Inside Out

by John Ramsey Miller

  Bertran had daydreamed about pulling a gun and killing Sam a million times. But Bertran, for all his complacency, was not a killer.

  The receptionist buzzed in the FedEx delivery guy who deposited three overnight letters on her desk. Bertran took the envelopes from her and his heart almost stopped when he read the return address he'd been expecting on one of them. FARNEY, JAMES & COMPANY, 221 STONE STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10016. The letter had been sent out from some drop-box service, paid for in cash.

  The lawyer strode straight back to his office and slammed the door shut.

  Johnny Russo sat behind Bertran's desk, his hand already out for the envelope. Russo opened it, and three pictures spilled out on the blotter. Bertran didn't care to inspect the images. In the split second before he closed his eyes and turned away, he saw what he needed to see. The instant and sickening impression was of blood and heads with features rearranged into perspectives that a cubist painter might have imagined.

  “Mission accomplished!” Johnny Russo's enthusiasm for violence repulsed Bertran. “Smart cops. You can tell by the fucking brains.” He snickered. “Herman's guys are something. Christ, will you look at this!”

  “I'm glad Sam got his money's worth,” Bertran murmured.

  “You got a problem with this?” Johnny gloated over the pictures. “It was necessary.”

  “Necessary or not, it's grotesque.”

  “Then get out,” Johnny snarled. “You don't need to look, you fucking hook-nose, liver-lip, sack-a-shit-kike fuck!”

  “You just make sure you turn those pictures into confetti,” Bertran reminded him calmly. “You get caught with those and you'll get buried so far under the jailhouse you'll be hearing Chinese through the walls.”

  He stepped out, softly closing the door behind him.

  Johnny Russo stared down at the photos, each showing another view of the carnage inside the cabin of an airplane. This was too good. He was elated, he wanted to laugh out loud, to yell and destroy things. It had seemed impossible, but here was the evidence. Here was something wonderful, something rare and beautiful. The whole thing was coming together more perfectly than he had hoped. He stared at each of the pictures as long as he dared. Then he fed all but one into the shredder beside the chair, turning them into tiny squares of confetti.

  In the remaining photograph, Dylan Devlin's eyes were open and the front of his shirt was covered with blood and gobs of brain tissue. The entrance wound looked like a dot applied with a Magic Marker. Another man's shattered head was resting on Dylan Devlin's shoulder. In the background, there was what had once been Avery Whitehead, a man Johnny Russo was familiar with. “Now, this shit is art.”

  Johnny lifted a pencil and pushed the photo under some papers on Bertran's desk. “You'll get a close look now, you prick.” Johnny loved screwing with the stuffy lawyer's head. If it weren't for Sam, Johnny would have made the guy vanish years earlier. But Sam needed the lawyer and knew Bertran loved money and his family too much to rat Sam out. Besides, a lawyer couldn't testify against a client. But Johnny believed the old attorney knew too much about too many things. The second Sam was gone, Johnny would take him out. There were lots of greedy attorneys to replace him with.

  Johnny fed the FedEx's address sheet into the shredder, stood, and opened the seemingly solid bookcase by twisting the ornamental column on it. He exited into a secret hallway that led into the next building, which was used as a storage facility for retired amusement games. Sam had a business that refurbished the bell-ringers and other vintage arcade games, then sold them to dealers across the country, who in turn sold them to rich people who liked to put them in their fancy houses.

  Johnny's driver, Spiro Feretti, was waiting in the Lincoln. Johnny slid in beside him and lifted the magazine Spiro had laid down before he started the car.

  “You been reading this rag for a solid week, Spiro,” Johnny told him.

  “I like to take my time. It only comes out every other month.”

  Johnny thumbed through the pages. “You know, I gotta wonder about this bodybuilding shit. I mean this staring at greased-up men and bodies of those she-he muscle chicks is sort of . . .” He stared down at a fold-out of a well-oiled man on a stage, posing. “Spiro, it's queer.”

  Spiro was pressing a remote door opener. “You mean odd, right?” he said, staring ahead at the opening garage doors. “Not fagola.”

  “This muscle shit is dick-sucking queer. There's nothing normal about looking at this shit.”

  “I work out hard to maintain this—”

  “Hey, don't sulk on me,” Johnny cut in. “You got a build scares the shit outta people. You are one strong-looking bull. Enough already. Maybe I have to get a new guy who don't look like some fucking sausage filled with marbles, like he's gonna explode.”

  “Sure, Johnny. I got the cuts, the definition I like. I ain't going to compete or nothing. I mean, that takes pumping eight hours a day.”

  “Just remember, Spiro. You start looking at me like you want me to screw you, you're a dead man.”

  Spiro turned and looked at Johnny with wounded eyes. “I ain't ever had no such a thought,” he declared solemnly.

  Johnny laughed and popped Spiro in the shoulder. “Of course not! I'm just messing with you. I know you ain't no sissy. You'd look like shit in a dress. Chill—those steroids are supposed to shrink just your dick, not your sense of humor!”

  Spiro drove out into the street and waited for the garage door to close before proceeding. As they neared the intersection, three vehicles crossed in front of them and pulled up at the curb. Men and women, all wearing jackets with FBI emblazoned on them, streamed out of the cars and ran up to Bertran Stern's front door.

  “What they doing?” Spiro asked. “Can they go into a lawyer's office like that?”

  Johnny slunk down in his seat. “Get the hell outta here!”

  Spiro steered the car away from the attorney's office and drove in the other direction. Johnny stared out the back window.

  “He knows a lot of shit, Johnny,” Spiro said.

  “He can't tell—it's client privilege. And he has a big family that can't hide out with him. Anyway, we can always pay to have some guys we know whack him. It would be real expensive, but doable.”

  “Like an investment in the future.”

  “You know, Spiro, it's too fucking bad we can't write hits off as a business-related expense.”

  Spiro laughed.

  “See,” Johnny said, “you still got your sense of humor.”

  Bertran was in the kitchen making a mug of English breakfast tea. He planned to wait until Johnny was gone before returning to his office. He would spray Lysol to kill the eye-tearing cologne odor Johnny always left lingering in the air.

  He was sitting there sipping his tea when he heard his receptionist squeal, “They, they're . . . the FBI!”

  “What?” he said. “What the devil?” He felt his heart race, then the icy grip of real fear. He thought about the photographs that had been delivered to his office. Did the feds know about them? Was it possible they had already seen them? He heard fists pounding at the door.

  “What should I do, Mr. Stern?” the receptionist shrieked from her desk, in full view of the people demanding to come inside.

  “Give me a few seconds.”

  Bertran bolted into his office and slammed the door. Johnny was gone. He grabbed up the shredder and looked in at the confetti before he opened the bookcase and set the machine in the secret passageway. He pushed the bookcase closed until it clicked into place, then sat at his desk. Sweat poured from every pore in his body. He mopped his brow with his handkerchief and gulped down a glass of water.

  The agents didn't bother to knock. The door flew open and the room filled up with blue jackets and hard eyes set in determined faces.

  “You people have a legal emergency?” Bertran Stern joked.

  One of them handed him a search warrant. He made a show of looking for his glasses, then read the warrant, summoni
ng whatever courage he could pull together into a wall of bluff to hide behind. There is no evidence. It doesn't exist. Even the scraps are not on my property. I never touched those pictures. No evidence equals no arrest. How did the FBI know about the pictures?

  The warrant, issued by a federal judge named Horn, sought evidence of conspiracy between Sam Manelli and other unidentified parties to commit murder. The warrant didn't specify which murders had taken place, but Bertran knew good and well from the images what murders the warrant referred to. The smug expressions on the feds' faces said they knew that he knew. A “John Doe” informant was credited with furnishing the information.

  “This warrant seems a bit vague,” Bertran pointed out. “A fishing expedition. But there is nothing here that could possibly help you.”

  “That right?” an FBI agent said.

  “Search away, ladies and gentlemen,” he said graciously. “If you have no objections, I have paperwork to catch up on.”

  “Would you open your safe?” The man in command was short and not particularly threatening in either his speech or manner.

  Bertran pointed his finger at the safe. “It isn't locked. I never keep much of anything in it. I don't deal with cash or dark secrets.”

  He didn't keep any records of anything incriminating in his office. There was nothing like that within miles. Russo certainly had books on what came and went on the dark side of Manelli's empire, but Bertran had never even seen the “dirty” books. He envisioned thick leather-bound volumes, but they could be computer diskettes or images carved into wax tablets, for that matter.

  The agents opened the safe door and started removing the items and laying them on the coffee table.

  “Just put it all back in when you are done,” Bertan said.

  “We'll be taking them,” the agent in charge told him.

  Bertran felt their eyes on him, felt the hate, the anger. But he knew the agents were going to be a lot madder when they left. He lifted a stack of papers from beside his blotter and placed it tidily before him.

  The agent in charge stared down at something that had been under the papers Bertran had moved and was now exposed.

  When the lawyer realized what he had just unwittingly uncovered, a vise tightened on his left arm near the shoulder and his eyes felt like they were being vacuumed out of his skull. Something took his heart in its jaws and crunched it.

  The rectangular image of three obliterated heads stayed with him until he was swallowed up by absolute darkness.

  56

  Richmond, Virginia

  Sean left the hotel Saturday afternoon to walk around the neighborhood. She had located a coffee shop where Max had told her that most of the residents and guests ate. The restaurant was closed on Sunday, so Sean went to the convenience store and stocked up on bottled water and enough food so she wouldn't have to go out until Monday, when business demanded she must.

  She also replaced some of the things she had abandoned in Washington—undergarments and necessary toiletries.

  She wasn't sure yet where she would go when she left Richmond. She needed to decide on somewhere she could lay low and let the search cool down without attracting any attention.

  She was aware of Sam Manelli's reach and what he was capable of doing to anyone he felt had betrayed him. She knew he was single-minded when he perceived a threat to what was his, and the lengths he would go to in order to make sure everybody knew there was no such thing as a safe place for an enemy to hide. Her best chance was to hide and wait and hope that his desire for revenge would ebb to the point where other things occupied his attention. It was possible that Sam could be arrested for sending the killers after Dylan and decide that she was no longer worth pursuing.

  She thought about Winter Massey. Of all the people who could and would protect her, he was the only one she could trust, but she couldn't bring herself to drag him back into danger. He didn't owe her anything. Their relationship had ended when he left Ward Field. She was on her own, and it had to remain that way.

  She found herself fantasizing about the deputy, wondering whether, if she had met him under other circumstances, things might have been different. She told herself that her attraction to him was probably due more to their circumstances than anything else. Maybe someday she would see him. But for the time being, she decided, it was best for both of them if she forgot all about him.

  When she went to sleep Saturday night, it was after a long, heartfelt prayer and with the loaded .38 under her pillow.

  57

  Concord, North Carolina

  Sunday

  Winter sat at the table, watching his son fight to contain his growing excitement. Winter had stayed busy around the house all weekend. There were plenty of minor repairs to take care of. While he worked, Rush stayed close and they talked and laughed. It helped to keep his mind off Greg and the other thoughts that stalked him. He and Lydia decided to celebrate Rush's birthday on Sunday afternoon. Winter didn't know what Monday would bring his way.

  The handicap had taken its social toll on Rush. Most of the friends he had made before the accident hadn't remained close for long. After the novelty wore off, most sighted children found it difficult to maintain a relationship with someone so radically different. Friendship with Rush meant the loss of things that were important to children that age: video games, basketball, baseball, movies, bicycles. Since the accident, Rush had become more and more comfortable with children like him. Angus McGill, a neighbor Rush's age, was the only one of Rush's old pals who still visited, but he was out of town with his parents.

  “Well,” Winter said. “What should we do now?”

  “We could sit on the porch,” Lydia said.

  “Aren't you guys forgetting something?” Rush asked, fighting back a smile.

  “I don't think so,” Winter said, trying to sound sincerely confused. “Mama, what's that?” Winter got up, lifted a package from the sideboard and placed it on the table in front of his son. “A present?”

  Rush placed his hands on the package.

  “I don't know,” Lydia said.

  Rush felt the edges of the box. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Open it and see.”

  Rush removed the ribbon, peeled off the paper, and pried open the box. He reached in.

  “It's something plastic.”

  “Could be,” Winter said.

  Rush lifted the object by the edges and placed it down on the table, flat-side down.

  “Sculpture art?” Rush had been to museums where there had been sculpture and other tactile work he could appreciate with his fingers. In art classes, he had made three-dimensional objects in clay, wood, cloth, and paper.

  “Sort of art. That guy Moses Mink who brought his statues to your school made it for me. You tell me what it is,” Winter said.

  As Rush's fingers moved over the surface of the piece, the contours started to make sense. What he was feeling suddenly appeared as an image in his mind, and his heart leaped with sheer joy. “It's . . . you!” He started laughing and ran his fingers over the cast impression of his father's face. “It's a picture of you!”

  “It's a mask, so you won't forget me. How cool is that?”

  “That's way, way far-out cool! That's the number-one best present ever.” He laughed again. “I can't believe it.”

  Rush made a big deal over the other gifts: a stack of audiobooks from the Trammels, two sweaters and two pairs of jeans from Lydia, and a check from Eleanor's father, who had moved to Nova Scotia with his third wife. When Rush left the table, he was carrying the mask.

  58

  Charlotte, North Carolina

  Monday

  From his Explorer, Winter watched Rush and Nemo join other students to walk up the stairs to his school. His cell phone buzzed.

  “Yeah?”

  “Where are you?” Hank Trammel asked.

  “Dropping Rush off.”

  “Can you come see me?”

  “What's up?”

  �
��I'd rather tell you when you get here.”

  It was impossible to read Hank's voice.

  His phone rang again almost immediately after he'd set it aside.

  “Yeah?”

  “Say hello first, Winter,” Lydia scolded.

  “I thought it was Hank.”

  “I wondered if you would mind stopping by the grocery store on your way home.”

  “Something's come up. An important meeting at headquarters. It may take a while.”

  “I don't know why one tells you to rest a few days and then another tells you to come to work,” his mother complained. “It's like they don't care what you go through. I know that news story about the plane crashing upset you. I know you didn't want Rush to think about all that, but you can tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Did you know any of those people?”

  “I knew most of them.”

  “Did it—”

  “Mama, if I could discuss it with you, I already would have. When I can, you'll be the first to know.”

  Hank Trammel's stiffly formal manner and his stern face set off warning bells in Winter's mind as he sat across the uncharacteristically ordered desk. Hank flipped open a file folder and studied the first page. “Chief Marshal Shapiro got preliminary findings from the FBI this morning and faxed this to me, asking that I share it with you.”

  Winter felt his anticipation growing at the possibility that the case had already been broken.

  “Were you aware that Greg Nations had an offshore bank account?”

  “No,” Winter replied. The question surprised him. He couldn't think of one reason he should have one. “But people have bank accounts all over. I doubt it's illegal to have an offshore account.”