Titans

by Tim Green

  Chapter 35

  Aunt Esther liked to watch "Gunsmoke" reruns on Saturday nights. It was one of the few luxuries she allowed herself. She'd seen each episode three or four times, but that didn't matter. She hustled Natasha to bed and settled down on the couch with a can of Coke and a white sugar-powdered doughnut. Everything was right in Esther's world. The only thing that could have been better was if she knew where her nephew was and when he'd be back.

  "Cuss that Ellis," the old woman muttered to herself and then briefly touched the small, simple wooden cross that hung around her neck.

  Festus was dragging his wounded and bleeding leg through the marshal's office door when a knock came at Esther's own door. She looked up from her show like an angry owl. The knock came again and she returned her half-eaten doughnut to its plate, then licked the white powder from her fingers. She was halfway to the door and muttering ceaselessly under her breath before she was struck with the notion that whoever was at the door might be there to harm her.

  Esther stopped dead in her tracks. It was late Saturday night. No one should be here knocking. Her heart began to gallop, and she shuffled into her bedroom to get her pistol from under the mattress. She returned to the door and quietly put her eye to the peephole, pointing the gun at the door all the while.

  There was a man in a suit out there, and Esther almost jumped out of her skin when he rapped loudly once more.

  "Who is it?" she cried, stepping back from the door and leveling the gun. She closed her eyes, scared of the noise the gun would make if she pulled the trigger.

  "Are you Aunt Esther?" came the man's voice. "I'm Duncan Fellows. I'm with the FBI. Your nephew works under me. I need to come in. Are you in there?"

  She opened the door a crack and stared at the man called Fellows.

  "He dead?" she asked in a shocked voice.

  "No," Fellows said. "No, he's not. But he's in some trouble, and I need to help him. Can I come in?"

  "Let me see your badge," Esther said stubbornly.

  Fellows whipped out his badge and his ID and held them up to the wedge of light that shone through from Esther's side of the door. Esther pretended to examine it carefully despite being unable to read anything at all without her glasses. She felt ludicrous, standing there with the gun. She quickly stuffed the firearm in the pocket of her tattered old housecoat, then unbolted the door and opened it the rest of the way.

  Fellows came in. Esther could see that his hands were trembling slightly, and she thought she smelled peppermint schnapps on his breath. He looked around nervously.

  "Are you alone?" he said.

  "What kinda question is that?" she said, sliding her hand discreetly into the pocket of her housecoat.

  "I . . . nothing, I just wondered if you were all right, staying here, alone ..."

  "What you want?" Esther said, stepping backward into the living room.

  "Cook, your nephew, has some papers here. I need to see them. It's important. He may be in great danger," he added.

  "Ellis sent you?" Esther asked.

  "Yes," Fellows nodded, "I'm his boss."

  "I know that," Esther said, looking as though she might have bitten into a lemon.

  She thought for a moment. She thought of her nephew's words about her overreacting. She pointed toward Ellis's bedroom.

  "He keeps all his things in there," she said.

  Fellows's face seemed to relax. He almost smiled.

  "Good," he said and went into Cook's bedroom.

  Esther followed him. She reached across the hall and shut the door to her bedroom, then watched Fellows silently from the doorway.

  "You're making a mess," she commented sharply.

  Fellows looked back at her and smiled in a wicked way. "I'm sorry," he said. "It's important."

  Esther began to think that she'd done the wrong thing to let Fellows in. She had a bad feeling about the way he was ripping through her nephew's things. He was digging through the bottom drawer of Ellis's battered old desk when he suddenly stood erect with a thick manila folder in his hand. He began thumbing through the pages and photographs inside. He smiled and snapped the folder shut, setting it down on the desktop. Then he proceeded to go through the rest of Ellis's things.

  "You find what you needed?" Esther said.

  "Yes," Fellows murmured without looking at her. "But I need to make sure I've got everything."

  In another minute, the room was in a complete shambles. Fellows had extracted two packets of photos and their negatives from the top shelf of the closet, and he now held them with the file.

  "Now," he said, looking at Esther, "are you sure this is the only place he keeps his papers? It's important, very important . . . for him."

  Esther shook her head and said, "If it ain't in there, then it ain't Ellis's."

  "Good," Fellows said.

  Esther suddenly came to her senses and remembered Ellis's cellular phone. She backed into the living room and quietly picked up the phone while Fellows was doing a final take of the bedroom. She heard the phone ring twice, but before Ellis could answer, Fellows was on top of her, snapping down the receiver of the phone. "What are you doing?" he growled.

  "Calling Ellis," she said, glaring at him. "He said call if I needed him. I don't know if I like what you're doing."

  A twisted smile appeared on Fellows's face. He reached into his coat and pulled out an automatic handgun. It had a cylindrical tube on the end of it, a silencer. Fellows pointed the gun at Esther's forehead and put the index finger of the hand that held the file up to his lips.

  "Shhh," he whispered. "If you're quiet, and if you do what I say . . . no one will get hurt."

  Cook was sitting at the upstairs bar of the Palladium. Besides his brief encounter with Vincent Mondolffi, Tony Rizzo's night had been uneventful. Tony seemed to be engaged in a game with Camille Carter. Cook called it the "See How Much She Can Take" game. Rizzo, with one arm around Camille, was engaged in a lively discussion with a beautiful brunette whom he had flagged down about an hour earlier. Cook couldn't help wondering how long Camille would put up with Rizzo's obvious flirtations. He had bet himself she would slap Rizzo's face and walk away before his fourth drink. He was working on his fifth soda water with lime, and Camille was still there when he felt more than heard the small cellular phone in his coat pocket ring. Popping it open, he heard only a dial tone.

  The call made him nervous. Only Esther had the number and she was to call him only in the event of an emergency. Cook's heart pumped adrenaline through his body. He started up from his chair, then sat back down. He had made a promise to Logan that he would stay on top of Tony Rizzo. It was certainly possible that Rizzo could take a plane to Kansas City and make his rendezvous with the quarterback there. It was unlikely but possible, and Cook didn't want to jeopardize Logan.

  Besides, Cook reasoned, it could have been a caller who had dialed the wrong number and hung up when he realized his mistake. Just as likely, it was Esther. Nervous about the recent killing down the block, she could have heard a noise and called him in a panic, then realized she was being foolish before he had time to answer. Cook was getting jumpy from sitting, that was all. If Esther needed him, she would have stayed on the line. Cook was determined to see Rizzo to bed. After that he would make a quick trip back downtown to check on Esther and Natasha. There would be plenty of time for that.

  Esther involuntarily staggered backwards into the hallway and bumped against the bedroom door. She looked up at Fellows. His eyes were crazed, and his tongue darted nervously over his lips as he kept the gun at her forehead. Her legs felt wobbly and she dropped to the floor. Before she heard the gun go off, Esther's last feelings were of disgust with herself. She was disgusted that she couldn't do a thing. She wanted to take the gun out of her housecoat pocket. It was there for her protection, and now, with a chance to use it, her limbs felt too heavy and she was sluggish with fear, as though she was living out a horrifying dream.

  The silencer's spit sounded like the bu
rst of an underwater scream. Esther's face was sprayed with blood, and she heard the pistol clatter to the floor. She looked up and watched Fellows's faceless body drop lifelessly. She felt the warm pool of her own urine beneath her. Too terrified to scream, she looked up with a gaping mouth at the large man who stood only a few feet away in the living room. He was dressed in dark pants and shirt and wore a dark blue windbreaker. His face was distorted under the tight covering of a woman's stocking.

  The big man stepped forward into the hallway and leaned down over Fellows's body. He suddenly jammed the cylindrical barrel of his gun tightly behind Fellows's ear and pulled the trigger in three quick short bursts. Esther heard the bullets hitting the floor like three raps of a hammer. The underside of the dead man's head was a pudding of blood and brains. The big man quickly and quietly stuffed the bloodied papers and photos Fellows had taken from Ellis's room back into the file. He picked up the packets of photos too and stuffed everything into the front of his pants before he zipped up his jacket.

  When he finished, he checked his appearance, then seemed to notice Esther for the first time. He aimed his gun at her head, then paused and tilted his own head ever so slightly, like a dog that hears a silent whistle. He stood that way for almost a minute. Tears filled Esther's eyes and ran pellmell down the crags in her old face. Her mouth was twisted, but she made no noise. She prayed to God, not for her own life, but that the man would kill her and go away, leaving Natasha to grow as old as the aunt who would willingly die in her place.

  The man backed into the living room and reached down. With a gloved finger from his free hand he popped off a pair of cheap rubbers that Esther hadn't noticed until now. Then he straightened and held his finger to his lips much in the same way Fellows had, signaling her to be silent. He tossed the pistol down on the floor beside Fellows's body. Esther's eyes followed the clatter of the gun in disbelief. When she looked up, the man was gone.

  Before Aladdin was over, Sara had fallen asleep on the couch with her head on Rachel's lap. Rachel let the movie run even though she'd already seen it a dozen times. She was waiting for Hunter to call. When he did, they talked for almost an hour, Rachel carefully avoiding the subject of Cook and Rizzo. She knew Hunter would want to keep his mind as clear as possible for the game tomorrow. That would be hard enough without her fretting to him over the phone. All she wanted was to hear his voice.

  "OK, Rach," Hunter finally said, "I'm turning in. I'll call you in the morning."

  "All right," she yawned. "I'm going to bed now, too. If you don't get me here, I'm probably on my way to the Hamptons to surprise Mom and Dad for breakfast, then watch the game out there. I won't call you before I go in case you're still sleeping."

  "No problem," Hunter said. "I love you, honey."

  "I love you, too."

  "Rachel?"

  "Yes?"

  "Don't worry. I'll be fine."

  "All right . . . good luck."

  At midnight Duffy got a call from an agent named Brotz, the desk agent at the Manhattan office. Duffy and Brotz had worked together on several occasions through the years.

  "Duffy?"

  "Yeah? Who's this?" Duffy said, his voice hoarse with sleep.

  "It's me, Brotz. I'm working the desk tonight. I know it's late, but I thought you'd want to hear this . . ."

  "Go ahead," Duffy said.

  "It's unbelievable, really," Brotz said. "We just got a call from NYPD. They found Duncan Fellows dead as hell . . . shot through the head."

  "What?" Duffy said incredulously.

  "But get this--they found him in your boss's apartment." Brotz's words seemed to hang in the air.

  "Cook's?" Duffy asked finally.

  "Yeah, I thought you'd want to know," Brotz said in a nearly apologetic tone. "I mean ..."

  Duffy waited to hear what Brotz meant, but the whole thing seemed too bizarre to have any meaning.

  "I . . . yes. Brotz, thanks," Duffy said, then hung up.

  Duffy sat there in the dark for several minutes shaking his head and thinking. He swung his feet out of the bed and began to dress. He hoped Cook wasn't in any trouble, but after what he'd just heard he doubted that was possible.

  Rachel heard a strange yet familiar voice in her dreams. She sat upright in the bed. Her bedroom was dark except for the pale moonlight coming in through the windows. A storm was blowing in from the ocean. The wind howled violently outside, and the moonlit shadows of the trees fell in from the window and swayed wildly across the bedroom floor.

  "Someone has entered the front inner perimeter."

  The electronic voice cut through the sound of the swaying trees and hung eerily in the darkness. Rachel was terrified. She must have heard the first warning in her sleep. Someone was out in the front, on foot. Sensors in the driveway would have specified if it was a car. In the darkness she fished through the night table drawer for her Mace. Before she could get her hands on it, the security system began to wail. She looked up at the monitor above the bed. ZONE 3 flashed on the digital readout in bright red letters--it was the service door near the garage. The phone rang, and Rachel picked it up. She shook her head, still trying to come completely to her senses.

  This is Regal Security" came the bored voice on the other end of the phone.

  "My God! Someone's here!" Rachel screamed into the phone. "Send the police!"

  The voice quickly came to life, "All right, Mrs. Logan. Are you OK?"

  'Just send them!" she shrieked. "Someone is in my house!"

  Rachel heard the man talking calmly over the phone.

  'This is Regal Security," he was saying, "I have a break-in at two-fifty-seven Meadow View with residents in the home. Please dispatch immediately. Yes, I have them on the line. I will."

  ". . . Mrs. Logan, I'm staying with you. Are you still all right?"

  "Oh, my God, I've got to check my daughter," Rachel said and scrambled from her bed with the phone still in hand.

  "Mommy! Mommy!" Sara burst into her room, sobbing. "Stop the noise! Make it stop!"

  Rachel grabbed her daughter and held her tight. She punched the code into the monitor and the house became eerily silent. The ZONE 3 light still flashed, illuminating the bedroom with a bloodred glow.

  "Mrs. Logan? Are you there?"

  "Yes. Yes, I'm here."

  "Just stay calm, Mrs. Logan," the man said. 'The Nassau police are on their way. They'll be there in just a few minutes. Is your daughter with you now?"

  "Yes."

  "Is it just the two of you in the house?"

  "Yes."

  "And you're still in your bedroom?"

  "Yes."

  "All right. Do you have a lock on the door?"

  "Yes."

  "All right. You stay there in the bedroom and lock the door. You'll be fine. I'm right here, and the police are on their way."

  Rachel locked the bedroom door and moved back toward the bed, gripping her can of Mace tightly and squeezing Sara with her arms.

  "Mrs. Logan," the man said, "my name is David. Now, don't worry. The police will be there any minute. If there is an intruder, he's probably already gone. That's the beauty of a security system. It's like a big dog, and when a burglar hears it, he runs. It might not even be anyone, Mrs. Logan. Most of the time it's a door that just wasn't shut, but if it is someone, the police will be right there, so don't worry. Are you OK?"

  "Yes," Rachel said, drawing strength from the fact that her daughter was scared and the security man was obviously very nervous. Someone had to keep cool, and it would now be her.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the flashing lights through the curtains of her window. David had chattered at her nonstop, but now he was repeating her name.

  "Mrs. Logan?"

  "Yes," she said, 'Tm right here."

  "Now, I've got the police on the other line, and they want you to stay where you are while they go through your house. OK?"

  "OK."

  "Yes," she heard David saying into another pho
ne, "it's the side door near the garage, and the residents are remaining in the master bedroom on the second floor with the door locked." Rachel heard the police-car door slam. She waited patiently as the policemen worked their way through the downstairs of her house. Twenty minutes later, they were outside her bedroom door. There came a gen-de tap, as if they were afraid of waking someone.

  "Mrs. Logan?" came the soft voice of a young man through the door. "I'm Officer Wolkoff from the Nassau County police. Are you OK?"

  "Yes," Rachel said, tears suddenly streaming down her face. "I'm fine."

  "You can open the door, Mrs. Logan. We've checked the house and everything's fine. I think I can show you the problem. It looks as though your alarm system is on the fritz, ma'am. The side door was unlocked but shut tightly, and so were all the other doors ..."

  Chapter 36

  Although Officer Wolkoff was only twenty-two, he was the epitome of his profession. He was clean-cut, had a fresh red face, and refused to call her anything but "ma'am." By the third alarm malfunction that night he had thoroughly checked the entire Hewlett Bay area for any suspicious vehicles and repeatedly offered to take Rachel and Sara to her parents' place in Quogue even though it was an hour and a half away. But Rachel refused to upset her parents--or her husband, for that matter--by calling in the middle of the night. It was obvious to her that Wolkoff and his older partner, who was no less than a sergeant, had everything under control. It was three A. M. when she finally told David with Regal Security that she would just disengage the alarm. David fretted that he wouldn't be able to get someone there until Monday to fix the problem, but Rachel said not to worry, her husband would be home tomorrow night anyway.

  She apologized to the officers for one final time from the front steps and wished them good night. They assured her that they would keep a close watch on the neighborhood for the rest of the night.

  "Don't worry," the young officer added before he disappeared into his patrol car for the last time, "we get this kind of thing all the time. It's always just a bad system."

  Rachel was proud of her rational acceptance of the situation as she settled down beneath the sheets with Sara snuggled up close beside her, already breathing heavily with sleep. She had locked the bedroom door again and left the Mace out on the nightstand. She was safe. Sleep, however, would not come. She tossed and turned for thirty minutes, then sat bolt upright in bed. Without the police right there, assuring her that everything was fine, the prospect of waking her parents didn't seem so ludicrous. She went back and forth in her mind a minute before she picked up the phone. The line was dead.