by Michael Kerr
Dom poured another Scotch and smiled as he looked at the framed photographs that graced the walls of his father’s office. It was a gallery of Frank’s heroes, featuring: Caruso and Lanza, who Frank said were singers, not crooners like Como, Bennett, Martin, and a host of other Italian Americans, Including Francis Albert. There was also a signed promotional shot of Rocky Marciano, who Santini senior proclaimed to have been the best fighter to ever climb into the ring. Maybe he hadn’t had the footwork or finesse of an Ali, Frank would opine, but he came out swinging with a killer instinct, and did the business, every time. Another wall could have been out-of-date mug shots of the FBI’s Most Wanted: Al Capone, his cousin Joe Fischetti, Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, Sam Giancana, Frank Nitti, and Benny Siegal, the New York gangster who had contracted hits for Murder Incorporated, and had turned the dusty, one-horse desert town of Las Vegas into a glittering, glamorous and hedonistic gambling capital; a money pit with no equal, that had laundered vast sums of dirty green for the mob.
Dom stood up and checked himself out in a full-length mirror. Damn, he looked good! Only the slightly thinning hair dismayed him. He was a victim of hereditary male pattern baldness, and supposed that at thirty-eight it could be worse, which gave him little comfort. One thing he wouldn’t do was wear a rug. It would be better to wear his hair ultra short than succumb to the vanity that his father had fallen prey to. Frank’s toupee was a joke. At the moment, Dom chose to keep his hair long, tied back in a ponytail. He turned to look at his profile, admired the diamond that graced his left earlobe (a rock that any woman would give a lot to have on her finger), and smiled at his reflection, pleased with the strong, handsome image. Dom was six foot three, and had shoulders so broad that his head looked a little on the small side for his body. He still pushed weights, did not smoke, or do drugs...to excess. He drank in moderation, and required – needed – sex at least once every twenty-four hours, preferring to use the high-class whores owned by the organisation, than to form relationships. Women in general expected to be taken out and pampered, which was too much like hard work. He didn’t confuse lust and love. The working girls knew the score and were paid well for their services. He did not have demands made of him by anyone, with the exception of his father.
“Eddie, I don’t like the idea of that injured cop or the woman being able to finger the hitter,” Dom said when his aide returned from downstairs. “Check them out and get back to me with the story of their lives. Then I’ll decide whether we have a problem, or if there’s enough leverage to shut them up. If they don’t have the sense to quit while they’re ahead, then we’ll vanish them.”
“The shooter was sloppy, Dom,” Eddie said. “I thought he came highly recommended?”
“He’s a pro, Eddie. He did the job at short notice and got that creep, Little. Leaving witnesses was an oversight that proves he’s human. Maybe I’ll get him to clean up his own leftovers. I’ll sleep on it. In the meantime, tell Courtney to get her cute little arse up to my suite in thirty minutes.”
Eddie grinned. “You got it, boss.
Dom nodded. “Yeah, Eddie, I have.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT was ten o’ clock the next morning when Tom knocked at Matt’s door and waited; knowing that in his present condition it would take his DI a while to hobble through the house.
“I just put the coffee on” Matt said, opening the door, then turning awkwardly to make his way back to the kitchen.
“All you need is a bloody parrot on your shoulder,” quipped Tom, closing the door and following him, with the image of Long John Silver coming to mind as Matt clumped along the hall under crutch power.
Matt took a seat as Tom placed a carrier bag on the table, and then went to pour the coffee.
“What’s in the bag?” Matt asked.
“Take a look. It isn’t grapes or Lucozade.”
Matt reached into the bag and withdrew a nine millimetre Beretta and shoulder rig. “Thanks, Tom,” he said. “I feel safer already.”
“Sign for it,” Tom said, putting the mugs of coffee on the table and pulling a folded sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket. “And let’s hope to Christ you don’t have to use it.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Matt said, picking up his mug and taking a sip of the steaming black liquid. “What about the rogue cop? Anything?”
“No. There’s no one involved who stands out. We had a close look at one of Vic Pender’s DC’s, Mike Vernon. He moved into a five hundred grand mock Tudor gaff at Chingford recently, but it was left to him. His mother checked out and he was the sole beneficiary.”
“What have you done about the other cop you’ve got on the inside? He’s on borrowed time if we’ve got a leak, which I know we have.”
“He’s safe. Or as safe as anyone under deep cover can be. He’s from outside the Met, and only his handler knows his real ID, and is in contact with him.”
“You?”
“Yeah. After Joey Demaris went missing, I decided that anyone on the inside needed total anonymity.”
There was a knock at the door.
“That’ll be Dick Curtis,” Tom said, getting up and going to answer it.
Dick was an artist on a retainer, who could work-up a near perfect likeness from a description. He spent the best part of an hour drinking copious amounts of coffee as he attempted to capture on paper the fleeting glance of the killer from Matt’s memory.
Matt nodded, studying the finished pencil portrait of a thin-faced young man with black, menacing eyes and sharp features. “That’s good, Dick. His chin was maybe a touch firmer, though.”
Dick quickly erased and redrew.
“That’s who I saw,” Matt said, grinning, amazed at the artist’s ability.
“Pity he was wearing a baseball cap,” Dick said.
Tom had been on the phone. He closed it. “We’ll soon get to see how good it is,” he said, giving the sketch a hard look. “I just checked in with the cop at the clinic. The Page woman came out of it. She’s got her memory back, but they had to sedate her when she was told that her husband didn’t make it . When she’s able, we should get a lot more to work with.”
All Penny wanted when she came to, was her baby. He was brought in by her parents and she cradled him and cried for a long time. The relief and grief to know that Michael was unharmed, but that her husband had not survived the ordeal, threw up a mix of bittersweet emotions that no one who had not been there could appreciate. She was in a bad place.
The medical staff could not answer her questions. They didn’t know why she and her husband had been shot.
When Tom arrived, Penny was a willing witness; wanted to talk to him. There was no reluctance, just a need on her part to try and understand. She was both victim and witness, who apart from Matt, was all Tom had to run with.
“Why?” Penny asked, after waiting until her mum and dad had taken Michael out of the room.
Tom pulled one of the chairs up next to the bed and sat down before answering. “You’d seen him, Mrs. Page. May I call you Penny? I’m Detective Chief Inspector Tom Bartlett...Tom.”
Her shoulders hiked a little, as if to say that she didn’t give a damn what he called her. She just wanted an explanation. Tom knew that whatever he said would be woefully inadequate.
Penny looked down to where her hands were clasped on top of the blanket, but not still. Nerves seemed to have given them a life of their own; her fingers began to clench and unclench independent of any conscious control.
Tom waited, not forcing the issue.
“He said he wouldn’t harm us if we did exactly as we were told and promised not to say anything,” Penny said, looking up with disbelief in her eyes, tears running down her cheeks as she spoke in a still, small voice.
“I’m sorry, Penny. He was lying to you. After he left your house, he shot six other people, and only one survived.”
“What brought him to our house? Why were we involved?”
Tom saw anger forming in the expression on her drawn face, and in the accusatory look in her sunken eyes. There was a new edge, a trace of steel in her voice. She wanted, needed someone to blame, to vent her wrath on. Tom sensed that he was going to be the sacrificial cow, like it or not.
“A witness who was due to appear in court was being protected by officers in the bungalow next door to your house,” he said, having made the decision to give her all the information he could, barring names. “Someone found out where he was and sent a professional to kill him.”
Penny sat up straight, hands now fisted, her whole body trembling. “You put innocent people in danger, and...and Jerry died.”
“I can’t alter what happened, Penny. All we can do, with your help, is find the man who did it and put him away for life.”
Penny blinked her eyes and swallowed hard. Her throat hurt with the effort it was taking not to break down. “Are Michael and I safe from him, now?” she asked.
“You want the truth, Penny?”
She nodded.
“He attempted to kill you because you could describe him. I can’t tell you that he won’t try to finish the job. He’ll still regard you as a threat.”
“So until he’s caught, my son and I are in danger?”
“I doubt it, but we have to assume that you are. That’s why we moved you to a private clinic. And why there’s an armed officer outside the door, and others in the building.”
“Weren’t the officers in the bungalow armed?”
She was distraught, but not to a point that prevented her from rationalising the situation.
“Yes,” Tom conceded. “So you can appreciate we need all the help you can give us. Anything you can tell me that might help us to track him down.”
Penny licked her lips. Her mouth was dry as tinder. Tom got up and poured water from a jug on the locker next to the bed into a plastic tumbler and handed it to her. She took small, birdlike sips. Her hands shook, and water splashed out over the rim.
“I’ll tell you everything I can,” she said.
“Thanks, Penny,” Tom said, bending down to take a small recorder from his briefcase. “I need to tape it. I don’t do shorthand or try to commit statements to memory. And with your permission, I want another officer to be present. He’s the one that survived the shooting and got a glimpse of the man who did it.”
“Okay,” she whispered. There was no resistance in her demeanour. She wanted to talk; to attempt to expunge some of the locked-in horror.
It took Tom all of his willpower not to lean forward and hold Penny Page in his arms. He wished that he could absorb some of the deep and poignant distress and pain she was suffering. For a second, he saw her not as a mother and newly grieving widow, but as a little girl; an orphan, lost, frightened and dazed by the accumulation of events that had led to her present predicament.
Tom went to the door, opened it a few inches and nodded to Matt, who was talking to an armed cop, Bo Silver, known as Boris the Spider from the Who’s old sixties hit, because he was quick, and a little creepy.
Matt held Penny’s hand firmly for a few seconds as Tom introduced them. He didn’t offer his condolences, just exchanged looks that spoke volumes. Words could sound so lame and empty, even when well meant and sincerely voiced.
Penny saw the mental and physical pain in the cop’s eyes. His set expression could not hide the underlying emotions emanating from him in unseen waves.
“You were shot,” she stated, watching him as he carefully, awkwardly lowered himself into a sitting position.
“Yeah, but I’m paid to take risks. You and your family shouldn’t have been in the firing line.”
“He enjoyed it,” Penny said, when Tom had set the tape running. She told them everything, pausing several times to regain her composure. “He said he killed people for a living. But that wasn’t the truth. He does it because it gives him pleasure. He was...was feeding off our fear.”
“Can you describe him?” Tom asked.
“Young. In his twenties,” Penny said, her eyes closed as she recalled his features. “He was the same height as Jerry...five-nine. And he was slim, but looked strong. His hair was light brown, receding at the temples. And his eyes were black, somehow not human. I had the feeling he was...crazy
She gave a full account of everything the intruder had said and done. Of how he had wanted to know when Becks, their dog, was taken for walks; of his changing moods. Of the fact that one minute he could be pleasant and friendly, and the next, threatening and violent.
Tom showed her the sketch.
Penny physically shied away from it. Tom could have been holding up a live cobra in front of her.
“That...that’s him. And the New York baseball cap is Jerry’s.”
“Did Jerry own a red jacket?” Matt asked. It pained him to hear Penny talking about her husband in the present tense, as though he was still alive. It would take a long time for her to accept that he was no longer among the living.
“A fleece. He has a red fleece. Why?”
“The killer was wearing the cap and fleece when I saw him.”
“Why would he do that?”
Matt wasn’t prepared to hold anything back. She deserved the full picture. “There were two cops in a van outside the bungalow. I believe he wore Jerry’s stuff to get near to them without causing any alarm. They would have seen him leave the house with the dog and not given him a second look.”
“Did he...?”
“Yes, Penny. He shot them both before entering the bungalow. We have a lot of people going through what you’re having to face. I know that that won’t help. But what he did affected a great many lives.”
“His voice, Penny,” Tom said. “Did he have an accent?”
She shook her head. “He sounded local. Definitely a southerner.”
“Anything else?” Matt asked her. “Try and picture him, Penny. Was he wearing a ring or neck chain? Did he have a tattoo?”
“No...But he had scars on his wrists.”
“What kind of scars?”
“As if he had slashed them lots of times,” Penny said, running a finger across her own wrist repeatedly to illustrate what she meant. “Some were just white lines, but others looked fresh. There was a bandage on his left wrist. I don’t recall any jewellery. He wore a dark sweater, blue jeans, and trainers.”
There was no more.
“Okay, Penny. Thank you for going through it with us,” Tom said, before stating the time and date and turning off the tape. “And try to feel safe. No one knows where you are, apart from us and your parents. Be sure to tell them to keep your location to themselves.”
“Why does he do it?” Penny asked, looking from Tom to Matt.
Tom had no answer for her.
“You answered that yourself, Penny,” Matt said. “He enjoys it. Some people don’t need a reason to hurt others. They do it because they can, and because it fulfils some sick inner need.”
After leaving Penny’s room, Tom and Matt went to the clinic’s small cafeteria on the ground floor.
“That was more than I hoped for,” Tom said, returning from the self-service counter with two cups of coffee. “It confirms there was only one perp involved.”
Matt propped the crutch up against the wall behind the corner table, grunting as he twisted slightly and his back and side complained. “You can feed that sketch to the media,” he said. “It’ll negate any reason for the killer to try and take Penny and me out. The only threat we were, was that we’d seen him.”
“I’ll arrange a press conference when I get back, after the super is clued up. He’ll want to be the mouthpiece. The cameras love him.”
Matt pulled a face. He had no time for their boss, Jack McClane, who he considered to be a lard-arsed pen-pusher, only interested in brown-nosing to the suits on the top floor.
“I know,” Tom said. “He’s a dickhead. But he can be pointed in the right direction if
things are put to him in a way that leaves him thinking it was his idea in the first place.”
“This shooter should be easy to find,” Matt said, not wanting to waste time discussing a superintendent who he thought was little more than dead weight. “We have every reason to believe he’s local. And he self mutilates. This is a head case that may have a history of mental illness, a criminal record, or both.”
Tom agreed. “I’ll have a couple of the squad run what we’ve got through the computer. His face might come up. Even if it doesn’t, someone out there will recognise him when this hits the front pages. And the scarred wrists will confirm his ID to anyone who knows him.”
Matt frowned. “We could scare him off, Tom. He isn’t stupid. When the media run with this, he’ll more than likely go to ground. He’s a pro, which means he’ll have made contingency plans for if ever the shit hits his personal fan.”
“Maybe not. If he’s a nutter, being caught might not be something he would ever contemplate.”
“He’s sharp, Tom. This was a well-planned hit. If Santini uses him, then he must come highly recommended with a good track record. Ballistics should be able to run a check on the slugs. He may have used the same handgun before.”
“I’ll see if they can find a match. Although that won’t help us nail him. Do you think he might have altered his appearance? You know, worn contact lenses and stuff.”
“No. He didn’t plan on anybody being left alive to finger him.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Get Dick Curtis to work up another sketch with Penny. She said he had receding hair. That’ll make a difference. Then hold it back while we show it around on the street. We want this guy feeling safe, Tom. He can help us bury Santini.”
“Santini might not even know who he is.”
“No, but the shooter will know who he’s capping people for.”