by Blair Howard
He stared at me across the table. His eyes half closed. It was a look I knew well, one that boded no one any good. “How far are you willing to go, Harry?”
I looked at him and slowly shook my head. “We can’t do it, Bob. We can’t just kill him.”
“You know as well as I do that to stop it, we have to cut off the head of the snake. We have to kill De Luca. You think he’s gonna make a mistake? It ain’t going to happen. He’s a pro, and he’s been doing what he does a long time.”
I shook my head, stared at him across the desk. He was right, but how the hell to do it and not go to jail for the rest of my days? That was something I needed to think about. How the hell could we even get at him? He never sets foot outside that restaurant. He even sleeps there; has an apartment above.
“Leave it with me, Bob. I’ll give it some more thought.”
He rose and turned to leave. “Just don’t leave it too long. Somebody in this office dies, it really will be on you.”
“Screw you, Bob. That was uncalled for.”
He nodded. “Maybe it was, but you know I’m right.” He left, closing the door behind him.
I sat there, stewing. What Bob had said hurt, but I knew he was right. I had to take it to De Luca, but how?
I thought about Jacque lying in the hospital. I thought about the two girls who worked in the outer office, Leslie and Margo. Even knowing what had happened to her, they still had turned up for work and were doing their jobs. Bob was right, if anything happened to anyone else, it would be on my head.
Okay, so it’s me he wants. He gets his hands on me, I’m dead. Hmmm... he gets his hands on me.... I wonder.... Already, the kernel of a plan was beginning to form. Could work. If not.... It would mean....
I picked up the phone and punched the button that would connect me to Bob’s extension.
“Hey. What’s up?”
“Come on back in here. I have an idea.”
For the next hour, Bob and I mulled over my idea. From the start, he could tell I wasn’t happy about it, not confident. But Bob is Bob. He went along with it, with reservations.
“Harry, this could bite you in the ass, big time. It goes wrong, you just might not walk away. You do know that, right?”
I nodded. “I do, but I can’t think of any other way. He has to be stopped. Either way this goes, it will do that: he’ll either be dead or he will kill me. If he kills me, he goes down for that, and it’s over.”
“If you’re sure....”
“I’m not, but it’s all we have.”
“Then let’s do it.”
We went over the details several times more, then we both headed out. Tomorrow, as Scarlet said, is another day. I just hoped it wouldn’t be my last.
Chapter 34
I was alone when I arrived outside Il Sapore Roma at a little after ten-thirty the following morning. The restaurant wouldn’t open for lunch for another hour. I sat there in my car for several moments. I knew I was about to step into the lion’s den, and I also knew I had little choice. Was I worried? You bet I was. I was about to face three of the underworld’s worst, and alone. I must be goddam crazy. This works out, I’m done. I’ll quit, get me a job selling insurance.... Nah!
I took a deep breath, checked the M&P9 under my coat, and adjusted the watch on my left wrist. I hoped I wasn’t putting too much faith in that thing. One more time, old buddy; just one more time.
I got out of the car, locked it, and stood for a moment, looking at the door into the restaurant. I took a deep breath, stepped forward, pushed open the door, and walked through it.
It was dark inside, really dark. The place didn’t have windows, and the only the lights on were those above the bar. As always, De Luca was hunched over the bar top with a cup of what I assumed to be coffee. Tony and Jesus were seated together a few feet further away along the bar. He must have heard the door open, because he turned his head and looked at me.
“Well, well. Look who’s here. I’ve been expecting you. Come on and join us, Harry,” he said.
He sat there, his elbows on the bar, grinning at me. He looked like a goddamn barracuda.
“You don’t seem upset to see me, Sal.”
“Oh, Harry. On the contrary. I was hoping you’d drop by. In fact, I was sure you would. I’m very pleased to see you.”
“You shouldn’t be. I told you what would happen if you touched any of my people. Jacque, my PA, is in the hospital, and one of your thugs put her there. You stepped over the line, Sal.”
“That so? Well, wadda ya know?” He looked past me, over my shoulder. “Paulie.”
I felt something cold touch the back of my neck. What the hell?
“Paulie?” I said. “I don’t think I’ve met you.”
“You haven’t, Harry. Paulie is my brother. Say hello to Harry Starke, Paulie.”
He didn’t. The gun didn’t move.
“Get your hands up, Starke,” De Luca growled. “Tony. Get his gun; frisk him. He might be wired.”
I raised my arms, level with my shoulders, the watch angled toward him. He was still hunched over the cup, his mouth twisted into a snarl. He watched as Tony relieved me first of the M&P9 and then patted me down. That done, he nodded at De Luca.
“Don’t move a muscle, Starke,” De Luca said, sliding off the stool. “Paulie will kill you if you do. It’s time to pay your debts, plus a little vig, I think. You know how it works, right? I always need a little vig. Don’t go anywhere now, you heah?”
He pushed through the door into the kitchen and returned a minute later, holding a meat cleaver.
“You took my little finger, Starke. I’m gonna take yours, plus interest. I’m gonna take your whole goddam hand. Grab him, Jesus, Tony. Hold his hand on the counter.”
Jesus grabbed my left arm and slammed my hand down. Tony grabbed my right wrist and held it like it was in a vice. Paulie still had the gun at my neck. I tried to pull back, but the pressure of the gun against my neck increased. It’s funny how weird thoughts flood your mind in times of stress, danger, whatever. Gotcha, you bastard.
The lens in the watch face was looking right up at Sal. I looked up at him and grinned. Yeah, you’re right. I must have been off my head, but that’s what I did; I grinned up at him.
He had an insane light in his eyes. He swung the cleaver up and back, and opened his eyes wide. I closed mine, clamped my teeth together, and.... BAM, SMACK.
I was showered with something wet, warm, and sticky. My hands were released. The gun was gone from my neck. BAM. The second shot came before the echo of the first had died away. More wetness. A heavy thud to my left was followed an instant later by another behind me, and I heard the kitchen door fly open.
“Don’t move, assholes.” Jesus and Tony both raised their hands. “Now step away. You alright, Harry?”
“I am now. Cut it a little close, didn’t you?”
Bob grinned. “Had to make sure we had ‘em dead to rights, and they both are certainly that, dead. Gazzara is on her way. I called her before I came in. Should be here in a minute.”
And she was, along with Lonnie Guest and a half-dozen uniforms.
“Oh my God, Harry,” she said, as she ran between the booths. “What the hell have you done?”
“Me? Nothing. They took my weapon. Bob got them. He saved my life. Here.” I stripped off the watch and handed it to her. “The recorder is outside in the car. I got it all... I hope.” I suddenly had my doubts. What if the damn thing malfunctioned? Nah! That’s CIA equipment.
“Bob,” she said, holding out her hand. He handed her his Colt .45.
“Talk to me, Harry,” she said, handing the Colt to Lonnie. “You and Bob set him up, didn’t you?”
“Kate,” I said, trying to sound outraged. “How can you say such a thing?”
“So what the hell happened? Tell me.”
“There’s not much to tell. I came in alone; came in to talk to De Luca, to try to persuade him to call off his vendetta. I also wanted to ask him
about the Dickersons, but I didn’t get the chance. He wasn’t interested in talking. We’d barely exchanged a couple of words when that one stuck a gun in my ear.” I pointed to what was left of Paulie.
“Where the hell he came from I have no idea. They must have been expecting me, I think, after what they did to Jacque. He must have been sitting in one of the booths, in the dark. I was concentrating on De Luca and didn’t see him. Anyway, they grabbed me. Sal was going to cut off my hand; almost did.” I pointed at the cleaver lying on the floor next to De Luca’s right hand. “Bob knew I was coming here. He must have followed me. Whatever, he arrived just in time. If he hadn’t, I’d be bleeding to death right now.”
She looked down at De Luca, and for the first time, so did I. He was on his back in the doorway; the self-closing door up against his left side. There was a neat little hole in his face just to the right side of his nose, and a pool of blood around his head. I inwardly shuddered at the thought of what the exit wound must look like: Bob used hollow points.
Paulie was in no better shape. He was on his back in one of the booths. Bob’s slug had torn a hole in his neck the size of my fist. He hadn’t died quickly; he’d bled out.
It was then that it hit me, with a bang. I looked again at the cleaver. Goddamn, that was a close call. I’ve got to quit this silly shit before it kills me. Hell, if Bob had been two steps slower....
Suddenly, I felt totally washed out, weak at the knees. I had to sit down. I did, on the edge of the bench in one of the booths. I looked again at my right hand, a subconscious check to make sure it was still there.
Kate walked toward the door, her iPhone at her ear. She finished the call and came back; her face was white.
“I have to take you both in. Doc Sheddon and a team are on the way. Damn it, Harry. This time... I dunno. Let’s go.”
I grinned up at her, nodded, and held out my hands for the cuffs.
“Oh for God’s sake, Harry. Get out of here. Lonnie, I’ll take Harry. You take Bob; no, you don’t need the cuffs.”
“What about those two?” Lonnie asked. Jesus and Tony still had their hands in the air.
“Cuff ‘em, caution ‘em, and charge ‘em with attempted murder. You did get them both on the watch, right?” she asked me.
I nodded. Hell, I hope I did.
Bob and I were kept separated and were interrogated for the next three hours. Nope, Kate stayed out of it. Where she was, I had no clue, but I figured she was running the recording.
I spent my three hours with Lonnie Guest. Can you believe that?
I had badly underestimated Lonnie all these years. He’s one hell of an interrogator. He kept at it, over and over, like a dog with a bone. I remember to this day the snide grin he gave me when I turned down his offer to have an attorney present.
Fortunately, Bob and I had it together. We had done nothing illegal.
Yes, we’d set De Luca up, but that’s not what we told the cops. My plan had been to provide De Luca with the opportunity to kill me. Bob was supposed to bust in and save the day, just as he had, and everything would be recorded via the watch. What I hadn’t planned for was Paulie. It almost came off the rails right there. It was only the fact that Sal had wanted to collect on the perceived debt that saved my ass. Bob and I stuck to our story, that I went in there to try to talk to him and that Bob had decided to follow me, to provide backup, should I need it. Needless to say, no one really believed it, but what the hell. They couldn’t prove anything. It worked, and I still had my hand. Lonnie, however, was not convinced.
“Pull the other one, Starke,” he said. “You don’t negotiate with people who are dedicated to killing you, and you don’t walk into a nest of vipers on your own, not unless you’re crazy.” He grinned, then shook his head. “Then again, maybe you are crazy. Nah, you planned it.” He reached out and turned off the machines.
“Nice one, Harry,” he said, quietly. It was almost a whisper that only I could hear. “I know what you did, and so does Kate. You got real lucky, and you got away with it... this time.”
He was right, of course, but I had no regrets, and eventually Bob and I walked out onto Amnicola, into the last glimmer of the setting sun. It was over.... No. It wasn’t, not quite. There was still Brinique.
Chapter 35
I spent the next two days trying to figure it out, getting nowhere. I’d gotten into the office early that Saturday morning. Amanda was still staying with me on Lakeshore, and so were Terri and Sandra. To see them now, you wouldn’t recognize them. Amanda had hit my American Express card hard, but she’d turned those two little waifs into beautiful kids, and they loved it. It was going to be hard, on all of us, to move them on. Anyway, now that the danger was over, Amanda was back to driving her Lexus, and she’d left the kids at home with Sandra in charge, and gone into the station.
I had two solid suspects, so I thought: the Draycotts. Either he killed the girl as a cover up... of what I had no idea. But that didn’t account for the body in the sewer. Second, I kinda liked Doctor Ellen for both. I figured maybe she caught her husband fooling around with Brinique, or Brinique had confronted her about her husband, threatened to expose him, and she killed her to stop it. After all, who was going to miss a homeless kid? If that was what had happened, it also could explain the other body. She would have needed help to put Brinique under the boards. But that would have her exposed to blackmail, or some other kind of pressure from him, thus he ended up in the sewer.
I also figured that the identity of that body was probably Ricky Jessell; as yet we hadn’t found him, nor had Tim had any luck with his missing persons search. Samantha had completed the reconstruction several days ago, but the photo of the head hadn’t brought in any hits either. The body in the drain was a dead end, literally.
I didn’t like either of the Dickersons for it. Hell, I didn’t think they even knew Brinique, but I also knew I could have been wrong about that.
And then there was the fact that no one remembered her. None of the inmates we’d interviewed did, and that bothered me a whole lot. I sort of figured that she probably hadn’t been at Hill House long enough for people to get to know her; that and the fact that it had been more than ten years ago.
I knew she had to have been there at the time of the transition between the Dickersons and Draycotts. The dates and time of death matched, so did the date of Brinique’s disappearance from home, and then of course, she was found under the floorboards.
I figured that we were probably looking at a three to five-week window, from May 27 through the end of June, during which time... well, she died. It couldn’t have been any longer than that. If Dickerson really didn’t know her, that must put her there either just before or right at the time of the hand over. If he was lying... well, that would really screw things up. Somehow, though, I didn’t think he was. Surely someone would have gotten to know her, remembered her.
So here’s how I broke it down:
May 28: Brinique runs away from home with Ricky Jessell.
May 30: They arrive in Chattanooga. Why? Now that’s a damned good question.
June 4: Brinique calls home, so she’s still alive.
June 20: She’s dead and under the boards. Ricky disappears. It’s a guess, but I don’t see anything else. The question is, where was she and with whom, from June 4 to June 20?
That was about all I had: nothing, other than an unfounded suspicion that it was one of the Draycotts. That was it, not a damn thing more. There had to be an answer, probably more than one.
I had the small stack of files on my desk. The ones from the Draycotts; the girls that went missing. Nine of them had disappeared between 2005 and 2008: runaways, probably. I also had the stack of photos in front of me; the ones that Tim had copied from the footage Bob had shot during our first visit. There were fifteen of them, all eight by tens. Some were in color, some were black and white. Almost all of them slightly blurred or out of focus, probably due to the way Bob had shot them. Still, the people in them wer
e, for the most part, recognizable. I shuffled through the stack of photos, not really knowing what I was looking for, hoping something would grab my attention. It didn’t. I directed my attention to those taken during the transition from the Dickersons to the Draycotts.
I had a magnifying glass, but it didn’t help much. The photos were old, and the watch was not the best instrument for making copies. In some cases, the magnifying glass made it a whole lot worse: those fuzzy images turned into a hazy, unrecognizable mess.
One by one, I sifted through them, discarded some, and placed others in a pile to be looked at again. When I’d finished, I’d reduced the stack to just four that were of particular interest: the group photos taken during the time when the Draycotts were at Hill House. All had been taken at the same time, on the rear steps, rear porch, and balcony of the house
All of them included both the Dickersons and the Draycotts. Three also included what I assumed must be the inmates, more than twenty of them: some on the balcony, some on the porch. The fourth photo was the one that included only the four principals: Sam Draycott had his arm around Billy Dickerson’s shoulder; Ellen Draycott was standing next to Billy; India was next to Sam.
The features of the people in the three group photos were difficult to distinguish. The images had been shot from a distance with negative film and then printed. The viewpoint was from somewhere left of the stone steps, now long gone. The people were small, the faces smaller still. Some of the people were in all three photos, some only in one.
I stared at each one through the glass until my eyes hurt. I discarded two more, including the one with just the Draycotts and Dickersons. Hell, I knew who they were, for God’s sake.
Now I was left with just two images, both group shots. I went out, got a cup of coffee, and sat down again. I put the two photos side by side in front of me and sipped on the hot beverage as I stared down at them. I thought I recognized one of those people at the back of the group on the porch. He was also there on the second image, but half hidden by the person in front of him. I wasn’t absolutely sure, but it looked like a young Darius Willett. He was standing next to a girl, but the quality of the print was too poor to make out the features; still... it could be.