Death Logs In

by E. J. Simon

  “There’s still plenty of places with no signals, especially in Europe where you are. But the most common is—”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “Yes, a plane.”

  Chapter 90

  Florence, Italy

  They met in the second-floor private office of DiJulia’s Leather Shop on the Via Del Corso, just blocks from the Duomo. DiJulia’s, a Florence institution, was owned by a close and trustworthy friend of Cardinal Lovallo. Sindy had been assured that it was secure.

  “It’s so nice to meet you, Mr. Sharkey. Monsignor Petrucceli spoke very highly of you.” She remembered Michael mentioning that Sharkey could be mistaken for an older Christopher Walken. She saw the resemblance, that look of someone capable of sadistic, crazed behavior at any moment, but he looked old and almost frail now. Several days in prison couldn’t have helped.

  “Yeah, well, it’s good to be out of that place.”

  “Yes, Regina Coeli, it’s the most notorious prison in Rome. I can’t imagine what you must have gone through—”

  “The whole thing was a setup. They planted drugs in my hotel room. I spent a little time—you know, a few days here and there over the years in a New York joint, but nothing like this. No one even spoke English, you know? … So, my good friend Petrucceli said you’d be able to help me.”

  “Yes, I’m going to arrange a place for you to stay, at least until we can get you out of Italy—and back home.”

  “Back to New York? I thought Petrucceli filled you in on—”

  “Yes, of course, he did. I’m aware of everything—including Michael Nicholas.”

  “Well then you know I can’t go back to the U.S. as long as he’s alive. Petrucceli and his associates were supposed to fix that.”

  “That’s one reason they’ve hired me. I’m going to take care of everything so you’ll be able to return home.”

  “How are you going to do that? Where is Michael anyway?”

  “He’s made it very convenient for us; he’s in Europe now, Paris. Just an hour’s flight away.”

  “Are you going to handle it, personally? Is this what you do? Professionally, I mean.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s exactly what I do.”

  “You don’t look like the type. I mean, you’re a good-looking woman.”

  “Thank you. I assure you, you’ll see that I know what I’m doing.”

  “You know, I have two big needs now. I think you’re the one who can help me with both of them.”

  She noticed Sharkey eyeing her up and down. He must have had a kind of sick, bad-boy charm, she thought, thirty years ago.

  “Well, the monsignor told me to take good care of you. What are the two needs?”

  His face erupted in a broad smile and he actually looked ten years younger. “First, one of those Florentine steaks.”

  “Consider it done,” she said, reaching across and placing her hand on his arm. “What’s the other one?”

  “I haven’t gotten laid since I got to Italy.”

  “Well, I don’t want you to think I’m easy. How about if we get you cleaned up and just see how the day goes first?”

  “Good. OK. I think you and I are going to get along. Where do we go from here?”

  “I’m going to take you to a private home just outside of Rome. It’ll be best if you keep a very low profile for the remainder of your stay here. Oh, and the monsignor said to be sure to pick out a leather coat before we leave this shop. The quality here is superb.”

  “It’s hot as hell—what do I need a leather coat for?”

  He looked at her as though she was crazy. He’s about to find out, she thought. Pulling the stiletto out of the narrow pocket of her short skirt, she raised her arm and in one arching powerful stroke, plunged its full seven inches into Sharkey’s heart. She stepped back, leaving the knife embedded where it rested. She knew it had done its job. Sharkey hardly moved, his head first tilting downward as he looked at the pearl handle sticking out of his chest, his blood seeping out slowly around it. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Breathing heavily, he leaned back, his eyes following her. She stared back as he began to choke on his blood.

  “To answer your question, maybe you’ll want to be buried in it.”

  Chapter 91

  Paris, France

  Michael was staring up at what had been Ernest Hemingway’s apartment on the rue Ferou, near the Luxembourg Gardens.

  Samantha watched him, with an indulgent yet amused look.

  “You must stop and look at that building at least once a year.”

  “I know, it just fascinates me when you see something like this—so filled with history for a few years—and then it becomes just another building. I wonder how many of the people living there now know Hemingway once did. And can you imagine living in the actual apartment as he did?”

  “No, since I’m not sure it’s even air-conditioned—which means you’d never live in it either.”

  “Good point.”

  Samantha moved on ahead while Michael drifted behind, still staring up when his cell rang. It was Alex.

  “I can’t speak now. Can you text me?”

  “Are you always with your wife?”

  “Yes, when I’m on vacation.”

  Seconds later, he felt his phone vibrate. He checked the screen.

  Steele murdered Sharkey then left Rome. Can’t locate her. No signal.

  Chapter 92

  Paris, France

  Michael and Samantha entered the steel-and-glass doors of Pizza Chic, a modern, stylish restaurant on the corner of the rue de Mezieres in the hip Sixth Arrondissement and were immediately greeted by the good-looking, friendly Italian young lady who recognized them from their earlier visits. In addition to the menu, the restaurant was unusual in Paris with its cool minimalist décor, floor-to-ceiling windows, white-and-black-tiled floors, light bulbs dangling from the tin ceiling, and a wood-burning oven spreading a welcoming aroma throughout the room.

  For Michael, his life and marriage seemed to be healing. Sharkey was finally gone, forever. There was still one threat—a potential one, at least: Sindy Steele.

  It felt great to be back in Paris and even better to return to one of the restaurants that felt like a gentle reminder of simpler times. Even though he had yet to reach his seat, he could taste his favorite pizza, the “Aurora,” a thin crust with fresh tomatoes topped by creamy, Italian buratta mozzarella.

  Michael and Samantha sat down at their table for six against the restored brick wall near the open kitchen. Angie and Fletcher would be joining them—along with Tiger and his “surprise” date whom he had brought with him to Paris.

  “So where do we think she is?” Samantha asked. Like him, she was relieved over Sharkey’s timely death but the unpredictability of Sindy Steele remained a dark cloud. Michael intuitively knew that she was referring to Steele, and he could see her searching his face for any clues about his feelings.

  “I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”

  Michael believed he had no longing for Sindy. In his mind, she was an infatuation, a strong woman who had offered exotic sex freely and provided a sense of physical safety at a time when he felt vulnerable. It was, he thought now, a type of codependency based upon forbidden sex and security, or fear. She—and the events beginning with his brother’s murder—provided the perfect storm for what he considered his midlife crisis gone astray.

  Michael knew Samantha wanted more from him though. “Michael, she can never enter our lives again. On any level.”

  Fletcher and Angie entered the restaurant. After the usual greeting, kisses and hugs, they settled into their seats.

  “Tiger called my room, said he’ll meet us all here. I think he’s a little tied up. He said they slept all afternoon after they got in this morning.” Fletcher laughed. “He made me swear not to tell you who he brought with him to Paris. He wants to surprise you. Angie and I didn’t know until we met up with them at JFK.”

  “Do I know h
er?” Michael asked.

  “Tiger said you would ‘recognize’ her. Let’s leave it at that.”

  Their discussions continued as they quickly finished the first bottle of Nebbiolo Barolo wine, a magnificent red from Piemonte region of Italy. “You can almost taste the oak barrels,” Samantha said as she put down her glass, “We have to get a case of this for our cellar at home.”

  “I’ll have to ask Alex if it’s alright. He approves anything that comes into the cellar now.” Maybe it was the wine, maybe a feeling of relief, now that he and Samantha had reconciled and opened up about at least some of their indiscretions. It was a rare slip for Michael, always so careful with his words. He hoped his laugh made it apparent that he was joking. He noticed a puzzled look on Fletcher’s face. He watched for a reaction from Samantha. He knew the demonstration in the wine cellar of the virtual Alex had upset her. They had rarely spoken of it since, another of the many dark secrets that had been allowed to seep into their marriage over the past year. The secret he was determined to reveal. This one, he knew, needed more preparation, more groundwork, before revisiting with her.

  Fortunately, Samantha let it go.

  Just as Michael was about to lift his glass for a subject-changing, light-hearted toast, his cell phone rang. He looked at the screen, subtly hiding it from Samantha’s view. “I’d better take this outside. This place is too small in here to speak. I’ll be right back.”

  Michael noticed that Samantha looked perplexed as he rose and walked out of the restaurant and onto the quiet sidewalk.

  As he put his ear to the phone, he heard the sultry, familiar voice—and before he had any idea of what would transpire on the call—he was already wondering what he would say to Samantha when he re-entered the restaurant.

  “Michael, I just want you know that I’m good now. I know it had to end. But we had a good little run. I don’t have a great track record with men, in case you haven’t noticed. I think I’ve killed more of them than I’ve loved.”

  “Sindy, where are you?”

  “I’m taking a vacation in Europe. I needed to just get away. You know, after the shooting, I went right from the stadium to the St. Regis, got my things and took the next flight out of JFK to Venice. I always wanted to see it. It’s beautiful. I’m going to travel for a while now. I couldn’t afford to have the cops questioning me. Once they started digging into my past and things that happened back at school, it would have snowballed out of control. So, I had to just get out of the stadium, even though, you know, I was just trying to protect you from that madman.”

  “And what about Sharkey … have you—”

  “Sharkey had a heart attack.”

  “A heart attack?”

  “After I put a knife in it.”

  “Oh, God.” Michael knew she’d murdered him—but hearing how she did it made it oddly real.

  “He’s out of your life, Michael. I took care of it. I made a deal. The Vatican guys are not going to bother you anymore either. They gave their word. For whatever that’s worth.”

  He was listening so intently that he was jolted when he felt someone from behind gently tap him on his shoulder. He spun around, the cell phone still in his ear, to quite a surprise. “Sindy, hold on for one second. Don’t hang up, I’ll be right there.”

  Michael took a step back. It was a sight to behold: Tiger and his voluptuous girlfriend. Although she was clearly quite younger, they made a colorful couple. She was wearing a very short, simple, red dress, which left nothing to the imagination of any of the Frenchmen who were turning their heads back to look fifty feet up the street. Michael remembered seeing her before, briefly, at Mario’s.

  Tiger had the broad smile of an expectant father, “Michael, this is Chambers Galore, she was in a lot of those big films.” She was giggling. It was obvious they had both stopped for drinks on their way.

  “My face was also on a lot of detergent boxes and my legs were on hair remover jars too,” Chambers Galore proudly proclaimed as she planted a greeting kiss on Michael’s cheek. Looking at Tiger, she continued, “He’s so sweet. I’m too discreet to mention the films. I don’t want people to think, you know, that I’m unapproachable or anything like that. Please—go back to your call. We’re going to head inside.”

  Michael watched as they entered the restaurant, joining Fletcher, Angie, and a now, for at least another few minutes, preoccupied Samantha. He turned his attention back to Sindy.

  “Sindy, you saved my life at the stadium. I realized he was there to kill me.” Michael said, intentionally ignoring the call from Alex and his warning that it was Steele who would murder him. “When he saw you, it must have disrupted his whole plan,” Michael said, not wanting to have her think he knew she had planned to murder him. It seemed safer not to let her know that he knew the truth.

  “When he saw me reach for my gun,” she said, “he knew I’d shoot him. But he had his out before I could move. That’s why I had to jump onto the field. I didn’t think he’d be crazy enough to try and shoot me in the middle of the goddamned game on the field.”

  It all fit together, just the way he and Fletcher had speculated, Michael thought. “This guy must have been working for Sharkey.”

  “At least indirectly. His real boss was inside the Vatican. He was the guy we saw in L.A. when that photographer was killed. The same one I saw in the restaurant right after in Beverly Hills and way back when you had dinner with Bishop McCarthy at Piccola’s in Astoria.”

  Michael was stunned. He had no idea someone had been following him that long. “What was the guy’s name?”

  “Frank. It was Frank Cortese,” she said. “What difference does it make?”

  “None, I was just curious.” It was the man Alex had warned him about weeks ago. “Anyway, he’s gone now.”

  Despite everything, Michael knew he would miss the extra security that Steele provided—even if she had been about to murder him.

  “I think Cortese may have put a lot of extra work into a simple assignment for his own purposes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cortese was the one who took Samantha out of the bar at the Surrey that night I was with her. I think after he started watching you, he became infatuated with her and wanted to get you out of the way so he could make a play for her. He was forty-something. The guy had never been married. He was sick, Michael. That’s why his plotting got so involved.”

  “My God. It’s all so complicated. Do you really think he was hoping to hook up with Samantha after he eliminated me?”

  “Absolutely. Think about it, Michael, a person who is obsessed becomes delusional—and will stop at nothing.”

  Michael wondered whether Steele knew she could have been talking about herself. Did she get the irony of what she was saying? He glanced inside the restaurant; he had to get back inside before Samantha became suspicious and came out looking for him. He wanted to ask her about Rosen and Samantha. Was she telling the truth about them at the stadium—or was she just trying to bait him? He couldn’t trust very much that she would say anyway, and he didn’t want to engage her any further, so he let it drop.

  “What will you do now?”

  “I’m headed to Marseilles. It’s a great place to get lost—and from there, who knows? Oddly enough, no one seems to be looking for me.”

  It appeared that Sharkey had “disappeared” and his murder had gone unreported. The Church works in miraculous ways, he thought. He needed to get back inside before Samantha came out looking for him.

  “Well, I wish you the—”

  “Michael, there’s more about me than you know.”

  “I know.” He believed he did. “You mean what happened in med school?”

  She appeared surprised. “Well … yes. That too, I guess.”

  “We know about the bishop.”

  “Of course. That was actually a pleasure. You know, when work and your passion come together.”

  “What else? Hightower?”

  “No, I had no
thing to do with his murder. That was those money guys who, I’m sure, were afraid he was going to turn on them for a plea deal. They have some crazy neo-Nazi fanatic kids do some of their dirty work for them.”

  “OK, what haven’t you told me?”

  “When we met in your office, I told you I was a bodyguard. I was a lot more than that.”

  “Yeah …”

  “Almost since that incident, so to speak, at Stanford, I’ve been a paid assassin. A professional hit man, woman, whatever.”

  “Well, I can’t say that that’s a total surprise to me at this point—”

  “There’s more. Remember when you said you’d noticed me in the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills?”

  “Yes, the night before my speech.”

  “And the night before Applegarden was murdered.”

  No, he thought. “But … how—”

  “Johnny Feathers had called me for the assignment. I’d done work for him before. I put a small team together, two other pros. We got into his room while he was asleep. I injected him—right in his groin—he couldn’t move or speak. We held a pillow over his face. … It took a couple of minutes.”

  “But how did you know it had anything to do with me? I never had a clue Feathers was going to do this. It was a huge misunderstanding.”

  “Feathers told me just enough. He said he was doing this as a favor for the brother of a friend of his—obviously Alex—who’d been murdered. I did a lot of Googling and figured out you were the brother. He said for him it was a freebie, so he actually paid me less than I usually made on a job. I was infatuated with you, your background and everything, all so different from your brother and the people I deal with now—so I tracked you down. I realized later that you didn’t have any idea what Feathers really did—or that he’d act on what he thought you wanted.”

  Her mood then appeared to change. Michael had seen it before, as though she reached back into her mind or memory and found something there that she’d buried.