Michael didn’t say anything.
Norwaldo laughed again. “What? You don’t feel like talking about rumors anymore, you sly son of a bitch?” he said. “Don’t try and play things like you heard something on the streets. I got detectives coming by asking me about that car—one of them sharing your name—and here you are coming out of the woodwork, asking me about it again. That ain’t a rumor, that’s informant work.”
“There aren’t any coincidences, are there?”
“I know you ain’t banging that broad who got killed by the car,” Norwaldo said. “That ain’t the way you work, especially if you take after your old man.” He laughed harder this time.
“Tell me about the car.” Michael tried to play off the insult. It was the only way to keep the worst part of him from turning Norwaldo’s nose into paste.
“Now I know you’re working with that detective. Ten years ago, you would’ve snipped my fingers off for making a crack like that.” He laughed and shook his head. “If you went soft, I guess the old days are dead and gone for good, ain’t they?” He gulped down more beer then said, “Take me over to the pantry. I want a snack.”
Michael wheeled him over to the pantry door, then opened it for him.
“It’s a damn shame you turned against us,” Norwaldo said as he felt around the shelves. “When you were in your prime, you were the meanest, scariest man I ever heard about.” He grabbed an open bag of chips. “You know why?”
“No.”
“Turn me around. I want to face you,” Norwaldo said.
Michael turned him around.
“Because you were smart,” he said. “Plenty of guys knew how to go somewhere and knock heads around until maybe they got what they wanted or somebody died. They were blunt instruments. But you were surgical. Clean. Ruthless. You knew how to use those pliers and wires in your black bag to get people to do what you wanted them to, and you knew how to do it the way the bosses wanted—doing what the bosses want is what matters.”
He pulled the clip off the chip bag and stuck his hand inside. It clattered around the bag like a wild possum looking for its first meal of the evening, making a noise loud enough to wake the neighbors’ dogs.
“I bet half the time all you had to do was knock at the front door and everybody dropped to their hands and knees so they could kiss your boots. You had a reputation. If anyone did Ewan wrong, we all knew Michael Rourke wouldn’t think twice about chopping off fingers, or pounding the bones in somebody’s legs so bad they couldn’t walk again—or hell, even blinding a guy for life.”
Norwaldo stuck his other hand in the chip bag, making it that much more obnoxiously loud.
“I ain’t mad about what you did. I screwed up, and you did what the bosses wanted.” A greasy smile leaked across his face, coating and absorbing any other hint of emotion. “It was the cost of doing business, Michael—I get that. Sometimes a good opportunity turns into a disaster.”
The beginnings of a cold sweat spring up on Michael’s forehead. Funny as it sounded, something about that bag of chips bothered him.
“But sometimes a disaster turns into opportunity.”
The bottom of the chip bag blew out in a flash of light. Michael’s ears rang as he dove away from Norwaldo—back into his den with all the collectibles. Shots rang out and potato chips soared through the kitchen while glass shattered, trophies exploded and pictures crashed to the floor. Michael scrambled for cover behind the nearest wall.
Holes appeared in the walls, sending plaster flying across the den like jet streams, and shredding a signed poster of Muhammad Ali into a million pieces.
The gun fired from the kitchen over and over again until it clicked like a mouse trap. It was empty.
Michael checked himself over.
He hadn’t been hit, at least not anywhere obvious, which was an undeserved miracle. Karma owed him at least a grazing wound.
From the kitchen, he heard the sound of an empty magazine hitting the floor.
Like hell he was going to let Norwaldo reload.
He jumped up as fast as he could and ran into the kitchen. He leapt at Norwaldo, crashing into him and tumbling onto the floor. Michael pinned the old man down, crunching him into the potato chips scattered like confetti.
To the left, a Micro UZI had a fresh magazine hanging halfway out of its grip.
“That was a hell of a thing, Robert.” Michael picked it up, pocketed the magazine and tossed the gun into the den. “You realize you’re blind, don’t you? Even with that gun at this range, hitting me would’ve been nothing short of a miracle.”
“I should’ve shoved a hand grenade up your ass and pulled the pin.” Norwaldo’s bulldog chin jutted out in anger. He planted his palms on the ground like he wanted to do a push up, but really the guy couldn’t move his own wheelchair five feet without exhausting himself. He wasn’t getting up with Michael sitting on his back.
“That probably would’ve worked.” Michael eased off him, then hooked him under the armpits and propped him back up against the lower cabinets of his kitchen. “But I don’t think you would’ve survived.”
“Ain’t concerned about surviving this hell you put me in—” he motioned at his eyes “—and if I can get out of it while taking you with me, that’s all the better.”
“How are you gonna say that?” Michael brushed a couple potato chips off Norwaldo’s chin. “Of course you care about your own survival. You wouldn’t be paying for that nurse if you didn’t.”
Norwaldo didn’t say anything back.
“Look, I know you want to kill me, but how about we compromise and you tell me about the Stingray? I know you saw it.”
“I didn’t see a damn thing.”
“Because you’re blind.” Michael patted him on the shoulder. “Real cute.”
He stood up and looked down at Norwaldo. So much had changed about him. He always looked like a wrecking ball of a man who’d tear down just about anything in his way. Now he was old, shriveled, and his thin legs had long ago quit supporting his beer belly.
There was something almost pitiful about him now.
“I’m gonna use your guts for a necktie before you walk out of this house.”
“Stop with the tough guy act,” Michael said. “You had the car. I don’t have any doubt about that, because it sounds just like something you’d do to settle up a gambling debt. I forgot how much you like taking other people’s things until I sat in that chair in your den and had a good look at all the stuff you’d taken from people who’d earned it through their hard work. I just can’t figure out why you don’t have the car now—why you let somebody else use it for murder.” Michael shoved Norwaldo over, and he sagged to the floor like his muscles were gelatin.
“What are you doing?” He tried to sit up again.
Michael grabbed his left arm out from under him. He trapped it against the kitchen floor with his knee, then pulled his father’s cigarette case out of his pocket and opened it with his thumb. One good shake and all the cigarettes spilled out over the potato chips and bullet casings.
“Are you right-handed or left?” Michael said.
“What are you gonna do?” Norwaldo’s hands felt clammy, and his fingers started to quiver.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll cut all your fingers off.”
“Right-handed!” he squealed.
“That’s what I thought.” He took Norwaldo’s left hand and spread it open.
Michael put the open edge of the cigarette case around the first knuckle of Norwaldo’s index finger like a clamshell.
“You feel that?”
Norwaldo whimpered.
“I asked you a question, Robert.” Michael put slight pressure on the case.
“Yes!” he screamed. “Yes, I feel it.”
“Those are wire cutters on your finger. I thought about bringing my bolt cutters along, but somehow I knew you’d be a soft old man by now. I bet if I tried, I could use my bare hands to snap the ends of your fingers off, couldn�
��t I?”
“Mike, I got a daughter,” Norwaldo said. “Please don’t hurt me.”
“I won’t do anything if you tell me about the car.” He pushed down a little harder on the cigarette case—just enough to give the impression to Norwaldo that he was a bad twitch away from losing the tips of his fingers.
“I don’t know nothing.” The words stammered out of him.
Michael could feel the cold sweat creeping through the back of the old man’s shirt. “Come on, Robert. You’re already blind and stuck in a wheelchair. You don’t want to lose your fingers too.” Michael slapped him on the back of his head. “We both know this isn’t worth it.”
“I swear to you!”
Michael squeezed the case tighter until the skin on Norwaldo’s knuckle turned China white.
“I sold it!” he yelled. “I sold the car!”
Finally.
“Who’d you sell it to?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a lie.” Michael pressed down on the case again. This time, he did it until Norwaldo’s knuckle popped.
“No! It’s not! I swear!”
“Yes, it is. You always know names—and you always know more than you say you do, or do I have to remind you of when you thought you’d be able to blackmail Ewan and ended up blind because of it?”
“Please, I know I made a mistake back then.” Norwaldo tried to wiggle free. “But this isn’t like that. I didn’t meet the guy. I never knew his name, I never knew what he looked like—I don’t know nothing about him.”
“Then how’d you sell him the car?”
“He called me. He said he wanted to buy it for a hundred grand and he’d pay in cash right on the spot. I ain’t gonna say no to that. You know how much my nurse costs me every month?”
“So you just let him have it, sight unseen?”
“No. I told him if he was serious, I wanted half deposited in a bank account I keep.”
“And he did it?”
“He did it twenty minutes after he called. He wanted that car bad.”
Michael relaxed the cigarette case.
He stood up and guided Norwaldo back to his chair. The old man settled into it, bewildered beyond belief and gasping for every breath of air he could fit in his lungs.
“You look like hell, Robert.” Michael picked a cigarette up off the ground and lit it. It tasted a little like peanut oil and salt, which he spit out like dog hairs on his tongue.
Norwaldo caressed the knuckles of his left hand. He’d bought the whole act.
“I appreciate you telling me about the car,” Michael said. “But there’s one last thing I need you to do.”
Norwaldo tensed up.
“Oh, relax,” Michael slapped his back. “It’s just a phone call, that’s all.”
“To who?”
“You know who.” Michael took out his phone and scrolled down to Shannon’s entry in his phone book. He called her, then held the phone to Norwaldo’s ear.
“It’s ringing,” Norwaldo said.
“Yep.” He barely heard Shannon’s voice say, “Detective Rourke.”
Norwaldo gave it all up, telling Shannon everything he’d told Michael, and even wishing her a good night at the end of the call.
When he was done, Michael brought the phone back to his own ear. “Did you catch all that?”
“I got it,” Shannon said. “And Michael, thanks. I knew I could count on you.”
In the middle of the bullet-riddled kitchen, those words from his sister caught Michael right in the heart. That tidbit of gratitude was everything he needed to hear.
“No problem.” He ended the call, then turned back to Norwaldo. “Well, Robert, it’s been a real pleasure.” He dropped his cigarette and stomped it out on the kitchen floor. A few chips crunched underfoot. “Normally I wouldn’t put a cigarette out in someone’s kitchen, but I figured you’re due for a remodel now anyway.”
Norwaldo was slumped over in his chair like he’d been shot, his foggy eyes rolling around in his head, but he wasn’t any worse for wear—he was being overly dramatic.
Michael picked a pair of fresh, lightly salted cigarettes off the ground. He put one between his lips, and the other between Norwaldo’s, who jumped up with a start and swatted it out of his mouth.
“What the hell you doing?” he shouted.
“Well, I figured you needed a smoke to help you relax.” Michael picked it up and brushed it off again, then put it in Norwaldo’s shirt pocket.
“I ain’t gonna start smoking now.”
“Really? The way you had your finger in my cigarette case, I thought you wanted one.” Michael snapped the case shut an inch from Norwaldo’s nose, then walked toward the busted up back door.
A moment later, it sounded like Norwaldo made the connection.
“You son of a bitch!”
“You didn’t know how right you were, Robert,” Michael said as he slipped out the back door. “The old days really are dead and gone—I’m not hurting anyone anymore.”
CHAPTER 26
Michael’s call came just as Shannon and Frank settled into bed next to each other. She glanced at the clock on her phone and noted the time—11:13 p.m. She and Marcie checked Gregory Wendt’s place—The Aces Club—only to find that it wasn’t yet open and that the man himself wasn’t there. They left around 6 p.m., but it felt like she’d left ten minutes ago.
She hung her feet off the side of the bed while she scratched out the last few notes from the things Robert Norwaldo told her. She wrote it all down on the back of an old birthday card—the only thing she’d had available.
“Should I give Marcie a call?” she asked Frank.
He lifted his head, army-crawled across the bed toward her, and laid his chin on her bare legs. He wanted her to go back to sleep.
“You know, you really gotta start thinking of someone other than yourself.” She pulled Marcie’s number from her phone’s contact list and gave it a call.
It rang five times then went to her voicemail.
Shannon hated leaving messages. She hung up.
“I guess that’s what I get for doubting you.” She moved Frank’s big head off her lap and got back under the covers, then turned off the light.
Frank rolled until his back was up against her right hip. The two of them fell asleep just like that.
CHAPTER 27
“Someone bought the Stingray from Robert Norwaldo.” Shannon slapped the birthday card on Marcie’s desk—right over top of this morning’s already half-finished crossword puzzle.
Marcie picked up the birthday card with one hand and her travel coffee mug with the other. She took a sip and read over Shannon’s furiously scribbled notes. “I suppose you really can squeeze blood from a stone,” she said. “Did Mr. Norwaldo give your informant the buyer’s name?”
“No, but I think we should go talk to Leigh Corvath about any enemies he or Jennica may have had, because whoever it was, they wanted that car bad enough to pay twice what it was worth.”
Marcie tilted her head and looked at Shannon like she was being silly.
“What?” Shannon said.
“I’m not sure we can trust everything your informant tells us.” Marcie said. “To me, this reads as a classic case of jealous boyfriend kills girlfriend because she broke up with him.”
“There are a hundred easier ways he could’ve done it.”
“None that made a statement as loud as running her over with his car at her son’s school. These types of murders are always about a statement. Leigh wants to show the world that he’s the man, and he isn’t going to be brushed aside by his woman.”
“Then why did he leave Jennica’s house the night before? You think a guy who wanted to prove so badly that he owned Jennica Ausdall is going to walk away from her just like that?” Shannon put her work bag over her shoulder. “A jealous boyfriend doesn’t leave his woman behind. That isn’t the way it works.”
Before she took the first step away from her
desk, Shannon did a quick and casual scan of the bullpen. No Dedrick. She made her move toward the dreaded elevators.
“Oh, of course,” Marcie said as she followed behind Shannon. “And when Jennica finally managed to force Leigh Corvath out of her house, he went home to an empty, depressing apartment, and he stewed. He resolved it was time to teach her that she couldn’t simply throw him out on the street, and he decided he was going to take revenge on her. You can’t underestimate the passions of a man like that.”
“But why would Corvath kill her with his own car? That’s like showing up to the crime scene in a prison-orange jumpsuit.”
“Men like him aren’t thinking ahead,” Marcie said. “It’s all passion, all libido whipping them into a frenzy until they get the nerve to act on whatever plan they came up with minutes before.”
Maybe. Marcie was right. There were plenty of guys with more balls than brains, and some of them were all too eager to bash their girlfriends’ heads in. But was that really who Leigh Corvath was?
To Shannon’s eye, he didn’t fit the profile of a guy who flew off the handle and pasted Jennica to the parking lot at Northern Cardinal. In all the interviews they’d done, sure he’d gotten upset, but he tended toward despondency first.
And he sure as hell didn’t have $100,000 to buy back his own car.
“I admit, some people are morons.” Shannon pushed the elevator’s call button. “All the same, I want to feel out Leigh some more. I think there’s a way I can categorically rule him out for you, and if you’re still not convinced, I’ll strap him to the electric chair myself.”
“There’s no death penalty in Illinois.”
“Then I’ll bus him to Texas.” Shannon adjusted the strap of her bag. “What about the information from my informant? Do you think Norwaldo is lying about selling the car, or do you think Leigh is lying about being flat broke?”
“I think that may have been a case of your informant pouring honey in your ears.” Marcie shrugged.
Chicago Broken: Detective Shannon Rourke Book 2 Page 14