It was a fearsome and awful thing, if she stopped to think about it. Ordinarily she never would. But lately, thoughts like this had been crowding in on her, and she didn’t like it. Too much thinking wasn’t healthy for someone in her profession.
She even knew what lay behind it. It was the episode with Pascal in August, just two months ago. She’d nearly bought it more than once that time. There was something about coming face to face with your own mortality that made you a little more respectful of other people’s lives.
And there was the whole moral component, too. She couldn’t deny it. Looking at Pascal had been like seeing herself in a mirror—an older, more sophisticated, and more sadistic image of herself. She hadn’t liked what she’d seen. It had frightened her. Sometimes the memory kept her up at night. She’d even thought about quitting the life. But she didn’t know if she could. It was addictive—the thrill of the kill.
She felt the familiar stirrings of that thrill as she closed in on her quarry. He was a fucking clay pigeon and she had him dead in her sights.
She wanted to do the hit fast and clean, take him from behind before he knew what happened. A single slug to the head, then a couple more between the shoulder blades for insurance.
But at the last moment he turned. How he knew she was there, she couldn’t say. Some people had a sixth sense about being watched. Or maybe he’d glimpsed her reflection in the water or sensed a change in the pattern of ripples around his knees.
Whatever the reason, suddenly he was confronting her, the wrench upraised like a weapon—a pitifully inadequate weapon, as they both knew.
“Did Chiu send you?” he asked, seeming a lot less surprised than he ought to be.
She faced him squarely from a yard away. “I don’t know any Chiu.”
He blinked, taking this in. “So what the fuck is this?”
“Ask Aaron Walling.”
“Walling? The fucking orthodontist? Are you shitting me?”
“I am not.”
“He hired a hitter?”
“Looks that way.”
“Listen to me, lady.” Dante took a half step forward, spirals of water unspooling around his legs. “You are about to make a very big-time mistake. I have some powerful relatives.”
“I know all about your relatives.”
“Then you know it’s suicide, if you go through with this.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
She steadied the gun. He knew what was coming. He made one last try at saving his life.
“Hear me, okay? Just hear me. I swear to you. I will never make trouble for the Wallings again.”
“You got that right,” she said, and fired twice into his center body mass.
The shots were well placed, left side of the chest. They must have stopped his heart instantly. She doubted he had time to know he’d been hit. The stupidly amazed look on his face was probably just reflex. She hoped so.
Alec Dante fell forward, knees buckling, and splashed facedown in the water, his T-shirt ballooning around him, the wrench separating from his grasp and settling on the basement floor. A maroon stain spread out around him in widening circles, diffusing with distance. Close to him it was thick and opaque, like a second skin, a caul wrapping his body. Farther away, it was only a mist of reddish purple bubbles.
She didn’t like standing in a lake of blood. Bonnie made her way back to the stairs and started to climb. Though it was only her imagination, she could swear the echoes of the shots still reverberated off the cinderblock walls.
CHAPTER 2
Taking the bridge off the island, Bonnie slowed down just long enough to toss the murder gun out the window and into the drink. When she hit the mainland, she pulled out a burner—an untraceable flip phone she’d picked up at Rite Aid—and called Aaron Walling.
“It’s done,” she said. “No worries.”
“You mean—”
“You know exactly what I mean.” Clients tended to get stupid at times like this, and she didn’t have a whole lot of patience with stupidity. “Only thing left is the balance of payment.”
He’d already ponied up a retainer of $2,500, but the balloon payment—ten times that much—had yet to be delivered. The cost was $27,500 in all. Given that she routinely put her life on the line, and risked a life sentence in prison with every job, she didn’t think her fee was exorbitant. Hell, a mob hit could easily cost twice that much, and then you had to deal with some Brando wannabe chopping on a cigar and mumbling about omertà.
She figured she would use some of the scratch to buy new brake pads. The Jeep could use them. Actually the Jeep could use a lot of things. She’d purchased the puke-green Wrangler secondhand six years ago, when it was already kind of a wreck. These days it was a rattletrap mess with duct-taped seat cushions, rusty hinges, bad shocks, and a rearview mirror that was stuck on the windshield with Krazy-Glue. She could have afforded a new vehicle, but the Jeep had been there when she needed it, and she was loyal to the old gal.
“You’re sure there were no complications?” Walling asked.
“None. Your wife is safe, and you’re in the clear.”
She heard him swallow. “We shouldn’t have done this.”
“It’s a little late for second thoughts.”
“I know.”
“Hey, chill. I met the guy. The world is a better place without him.”
“Probably. I mean, yes, sure. Of course it is. Only …”
“Only what?”
“Nothing.”
She knew what this was about. It made no sense, but logic didn’t play a big role in situations like this. She’d done the job he’d hired her for, and now he hated her for it. It was easier than hating himself.
Putting somebody out of the way was all well and good when it was safely theoretical, but when the call came through, confirming that the hit had actually gone down …
Then suddenly her client saw her in a different light. He saw her with blood on her hands. And let’s face it, he wasn’t wrong.
“They police will talk to me,” Walling said in a tone of surprise, as if this had never occurred to him before. “I’m his neighbor, after all.”
“We’ve been over this, Aaron. Yeah, they’ll talk. But it’ll be strictly pro forma.”
“I hope so.”
“Why wouldn’t it be? Nobody knows what happened to your wife. Not the real story. Right?”
“Right. Right …”
She wondered if it had been a mistake to take the job. Walling was the nervous type. Apparently a career in orthodontics hadn’t prepared him for a leading role in a murder-for-hire plot.
He’d been antsy the day he visited her office with the medical records and the police report. He’d kept saying his wife could never know. Nobody could know. As if Bonnie was in the habit of broadcasting her resume. She’d told him not to worry. Let him stick to putting braces on overbites, and she would deal with his other problem. He had seemed a lot calmer by the end of the interview. But he was going all goofy on her now.
“When do you think they’ll … find the body?” he asked. She heard cold dread in his voice.
“Probably not for a couple days. But it could be any time. You’ll just have to be ready. Stay cool.”
“Cool.” He uttered a noise that might have been a chuckle. “Sure.”
“Hey, suck it up, cupcake. They’ll just ask a few standard questions—how well did you know him, did he have any enemies, that kind of thing. Just say you don’t know anything. You passed him in the lobby sometimes, saw him at the mailboxes. Period. They won’t pursue it. You’re a respectable citizen. Nobody’s gonna suspect you.”
“Okay.”
She changed the subject. “How are you handling the storm?”
“I’ll be closing my practice early. Then Rachel and I are heading to a hotel in Philly to ride it out.”
“Smart.”
“You?”
“I’m staying put.” It took more than a hurricane to make her run
. “When the weather clears, we’ll set up a time to meet. Not at my office. Someplace neutral. Bring cash.”
“Of course it’ll be cash. You think I’m putting this on my American Express?”
“You’d better not. I only take Visa.” She thought that was kinda funny, but he didn’t laugh.
“I’ll have the payment,” he said, the words a whisper.
She knew he would have it, and he’d be happy to get rid of it, too. Happy to pay his blood money—after which, Dr. Aaron Walling would do his best to forget he’d ever had anything to do with someone like her.
“Stay safe,” he said. “And … wish me luck.”
Bonnie smiled. “Don’t sweat it, Aaron. The hard part’s over. It’s all smooth sailing now.”
CHAPTER 3
Frank Lazzaro was having a bad fucking day.
This goddamn storm was part of it. It had closed down the ports, and without the ports, the arrival of his latest inventory—two hundred kilos of Turkish heroin and Moroccan hashish—had been indefinitely delayed. Plus, it was a serious pain in the ass to deal with high winds and rain and all the shit that came with a hurricane.
And then there was Victoria, who’d been acting up lately. Sure, he could keep her in line with a modest beating or two, administered as needed, like medicine; even so, she didn’t seem nearly as deferential as she used to be. Last week she’d actually had the temerity to drop the D-word—divorce—in his presence, a first for her. Divorce—with two newly minted babies less than a year old. What the fuck was she thinking?
It looked like she was serious. She’d even let it slip that she’d started documenting her cuts and bruises with a cell phone camera, storing the photos in “the cloud,” whatever the hell that was. He thought she’d been talking to her brother again, that putz with the glasses, a lawyer in Hoboken with an Obama sticker on his Prius. Over the years Frank had given serious thought to putting a big hurt on that asshole, but he knew Victoria would pitch a fucking fit, and he’d wanted to keep peace in the household. Now he was thinking maybe he should have taught the cocksucker a lesson. And maybe he still could.
So yeah, he was pissed as he navigated the shopping cart around the A&P, past largely depleted shelves, muscling his way through knots of last-minute buyers like himself. The storm had everybody worked up, and people were snatching at canned peas and boxed granola bars like they were made of solid gold.
Frank wasn’t concerned about simple survival—after Hurricane Irene, he’d installed a generator in his house, hooked up to a gas main, and he kept a subzero freezer well stocked—but according to Victoria, the household was dangerously low on toilet paper, facial tissue, diapers, and other inedible essentials.
So why wasn’t his wife out shopping, instead of him? Lately she didn’t want to lift the god damn finger. He didn’t know what the hell had gotten into her.
Things had been okay between them for most of the five years of their marriage. She was only thirty-two, nearly two decades younger than he was, but the age difference had never been a problem. He treated her good enough. He could’ve gotten himself a little goombata on the side, put her up in an apartment in Hoboken, but he hadn’t. He’d been faithful. Mostly, anyhow. No guy was ever completely faithful. It wasn’t human nature.
Their marriage was a fair exchange. She’d given him babies, two sons, and he’d given her a twelve thousand square foot house in Saddle River—a trophy house for a trophy wife. And so what if he knocked her around a little? Every marriage needed discipline. Jesus Christ, to even think about divorce—
“Hey.”
An annoyed grunt. Frank turned and saw a thin-faced little mook with a spindly pussy-tickler mustache glaring at him through rectangular lenses. On his head rode a baseball cap emblazoned with the words Proud American.
“You banged my cart. Watch where you’re going.”
Frank hadn’t noticed, but he probably had banged Proud American’s cart, not that he gave a crap. It was no part of his philosophy to own up to anything. Somewhere he’d picked up John Wayne’s guiding maxim: Never apologize, never explain.
“Fuck yourself,” Frank said, not really angry, because the motherless cooch wasn’t worth it.
It might have ended there, except as Frank was turning to press forward down the aisle, he heard Proud American mutter one word: “Jerkoff.”
Huh.
Jerkoff.
Frank had been called a lot of names, but he’d never developed much of a sense of humor about it. Besides the John Wayne thing, there was another philosophical lodestar he followed.
Take no shit from nobody. Ever.
Didn’t matter if the shit in question came from a smart-ass ten-year-old or a drooling geezer or the president of the motherfucking United States. Disrespect could never be tolerated, and must always be answered.
He turned and gave the potty-mouthed little prick a long, thoughtful stare.
- — -
Later, when his cart was loaded up with twelve-packs of towels and toilet paper and diapers and assorted other shit, some of which he’d filched from other people’s carts in opportune moments, he stood online in aisle eight, watching Proud American in aisle ten. The kids called it hard-looking a guy. Mad-dogging. An intimidation play.
Proud American, conscious of his gaze, first looked at him, then looked away.
Frank was enough of a student of human nature to know that by looking away, the sad little shit was signaling surrender. Without benefit of words, he was acknowledging that Frank Lazzaro was the alpha dog in this situation, and that he, Proud American, was Frank’s bitch. He also was expressing a wistful hope that bygones could be bygones, past misunderstandings forgotten in a spirit of mutual goodwill and common decency.
It wasn’t going to play out that way.
Frank reached the cashier before Proud American did. Sometimes he flirted with checkout girls, but not today; he didn’t want anybody remembering him. Besides, the checker in this aisle was a butt-ugly sow. He spied an engagement ring on one stumpy finger. Some guy must be really fucking desperate if he wanted to suckle at that pig’s udder for a lifetime.
He paid cash. There would be no credit card entry to place him at the scene.
It was easy to beat Proud American out the door. He even had time to stow his groceries in the trunk of his Mercedes—a black 550, the S-Class model—and to settle behind the wheel for a moment of reflection.
Frank buttoned his raincoat all the way up to his collarbone. He had no intention of ruining his expensive Armani suit and the silk necktie Victoria had given him for his birthday. He had done some business earlier today, and he liked to dress well for his job.
Pulling on black gloves, he reached under the driver’s seat and extracted a hunting knife in a leather sheath. It had a curved six-inch blade, and the mahogany handle was scored with deep notches. The knife went into the side pocket of his coat.
Then he summoned the animal.
That was how he thought of it—the animal, the black beast, sinuous as a panther, hissing like a snake, with evil fangs and cruel talons, a composite spirit of all predators, all natural killers everywhere.
He let it come to him, enter him. The animal took over and he, Frank, stepped aside to let the black beast do its work.
When he left the car, he was not anything human any longer.
The storm spat at him as he crossed the parking lot. Though the downpour had subsided for now, the asphalt was checkered with pools of rainwater. He sloshed through them, indifferent to the fate of his shoes. His world had narrowed to a single focus—the mustached man unpacking his shopping cart by an ancient orange hatchback, the man who had shown disrespect. Shoes cost only money. Respect was beyond price. A man could endure anything, sacrifice everything, take any risk, suffer any punishment, if only he preserved his respect.
Uomini di rispettu—that was how his Sicilian forebears had been known. Men of respect.
Proud American had parked in a corner of the lot, next
to a Ford pickup that screened him from the view of anyone in the store. He had just finished transferring the contents of his cart to his vehicle when Frank stepped up behind him, the knife already unsheathed.
“Hey,” he said. “Jerkoff.”
It felt good, using the same epithet Proud American had used on him.
Before the guy could turn, Frank slammed the knife down, gripping the handle in one hand, hammering the pommel with the other. The impact of the blow drove the blade into the gap between his victim’s neck and left shoulder, drilling through veins and arteries.
The man sagged with a groan. Frank shoved him into the rear of the hatchback, where he lay facedown amid the grocery bags.
The trick was to leave the knife embedded until the heart stopped pumping. Pull it out too soon and you’d be splashed by a foaming fountain of arterial blood. That was a lesson he’d learned the hard way.
Frank crawled into the back of the car and flopped his victim onto his back. The little shitbag stared up at him, eyelids flickering, mouth working without sound. A dying man. There was nothing more fascinating, nothing in the world.
“What …” The man’s voice was a croak. “What’re you doing …?”
“I’m killing you, Proud American.” Frank felt his mouth expand in a smile. “If you don’t like it, you got nobody to blame but yourself. Don’t try putting this on me. You made me do it. You fucked up. You pissed me off, so I had to end you. ’Cause that’s the rule, cazzo. That’s how it works.”
It wasn’t Frank who was speaking. It was the animal, with its inbred sense of jungle justice, its instinctual knowledge of the logic of life and death.
He leaned in closer, his mouth brushing the man’s ear. “You’re just lucky I got a lot on my plate right now. ’Cause otherwise, you know what I do? I get your driver’s license, and I go to your house, and I kill your wife, and I kill your kids, and I kill your dog, and I burn the fucking place to the ground. I wipe out everything that’s got any connection with you, so there’s nothing left, and your life is a black fucking hole. Like you was never even born.” Frank straightened up. “You’re getting off easy, shit-for-brains. Too fucking easy.”
Blood in the Water Page 2