The Shadow Box (51 page)

But Yahya turned out to be right.

Aaronson came around but he went right from coma to
spasm. His heart sounded like an Uzi and he was starting
to hallucinate. It's that shit that he eats. It's all that grease
and cholesterol.

Parker tried slapping him. “Talk to me, Arnold. Say
words. What does Doyle have on AdChem?”

Aaronson took a flaccid swipe at him, tried to slap him back. Parker brushed the arm away but the porker tried to
grab him in a headlock while yelling something about
Doyle. His first reaction was that this guy has more guts
than he expected, that this might take a while, but then
he realized that Aaronson thought he was Doyle. So Parker
tried playing the part.

He said, come on, wake up, we have to be in court.
Did you bring all the stuff about Lehman-Stone? Did you
bring all the stuff about AdChem? Aaronson said, “You go to . . .” and “Leave me . . .” and other part sentences that sounded very much like he was blowing Doyle off.
He seemed to want no part of this.

Okay, then how about the Baron?

Nothing.

Rast? The Baron Franz Rast von Scharnhorst?

A blank.

Same when he tried Rasmussen. Aaronson’s eyes said
he didn't know and didn't care. He leaned over to one
side and threw up.

“Nausea,” said the Pakistani, Yahya. “Nausea, disori
entation, aggressiveness. All these are symptoms of
overdose.”

Parker ignored him. “Arnold? Where's Moon? The bad
guys are looking for him because he burned down their
houses. Let's go get Moon. We have to find him and
hide him.”

As far as Parker could tell, all this meant absolutely
nothing to Aaronson. Doyle's friend seemed more inter
ested in picking half-digested bacon off his pants. Parker
repeated the name and the part about burning. There was no sign, not a glimmer, that Aaronson had the first clue
about the torchings or that he'd ever heard of anyone
named Moon.

Let's try the Fallons.

“Arnold . . . these guys murdered Jake. And now they
want to hurt Michael. We really should go find him and
tell him.”

A spark appeared.

“You know what else? They killed Bronwyn. They
were trying to get him but they got Bronwyn by accident.
Poor Michael. He was going to marry her.”

The spark became angry. “Lehman . . . Stone? Pills?”

“Yeah. Good boy, Arnold. Michael found out about Lehman-Stone and the pills. We can't let them hurt him
anymore.”

“Scumbags . . .”

“They certainly are. Shouldn't we tell Michael?”

“Safe. Michael's safe.”

“Yeah, but you can't be too careful. Safe where,
Arnold?”

“Hotel. Dums . . . dummas hotel.”

“Dummas Hotel? Where's the Dummas Hotel?”

Aaronson gave him a look as if he was an idiot. He pronounced it more clearly. “Dumb-ass hotel. Martha's
dumb-ass hotel.”

Ah, shit.

Okay, let's work on Martha.

“Martha who, Arnold?”

“Martha Vin-yer.”

Parker blinked. Cape Cod had popped into his mind.
The Fallon kid left a trail to Cape Cod. Could Arnold be
saying Martha's Vineyard? Would Fallon go to all that
trouble and then hide out right next door? Maybe. Maybe
it's even smart.

“Enunciate, Arnold. You confuse me when you don't
enunciate. Say Martha's . . .”

Aaronson said it with him. “Martha's . . . Vin . . .
yard.”

“Good, Arnold.” That's a one-suitcase answer. “Now
let's see if we can pin it down a little better.”

But Parker had to wait because a call had come in from
the Mexican, Hector, who was one of the two men tailing
Hobbs. He would take it in the other room.

Once there, he put the phone to his ear and looked back out through the door at Aaronson. Doyle's snoop had slid
from his chair and was down on all fours in front of it.
His arms were trembling. They had trouble holding his weight. And now they collapsed. He hit face-first but it
didn't seem to hurt him. He rolled off his belly and onto
his side where he curled himself up in a fetal position.
One leg kept twitching but the rest of him was still. Good.
Let him sleep some of it off.

“Yeah, Hector.”

“We are in Brooklyn,” said the voice. “Mr. Hobbs
came by taxi. He went into a little office building. It's
more than two hours and we don't see him come out. Do
you want that we wait because Haroun thinks he maybe
sneaked out the back.”

A look of pain.

“Hector . . . you didn't cover the back?”

“Yes, but in back there is a fence with barbed wire. I
said to Haroun, Mr. Hobbs is too rich to climb fences but
Haroun said—”

“Wait a minute. Brooklyn? Where's this office?”

“Also in Brooklyn.”

“The
address,
fuckhead. Is that a glass-front building on Flatbush?”

“Brown glass. Yes.”

Jesus Christ, thought Parker. He's in with Doyle.

“Hector, which Haroun is with you?”

“The one who is from Ankara.”

The Turk, nodded Parker. Claims he killed fifty Kurds
for the bounty. Says he still has a necklace made out of
their fingers.

“Get back here,
Hector.
Tell Haroun to stay.”

“Haroun thinks Mr. Hobbs is no longer our friend.”

“Yeah, well, tell him
…
” Got to be careful on the
phone. “Tell him we don't like Mr. Hobbs either. He's worse than the Kurds. Do you hear what I'm saying,
Hector?”

”I will tell Haroun.”

Parker broke the connection.

He looked up to see Mohammed Yahya standing in the
doorway, his eyes on the floor. He could have done with
out Yahya hearing that. But he would need this one, at least until he made his deal with the dagos.

“Something on your mind?” he asked him.

”I said it was too much. It was too much.”

Yahya stepped aside and cocked his head toward Aaron
son. Aaronson's eyes were partially open. He was no
longer twitching.

Chapter 32

W
hy Jake
died was vengeance, pure and simple.

It wasn't money, it wasn't greed and it wasn't that Jake
got into something he shouldn't.

Johnny G. said, ”I understand that, I believe it, but I
still have to know what we've got here.”

Moon nodded. He would tell him what he could. Parts
of it, Johnny knew already because he was going on fifteen
back when Tom Fallon died and had heard a lot of the
talk.

The “family problem” Jake needed him for had started
long before. Tom Fallon came home from the army, went
to college, and got his degree in accounting because he
had a head for figures and Jake said he'd throw him lots of business. Jake, it should be understood, never took a
dime in graft. What he'd do, you'd come to him for a
favor and if he helped you he'd pull out someone's busi
ness card. He might tell you, for example, that you ought to have more insurance or who you might use when you
need a lawyer or, in Tom's case, who you should get to
do your taxes.

Johnny G. is making faces. He understands one hand
washing the other and he's asking could we speed this up
a little.

Well, the long and the short, Tom didn't want handouts
and he especially didn't want to be
under his brother's
shadow, which he was even when he was in the ring and
winning. He didn't want to work in New York either be
cause everybody there knew Jake. He went to work in
Bayonne, New Jersey. Company was the American Eagle
Import-Export Company. Back then, lots of companies had patriotic names but this was laying it on a bit thick consid
ering that the founder had been in the Nazi navy before
that.

Armin Rasmussen. He was pharmacist's mate on a Ger
man U-boat that got depth charged by a destroyer off Cape
May and had to surface. Officers got sent out west but the
enlisted men got put in a camp just outside Uniontown,
New Jersey. Some were put
to work on farms, some on
road gangs, and some worked in factories that were left
short-handed by the war as long as they weren't in war-
related industries. The Geneva Convention said you
couldn't make them do that.

The war ended, the crew got sent home, saw what was
left of Germany, and some of them turned around and
went back to the only country that was still in one piece.
The pharmacist's mate went back to work for this little
drug and chemical company he'd been working for as a
prisoner. He showed them how they could get a lot bigger
selling certain products to Germany because Germany
didn't have anything except money. They had money be
cause the Marshall Plan was helping them buy what they
needed. Within four or five years, Rasmussen owned the
company.