He watched her carefully. This kind of woman could always fool him. He did not see it coming with Gloria Vandergrift. But this time, he would not be taken in. This time he would see it through, even if it killed him. He stayed seated, unmoving.
They both sat in the semi-darkness, faces caught in the yellow glow of the lamp light. Finally he said, “You didn’t come over here tonight to talk about the board, did you?”
She did not answer right away. Her eyes bored into him as if she were trying to read his mind.
“You know, don’t you?” she said finally. “You figured it out. I knew it as soon as I said it. It was stupid of me. You called me Grace. That’s when you knew, am I right?”
“Yes, not entirely sure then, just suspicious. Then I remembered the water bottle.”
“What water bottle?”
“The one you used as a silencer when you shot Waldo. I never told anyone about the bottle. Schwartz never told anyone either, but you knew. You said something like, ‘You left out the part about the bottle.’ Do you remember? I knew something was out of place this morning but couldn’t put my finger on it. Then you called and said, ‘It’s me,’ and I recognized the voice. The voice I heard when I was shot. When you’re excited, you lose your nice, cultured way of speaking, Sylvia, and revert to a nasal, what—New York, New Jersey? Not Philadelphia. I’d know that one.”
“Jersey.”
“So…yes, I know, but I don’t know why. I guess all that will come out at your trial.”
“There isn’t going to be any trial, except for Grace Franks. She’s the killer, remember? Our slow but predictable sheriff will see to that.” She removed a light automatic from her purse and pointed it at him. “Now the question is, what shall I do with you?”
“Do me a favor, Sylvia. Before you decide and shoot me again, tell me why. I think I’ve earned it, don’t you?”
“You want to hear my confession, Father?”
“Something like that. Who knows, I might even give you absolution. Either way, I’d like to know why I have to die.”
“Of course you would. Hand me one of your water bottles, please, I’m a little dry, and I may need it in a minute or two.”
Blake handed her the bottle and opened one himself.
“How much do you really know about Krueger?”
“Only what we talked about. He held some kind of insider position with the San Francisco mob, and he was about to rat out most of the leadership. I gather the feds had slated him to sing to a grand jury, but he jumped their ship.”
“He was all those things and more. He managed the books. He knew where the money came from and where it went to be laundered. Money laundering is a very important part of organized crime. Did you know that?”
“I heard, but it didn’t mean much to me.”
“Believe me, it is. There are some men who specialize in it—make it a career. A man can make a lot of money in that business. The skim can be as high as ten percent. You figure out what that comes to in a two billion a year business.”
“A lot of money, but what has that to do with us?”
“Not with us, Blake, with me. How do you think my husband made all his money? He’s their east coast money manager. When the feds picked up Krueger, we all ran for cover. Luckily, Krueger didn’t have names. That was a security precaution my husband insisted on. We were just numbered accounts. He put money in and took it back later. The only time my husband might have come in contact with him was when he went to San Francisco for a meeting. Krueger was never allowed to be part of those meetings, so there was no reason to think we had a problem. But Krueger was a resourceful man, and if he didn’t get a name, he got a picture. He had a camera with a telephoto lens on it.”
“I know about his camera.”
“Do you now? Ah, so that’s what he had on your little goody-two-shoes girlfriend. What did he catch her doing, Blake? Shall I guess?”
“You were telling me about Krueger and your husband.”
“Nothing too naughty, I hope. Well, yes. Robert never met Krueger. How were we to know he would show up here as an organist? You want to figure the odds on that? My husband is not much of a churchgoer, but he came to your installation as a favor to me, and Krueger saw him. Two months later we got a newspaper clipping in the mail.”
“crime kingpins still at large,” Blake recited. “You left it in the vicarage. Is that when you took my gun?”
As she spoke, Sylvia’s carefully measured speech slowly flaked away and east Jersey emerged.
“I wondered what happened to it. Yeah, that’s when I lifted your gun. I didn’t have a reason to. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. You never know when you will need a cold piece. It turned out to be a stroke of genius. Then we get a call. Krueger had his picture on the TV—dumb bastard, and I get a commission to snuff him. I’m setting that up, you know, we are sort of settled in here and I don’t want to have to blow town, so I think, I’ll take my time on this one.
“So anyway, this note comes telling us where and when to leave the money—a lot of money, by the way. Do you believe that? Krueger thought he had his backside covered. The jerk didn’t have a clue he’d already been fingered, but you know how it is with guys like that. They always make a mistake somewhere along the line. I wait for the moment and…you know the rest.”
“You shot him, not your husband?”
“Robert’s a killer in the financial markets, not on the ground. He faints at the sight of blood. I’m the shooter. That’s how we met. I pick up a job in San Francisco and he’s in it and we hit it right off. Funny, isn’t it? I have my specialty, he has his. No, I capped Walter and now I am going to send you off to that heaven of yours.”
“Why did you wait so long to kill him? I mean if he’d been fingered—”
“I like it here and I needed time to set up a patsy to take the fall. He wasn’t going anywhere.”
“It’s none of my business, but how did you come to be a…whatever you’re called?”
“A killer. That’s the word you’re searching for, and since you are about to become a score, I guess it is your business. My old man ran a tire store in Camden. He sold new and used tires—retail and wholesale—stuff like that. One day the guy who sells us protection asks him to handle some merchandise that they will supply. It’s not like we had a choice, so my father says ‘Sure.’ And that’s how we got dug in.”
“Stolen tires and—”
“You could say. Well, one day this mook shows up and threatens us. He’s figuring to muscle in on the other guy’s territory. So, we call our guy and we think it’s all taken care of, you know? But then the creep comes back. He’s busted up pretty good by a guy we know named Angelo, who I hear bought it around here somewhere, but I don’t know about that for sure because he went solo. Anyway, this piece of crap starts in on my father. I come in and he’s got him on the floor and is kicking the shit out of him, so I go to the drawer, get the little .32, and blow him away. That’s how it started. Pretty soon, I had me a full-time job. End of story.”
“And law school? You are a lawyer, right?”
“Seton Hall, part-time. A reward for being good at what I did for the locals.”
“You’re still not finished, Sylvia. What about the list? You weren’t on the list I found in Krueger’s house.”
“Oh, my husband had a place on his list, the original list. The one you found was one I left in its place. Adding your name was, like, an afterthought. Good, huh?”
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Why there were no fingerprints on the paper. How was that to be explained, do you suppose?”
“Who’d notice?”
“Schwartz did.”
“Woo-hoo!”
“And the search?”
“Easy. After I shot him, I took his keys, copied his house key so I could look later—after the sheriff and his boy scouts got all done. See, they wouldn’t know what they were after ’til later anyway, and that way, they’d be screwed big time trying to figure out how the place got tossed after they’d already searched. I looked for his stash. I didn’t care about Taliaferro’s files. I just wanted whatever he had on us. I didn’t find anything but I thought the list would point the police in the right direction. Then, see, if I’m part of ‘the team,’ I can get there first. After all, the sheriff’s office does not have any mental giants working for them, do they? You ever met the Sutherlin woman’s kid? The village idiot. That’s why I had my son-in-law free up our friend Sheriff Andy—Ike—to run the investigation. I figured in a shed full of dull tools, he’s most in need of sharpening. It worked pretty good I thought. Then later, I went with you to Krueger’s house—that would explain my fingerprints. I volunteered to help out here, same deal with the fingerprints, and when I visited Millie, she did all the searching, no problem there. You see how it works, Blake. The winners are always a step ahead of the losers.”
“What about Millie? Why’d you kill her?”
“Oh, that. I took that silly bitch, Grace Franks, to lunch one day. I’m listening to her moan and groan—what a turkey—I’m getting ready to plant the gun in her purse and then have the cops find it on her. I figured she was one of Krueger’s marks, but while we’re sitting there, we hear Millie yammering about people and Grace’s name pops up. That’s when we both decide Millie has the files. Grace almost passes out. I decide to keep the gun for a while. Later, I go to Millie’s house to pick up the files. She’s a pretty stupid woman, you know. We wasted a lot of nice words on her last Friday.
“She says she didn’t have them, you do, and finally, after I make her turn her house upside down, I believe her. I couldn’t just leave her after all that, could I? So I popped her, too.”
“And me, why shoot me? By then, you knew I didn’t have the files.”
“Me? I didn’t shoot you, Grace did, remember? See, I knew she was ticked at you because she thought you were blabbing her secrets. I had to stay close to her to make sure she had no alibis. She told me she’d called you, so I sort of let it be known to other people what she said. Too bad I didn’t get to finish you, though. Would’ve saved a trip over here tonight.”
“Must have made you angry, you being the pro and all.”
“Pissed me off. I never miss.”
“If you never miss, how come it took two shots for Waldo?”
“It’s my style. I always shoot twice, one to stop ’em, one to drop ’em.”
“But you missed me.”
“Yeah, you’re pretty quick. And I didn’t know about the damn deadbolt. Actually, it didn’t matter much. Remember, it’s Grace that missed you. Made her more human, I think.”
“But lucky for me. So it was a hit all along. Killing Krueger had nothing to do with Taliaferro’s files, local blackmail, or anything else.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“And now you plan to shoot me?”
“Got to. Sorry about that. Things were just starting to get good around here.” She smiled and leveled the pistol at his head.
“Before you do that, one last question—how do you plan to kill me? I mean there will be another investigation. Someone will put all those clippings and pictures sitting in Schwartz’s evidence locker together and come looking for your husband. Did you know about the photographs? I bet your husband is in one of them. Sooner or later, they will find you.”
“Not this time. They don’t have a clue, see, because Krueger is dead. Who’s going to say who’s who? Besides, I’m not going to shoot you. You’re going to shoot yourself.”
“Really? Where did I get the gun? Mine ended up in Grace’s burn barrel.”
“No, no, Blake. This is your gun, pretty nice, too. Needs some work, but you kept it good. No, the one in the barrel is its twin, one of mine. You’re going to commit suicide with your own gun which, naughty boy, you reported stolen. Shame on you, Padre, you should not tell fibs to the police.”
“And you think they will buy a suicide?”
“Schwartz? Are you kidding? I told you he’s dumber than a box of rocks. And he’ll believe it because my son-in-law, the Attorney General, will tell him to. And besides, what reason would he have not to?”
“So I am going to blow my brains out. Why?”
“Oh, the tragedies of the past weeks have preyed on your mind. Then, there is your drug habit, which explains the crack cocaine I hid in your luggage in one of those upstairs bedrooms. But mostly, you are feeling guilty for what you did to that bimbo in Philadelphia.”
“I didn’t do anything to that woman.”
“Who cares? In your note, which I will type on your computer, you will confess that you really did assault her. You took advantage of the fact she was known to be a person who misrepresented relationships with men all the time, so you ‘had your way with her’ as they used to say. Do you think she will deny it? You are, after all, a very moral guy and you would want to clear the record, wouldn’t you? Of course, you would. What’s her name, by the way? I want to get the spelling right. I don’t want to give the sheriff a mental hernia when he does his snooping.”
“Gloria Vandergrift. You two have a lot in common.”
“Who? Me and the Philly dame? Good for her. I wish her well. Vande…spelled with an ‘e’ or an ‘er’ in the middle?”
“An ‘er’. What makes you think I will let you walk over here and pull that trigger? I have at least one hundred pounds on you and weak as I am, I can still knock you silly, gun or no gun.”
“It’s like this,” she said and drained the last of the water from her bottle. “I’m going to shoot you from over here with this silencer I’m going to make. Then I am going to put the gun in your hand.” She stood and took careful aim.
Chapter Fifty-three
The office suddenly blazed with light.
“That’s it. Put the gun down,” Ike Schwartz barked. One hand held his service .357 magnum less than a foot from Sylvia’s temple; the other still hovered over the light switch.
“What took you so long?” Blake rasped. “I’ve been asking her questions forever since she admitted killing Krueger.”
“Wanted to hear it all. Figured something like this would be my only chance, so I let you hang for a while. You were never in any danger.”
“The hell he wasn’t. How did you get in here?” Sylvia spat. “I locked the doors.”
“I have a key,” Ike said. “Everyone has a key. You are cooked, lawyer lady. Nice of you to spell it all out to Blake. He will testify to it in court.”
“It’s ‘he says, she says,’ and I can beat it.”
“And this young deputy who came in with me heard everything you said as well, didn’t you, Billy? Excuse me. This is Billy Sutherlin, sometimes referred to by folks from New Jersey, who don’t know any better, as the village idiot. He will back him up.”
“You were out there all the time?”
“Most of it.”
“That’s entrapment. None of this will be admissible.”
“Wrong again. You invited yourself over here.”
“Bullshit. I say Fisher called me and told me to come. He threatened me if I didn’t.”
Schwartz heaved a sigh. “Cuff her, and read her rights, Billy. You know, you were right about one thing, though. The bad guys always make a mistake. We know that you asked to come here, therefore, no entrapment. No, no.” He waved off her protest. “The phone lines have been tapped ever since Blake got the threatening phone call. Blake insisted it be a court-ordered tap, by the way. If you were closer to your wet-behind-the-ears son-in-law, you would have known that. It was the missing puzzle piece,
you see. Then Blake called me and here we are.”
“You will never make this stick.”
“Oh, I will.”
“You said yourself, the etched print on the gun matched Grace’s. How are you going to explain that?”
“The fingerprint? You mean the one caused by electrolytes and fire? Well, I’m sorry about that. There never was any print. I made that bit up. Sounded good, didn’t it. But acid etched in the fire…? See, as good as Mrs. Franks looked for the murders, I never liked her for them. I worry about something that’s practically handed to me on a plate. Puzzle pieces. There was the key on Krueger’s ring. He was a meticulous man. He arranged all the keys with the cut sides facing the same way. Someone took one off the ring and then replaced it wrong way out. The question was—who and why. Certainly not Grace Franks. And then there’s Floyd. I have associates living in Floyd. They are a suspicious bunch—part of their history—and they tell me things. What ever made you decide to live there, I wonder.”
While Ike talked, Sylvia’s expression changed from overconfidence to uncertainty.
“You have a weak case, Sheriff, and I’ve got friends in places that can make it go away.”
“Yeah? Maybe so, but worst case, it’s my jurisdiction, don’t forget, and I have enough to hold you over for arraignment. We can make a case for attempted murder. Blake can positively ID you for his shooting. That gets you behind bars. Other charges may or may not stick. I don’t care. Do you want to know why I don’t care?”
Sylvia glared at him.
“See, once your pals in San Francisco find out you’ve been talking to the police and the FBI, you are as good as dead. They will find you and rub you out. And what can poor, dumb Sheriff Andy do about that?” Ike shook his head sadly. “You know what I think? I think you need to get yourself a really good lawyer who can cut you a quick plea bargain and maybe a deal for protected solitary. Then you just might live to see your grandchildren, assuming, of course, they’ll want to see you.”
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