The Guilty: (P.I. Jack Marconi No. 3)

by Vincent Zandri

  “You still got the guns, Keep,” he said. “They just a little older and more shot up then they used to be. I’ll give you a boost.”

  “Warranty ran out a while ago,” I said as I set the tip of my booted right foot into one of the square-shaped chain links, grabbed hold of the fence with both hands and, with Blood’s help, heaved myself up.

  Once at the top of the fence, I felt the searing burn in my right shoulder. I was pretty sure that whatever bleeding had stopped had started right back up again. With Sarah’s pale face foremost in my brain, I threw my right leg around, then my left, and dropped down onto the lot. I fell hard, dropping down onto my good, left side, but still feeling the concussion in my right side.

  Blood jumped and landed on both feet. He probably could have hurdled it had he been given a running start. But to him, that would have been like showing off. He already had his gun out, and his eyes were examining the back of the building.

  Picking myself up, I pulled the 9 mm out of my pant waist, thumbed the safety off, and slowly moved in the direction of Manny’s back door.

  Find Sarah!

  By Ted Bolous, Albany Times Union Senior Food Blogger

  If anyone has any information regarding the whereabouts of Sarah Levy, please post it here.

  62

  THE EXTERIOR WALL OF the building was made of old, common brick. It looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned since the day the bricks were laid maybe one hundred or more years ago. In the center of the four-story brick wall was a solid metal door and beside it, a steel roll-up door. To the right of the building sat a beat up blue dumpster that bore the letters BFI.

  The area behind the building was dark since the brick buildings that surrounded it blocked out the sun. Directly behind us was the service road. It too was blocked off with padlocked chain-link gates topped with razor wire. The place seemed more like Fort Knox than a place for innocent food deliveries.

  Blood and I approached the door. I tried the opener, but it was closed tighter than a bank vault.

  “Think you can jimmy that?” I asked Blood.

  “You got the time, I can jimmy anything.”

  “Ain’t got the time,” I said.

  “Back up,” he said, pressing the barrel of his hand cannon to the closer.

  I backed up.

  He squeezed the trigger and the closer exploded into a dozen fragments. Blood reached into the round machined hole where the closer had been installed, pulled out the bolt, and dropped it to the ground. Then, using the same hole, he pulled the door open. There was no alarm. I sensed that, like Junior’s home, it would sound silently. Not that I cared. Miller knew precisely where and what we were doing. I could only wonder if Junior and his father knew what we were doing.

  We entered the kitchen. It was dark, and I felt along the wall for a switch. I found one and flipped it on. The place was white, like a morgue. There were stainless steel prep tables set up in the middle of the floor, several stainless steel freezers, and a walk-in cooler. There were also several professional grade gas stoves, a wood-fired pizza oven, and a couple of regular ovens.

  “Wine cellar,” said Blood.

  Our guns aimed for what lie ahead, we exited the kitchen directly into the bar back. It might have been early evening, but it most definitely was not happy hour.

  “Here,” Blood said, pointing down at the worn wood floor behind the long wood bar. “An opening,” he said.

  I shuffled over to him. There was a rectangular panel embedded into the floor with a retractable opener.

  “Step away,” I said, as I crouched down, fingered the opener, and pulled it up. The panel opened easily, revealing a basement that was accessible by a set of narrow wood plank stairs.

  “Got a light?” Blood said.

  I reached in, ran the fingers on my left hand along the wood wall, and found a round, old–fashioned, surface-mounted fixture. I flicked the switch on and a dull bulb cast an eerie yellowish glow inside the basement.

  “Perfection before brains,” I said.

  “I’m smarter than you,” he said. “Played you like a violin at Green Haven for many years.”

  He smiled because he was right and he knew it.

  “Must be nice to be perfect.”

  He grimaced as he placed his right foot on the first tread and then began his descent into the cramped basement. I immediately followed, praying we were entering into a wine cellar and not into hell itself.

  63

  s

  THE SPACE WAS CRAMPED, the walls made not of concrete or concrete block but old field stone stacked one on top of the other, the joints filled in with now eroding mortar. My grandfather had worked as a stonemason among other occupations. But these walls had been built long before even he was born. The ceiling was so low that Blood and I had to duck our heads or else risk slamming our foreheads into the thick wood structural beams that supported the first floor. The floor consisted of compacted dirt and gravel that bore a damp mustiness to it. Someone had thought enough to install a series of wood planks over the dirt so that you weren’t forced to walk on it and, therefore, drag the dirt upstairs to the restaurant.

  We followed the path of the planks to a series of wood wine racks that contained dozens if not a couple hundred bottles stacked horizontally to the ceiling. Some of the bottles bore a coating of white dust while others looked as though they’d just been placed there.

  “Why don’t we pop a cork and get drunk?” Blood said.

  “Thought you don’t drink anymore,” I said.

  “Don’t do drugs or liquors,” he said, examining some of the bottles. “But when it comes to a very good bottle of wine . . .” He allowed thought to trail off. “Got a red here bottled in 1969. Must be expensive.”

  “Not for a man of your means.”

  “True that,” he said, gently setting the dusty bottle back on the rack.

  “You see anything that tells you Sarah Levy is down here?” I said, walking the length of the racks until I came to another stone wall.

  “That preppy James Slater was lying to us,” Blood said.

  “Maybe not. He said he overheard Junior taking about a wine cellar.”

  “You giving that creepy Slater the benefit of the doubt?”

  “I was raised a Christian.”

  “Turn the other cheek.”

  “She’s not down here,” I exhaled.

  “My sentiments exactly,” he said. “Lots of wine though. I almost hate to leave this place.”

  “Stay as long as you want,” I said, heading back across the wood planks for the staircase. “Plenty of spiders and snakes to keep you company.”

  “Not on your life,” Blood said, following close behind. “Man’s got to know the limitations of his bravery.”

  64

  WHEN WE CAME UP for air, closing the floor panel behind us, a group of three or four business-suited men were pulling on the door, trying to get in.

  “Stay down,” I said to Blood.

  “Those businessmen need to wet their whistles,” he said. “They not used to the joint being closed up.”

  “Makes me wonder if Junior and the old man have already fled the city and the state.”

  “You wanna call Miller? See how he doing with the raid?”

  I shook my head while someone yelled out to “Open the damn door!”

  “Follow me,” I said.

  Crouching, I made my way from the bar, through the swinging door, and back into the kitchen. Blood stayed close behind. When we were both safely inside the kitchen, I took one last look around.

  “Goose chase,” I said. “Any ideas?”

  Blood wasn’t answering me. His hawk-like eyes were focused on something else instead. He moved on past me and made his way to the walk-in cooler. He took a knee and pressed his index finger to the floor. He smelled the pad of his index finger as if something now coated it.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “You really wanna know?” he said.

  “The
cooler,” I said, feeling my stomach drop. “Sarah’s in the cooler.”

  65

  GUNS POISED, BLOOD PULLED the metal, pen-like locking device on the cooler door and opened it.

  We stepped inside.

  First, we were hit by a blast of cold air. Then we were hit with something else.

  A body, hanging from a meat hook, directly beside two separate sides of raw beef.

  The body of Sarah Levy.

  66

  HER EYES WERE CLOSED and her body, which was dressed only in her underwear, was hanging perfectly still while beneath her, a puddle of urine had collected. It was the urine that Blood had smelled on his fingertips.

  “Junior,” Blood said.

  “Looks like his work,” I said.

  Upon closer inspection, I could see that her back hadn’t been pierced by the meat hook. She was hanging by a thin, brown leather belt which had been strapped to the hook and strung under her armpits. Maybe Junior’s belt. I set my hand on her body. It was cold, but not as cold as a dead person’s body would be.

  “Christ she’s alive!” I shouted to Blood.

  Without a second of pause, he grabbed her by the legs and heaved her up so that the belt detached from the meat hook. Her lifeless, unconscious body draped itself over his shoulder.

  “Hospital!” he said.

  I back-stepped, turned toward the opening.

  That’s when the cooler door slammed shut in my face.

  67

  “OH, SHIT,” BLOOD SAID, setting Sarah’s body gently onto the floor on her back. Standing up straight, he approached the door, yanked on the interior closer which was just a thin metal pulley. But the door wouldn’t budge. He tried ramming it with his shoulder. Even when Blood put all two-hundred and twenty- pounds of solid muscle into it, he couldn’t make it move.

  He backed up and rubbed the shoulder he used on the door.

  “Somebody know we’re in here,” he said. “Saw us coming.”

  “That somebody wants us dead,” I said, my teeth beginning to chatter.

  Blood drew his .9mm from his pant waist. Aimed it at the pulley.

  “Save it,” I said. “Won’t work. This is like a vault door. That bullet will just rattle around inside here like a coin in a piggy bank. One of us might get shot, and I’m sick of being a bullet magnet.”

  He replaced the pistol into his pant waist and sighed. I knew that even though he would never admit to it, Blood was freezing also.

  I pressed my ear up against the door and listened.

  I could hear talking. Not shouting, but talking. A man’s voice. Junior’s voice.

  He seemed to be talking to someone else. One of his goons, maybe.

  “You going to freeze them to death?” the second man said.

  “Don’t be an asshole,” Junior said. “Takes too long. I’m thinking about something else maybe.”

  “Like what?”

  “This place has got to go away,” Junior said. “So how can we make it go away?”

  “Burn it.”

  “Exactly,” Junior said. “Send it back to hell.”

  I turned to Blood.

  “They’re gonna burn the joint,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve got perfect hearing.”

  I made a fist, pounded on the door.

  “Junior!” I barked. “Let us go! No one else has to die. The police know everything. Do yourself a favor and give it up now while you can still cop a plea.”

  But it was like spitting into the wind.

  I heard Junior laughing.

  “You have got to be kidding me, Marconi. Today life ends. For all three of you. I’m just glad you had the stupidity to actually show up.”

  I turned to Blood. Even in the freezing cooler, he was sharp enough to know precisely what I was thinking. Slater set us up. Junior must have figured that eventually we would get to him and when we did, he would lead us here for which a trap would be set. Blood and I walked right into it.

  Blood pulled out his cell phone.

  “Almost forgot,” he said. “Modern technology.”

  “Call 911,” I said.

  He punched in the numbers. I saw his eyes go wide.

  “Can’t get a signal,” he said.

  “Shit,” I said, pulling my phone out, speed-dialing Miller. Same thing. No signal.

  “And if you try your cell phones,” Junior said, “they won’t work. That cooler is lead-lined. It’s topped and surrounded by insulation and steel. You might as well be calling from hell.”

  “Can you text?” I said to Blood.

  On the floor, I could see that Sarah was squirming, coming to. I almost wished she would stay unconscious.

  Blood tried to text something. He looked at me with those same big, disappointed eyes. Shook his head.

  I heard some commotion going on outside the door. Some doors opening and closing. Some orders being given. Then I smelled something toxic. I looked down at my feet and saw liquid seeping into the cooler. I bent down, touched the liquid with my fingertips, brought it to my nose.

  “Gasoline,” I said, looking up at Blood. “Get back.”

  I stood up and followed Blood to the back of the cooler at the precise moment the gas flashed and burst into flame.

  68

  THE THREE OF US were trapped inside Junior’s version of hell.

  The entire front wall of the cooler was going up in a hot, red flame.

  The more gas that was poured into the cooler, the more intense it got. The flame was tickling the toes of Sarah Levy. It was beginning to cook the sides of beef. You could smell the beef beginning to roast. I bent down, took hold of Sarah’s hands, dragged her to the back of the cooler. She was mumbling something.

  “Michael,” she said. “Michael.”

  “We’re dead meat,” said Blood. He pulled out his gun. “You want to shoot one another? Cut to the chase?”

  I looked at him, heart in throat, veins mainlining blood and adrenalin.

  “No one dies,” I said.

  Blood laughed.

  “You believe that?”

  I looked around. Trying to find an opening. A vent or a breach. Something that would allow me the chance to claw my way through the ceiling or a wall. But there was nothing.

  I looked at the door. It was entirely engulfed in red-orange flames along with the wall. I saw more gasoline being poured in. The air was being sucked away by the flame and the heat. I couldn’t breathe. The flame spread across the entire ceiling as though it were a live animal. I knew it was about to flash, and that once it did, our bodies would be consumed in white-hot flame.

  The interior of our lungs were searing.

  Blood dropped to his knees.

  I saw him press the barrel of the pistol to his head. He was intent on cutting to the chase rather than bear the torture of being burned alive. It’s something all inmates feared the most. Being locked in a prison cell while the place burned all around them.

  I felt my eyes tear up. But the moisture burned away as fast as my tear ducts could produce it.

  I too dropped to my knees, lungs burning, air gone, my world blinded by flame and heat and death. I lay atop the body of Sarah Levy as if I could somehow protect her from the flames that were about to roast us.

  Then came the gunshot.

  69

  WHEN I CAME TO, I was lying on the kitchen floor. I was coughing, my mouth tasting of ash, soot, and burnt gasoline. There was the smell of burnt meat. It combined with the acrid odor of burnt hair. I felt my face, ran my hands over my cropped head, and could immediately tell that my eyebrows had been singed and that some of the hair on my head had been burned off. But otherwise, I was no worse off than when I’d first entered the cooler.

  I sat up and looked to my right.

  Blood was standing beside me. He was downing a bottle of spring water as if all humanity depended upon it.

  “I thought you were dead,” I said.

  He pulled the bottle away from his mouth.


  “Thought the same about you,” he said, handing me the bottle.

  I took a deep drink, and my lungs felt as if they had been doused with ice water.

  “I heard a gunshot,” I said, coming up for air, handing Blood the bottle back.

  “Wasn’t one of our guns,” he said.

  I stood up, a bit wobbly and out of balance. As my eyes and ears adjusted, I could see that we weren’t alone. Not by a long shot. The kitchen was crawling with APD. Lying in the center of the floor were two bodies. Black rubber sheets concealed their identities.

  Freshly spilled blood stained the floor along with the charred wood, plastic, and metal. Behind me, the cooler door was wide open, water having doused the charred meat still hanging from the meat hooks. I looked around the room, but Sarah Levy was nowhere to be seen. I felt relieved to see that she was no longer present. I could only hope that like Blood and me, she had survived the cooler inferno.

  I turned back to the sheet-covered bodies. I made my way over to them, kneeling down before the first one. Taking hold of the rubber sheet’s edge, I pulled it back. I should have known all along who the face belonged to. After all, the man wanted me dead for what I was revealing about his life. About the life he’d led with Sarah Levy. The life that may have resulted in her death. But it was the second face that took me by surprise. When I pulled the sheet off it, my heart sped up and my breath was once more sucked from my lungs.

  70

  I REPLACED THE SHEETS over the faces of Robert David Jr. and the man who would have been his father-in-law, Harold Sanders, and then I stood up straight.

  “Ain’t he the man who hired you?” Blood said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Looks like he try and shoot Junior, but Junior shoot him first. Or vice versa.”