by Brad Latham
“No. You’re lying. No.”
Nuzzo had crumpled into a heap, a quivering, terrified blob, when the voice came, causing both men to whirl in surprise toward the bedroom door. “He’s not lying.”
For the second time in twenty minutes, Lockwood found himself staring down the barrel of a pistol. It was black and shiny and disconcerting. Very disconcerting. Because at the other end of that pistol was a woman. The woman.
“Gina!”
“He’s not lying,” she said again. “Help him. Please.”
Lockwood looked at Frankie. The mobster was as surprised as he.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“He told me he was coming here for protection,” Gina said. “I know he didn’t kill Maria. I’m sure he didn’t. But—but I had to be certain he wouldn’t kill you. I got here before he did. I asked the maid to let me in. She knew me—from last time.”
Her final words seemed to pass Frankie by. “You was here all this time?”
“Yes. If you’d tried to shoot—Mr. Lockwood here—then I’d have had to shoot you.”
“Christ.”
“I knew you wouldn’t, Frankie! I just couldn’t—” she put down the pistol, and looked very, very young, very out of place in all this. “I just couldn’t take chances.”
“Is he telling the truth, Gina?” Lockwood asked her. “Did he really escape from your brother?” Her hair was black and luxuriant and her eyes glowed with life. He found himself wishing Frankie had never bothered to turn up.
“Yes, he did,” she said, fresh-faced and radiant. “I heard Albert talking about it with one of his—I was going to say ‘workers’. I guess ‘henchmen’ is a better word, isn’t it?” She looked betrayed now, and infinitely sad.
“I’m afraid so,” Bill Lockwood agreed. “All right, if you tell me Frankie’s not lying, Gina, that he’s really looking for help, then I guess I’ll go along with him.” He turned toward the man Gina seemed to believe in so fer-. vently. “What exactly do you want from me?”
“I want you to stash me someplace—hide me somewhere no one’s goin’ to find me, until you solve the case. That’s all.”
“What if I find you’re the guy?”
“You won’t.”
The Hook looked at Nuzzo for a long time, feeling distaste for the gunman every second he regarded him. He still believed he’d done it. But if he could get him out of the way, stash him someplace where he wouldn’t have to worry about him, then he’d have a freer hand. Why was Gina so sure? “Where’d you get the gun?” he asked her.
“My parents gave me one when I went away to college. To protect myself. I didn’t take it, of course, but today, when Frankie—”
“May I have a look at it?”
Her eyebrows arched in innocent surprise when she handed it to him.
He relaxed. It was a .22 calibre job. “Not much firepower here,” he smiled at her. “Not much range. Works best if you’re doing a foxtrot with your victim.”
“I didn’t know.” She shrugged, looking small and helpless.
“I’m glad,” he said, handing the gun back to her. He looked over at Nuzzo, who seemed to be returning to his senses. Too bad. The closer he came to being the real Frankie Nuzzo, the more repulsive he got. “Okay, Frankie,” he told him, “come on. I’ll see what I can do.” He turned to Gina. “I think, under the circumstances, you’d better stay here.”
Her reaction was a combination of pleasure and embarrassment; but quietly, she gave a small nod, and then the two men left.
“We’re going to take a little spin into the country,” The Hook told Nuzzo as they got into the Cord.
“You’re the doctor.”
He drove across 50th to the Viaduct, and then on up the Bronx River Parkway, heading upstate. It was a warm summer day, but he kept the top up. No sense in advertising themselves anymore than they already were.
Out of the city, he flicked on the radio, and one of the afternoon soap operas came on. Sounded like “Ma Perkins.” Might as well give Nuzzo a taste of homespun American virtures, he decided, and they continued to drive.
From the beginning, he’d doubled back, circled, twisted, and turned from one road to the other, in a pattern as eccentric as something you’d have found back in one of the old slapstick comedies, two decades ago when the Keystone Kops were tearing up America’s funny bone. Nuzzo had occasionally looked up in surprise, and once, when they’d made a hairpin reverse turn on a straightaway, he murmured, “You’re the boss,” but that was it.
Despite it all, Lockwood saw, a car was on his tail. Not Borowy. He was a loner. This car was packed with mugs. Lomenzo, almost certainly, or at least his boys. They’d been discreet so far, waiting till traffic thinned out. But now there was no one else on the road, and the massive car, a Packard, began roaring after them.
Lockwood gunned the engine. “Better get down, Frankie. Here come some buddies of yours.”
Nuzzo took one frightened look behind him, and immediately sank to the floor, crowding as much of himself as he could under the dashboard. “I ain’t got no gun,” he whimpered.
“Now you know what some of your victims felt like, Frankie,” Lockwood answered, grimly. Any minute they’d be slinging lead at the two of them.
If that bunch behind had just waited five more miles. That was the whole purpose of this trip, in case he and Frankie were followed. There was a spot that … a bullet screamed past them. Damn. There was a curve coming up. Maybe he could gain a little distance on it. He eased up a bit, then threw his foot all the way down on the gas as they entered the curve. Another bullet flew overhead, but his eyes were glued on the road. The slightest mistake and they’d be flying off into the trees that lined the way. He was leaving no margin for error.
The tires squealed as they continued around the curve, the back of the convertible close to lifting off, and then they were in a straightaway again. Lockwood’s eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror. They’d gained maybe fifty yards. The punk behind was fine on the straightaways, but he apparently had less expertise, or guts, when it came to bends.
“Where are they? Are they still after us?” Frankie cried.
“They’re a little too far away to pot us, Frankie,” Lockwood yelled down at him. “Take a quick look topside, and see if you recognize any of them.”
Nuzzo blinked, hesitated, and then dutifully did as he was told, slowly rising up, gripping the seat with both hands, then raising himself just enough to see, his nose resting on the top of the seat, eyes squinting into the distance.
A shot rang out, and he dropped back down, again huddling near the floor, and looked up at the detective. “I recognized Richie Marchetti. He’s Albert’s lieutenant.”
“Is Fish with them?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see him.”
The Packard was pulling closer, and for a moment Lockwood considered handing Frankie the .38, having him pump a few at their pursuers. And then reconsidered.
“That’d be some sandwich I’d be making of myself, eh, putting me between your gun and the guns of your brother-in-law?”
Frankie looked up at him blankly.
“Skip it,” Lockwood told him, and drew out the pistol. “Help steady the wheel while I fire back at them. Any funny business, and I’ll change my targets.”
Frankie’s hand went up, but not his head. “Okay, pal, time to gamble a little. If you’re going to drive you’re going to have to look where we’re going.”
Slowly, fearfully, Frankie edged his face up to the windshield. He was sweating, and it wasn’t from the heat.
Satisfied, The Hook turned and emptied his pistol at the pursuing car. It seemed to throw them off, and the Cord gained another ten yards.
“Keep holding onto the wheel,” Lockwood yelled at his companion. “I’m going to reload.”
He had the third bullet in its chamber when the car lurched suddenly.
“Look out! We’re goin’ off the road! I didn’t see it in time!”
Frankie screamed, as the car hurtled along the side of the road, bouncing and trembling each time it rose off the ground and then fell heavily down.
The Hook’s muscles strained, fighting to keep the auto on keel, while continuing to maintain the speed they so desperately needed. A shot passed over his head, but he didn’t look back. Every part of him was concentrated on the task of getting the Cord back on the road before it crashed or flipped over.
“I couldn’t help it! You’re the driver, not me!” Frankie shrieked, as tree branches sailed past them, just inches away from his face.
They were still fighting their way along the side of the road when Lockwood saw it just up ahead. A three-foot wide break in the dirt, maybe twelve inches deep. If they hit it at this speed…
He wrenched the wheel, and prayed, and the cinders flew out from under them, and then suddenly there was the roar of asphalt under first one, then two, then under all four tires. They were back on the highway!
“Ow!” Frankied screamed, his hand doubling into a fist and jerking close to his body. Then he opened up his fingers, and stared at his palm in horror-stricken disbelief. Red was running out of the bullethole in its center.
The Hook’s eyes darted up to the small mirror over the windshield, then down to the odometer. The car behind them was the closest it had been, less than fifty feet away, and his goal was a little more than a mile from here. He ducked as far down in the seat as he could, and waited for the curve he knew was coming.
This time he went into it without even momentarily slackening the pressure on the gas pedal. He knew this one as well as he knew his own living room, and he hoped that the other thing he knew so well, the goal toward which they were heading, was still as it had been the last time he’d seen it, five years before.
Again he looked in the mirror, and again he found he’d gained. The distance was right. Now if he could just maintain it. Not let them get any closer. Or any further.
Things were changing out here in the country. Progress, they called it. But the Great Depression had slowed things up, had practically, for a number of years, stopped them. Times were getting a little better, and things were beginning to progress again, a little, and he hoped now that that little bit of progress hadn’t reached into Brookmeyer’s Woods.
He saw the turnoff a quarter of a mile ahead, and slowed only as much as he felt he had to, grudging any gain to the car behind, but sure he’d be able to make it up once he made the turn. A shot spun over his head. If he made the turn.
At the last minute he hit the brakes, and swung the wheel sharply to the right, sand flying out behind him as he left the highway for a dirt country road. The Packard’s brakes screamed wildly, and for a moment he thought his goal would not be necessary, that the big car behind them was up-ending, thrashing about on the narrow black roadway, seconds away from bursting into flame.
Instead, in a moment he saw the Packard behind him again, and his grip tightened on the wheel. If he was wrong. If things no longer were the same … he looked at Nuzzo, who was white with fear. If things no longer are the same, he thought, then Frankie, you’d better start looking a lot more frightened. Because this is one we can’t get out of.
He remembered twenty years before, the five of them clearing out the road; he, Buzzy, Charlie, Dave and Tom. Hacking through the woods, a quarter of a mile, up to Brookmeyer’s Creek, and then for a little distance beyond, this time making a circular path. And then trimming it all down, and finally bringing the cars in, running them up and down this side of the creek till it got smooth and packed down hard. Charlie had been a sort of genius at certain kinds of things, and they’d believed him, and it had seemed worth all the effort, because he brought out that kind of confidence in you. And they were all young, and reckless, and death had seemed impossible. And so finally they’d perfected the road, a trail really, as much as possible; had done what they could on the other side, done it till Charlie had said it was good enough. And then they’d tried it. And it had worked.
Their parents never found out about it, and neither, apparently, had the succeeding generation of elders, judging by the look of things the last time Lockwood had seen it. A little more overgrown, maybe, but obviously still in use.
He saw the entrance now, dark by the side of the road, and again he had to slow down, hit the brakes, and swerve, and hope the car behind would be caught off guard, enough to keep the bullets away from their intended marks.
Now he was on the trail, and he wasn’t sure. There were bushes in the way, small branches that cracked as he sped over them, and he found himself hoping there were no felled trees blocking the way, hoping no floods had eroded the final few crucial yards.
He turned, and the Packard was coming after them. He slowed a bit, and the pursuing car vaulted nearer. Then he hit the gas as they came into the final stretch, committing himself fully, and hoping time didn’t prove to be even more of an enemy than the thundering hulk behind them.
Nuzzo screamed when he saw it coming; the big black yawning gap ahead, with its terrifying intimations of the thirty-foot drop into the water below. “Stop! Stop!” he screamed, and tried to grab for the steering wheel.
In desperation, Lockwood lifted his left hand off the wheel, and sent it soaring in Nuzzo’s direction. It caught the screaming man on the point of the chin, and as Nuzzo went in one direction, the car, aimed just so, went in another, forming a graceful counterpoint to Nuzzo’s fall as it soared up into the air, one foot, two feet, and then began to drop, slowly, as if in a dream.
Charlie’s decades-old calculations were proved all over again as the dream faded into solid reality, the car suddenly crunching down onto the trail at the other end of the chasm, continuing on another thirty yards, and then swinging around to face the drop again. Lockwood slammed on the brakes, jerked up the emergency, and vaulted out of the car, gun ready.
He’d already heard the hulking Packard go down, heard the splintering sounds of glass, the big tearing noises of metal being dashed apart, and he knew he was halfway there.
“Wait up!” It was Frankie Nuzzo, running after him, afraid of being left alone.
“You’re heading in the wrong direction,” The Hook told him. “There’s where the danger is,” he said, pointing in the direction he was heading. Nuzzo said nothing, continuing to keep up with him, uncertain, afraid to be left alone.
They got near the edge of the crevice, and Lockwood motioned Nuzzo to stay where he was. Moans and curses were coming from below. He edged a few steps closer and looked down.
The Packard was a shambles, already looking like something that had been lying there since the trail was first built. Two of the doors were open, the driver hanging out of one, not moving; two men staggering out of the back, groggy and bloodied, but evidently able to navigate. If anyone in the car needed help, one of them would obviously be able to reach the road and flag someone down. The Hook turned and motioned to Nuzzo. This time they ran back to the car, Lockwood hitting the ignition before the door was closed. He threw the shift into reverse, backed up as far as he could, then rammed it into second, going for power, riding the clutch till it caught, the engine blasting, branches cracking as they sped down the trail. Nuzzo, seeing what was about to happen, sank to the floor, unwilling, and unable, to take a second helping.
The mugs down below heard the Cord coming and one of them whipped out his pistol, firing wildly as the great mass of steel soared over his head, screening off the sun like some dark avenging angel, then disappeared from view, roaring back over the trail on which it had come. Lockwood, looking back, saw a pistol rising into the air, flung there in desperation by Lomenzo’s frustrated lieutenant.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Frankie looked bewildered when he saw the first signs of an approaching Manhattan, and the look was still on his face when Lockwood drove into the Radio City parking garage, then took his numbed ward by the arm and steered him to the offices of Transatlantic Underwriters.
Everyth
ing about Mr. Gray’s office was comfortable; the rich wood paneling, the thick wall-to-wall carpet, the big mahogany desk and its accompanying swivel chair. But Gray looked far from comfortable when the two of them stood before him, Nuzzo cradling his bloody, bandaged hand against his chest, tie askew, hatless, hair wild.
“Greetings,” Lockwood said, enjoying the look on his chief’s face.
“Well, I—ah—what is all this?” Gray stammered, clamping on the pince-nez, the better to stare in disbelief.
“This is a client of ours, Mr. Gray. This is Mister Frank Nuzzo.”
“Ah—ah—” Gray’s eyes skittered in their sockets, as if hoping that something somewhere in the room would provide assistance. Finally, disappointed, they rested, and settled themselves on Nuzzo. “Ah—but why is he here?” Gray asked, his face showing just the slightest tinge of red.
Lockwood took out a pack of Camels and offered them around. Gray declined, with an impatient wave of his hand; Nuzzo grabbed one gratefully, and after Lockwood lit the two of them, he gave himself a long, pleasurable inhale, and spoke: “It’s a little complicated, Mr. Gray, but I’m afraid I’ve got to board Mr. Nuzzo with you for a while.”
He stopped and said nothing, watching while Gray squirmed. If it were going to be an “easy case,” Gray might as well share a little bit of that “easiness.”
“I don’t understand,” Gray finally said, nervous with the long silence.
“Mr. Nuzzo is being pursued by people who are hoping to terminate him—to cancel him out.”
“Yes, but—?” It was unusual to see Gray obviously out of control. And satisfying.
“Mr. Nuzzo has placed himself under my protection, and I believe it’s in the best interests of Transatlantic Underwriters that we provide that protection.”
Mr. Gray stared helplessly at Lockwood.
“I think it’s perfectly clear why we should,” The Hook explained, making his speech almost as formal as the writing in an insurance policy: the kind of talk Gray understood. “If Mr. Nuzzo does not survive these attempts on his life, we will have to pay his survivors, who are his brother-in-law and sister-in-law. On the other hand, if we keep him alive long enough, we should be able to prove that Mr. Nuzzo in effect was the agent who set the two policies in motion, and thus we should be able to void them and therefore incur no further expense to the company.”