“I think you did,” I said.
“So now I have this house and a bank account,” she said. “And a left hand I try to hide.”
“What do you do? Do you have a job?”
“Yes. I am the maitre d’ at the best restaurant in Orlando,” she said, smiling. “I do for myself, and very nicely, thank you.”
“Let me ask you, do you think maybe this Giannone person is right, that Felix is alive, and that he’s been playing the part of Ingo since the airplane crash? I mean, you were married to Felix. Do you believe it’s possible?”
“I haven’t seen Felix since that day he broke my fingers, so I’m not sure. Yes, he looked a little bit like Ingo. I mean, you could tell they were brothers. But they certainly weren’t identical in appearance. And they were different in so many other ways. Ingo had discipline, intelligence, talent. Felix seemed always to be on his way to a defeat. He saw it coming, I thought, but he believed it was because of circumstances, other people — anybody’s fault but his own. He was constantly scrambling to find somebody or something to blame for his own failure. Could he take over for Ingo? Hardly. I can’t believe he could manage Julian Communications, not for a month, not for a day.” She looked out the front window at the orange trees in the yard. The rain had stopped.
Then she added, “Unless he just sat there at the big desk, and let somebody else make all the decisions, I suppose.”
I saw a tee-shirt once that said ‘Life is too short to drink bad wine,’ But at thirty thousand feet, with the only wine available in little screw-top bottles from the flight attendant at five dollars a drink, I contented myself with the notion that bad wine was better than no wine at all.
In the air back to Long Island, I looked into my glass of too-young merlot and tried to assess what I’d learned for a day spent traveling and three hundred sixty-three bucks round-trip airfare plus another fifty-five for a cheap rental car. Now I knew Felix Julian was hardly the happy-go-lucky sweetheart Lisa Harper had made him out to be. How had she put up with him when it got to be her turn? I suspected she’d put up with anything, if she figured the payoff was a vice presidency.
The truth was, Felix was a frustrated loser with violent tendencies, a man desperate to emulate his brother’s success. But was he really part of a bold scheme by Arthur Brody to take over a dead brother’s company, prestige and fortune?
With the lights of New York City passing below, for the first time I began to realize that the switch of identities had never happened, that Felix Julian was indeed dead and buried.
CHAPTER XXV
It was nearly nine the next morning when I made it to Bruce’s for coffee and a raisin scone. I’d wiped the raspberry jam off my fingers and was dusting the crumbs from my stomach when Wally pushed open the door, strode quickly across the wooden floor to my table and stood there, rocking from side to side and rubbing his hands together, expressions of eagerness unusual for him. “Nobody at the house. Figured you’d be here,” he said.
“Want coffee?” I said.
“No time, compadre,” he said. “Your pal Sosenko is at Lulu’s, right this very minute. She gave me a quick call when he went into the crapper.”
“How long ago?”
“No more than ten minutes. He was waiting at the door with the early morning rummies when she opened up. Scared the monumental shit out of her, she says. Turned out he came in to brag, impress her, crow about his big deal to the love of his life.”
“What deal?” I said.
“Something in New York, she says. Flashing around a fistful of hundred dollar bills he got from somebody to do something in the city.”
“When? When does he go to New York?”
“Don’t know. Pretty soon, seems like,” Wally said. “Whatever it is he’s going to do, it’s today. That’s what Lulu says.”
“But he’s still at the bar?”
“Was, ten minutes ago. Having a couple of eye-openers.” Wally made an impatient get-up motion to me with both hands. “We can be at Shinnecock in half an hour, if we go like hell.”
“Going to call Lulu first,” I said, taking the cell phone from my pocket, “see if Sosenko’s still there.”
I got the number from information, and Lulu answered on the first ring. “This is Ben Seidenberg, Wally Prager’s friend,” I told her. “You remember me.”
“Oh sure,” I heard her say.
“Sosenko’s there, right?” I said. I got the sense that he was close and listening to her end of the conversation.
“Yeah, you said it,” Lulu said.
“So you can’t say too much, right?”
“Right,” she said.
“Is he going to stay there? Just say yes or no.”
“No.”
“Is he getting ready to leave, do you think?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Right now?”
“Sure, absolutely,” she said.
“For New York?”
“Yeah, you bet.”
“Be cool, Lulu. We’re going to get this guy. Just say goodbye,” I said,
“Goodbye,” said Lulu Lumpkin.
“He’s leaving now,” I told Wally. “He’ll be gone by the time we get to the south side.”
“What now?”
“We get to the Expressway before he does and pick him up. We’ll snag him at exit 70.” I stood up and dropped some dollar bills on the table. “Got to go back to the house, get my gun,” I said. We left in Wally’s bright red pickup, the one that read ‘Southold Marina, Sales, Service, Dockage’ on the doors. After a speedy stop for my .38, we took off for the North Road, the long way to our destination, but quick because it avoided nearly every stoplight and most of the in-town traffic.
You could tell from the reek of stale cigar smoke that this was Wally’s truck. “It smells like a pool room in here,” I told him, rolling down my window.
“I don’t smell anything,” he said. Wally was hunched over the steering wheel, grinning with excitement like a kid, as he punched the accelerator and flew the truck down the road.
“Never saw you so turned on before,” I said. “Enjoying this?”
“Loving it, amigo. How many chances do I get to be a hero? Come on, in Southold?” Wally said. “I mean, right now I’m this far away from the real thing. This is the closest we’ve been to grabbing a real-life, honest-to-Christ killer. How many guys get to do that, ever?”
“Maybe you ought to think about it,” I told him. “Just because we’re close doesn’t mean they’re going to interview you on the eleven o’clock news. Au contraire. You just might get a bullet up your skinny ass.”
“Be worth it,” Wally said, pushing the pickup still faster. “Time I went for the glory.”
“Maybe it is,” I said. “Alicia thinks I should be quicker to ask you for help, because you’re my friend.”
“Alicia is right,” he said. “And not just for friendship, either.”
“For what, then?”
“Look at it this way. You are getting a little bit long in the tooth. You’re kind of going to flab, too. And there’s the way you wheeze. These are problemos muy grandes for a person in your line, I should think.” Wally looked over at me, which made me uncomfortable, because the pickup was pushing eighty and beginning to edge onto the shoulder of the road. I pointed straight ahead, and he got the idea, returning his attention, and the truck, to the blacktop. Still he went on, “And on the other hand, there’s me. Young and strong,”
“You’re not so young,” I said.
“Forty-two is younger than you are, pappy. And I’m muscle, mostly, with snappy reflexes, too. Plus I’m brave. Not fearless, you understand, or foolhardy, but respectably brave. Way I see it, I’ve got everything.”
“Except the gun,” I said.
“Yes, except the gun.”
“The gun is a big thing.”
Wally shrugged, in a way that told me he didn’t care, and wasn’t ready to back off, gun or no. “You know, I’m thinking,”
he said, “maybe Sosenko stayed on the south, took the Sunrise Highway.”
“Maybe, but he won’t stay on it. Too much traffic in the morning. Too many lights. He’ll cut north to the expressway.”
“Is it your investigator instinct saying we should watch the expressway?” Wally asked. “Like, a little voice inside your head?”
“Do you have your own voice telling you to do something else?” I said.
“I don’t get voices.”
“Then how about we listen to my voice. Get us on the expressway, and find a place to stop just behind the on-ramp at exit 70.”
“All right. But only because you got the gun.”
We barreled ahead, skidding through the curves as the road narrowed, then we cut over to the expressway and got on at exit 71.
“So, what you think he’s on his way to do in the city?” Wally said. “Your little voice letting us in on that?”
“You need help figuring that out, you have no future in the investigation business,” I said.
“He’s on his way to murder somebody,” Wally ventured. “That wad of hundred dollar bills he’s flashing around, that could be the payoff for a killing. Only Sosenko just can’t keep himself from showboating. Got to let Lulu know what a big man he is. Got to be hot shit.”
“That’s the easy part,” I said. “Now the big question is: who’s he after? And why?”
“You just going to ask that,” Wally said, “or you going to answer it, too?”
“He’s not after Ingo or Lisa. They’re both still on Shelter,” I said. “Maybe he wants Arthur Brody. He’s stalked Brody before. One thing I think is becoming clear. Sosenko isn’t into this thing out of revenge. Not his own revenge, anyway. No, he’s for hire.”
“Why would anybody pick a loco like him to hire?” Wally said. “You want somebody killed, you find yourself a pro who gets the job done and disappears, not some idiot who sings about Lulu Lumpkin’s tits, and keeps hanging around till he gets caught.”
“Interesting point,” I said. “You may have a career in the security industry after all. Leave your resume at the front desk.”
“No, really,” he said. “If you were looking for a hit man, would you get involved with Sosenko? He’s a maniac. He’s bound to fuck up.”
“Still,” I said, “he’s killed two people, and he’s still on the loose. Anyway, could be somebody chose him because he has an obvious motive. Julian Communications put his ass in jail, so it’s logical for him to be knocking off Julian executives. That’s what it looks like, what everybody thinks.”
“What if he gets caught and he says, ‘Wasn’t my idea. Somebody hired me to do this’?”
“What if, in the process of getting caught, he gets dead, and can’t say anything?” I said. “Or if he’s still alive, maybe he doesn’t even know who hired him.”
“So who did hire him to do these murders? And why would they pay him more money at this stage of the game?”
“Don’t know yet. My little voice has stopped whispering to me,” I said. “We’ll find out when we get Sosenko.”
“Right. And what’s the plan for that, by the way?”
We passed the exit 70 off-ramp, which meant the on-ramp that would bring Sosenko onto the Expressway was a half mile ahead. “Slow down,” I said. “Get off onto the shoulder up ahead and stop. This is where we wait. Keep the engine running.”
“And the plan?” asked Wally, as he pulled off the highway..
“You’re the one wants to be a hero. What do you think we should do?”
“If he’s not already on the Sunrise Highway, you mean? OK, I think if this guy does show up here, we take off after him. I make like I’m going to pass him, and when we get side by side, you open your window and shoot out his left front tire. He has to stop, and that’s when we pull over and get him. What do you think?”
“Excellent,” I said. “You ready for this?”
“Absolutely.”
I took the gun out of my holster and held it in my lap. “Don’t take your eyes off that ramp,” I said.
CHAPTER XXVI
Now there were dark clouds along the horizon to the north, bringing the threat of an autumn storm as they rolled slowly southward. But no rain yet.
We waited on the shoulder of the road with the engine running, scrutinizing each vehicle as it descended the ramp. The long line of morning commuters had thinned out, and the traffic was spotty now, one or two cars at a time slipping onto the three westbound lanes.
Wally was more than ready to go, sitting there pumping the accelerator to race the engine as every new vehicle appeared. “Hold your water,” I said to him. “Save something for the chase.”
“I’m trying to have an adventure here,” he said. “Know what your trouble is? You forgot how to enjoy this stuff. Get into the spirit of the moment.”
“Just another high-speed chase down the Long Island Expressway, guns blazing,” I told him. “Done it a dozen times.”
“Not with me at the wheel you didn’t, amigo. It’s a more satisfying experience when I’m driving.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
A commercial van descended the ramp and weaved onto the expressway. Across the two rear doors the signage read, ‘A Blind Man Is Driving This Truck’ in bold blue lettering. “Look at that,” said Wally, laughing and pointing. He was pumped up, flying, almost frenzied.
“That’s Harrison’s truck, from Easthampton. They sell Venetian blinds,” I said.
“Christ, I know that,” he said. “Everybody knows that. Had that sign on their trucks for twenty years.”
“So what are you laughing about?”
“Do you mind if I laugh? Do you? I’m psyching myself up because I’m about to go into harm’s way. I’m proving that I laugh at danger.” He had turned toward me to make certain I got a good look at how brave he was. He was laughing in my face, actually.
“There’s something you should know,” I put in, as he continued to hoot.
He seemed amused that I would intrude on his little show of pluck. “And that is?”
I pointed at the rusty Dodge pickup that had blasted down the ramp and was quickly swinging into the fast lane, crossing perilously close to the rear of a car in the center. “It’s adventure time,” I said.
“Is that Sosenko?” Wally said.
“Hideous guy. Dirty yellow hair. Disgusting tattoos up both arms. Old piece-of-shit truck. Just might be him. Why don’t we take a vote?”
Wally put the truck into gear and stomped on the accelerator, spinning the wheels against the shoulder of the road, as the vehicle fishtailed out into the traffic. Sosenko was already two hundred yards ahead of us, and going faster than anything else on the highway. “Why didn’t you say something?” Wally said, holding the steering wheel in a two-handed death grip. “Now we have to catch him. Son-of-a-bitch must be doing eighty in that old wreck.”
“I did say something,” I told Wally. “That’s why we’re chasing him now. Just don’t lose him.”
Wally moved past an immense moving van into the fast lane and pushed the accelerator to the floor. The engine howled in one key, and the tires sang on the concrete in another. Now we wove in and out of the fast lane, scaring the hell out of drivers who blocked our path. The speedometer inched past eighty. “We’re closing,” he said, above the noise. I watched the distance to the old Dodge shrink, wondering if Sosenko had any idea he was being chased. Hell, why should he? He was just tooling along, his pocket full of money, planning his next murder, never realizing that two simpleminded heroes were about to jump all over him.
When we were just fifty yards behind him, both trucks in the outside lane, Wally hollered, “I think I just discovered a flaw in our plan.”
“You mean because we can’t get on his left side so I can shoot out his tire through my window? That flaw?”
“Yeah, that one. He’s not going to move out of the fast lane. What do we do? Get up behind him and you take out a tire from the back?�
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“Low-grade idea,” I said. “Can’t see enough tire from back here for a decent shot. No, pull up close on his right.”
“Then what? You’re on the wrong side. How you going to shoot?”
“I’m not,” I told him. “You are.”
“I’m the driver.”
“I’m promoting you to shooter.”
“Muchas gracias. Who drives while I shoot?”
“I’ll watch the road and hold the steering wheel from here. You keep your foot on the gas and take the shot. One’s all you need.”
“Wait a minute. You’re the one with the gun license. I’m not even supposed to touch a pistol.”
“Heroes sometimes have to do these things,” I said. “Anyway, what’s Sosenko going to do, report you to the police? Swing into the middle lane and open your window.” He did. The wind roared in and sucked Wally’s cigar ashes out of the open ash tray, swirling them around the cab. We drew closer to Sosenko. I held the .38 out to Wally. “Here. Cock it before you fire.”
“You think you’re dealing with a child here?” he said, taking the gun. “I know how these things work.”
It dawned on some kid in an open green convertible that a curious thing was happening on the Long Island Expressway this morning, and he decided to join our chase, pulling close to get a better look. “Stupid shit. All we needed,” Wally said. He pointed the gun at the kid and made a fierce face, all teeth and blazing eyes. The convertible took off for the slow lane and disappeared.
I put both my hands on the wheel. “I’m watching the road now. I’m steering. Give it a little more gas. When we get alongside, take out his front tire. Easy shot.”
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