Killer (17 page)

chapter 26

present

When I met Sophie on Thursday, she smiled her amused shit-eating grin at me for a good minute or so before I raised an eyebrow and asked her what was up.

“I have a surprise,” she said.

“Yeah?”

She pursed her lips as she studied me. Then she told me how she was able to arrange for us to borrow an isolated cabin up in New Hampshire for the weekend.

“From a friend of a friend,” she explained. “But we’ll be up in the woods and we’ll be able to be like real writers. My friend’s friend can let us have it from Saturday morning until Monday. That will give us a chance to get started on this book and really concentrate on it.”

“I can’t do that,” I said. “I have to work Saturday night.”

She opened her eyes wide in mock surprise. We were sitting at a table in the same coffee shop we had first met in, and the other people there turned to stare as Sophie got out of her chair and walked over to sit on my lap. With her mouth inches from my ear, she said softly, “But Leonard, darling, how can you turn down a weekend alone with a sensual and somewhat attractive younger woman, even though all we’re going to be doing there is working.”

“Not somewhat attractive,” I said. “No, not by a long shot. Let’s call you what you are, stunningly beautiful.”

She pulled back, grinning at me, her eyes sparkling brightly. “If you say so, Leonard,” she said, her tone deprecating. “But seriously, call in sick Saturday. What’s the worst that can happen? They fire you? Fuck them if they do that, you’ll be making more on this book than they could pay you in a lifetime for cleaning their bathrooms. So come on, what do you say?”

“How are we going to get up there?”

“I’ll find us a car,” she said.

I found myself nodding, almost involuntarily. “Sure, okay, let’s do it,” I agreed.

“Outstanding.” She played with her index finger lightly along my lips for a few seconds, then kissed me on the cheek. Moving her mouth so she was again whispering in my ear, she said, “I’m not getting you too excited sitting on your lap, am I, Leonard? Because we’re only going to be working up there.”

“Not enough yet to give me a stroke. But keep trying.”

She laughed at that, her head tilted back slightly, the soft curvature of her throat making me swallow hard.

“I guess I can be a bit of a tease,” she said. “I’m sorry about that, Leonard, but it’s going to be so much fun us working together, and the thought of it has put me in a playful mood.” She stopped as she glanced at a clock on the wall. “Shit,” she said, her smile fading, “I have to get going, but let’s meet right in front of this shop Saturday morning at eight. We’ll get an early start.”

I nodded, and she hopped off my lap and headed fast towards the door. Before she went through it, she turned to give me a short wave and a slight impish smile.

Lombard’s boys showed up that night. I was vacuuming one of the third-floor offices when they walked in, the same two who’d been standing outside the courthouse Monday morning watching for me. One of them turned off the vacuum cleaner. The other one told me we were leaving.

“What’s the point?” I asked. “If you’re going to take me out, just do it here.”

He shook his head sadly. “Fuck, I’d like to, but orders are to deliver you alive. Get moving.”

I stayed where I was. I was deciding whether I had any chance against them when the one who had turned off the vacuum cleaner took a step towards me, violence in his eyes. “We can rough you up for convincing’s sake,” he said. “It would be a shame to get blood all over this nice carpeting, but if you need us to do that, sure, why the fuck not.”

I told him that wasn’t necessary and walked out of the room with them close enough behind for me to feel their breath on my neck and smell the sourness of it. I headed towards the back staircase, figuring they wanted to avoid the lobby and the security desk, but they indicated for me to take the elevator. When we got in there, they crowded me from both sides.

“Will it do me any good asking the security guard for help?” I asked.

“None,” the one on my right said. “Except for giving us an excuse to pop you in the mouth.”

“This has been the set-up from the beginning,” I said. “That’s the only reason I was hired here, wasn’t it?”

The one crowding me on my left smirked at that but didn’t answer me. When we got out at the lobby and they marched me past the security desk, the kid working there looked alarmed. He jumped out of his seat and started yelling, “Hey, hey, hey!”

One of the wiseguys gave him a confused look, and the kid told him he needed the office keys back. They searched through my pockets, found the keys and tossed them on to the security desk. The kid then picked up his magazine and went back to reading as they took me out the door.

There was a black Cadillac sedan waiting at the curb. I got in the back seat with one of the wiseguys while the other one took the wheel. We drove in silence for a while, and once I realized we were heading back towards Boston I asked them where they were taking me.

“Shut up,” the one next to me ordered.

“What’s the big deal, why not just tell me?” I asked. “Wait, I got it, this is some sort of surprise party you Revere guys have planned for me and you don’t want to ruin it, right? Christ, I’m touched by the sentiment.”

I sat back and watched as we sped down the Mass Turnpike. I stayed quiet until we had gotten off of the Turnpike and navigated down several side streets on the way towards Revere.

“This is a hell of a comfortable ride,” I remarked. “When I was working for Sal Lombard I had to keep a low profile and was never able to buy myself anything like a Cadillac. Damn nice car, though.”

“You like the ride, huh?” the driver said, half under his breath. “That’s nice.”

“Why’d the two of you wait until now?” I asked. “I’ve been out almost a month.”

“How many times do I have to tell you to shut your mouth?” the wiseguy next to me said. Then, to the driver, he said, “Can you believe this old fuck? He must have Swiss cheese for brains.”

The driver got a laugh out of that. I ignored it, said to the wiseguy next to me, “For Chrissakes, you can answer a few questions. I’m going to be dead soon anyway, right?”

“Not soon enough. So just shut your damn ugly piehole already!”

I shook my head sadly at him. “What a couple of fucking embarrassments Lombard’s family’s hiring these days,” I said. “You can at least be civil. Especially since I was about to tell you how you fucked things up.”

The last few minutes his face had slowly been reddening. With that comment of mine his color dropped to a harsh icy white. He stared open-mouthed at me for a moment, then pulled a big piece of iron from his shoulder holster and brought it up with the idea of striking me with it. I moved a lot faster than he probably thought I was capable of, blocking his gun hand, and at the same time punching him in the throat with my other fist. He was useless then. Fear flooded what had moments before been dead, hard eyes, and he sat paralyzed, making choking noises.

The driver looked over his shoulder, worried by what he was hearing. “Joey, what the fuck’s happening back there?” he asked.

As he tried to see what was going on in the back seat, enough of his face showed from behind the headrest for me to kick him, and I caught him hard enough in the jaw to bounce his head off the driver’s-side window. The car crashed into a utility pole seconds after that.

I was still holding on to the other wiseguy’s gun. It wasn’t hard pulling it out of his hand. He was panicking too much about whether he’d be able to breathe again. I craned my neck forward so I could look over at the front seat. The driver was breathing but out cold.

The wiseguy next to me was still struggling to breathe, his face having turned a dark purple. All at once he gasped in a frantic breath, then he was back among the living. His eyes were fearful as they turned back to me. He must’ve remembered stories that he had heard about me. I was no longer just some old cadaverous-looking has-been.

“You’ve got two choices,” I told him. “Either I blow you and your partner’s brains out right now, or you answer every question I ask you without hesitation. If you do that I’ll leave the two of you alive in the trunk. You’ve got five seconds to decide.”

I slid the safety off a .40 caliber automatic and pushed the muzzle hard into his ear. He winced at that, and told me he’d tell me anything I wanted to know.

“Who are you doing this for?” I asked.

“Nick Lombard.”

I was surprised by that. I had never met any of Sal Lombard’s sons, but I knew Nick was the youngest, and from what I’d heard, the softest.

“Nick’s running things now?”

The wiseguy nodded, his eyes clenched shut.

“Where were you going to take me?”

He was trying hard not to shake but it was a losing battle. “Winthrop. Terrace Avenue,” he said.

That brought back memories. They were taking me to the same house where I’d had my initiation all those years ago. I pushed the gun barrel harder into his ear making his grimace tighter.

“Who’s waiting for me there?”

“Nick.”

“Just him?”

“Yeah.”

“One more time, and answer this as if your life depends on it. Because it does. Who’s waiting for me in that house?”

“Just Nick, I swear.”

He was telling me the truth. He was too scared to be doing anything other than that. I pulled the gun from his ear and had him help me lift the driver into the trunk. There was some rope back there which I had him use to tie up his unconscious companion, then I had him crawl in there also and lie on his stomach while I tied his hands behind his back.

“You know how you fucked up before?” I asked. “You never should’ve brought me in the back seat with you. You should’ve put me where you and your buddy are right now.”

“You looked too frail for that,” he said. “I thought you’d die on us if we did that.”

It was a valid point. I closed the trunk on both of them.

The car was dented in front but still drivable. I got in the driver’s seat and headed off to Winthrop.

chapter 27

1992

She’s bundled up in a heavy green winter parka, but from her shoes and the little I can see of her uniform, I’m guessing she’s a nurse. She’s young, and her stare keeps moving from Marzone lying dead on the pavement to me standing over him. Her face is so pale in the moonlight. She wants to scream but she’s too horrified to do so. I just feel sick inside as I watch her, wishing that there was some other way than what I was going to have to do.

Finally the terror releases her enough to let her move. She starts running, but she has those heels on, and there’s ice on the ground, and it’s not too long before she falls and lands on one knee. She’s crying now. I don’t think she has the strength to try running again. My stomach is all knotted up as I walk over to her. I take out the .32 caliber and place the muzzle so it’s a few inches from her temple. Her mouth is gaping so wide open that when she cries thick strands of saliva drip from it. Oh Christ. I can’t pull the trigger. I just can’t do that to her face, not that type of damage. Instead I try hushing her and end up suffocating her, then lower her lifeless body to the ground. At least she looks undisturbed this way. Like she could be sleeping.

For the first time I look around to see where I am, and realize Marzone led me to the back parking lot of a small shopping plaza. There must be a hospital nearby, and this girl was probably cutting through the parking lot as a shortcut home after a late shift. This was all supposed to go down in a desolate warehouse parking lot with the Luger having an attached silencer. Instead I shot off three rounds with a .32, and for all the fuck I know neighbors nearby have already called the police about gunshots. I have to get out of there but I can’t leave the girl’s body with Marzone. Lombard’s furious enough with how this has gone so far and having this nurse’s death tied to Marzone would put him over the top.

I jog over to an old rusted Ford station wagon. When I’m on a job like this, I always carry a slim jim and a screwdriver on me. It takes only seconds to unlock the driver’s door, and not much longer than that to strip and hotwire the ignition. I drive the car over to the dead nurse and, after popping the trunk, drop her body inside.

The police still haven’t shown up, no sirens either, which means I’ve caught one break tonight. My hands are shaking as I drive away.

I feel so damn cold inside my skull. At first I think about leaving her body someplace where it could be found so her family can have a funeral for her, but I realize how risky that is. I have to make sure her body disappears for good, which isn’t hard, but still, I hate the idea of it. I hate the thought of how I’m going to be spending the next few hours.

It takes me an hour to drive where I have to go. The coldness deep in my head has traveled to the pit of my stomach, and it just keeps getting worse. By the time I stop the car, I’m drenched in a sickly cold sweat, and that stench of death nearly overpowers me.

I open the trunk and lift her body from it, except she comes alive in my arms and starts fighting me. Somehow I hadn’t killed her the first time, and I feel even sicker inside knowing that I have to do it now for real.