes to wade through the menu and finally get Eve. She answered on the first ring.

  “You’ve heard about Cara Clarke?” I asked.

  She wasn’t someone who needed the quiet hellos and the after-sex small talk. I wondered if I did, if I normally would want it if I hadn’t just seen the body of a murdered teenage girl.

  “Vicky’s been on scene,” Eve said. “We’re busy here now, Terry. Your brother’s story was big before, but now—”

  “Off the charts.”

  “Yes.”

  I had difficulty saying it. “I need your help.”

  “Anything,” she said.

  “In exchange for an in-depth on-camera interview, right?”

  “No, Terry. I know you’d probably agree to sit for one, but it would be a lie. I’m a professional but not a shrew. Hopefully we’re at least a few steps along the road to being friends. So what can I do to help?”

  “The cop I mentioned. His name is Detective Gilmore.”

  I could hear her perk up in her seat. In the background there was a din of voices, the sound of a lot of activity. I wondered what other kind of fallout Cara’s death would bring.

  “You said you still needed him. That you didn’t want me to do an exposé.”

  “I just want you to dig. Find out what you can about him.”

  “Why?”

  Because, I nearly said, my brother is manipulating me into being suspicious of everyone, and it’s making me as crazy as he is.

  “A screwy hunch. It’s probably nothing, but I’ve got a gut feeling I can’t shake loose.”

  “And what am I looking for?”

  “I’m not certain. See if his jacket has gotten sketchy in any way over the last five years. If there’ve been any off-duty collars in places where he shouldn’t be. If there’s been any kind of internal investigation into him. If he’s had a psych evaluation.”

  I could tell that she held the phone a little tighter to her lips, got herself away from the noise of the newsroom. Now there was something like concern in her voice. “You suspect him of something. What is it?”

  “First let me know if anything pans out, then I’ll fill you in if I can.”

  “You ask a lot,” she said.

  “Everyone does.”

  “Give me a couple of hours.”

  I disconnected. I had to keep moving. I was close to the address that had been on Butch’s suspended driver’s license. I had to keep an eye on the punk and his crew and see if Dale needed something more than a butterfly knife to protect herself. I had to see who his connections were.

  It was a nice house, obviously his parents’ place. His Chevy wasn’t around. I rang the bell, and when his mother answered I told her that I was a high school buddy of Joe’s and wanted to catch up on old times. I figured she wouldn’t call him “Butch.”

  Despite the gray streak and a few extra years, I was young enough to look like we’d run together. I turned on my most winning smile. She looked at me like she knew I was lying but that everyone who hung around her son lied to her. Her face went hard and drained of all interest and concern. She told me he hadn’t been living at home for some time and shut the door in my face.

  Next stop was the Fifth Amendment. Butch wasn’t around. Nobody knew where he might be. Danny was holding court with his crew in their usual spot. A lot of fat cats with lit cigars were rolling their sleeves up. It looked like a big poker game was on the agenda for later tonight. Maybe someone had Butch out picking up some fresh baked goods. I split.

  From the road I phoned the house, hoping to talk to my sister. My father answered and put Dale on.

  “Where’s Butch?” I asked.

  “Why?”


  “I wanted to ask him something.”

  “What?”

  “What to get you for your birthday.”

  “You’re full of shit.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I’m not pregnant. You don’t have to beat him up. And he didn’t defile me either. I wasn’t a virgin when I met him, you know.”

  Some things men weren’t meant to imagine, and a sister’s first time was one of them. “Shut up! Christ! Tell me where he is.”

  “No,” she said. “And thank you for the knife.” Then I heard her turn on her blow dryer and she hung up.

  I staked out my own house and parked down the street, mostly hidden by a curtain of brush. Dale fixing her hair meant she’d be heading out soon.

  Butch picked her up around seven o’clock and I tagged along. There wasn’t much need. I figured they’d be heading over to the lake. Butch parked pretty much in the same spot as before. They reenacted everything that they’d done the other night, except that Butch seemed to be drinking a lot more. Maybe the pressure of the heist was getting to him.

  I didn’t spot anyone. I kept the lights off and the music low and I tried not to let myself drift too much, but I couldn’t help it. I kept thinking that I could’ve saved Cara Clarke somehow. I didn’t know how, but I had botched the job. Maybe I never should have visited her. Maybe I had led the killer to her door. Maybe I had brought the underneath along with me and she’d gotten swept up in it too.

  I stared at the headlights of the kids’ cars and watched them dancing and drinking in the firelight until it felt like my eyes were full of splinters. Maybe this was the beginning of Alzheimer’s.

  It was a school night and my sister left early enough to make my mother only moderately unhappy. Butch wove around on the road a little and kept crossing the center line. They parked in front of our house and argued for a few minutes, maybe about his drinking, and then made out for a while. Then Butch split.

  He was knocking back beers as he drove home. I followed. I wanted to drop a dime on him for drunk driving with my sister in the car, the prick. He pulled into a low-class apartment complex in Wyandanch known for its drug market. I watched him weave up the sidewalk. I sat out in front and waited for ten minutes, then I went to have a look.

  I couldn’t even say I crept his place. The lock was broken and his front door was halfway open. The stink of rotting food made me gag.

  Butch was passed out on the couch. He had a three-inch doobie still burning in an ashtray. His pad was a catastrophe. Empty beer cans and old bags of Chinese takeout, ribs, burgers, were everywhere. I could hear the roaches skittering. I hoped to Christ my little sister didn’t spend much time here.

  There wasn’t much to the douche. He had a .22 with a warped front sight tucked down between the couch cushions where he slept. He had a new wallet. It had someone else’s ID and about a hundred bucks in it. The idiot had juked somebody but hadn’t tossed the driver’s license. Maybe he thought he could pass himself off as Carlos Ortiz Arroyo.

  Right out in the open, scrawled on a grease-soaked pizza box, were the name and number of Stan Herbert. He was a fairly small-time fence who took the dirty items nobody else wanted. If you boosted a church, then you brought the silver chalice to Stan. Butch and his string were relying on the wrong guy to move their jewelry. Either Butch was running the heist into the ground or they were all a bunch of amateurs or morons. Danny would want a fat hunk off the top and there wasn’t going to be much cheese left for the rest of them. Even if they got away with it, they weren’t going to want to give out such a big cut. That would put them on the wrong end with the Thompson crew. They were as good as caught or dead. The cops would sniff out Dale. Whether she was involved or not, it would go bad for her just because of the Rand name.

  Butch was a dim bulb. I wasn’t going to be able to scare him into laying off the heist. I wasn’t going to be able to talk any sense into him.

  Five men in all. I wondered if he’d picked up his fifth yet or if he was still looking. A family-owned jewelry store. Small shop, a lot of employees. Four minutes inside. I tried narrowing down which shop it might be, but there was no way. I looked over at Butch on the couch and tried to see what my sister saw in him. She could do much better. If she went for bad boys she could still go for smarter. Maybe she just dug the Chevy.

  As I was heading home, my phone rang again. The noise of it startled me. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to carrying a cell and I couldn’t wait to get rid of it as soon as I could. When that might be I had no idea. Maybe as soon as Collie was dead. Since I was still doing a lot of creeping, I thought maybe I should set the fucker on vibrate.

  “Hello?”

  “We’ve got a little trouble, Terry,” Wes said. “And don’t bother asking me how I got this number, it’s my goddamn phone. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist juking me.”

  “Taking a burner isn’t juking you, Wes. What’s the trouble? Something with my sister?”

  “No,” he said. “Your uncles are here at the Fifth.”

  “Ah, shit. The poker game.”

  “Right. They just walked in a few minutes ago. You’re the one who put it in Mr. Thompson’s head that when Mal and Grey are together they’re cheating. He said you mentioned cross chatter and keeping the marks distracted.”

  “What a fucking idiot I am.”

  “If you get here fast, maybe we can calm the situation before anything starts.”

  “Danny throwing his weight around?”

  “No. It’s all nice and mellow so far. But you know Mr. Thompson holds a grudge.”

  “How much have they won so far?”

  “Nothing. Nobody’s much ahead yet.”

  That’s how it would start. My uncles were just loosening up a little. They’d run the hands evenly for a while. Take a pot or two and then feed a couple back to the other players. The next step was to start losing slightly, then more heavily. After they’d gotten five or six grand deep, the others would get in a good mood and grow even sloppier, and then my uncles would come in with the serious rips and finish the fat cats off fast.

  “I’ll be there in five minutes. But tell me something else first.”

  “What is it?”

  “How deep is Gilmore into Danny’s pocket?”

  I could almost hear Wes’s stomach rumbling, the acid splashing around. “You don’t need to know things like that, Terry.”

  “I really do, Wes. Has he ever pulled a trigger for you?”

  “What?” Wes’s voice tightened, and he put some frost into it. “Terry, I don’t understand what’s been going on with you, but this isn’t the kind of thing we should be talking about.”

  “Is that a yes, then?”

  “Doesn’t the guy eat at your house and drink beer with your father? I thought you knew him.”

  “I thought I did too, but I’m not so sure anymore.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around. Hurry the fuck up and get here, would you?”

  It took me ten minutes. A sign on the front door said PRIVATE PARTY TONIGHT. That had always been Big Dan’s euphemism for a major game. It just proved that Danny was still walking in his father’s shadow, afraid to strike off on his own.

  I walked in anyway. I started over to Danny’s table, and one of his soldiers stepped up and blocked me. Danny watched it happen but kept me waiting. Wes saw it too and knew he had to let the boss throw his weight around a little. A few minutes went by. I tried hard to be patient.

  Danny had a new suit on, one that looked a couple of sizes larger and fit him more comfortably. His paunch was well hidden. He’d used some kind of thickening gel to give his hair more texture. He still couldn’t keep from thumbing back his widow’s peak.

  Mal had one of his stogies lit. He smoked it without ever pulling it from his mouth. Just sucked air through his teeth and then blew smoke out one side of his mouth. In front of him was either a Bloody Mary or a glass of tomato juice, garnished with a stick of celery.

&nbs
p; Grey had stopped off at home at some point and now wore a charcoal suit and a power tie. If possible, he looked even sharper than he had last night. He wore his best jewelry. Rolex watch, diamond pinkie ring, a gold bracelet. He said it all served as distraction and decoy. The more flash you wore, the more chance that someone was looking at the shine and not at your four-card pull. It went counter to everything my father had taught me. You wore nothing on your hands so that no one looked at your hands. Both methods seemed to work pretty well.

  The fat cats appeared to be having fun. I recognized two of them as mob guys who used to hang around with Big Dan. Both from Chicago, in town for a few days doing business. I suspected Mal was right again. The Chi syndicate was here pulling the Thompson crew apart and stealing their business.

  Danny’s boys hung close but not too close. The mook in front of me had on an enthusiastic expression like he was daring me to try to run around him. I thought about picking up a chair and cracking him across the face, but I thought that probably wasn’t the best way to proceed. I was there to keep things from getting out of hand, not to start a riot on my own. I waited.

  Finally Danny glanced up from his cards and waved me over with two fingers. The soldier moved aside and a path was cleared to the table.

  “What, no dog this time?” Danny asked. “Figured you had him trained to read cards and bark out the suits. Arf arf! Queen of diamonds! Woof woof woof! Nine of clubs!”

  His boys laughed because they had to. The Chi guys went along with it and smiled even though they had no clue.

  My uncles knew exactly why I was there. Mal seemed a little disturbed but Grey was curious, his eyes a bit hot, wondering how this would all play out. He grinned at me and gave me a nearly invisible head wag. He wasn’t telling me not to join in. He was saying, You’ve got balls, kid, getting laid last night must’ve really fired you up to jump back into the game.

  There was an empty chair on Danny’s right. I swung it around and squeezed in on his left.

  “So deal me in,” I said.

  “You need ten g’s to join us.”

  Like his father, Danny didn’t bother speaking in code the way some of the other outfit guys did. They would’ve said ten bags of cement or ten slices of bacon or something equally stupid. Big Dan didn’t believe in speaking stupid in his own place, even if the feds were tapping him. Danny was following suit.