Final Stroke (49 page)

THIRTY

ONE

As Valdez turned onto the exit ramp, the GPS system
sounded the double bell indicating they were at their turnoff. Beside him, beneath the bright overhead lights of the exit ramp, Valdez could see that Hanley had finished loading three magazines and was sliding one of the magazines into a Sig Sauer pistol. Valdez caught a detailed glimpse of the pistol.

“Did they give us P229s?” asked Valdez.

“No,” said Hanley. “It’s the newer Sig Pro that the DEA and the French use. It comes with an attachment.”

Hanley reached into the briefcase and pulled out a tubular object. He held up the object and Valdez could see it was a silencer. Hanley put the pistol along with its silencer and the magazines away carefully beneath his golf jacket, then he dug inside the briefcase once more and held up several pairs of latex gloves. “Extras,” he said.

After putting the latex gloves away in his jacket, Hanley reached again into the back seat, returning his briefcase to the back and retriev ing Valdez’s briefcase. Hanley opened this briefcase and began the
process of loading Valdez’s Sig Sauer along with two extra magazines.

Once off the Eisenhower Expressway, Valdez headed south. He saw by the GPS display that Saint Mel in the Woods Rehabilitation Facility was five miles away. On city streets at this time on a Friday evening, Valdez figured it would take them less than a half hour to get there.

Hanley returned the second briefcase to the back seat and sat with Valdez’s pistol, silencer, extra loaded magazines, and latex gloves in his lap. “I’ll hang onto these until you get stopped by a light,” he said, looking straight ahead.

“Do you think we’ll need the Sigs?” asked Valdez.

“I don’t know.”

“Do they have night sights?”

“Yes.”

At the next stoplight, Valdez put the magazines, silencer, and gloves into the inside pockets of his golf jacket and tucked the pistol into his waistband.

“How will we know if Lamberti or his men are straying too close to our territory?” asked Valdez, as he started off from the stoplight.

“I suppose we might ask about the condition of Mrs. Gianetti, a longtime rehab friend of our spouses,” said Hanley.

“Do you think we’ll have an opportunity to converse on that level?”

“From what our contacts have told us, I doubt it.”

Valdez stopped the car at another stoplight and glanced at Hanley. “If we need to use our Sigs, what will the cover be?”

“An underworld dispute,” said Hanley. “Langley arranged it with the New York office. East Coast bosses will have gotten upset that they lost drugs and money a long time ago and just now found out who was to blame. They will have sent in someone to represent their
interests. Coincidentally, our Sigs were confiscated in New York not that long ago. And, to add to the confusion, Gianetti and his crew also use the Sig Pro. It’s replaced their venerable Berettas.”

Hanley stared at Valdez for a moment, then looked back out the windshield. Valdez thought he saw a slight trace of a smile from Han-ley and wondered about it.

“The light is green,” said Hanley

Valdez accelerated abruptly and glanced Hanley’s way again. Al
though Hanley still stared out the windshield, Valdez thought he no
ticed a change in disposition in Hanley.

“If it comes down to it,” said Valdez, “how will we be certain we have closure?”

“Perhaps we’ll never have closure on this one,” said Hanley.

“Is that because there are others out there?” asked Valdez.

Hanley was silent, so Valdez pressed him.

“If we follow the money to its end, will there be others?”

Hanley took off his golf cap, scratched his head, put his cap back on, and said, “Yes, there will be others.”

Valdez looked at the GPS display and saw they were only three miles from the rehabilitation facility.

Although one guard at the front counter was new to Hell in the Woods and the other was a veteran, both of them were young.

“Must be shift change,” said the new guard. “Back at the hospital you’d hardly notice shift changes.”

“Why’s that?” asked the veteran guard.

“Because things were more hectic at the hospital,” said the new guard. “And because at the hospital there were a lot more exits.”

“Were they monitored?” asked the veteran guard.

“Yeah. That’s another reason I like this place better. My eyes used to get sore staring at all the monitors. Here you only got a few. And we hardly ever see anyone on them at night.”

Both guards nodded toward a group of employees who were leav
ing, taking turns holding open the unlocked door to the side of the locked main doors.

“We should do a sociological study on the employees in this place,” said the new guard.

“What do you mean?” asked the veteran guard.

“I was just noticing how many of the folks arriving and leaving by the front door are minorities. Too bad we don’t have a monitor on the loading dock to see how many minorities come and go that way.”

“We don’t need a monitor back there,” said the veteran guard. “Whoever’s on kitchen duty makes sure only employees use the back door. But if we did have a monitor there, what do you think we’d see?”

“I think,” said the new guard, putting a finger to his chin, “we’d see a higher proportion of minorities in and out the front door, while a higher proportion of non-minorities would be going in and out the back door. Kind of ironic when you think about it.”

“You use the back door,” said the veteran guard, smiling.

“That’s because I’ve got a set of wheels,” said the new guard, also smiling. “These folks without wheels use this entrance because it’s closer to the bus stop, whereas folks who go out the back door, through the proverbial bowels of the building with all its noisy machinery, tend to be driving to their split levels in the suburbs.”

“I live in a crumby one-bedroom apartment in the suburbs,” said the veteran guard.

“I guess we’re both exceptions. Me, because I’ve got wheels. You, because you don’t own a split level. But I bet you will some day.”

“On this salary?”

“Yeah, you got a point there, man.”

The two guards watched as several late night shift stragglers rushed into the building, running through the door at the side of the lobby that led to the time clock.

“It’s going to be a long night,” said the new guard, standing and retrieving some change from his pocket.

“Yeah,” said the veteran guard, staring off into space.

“How about I buy us a couple cups? You like yours black, like your women, right?”

The veteran guard turned to the new guard and grinned. “Yeah, thanks. Except you bought last time.”

“I know, but these extra quarters’ll wear out the pockets of my new uniform.”

The veteran guard watched as his partner for the night strode to the side door that led to the vending machine room. After his part
ner was gone, the remaining guard turned and stared out at the dark night, his face reflected back to him from the glass of the front doors.

“What kinda night is this?” Steve said aloud to himself as he turned the Lincoln into the lighted entrance past the bus stop kiosk. Several people stood inside the kiosk, and several more were walking along the entrance road toward the kiosk, their heads down in the wind.

Once past the overhead lights at the entrance, he could see the darkened area resulting from the blown left front headlight of the Lin coln. Because he had slowed the Lincoln after the rush to get back here, the front end stopped rattling and shimmying and he could hear sirens in the distance. He had driven a different route back to avoid
the area where the Christ Health Care truck and the Lincoln had side swiped a double-parked car. At one intersection he had seen flashing lights a few blocks over and turned on the scanner. He heard several calls for the area go out, one of them significant. Someone had called to report seeing a truck off the road back at the expressway and a man lying in the weeds. An ambulance had already been dispatched. If Jan were here with him—if only she were here with him—he would repeat the words to her. “What kinda night is this?”

As he drove into the front parking lot, he saw the squad car was still there parked next to Jan’s Audi. Inside the squad car, silhouetted against the bright lights at the main entrance in the distance, he could see the passenger hoist a large drinking mug to his lips. He looked at the tires on the squad car, then at the tires on Jan’s car, then at the mud caked on the downslope of the Audi’s fenders.

Tires. The word
tires
meant something. He had just said, “What kinda night is this?” and now, because of the pain in his right side, a wave of confusion and nausea came over him. It was as if all the confusion he’d had while in residence at Hell in the Woods had come flooding out the door of the main entrance and into the park
ing lot, the confusion spilling out like vomit, the pain throwing up a smokescreen.

He’d been here before. He’d heard the radio call about Jan’s car being found and now he was back at Hell in the Woods. He was sup
posed to look at tires, but as the police scanner chattered beside him, other words got mixed in. And when the word
tired
emerged in his brain, he had to acknowledge that, yes, he was tired. Or was he re
tired? Seeing the cop drinking from a mug had stirred another mem
ory. He was tired, and he was retired.

Confused, he drove up an aisle and came back around to drive past Jan’s car once more. This time, because of the lack of reflection,
he saw the driver’s side window was open. No, not open, idiot! Busted out! You’ve been here before!

And he was here again because he’d seen tire marks south of Orland, then he’d heard the call go out about Jan’s car being found. Tire marks south of Orland, and among those tire marks were the dis
tinct tread imprints of rain tires with their deep center grooves.

He began driving slowly up and down the aisles of the parking lot looking carefully for cars with rain tires, glancing down to read the list of vehicles he’d gotten from Tamara to see if any of those vehicles, or a vehicle with rain tires, or both, might be here somewhere at Hell in the Woods. He’d seen rain tire tracks in the mud, and although it was a long shot, he felt Jan would be here at Hell in the Woods.