She wouldn’t be coming back to the studio space again, and she’d probably already trashed the Amex. Maybe she was out of the city altogether. I’d blown an excellent chance to corner her and figure out what the hell was going on. The hard truth was enough to turn my mouth bitter.
My phone rang.
“Up and at them, soldier! Time to squeeze this new day by the balls!” Reuben, still hyper from his Saturday night. Maybe with a little pharma help.
“It’s afternoon, Reuben. And I called you, remember?”
“You did, you did, and it makes me very happy. You’ve thought about my offer.”
I had forgotten about Reuben’s proposal to have me work for him. Between the Kuznetsovs and Maurice Haymes, I had a world of career opportunities.
“That’s not why I called,” I said.
“No? Hang on.” I heard a car door close. When he came back on, his voice echoed slightly in the smaller confines of the vehicle. “Van, my man. Really. Why would you call me so early and start my day with bad news? This is not what colleagues do.”
“I need to find our other friend. The big man.”
“He’s such a friend, you don’t have his number?” Reuben was petulant now. From manic to downcast in a heartbeat.
“I have his number. He might be where there’s no reception.” The cell phone jammers they used for the game.
“Huh. Maybe.” Reuben exchanged a few words in Russian with someone next to him. “Our friend is working. Better if you talk to him later.”
“I need him now.”
“Now, always now. What if I want an answer from you now, Van? You thinking about the future or not?”
“Reuben—”
“Yes or no?”
I wanted to find Willard. But not enough to make promises I couldn’t keep to a Bratva captain, however junior he was.
“No.”
I heard the car’s engine start, simultaneous with Reuben’s exaggerated sigh. “Okay,” he said. “I think it’s the wrong decision, a man with your talent. But to show you no hard feelings, I’ll let you talk to your big friend. You know Double-X Motorsports? In Tacoma?”
“I’ll find it,” I said.
“Better move your ass. He’s got to have a thousand miles behind him by tomorrow night.”
A thousand miles meant L.A., or maybe Vegas. Cities well out of the Kuznetsov territory, last I knew. Maybe Reuben wasn’t bullshitting about his big plans.
I was on I-5 South in less than ten minutes. As I drove, the navigation app on my phone read off the directions to Double-X Motorsports in that female voice that always sounded to me like she was speaking to a mental patient. Chipper but soothing tones.
DOUBLE-X WAS PART OF a large two-story garage in the South End. Its sheet metal walls were painted a bright, clean ivory, while a sign above the big rolling door spelled out the name in purple and black, graffiti style, the X formed by crossed pistons. A good place for Willard’s temporary casino. Nobody would think twice at seeing a parking lot full of tricked-out cars inside its heavy iron fence.
The lot was mostly empty now, the gate open. Coasting past, I saw a twenty-foot moving truck, backed up to the garage door. And Willard’s Escalade, parked off to the side.
Gotcha, you big son of a bitch.
The industrial neighborhood was dead quiet on a Sunday afternoon. I parked half a block away, just as the moving truck turned out of the lot and passed by my pickup. Two men were in the cab of the truck. Neither of them was nearly large enough to be Willard.
I walked to the gate. Willard’s black Escalade was still there. The two movers had left the rolling door open, the gap making a tall black rectangle in the stark exterior. A two-foot crowbar was wedged in the track under the door to hold it in place. I could hear the sound of movement and a radio playing be-bop jazz from far inside the open shop.
The music clicked off. I quietly picked up the crowbar and faded back to hide behind the Escalade.
Willard came out of the garage. He wore one of his usual brown suits with a green knit tie. The tie was loosened and his white shirt wrinkled. A long night. He set down a leather gym bag—the night’s receipts, maybe—and turned to shut the garage door.
The steel door was twenty feet tall and fifteen wide. Even Willard had to tug hard at it with both hands to get it moving. He walked slowly backward, half in and half out of the garage, glancing behind him as he went.
I decided to give him a little help. Sprinting from behind the Escalade, I put all my weight into pushing the rolling door. It covered the last five feet in a rush. Too fast for Willard to get his suddenly stumbling bulk completely out of the way. He fell back against the doorjamb. The door’s edge slammed on his right arm, just below the shoulder. He shouted and tried to get his feet back underneath him. I reached down and jammed the end of the crowbar into the crack between the door and its roller track, and pulled up. The door closed another inch. Willard yelled again, a higher pitch.
“Van, what the fuck?” he said. He yanked at his trapped arm, but he had no leverage. I hauled up on the crowbar, harder, until he stopped.
“You’re breaking my arm,” he said. His broad face was red and already sweating.
“Yeah,” I said. “Tell me about Elana.”
Willard started to push back against the door. His strength was massive. The sheet metal groaned. But even Willard wasn’t stronger than high-carbon steel. This time I pulled on the crowbar for a slow count of thirty. There are a lot of sensitive nerve endings in the bicep muscle. The metal edge of the heavy door was pressing hard enough to stretch the fabric of Willard’s suit jacket taut. When I stopped he looked like he might vomit.
“Next time I’ll put my back into it,” I said.
“What do you want?” he said between gasps. He saw me adjust my grip on the bar and changed tack quickly. “Okay, stop. I knew it wasn’t her. The body, at the hospital.”
“But you lied to the cops. And me.”
Willard’s breath hissed out of his teeth. “Ease off, for fuck’s sake. Yes, I told everybody it was Elana. Even Hollis. I needed to buy some time. To find her.”
“Did you know who the dead woman was?”
“No. But her body looked so fucking horrible, it gave me the idea. I figured playing stupid would buy me a day or two. If Elana was alive, maybe she’d get in touch. But she never did.”
“Did she shoot Kend? And the woman?” I said.
“I don’t know.” His face was dripping, the usual stone expression replaced by a pain that might be more than physical.
“Bullshit.”
“It’s like I told you. She never showed for work, she didn’t answer my calls. She still doesn’t. I tried a hundred times. I even called the phone company and used a cop ID to get them to trace her phone. It’s been off for days. Shit, my arm. I can’t feel my fingers.”
“Probably for the best.”
“Did she call you? Did you see her?”
“I got a glimpse of her, before she rabbited. Why wouldn’t she tell you if she was in danger?”
“I’ve been wondering that since I saw that girl on the slab.”
What couldn’t big, bad Uncle Willard handle?
Or maybe he was part of whatever had Elana on the run.
“She’s not a killer,” Willard said.
“You are.”
“This isn’t on me. I swear I don’t know what happened.”
I was angry enough with Willard to tear a few of his tendons, and enjoy doing it. But I’d seen his reaction to seeing Trudy. It hadn’t been anguish after all. It had been relief.
“The cops, I don’t give a damn about,” I said. “You should have trusted me.”
“I told you to let it go.”
He slumped against the steel doorjamb. His shirt was soaked through so much that I could see the gray hairs on his chest, and his jowls sagged. He looked old. But he could still break my neck, if he got those dinner plate hands on me.
“Don’t move.” I hef
ted the crowbar to make my point. Willard stayed put as I walked a wide circle to come up behind him. I took the small carry piece over his right kidney out of its holster. A Kahr .38.
“Come on,” he growled. “If I was gonna draw on you, I would have done it.”
“Except that you’re right-handed. Call me paranoid.” I ejected the magazine and pocketed it, and did the same for the round in the chamber. The pistol I threw far into the garage, through the opening left by Willard’s bulk.
“What now?” he said.
“Now you take your family drama and go fuck yourself,” I said. “I’m done.”
He pushed the door wider and gingerly lowered his arm, caveman brow crushed tight in pain. His hand was the same bleached color as the garage walls.
“I need to find her,” he said.
“Tell it to the dead girl who’s paying for her vacation.” I started backing away toward the gate.
“Your grandfather would have helped.” He turned around. His face was back to its usual stolid mask. Almost. “Dono understood family.”
“My grandfather would have taken your money,” I replied.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
WHEN THE EVENING RUSH had finally subsided, Luce left the closing of the bar to Fye and her other employees, and she and Leo came to the house. I stacked wood on the hearth while breaking the news about Elana, and Willard.
“Thank God she’s not dead,” said Luce. “But that poor girl, Trudy. Didn’t anyone go looking for her?”
“She lived alone. Elana knew that, and decided to buy herself some time with texts to Trudy’s boss and posts on Facebook. It worked for a couple of days.”
Luce sat in Dono’s old wingback chair and stretched fiercely, like the topic of conversation demanded it.
“I should be happy,” Luce said, “but using Trudy’s money and things to run away just makes Elana look about as cold-hearted as anyone can get.”
“She’s desperate, maybe. It’s hard to wrap my head around Elana as a killer. Maybe she saw it happen.”
“Then why not call the police? Or Willard?”
“The cops, I can figure. Elana’s family doesn’t trust cops any more than Dono did. Why she didn’t tell her uncle is anybody’s guess. Maybe he’s part of what happened, and she knows it.”
Luce raised her eyebrows in surprise. “But he sent you to the cabin himself.” Then she sighed in exasperation. “Never mind. That could be an alibi, couldn’t it? Pretending to be worried for Elana when she didn’t show up for work.”
“He was honestly surprised when it wasn’t Elana’s body in the morgue, I’m sure of that. That would lead me to believe he wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger.”
“Kend and Trudy, dead together,” she said. “I wonder if there was something between them.”
“Maybe. It would be a motive, if Kend were hooking up with somebody else. But I’ll let that whole circle sort through their own trash. I don’t give a damn anymore.”
Leo jabbed at the fire with an andiron. He was still wearing his favorite gray hoodie, with a blue down vest zipped over it tonight, like armor. He hadn’t said a word since halfway through my story. I signaled Luce with my eyes.
“I’m going to shower.” She stood up and gave me a quick kiss. “Would you put on coffee?” Luce could drink coffee at any time, without it affecting her sleep one way or the other. Maybe it was a bartender thing.
Leo waited until Luce was upstairs. He sat on the hearth, the fire crackling into slow life as it ate the damp wood.
“You should have called me,” he said. “When you went to have it out with Willard, you should’ve called.”
“I wanted you on Luce.”
He shook his head. “Luce had the whole lunchtime crowd around her. Or she could have stayed low while I was out. You were the priority, man.”
“I handled it. I know Willard.”
“You think you do. Now you’re wondering if he might be killing people at cabins.” His eyes flickered between me and the windows and the doorway.
“It was my risk,” I said. “Maybe it was the wrong call, but it’s done. Don’t act like I crapped in your helmet.”
“If he’d had another guy there to back him up, you would have been fucked.”
“You’re not some grunt that needs this explained, Leo.”
He stared at me from under the gray hood. “Forget it.” He got up and walked to the kitchen and out to the backyard.
I put another log on the fire and stoked the ashes to let the flames breathe. Leo was brittle. Maybe I should walk tiptoe on those eggshells. But tonight I wasn’t in the goddamn mood.
Luce came downstairs, blond hair sleek as seal fur from the shower. She’d changed into my bleach-stained Mariners sweatshirt and her own yoga pants. If I’d owned yoga pants, she’d have probably have purloined those, too.
“Leo okay?” Luce said.
“Not yet,” I said.
She hugged me. “Can you get him help?”
“I don’t know what kind he needs. He’s tried doctors, and pills.”
“Maybe there are other ones.”
Thousands. And programs and V.A. hospitals and volunteer organizations. Finding help wasn’t the hard part.
I could hear Leo patrolling, coming up the porch out front. He was very quiet, but the old wooden slats creaked. I opened the front door to let him in.
“I’ll make the coffee,” I said.
I heard the kitchen door slam open with a splintering of wood. Leo, eyes wild, came flying through the kitchen. I grabbed for Luce but Leo was already digging his shoulder into her back at a full run, lifting her up like a football tackle and slamming her headlong into me. Glass shattered. I glimpsed a thick, whitish cylinder banded in duct tape hit the wingback chair, bouncing crazily, as I fell back and out through the open front door, Luce and Leo almost on top of me. We all tumbled off the porch. An instant before I hit the gravel, a clap-BANG of high explosive tore everything away from sight sound wall house Luce Leo
On fire. Leo was on fire. He was facedown and still. The back of his vest smoldered and glowed. I grabbed him and rolled him over to smother the sparks, before a hurricane of vertigo made me fall back again.
Leo was out cold, but breathing. Luce lay next to him, moving slowly, saying something to me. My ears were filled with a high insect whine. I tried to say her name, coughed, and was suddenly sick, vomiting through a mouthful of dust onto the gravel of the side lot.
Wisps of white smoke swirled around us. The other side of Luce’s head was bloody. I crawled over Leo to check her. Her ear was cut, and as I bent to look closely at the pink wash, a spat of blood from my own head fell onto her cheek.
“—okay?” she asked. From six inches away I could make out her words. Her eyes weren’t dilated. I peeled Leo’s lids back to check his pupils. He thrashed a little, coming back to the world.
We had to move, my stunned brain told me. Whoever had thrown the bomb might still be near.
Movement, to my right. I had no gun. I fumbled to stand, and then Stanley bounded up to us. His anxious barks pierced through the ringing. He ran in mad dashes, to and fro. Addy Proctor walked slowly up the steps. Her round face was twisted with fear.
The smoke around us churned thicker now, blacker. And there was heat. I steadied myself and bent down to help Luce stand. Addy walked with her toward the street, as I got my arms under Leo and hefted his buck-sixty into a fireman’s carry. I followed Addy, tottering under Leo’s weight and my own unfamiliar legs.
We reached the sidewalk as the first fire engine came screaming onto the block. I could hear the siren just fine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE PARAMEDICS BUNDLED LEO off to the hospital, just as he regained full consciousness and started to ask me questions. They wanted to take Luce. She wouldn’t go without me. They wanted to take me, too. They were very insistent. But we were both standing and answering their questions cogently, and eventually I told them to screw off.
/> One of them tossed us a handful of gauze pads as he left. I held one to the laceration on the side of my head, and Luce held one to her ear, and we watched the firefighters do what they could.
The explosion had shredded the side of the house and blown out every window in the front room. That was only the start. The flames in the fireplace hadn’t been snuffed out by the concussion, and the old wood skeleton of the house made excellent fuel.
Two soaring arcs of water flew up and into the second story, the firefighters working the hoses back and forth. At this point their efforts were more about saving the nearby homes. The front of Dono’s house was gutted. The back was invisible behind black smoke and spray. Whatever personal papers I had owned were ashes by now. Along with Dono’s books. My mother’s St. Christopher medal. Everything else.
A uniformed cop came over with his partner and questioned us. When he got to the part about whether I knew anyone who might have wanted to do this, I said no. I’d already told Guerin about T. X. Broch. Laying his name on the uniform would just lead to an entire night of repeating the same information, on the record this time.
Luce knew what I was leaving out, of course. Her face stayed neutral. But I could feel her vibe.
The cop told me detectives would be in touch. He was partly right. When people started throwing explosives around, the FBI took an interest, too. Maybe even Homeland, depending on who they thought was doing the throwing. It wouldn’t escape anyone’s notice that I’d received a lot of training in demolitions myself.
Local news vans had arrived five minutes after the fire engines. They had raced to get their people in the optimal spot to pose with the fire in the background. The photogenic part of the blaze was over. One shellacked mannequin hurried over with his cameraman the moment the cop was finished to ask us for an interview. I told him no, in much less polite language than I’d used with the medics.
Luce watched the firemen knock down a smoking wall to keep it from falling outward. “This wasn’t Willard,” she said.
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