All I Did Was Shoot My Man (17 page)

35

“THEY KNEW EXACTLY
what system you had and the tools to get around it,” Carson Kitteridge was saying.

We were in the dining room. Katrina was wrapped in a plush yellow bathrobe, sitting at our hickory dining table. I was standing next to her, wearing only my blue suit trousers.

When the cops arrived I was still naked. After killing the second failed assassin I saw that his three shots had gone through the wall to Shelly’s bedroom. I rushed in. Two of the bullets hit her bed but she wasn’t in it. After that I called 911—the idea of getting dressed never occurred to me.

One of the uniforms answering the call told me to put on some pants. If it wasn’t for her, I might have still been naked.

“They didn’t know, exactly,” I said. “I had a separate contractor put in the second alarm system—just bein’ careful.”

“Smart,” Kit said, his eyes, the color of a pale afternoon, staring into mine. “Looks like they used a souped-up magnet on the electronic lock and perfectly beveled crowbars on the bolts. Real pros.”

Katrina put her left elbow on the table, leaning her forehead against three extended fingers. She shook her head ever so slightly, mouthing something over and over.

“Bullets went through Shelly’s wall,” I said. “Two of ’em hit her bed.”

“ Why don’t we go down to your den, LT?” Kit suggested. “Officer Palmer can stay with your wife.”

Palmer was the lady cop that told me to get dressed. Her skin was milk with freckles. Even frowning, she seemed friendly.

IN THE HALLWAY
there were five more cops, a coroner, and four paramedics.

Kit led me to my office, ushered me in, and closed the door. He said that we should sit. I didn’t answer. I didn’t sit either. I was a soldier right then; my squad had just fought off one attack and was anticipating the next.

Kit stood with me, watching closely.

While aware of the scrutiny of the insightful cop I was concentrated on the daybed where Katrina had been. I was thinking that no one had ever tried to kill me in my home before. The antithesis of that realization made me snicker.

They’d tried to kill me in a dozen other places, but that was business—nothing personal.

“You think this has to do with Zella Grisham and the heist?” Kit asked.

“If it does, I can’t imagine how.”

That was a grievous understatement of my imagination. Stumpy Brown had given my name to his torturers. When he saw that there was no way out he threw the dice, hoping they were telling the truth when they said that they’d let him live for just a name.

I wondered if his corpse had been recovered.

“You’re the one who called me, LT,” Carson said.

“I called nine-one-one.
They
called you.”

“I represent the police, when it comes to you. I will protect you just as well as any innocent citizen. But you have to let me in.”

A thought came to my mind, a very disturbing notion.

“Look,” I said, “if this attack has anything to do with Zella or the heist, I don’t know how. I mean, if I expected armed assassins in my home, do you think I’d let my wife be here?”

Among other things, Kitteridge was a human lie detector. He could quantify any emotion in his mind. That’s why, even though I felt pressed to act, I chose my words carefully. In his own way the police captain was as dangerous as the hit man Hush.

“I’m going to have to take you down for a statement,” he said.

“Come on, man. You’ve seen my wife. I can’t just leave her.”

“You killed two men,” he said. “They’d bust my ass down to desk clerk if I didn’t follow the numbers on this.”

There was no way out of a trip to the police station. Most other times it wouldn’t have bothered me. Part of the dance is getting close to the fire without being burned.

“Okay,” I said. “All right. But give me a few minutes alone with Katrina. Let me talk to her a minute before you take me away.”

Kit heard something in my tone. He knew there was more to it than what I said. But he also knew that I could be very uncooperative when feeling pressed.

“And then you come with me and give what you got?” he asked.

I nodded.

He walked me back down to the dining room and asked kind-faced Officer Palmer to come outside with him.

ALONE IN THE ROOM
with my wife was almost a solitary experience. She was in the same position, mouthing what might well have been the same words. I was concerned about her, but there were other, more urgent things to worry about.

I called Breland Lewis on his home phone.

“Hello,” he said, sleep still in his voice.

“Two men broke in my house and tried to kill me.”

“How’s Katrina and the kids?”

“Fine. It has to be the Rutgers thing. You are a possible target. Get your wife and the kids and go somewhere where no one will be able to track you.”

“Okay.”

“You still got that phone Bug sent?”

“Yes.”

“Bring it with you.”

MY NEXT CALL
was to Twill.

“Hey, Pops,” he said on the first ring.

He was wide awake, getting into mischief no doubt, but I didn’t have time to question him. Instead I told him what had happened and that I wanted him to gather up his mother and take her down to Mr. Arnold’s—where she would be safe.

Twill promised to call his brother and sister on the way up from wherever he was.

That settled, I pulled a chair up to Katrina’s side.

“Katrina.”

To my surprise she sat upright and turned toward me.

“I am not leaving my house,” she said with conviction.

“But, baby, these men were pros. You need protection.”

“I will not leave. This is my home and I intend to stay.”

“Twill’s coming to get you.”

“He is welcome here but I will not go.”

I had come up against this blockade before. There was no moving Katrina once her mind was made up.

So I went out into the hallway to meet my official nemesis.

“Katrina won’t leave,” I told him. “The kids will all be here in an hour or so. Can you put a cop on watch at least until tomorrow tonight?”

“You gonna answer my questions, right?”

“I’ll try my best.”

The shade of a smile across Kit’s lips spoke of admiration if not friendship. I was his toughest nut but he never doubted that I’d crack one day.

“Okay,” he said. “I can have guys downstairs for a few days at least.”

36

WE RODE SIDE BY SIDE
in Kit’s unmarked dark green Ford sedan. I expected him to take me to the 20th Precinct near my home but instead he drove all the way down to the 5th on Elizabeth Street.

It was fairly empty at that hour. Kit led me to a subterranean office. When we got there I remembered that he was always on the lookout for an office where he could smoke.

This was more like a converted storeroom. There wasn’t even a proper desk; just a seven-foot-long folding table and six or seven walnut chairs.

He lit up a Marlboro.

“Can I have one’a those?” I asked.

“I thought you quit.”

“I did but I slipped earlier tonight, and whenever I do that I give myself twenty-four hours to quit again.”

We sat on the same side of the table facing each other, puffing away. If it wasn’t for the person or persons unknown trying to kill me, it would have been almost pleasant down there.

“Let’s have it, LT.”

“First you tell me the names of the men trying to slaughter me and my family.”

“No IDs,” he said. “No receipts, documents, passports, not even any scars. The cigarettes they were smoking are European but none of my people could even tell what language was on the packs. These guys were not only professional, they were expensive. Imported, probably from Eastern Europe, like smelly cheese.”

Damn.

“So?” he nudged.

“You realize that I don’t trust the police,” I stated.

“I’m not trying to trick you,” Kit replied.

“I know that. I know. But that’s not what I’m sayin’. There are holes in your security. Anything I say to you is safe, but the minute it goes past you lives will be on the line.”

Kit shook his pack of Marlboros at me. I took the offering.

He lit me up and tapped his left foot—slowly.

“ What do you want?” he asked after a spate of silence and smoke.

“Captain Clarence is right about Zella Grisham,” I said. “She doesn’t know a thing about the Rutgers heist. I don’t know anything about the robbery either.”

“Okay.”

“Somebody thinks I do, obviously. I don’t know who it is. If I did, I’d tell you or else I wouldn’t say a word.” This last phrase meant that if I did know, I might have killed them myself.

“Okay.”

“So I will cooperate with you as far as I can, but I don’t have any raw data, no evidence, that’s not already in your possession.”

“But you think Zella getting released has caused this violence?” Kit asked.

“She’s innocent and should have been set free.”

“ What aren’t you telling me, LT?”

“There’s nothing I know that could lead to an arrest,” I said. “That’s a fact.”

“Except maybe yours.”

“Come on, now, man. You know I can’t sit here and incriminate myself. I did not have anything to do with the robbery. I have no idea who sent those men to kill me.”

“Lethford wants to talk to you.”

“I’d be happy to meet with him . . . any time you say.”

Kit watched me for a few moments before saying, “That was some impressive killing you did. Naked too.”

“I hope I didn’t embarrass Officer Palmer.”

“She said that after all she heard about you she thought your johnson would be bigger.”

“Tell her that the air conditioner was on.”

I LEFT
the precinct with half a pack of Kit’s cigarettes at about seven a.m. Before that I filled out three forms, explaining what happened, and then Kit recorded my statement on a little digital recorder. He made copies of my gun license and my PI’s ticket. The whole deposition took about three hours. I didn’t mind. While speaking and writing I was going over every detail for my own investigation.

I arrived at the third-floor breakfast joint a little after eight. It was right at the East River and looked up at the Brooklyn Bridge.

I was met by an offbeat waiter. He had olive skin and a few years on me. He was dressed completely in white, even his shoes, and he was ugly. There’s no other way to describe his countenance. His people hailed from some part of Europe that had been conquered and raped again and again over millennia. His ears were too big and his eyes the wrong color. The index and point fingers of his right hand were huge, as if they had been cut off some giant and grafted on him. All of his teeth were edged in jagged, mangled gold.

“ We don’t open until nine,” he said in a gruff tone. There was an accent but I couldn’t place it.

“I’m here to see Clarence Lethford,” I said.

Hearing this, he turned and started walking across the broad room, with its dozen or so tables. He came to a door and opened it.

I had not moved from the entryway.

When he saw this he waved impatiently.

I approached and saw that this was a small private dining room with three empty tables.

“Sit here,” the ugly man said. “Lethford will come.”

I stepped in and the waiter closed the door behind me.

The walls, floor, and ceiling were cut from the same dirty and reddish brown unfinished wood. The room could have been a hundred years old, cleaned daily by the man in white and his ugly ancestors.

I sat next to a small window that allowed a view of the bridge and river. It was pleasant in there. I considered resting my head against the splintery wall and taking a nap.

But instead I made a call.

“Sorkin Securities,” a bright young voice answered.

“LT McGill,” I said. “NY-two-six-four-four-jay.”

“Just a moment.”

The phone made some clicking noises and then a man’s voice said, “Ron Welton, security analyst. With whom am I speaking?”

“Leonid Trotter McGill.”

“Yes, Mr. McGill. What can I do for you?”

“Somebody broke through my door last night.”

“There’s no record on our files of your shell being broken.”

“They used an electromagnet and specially made crowbars.”

“That must have taken a while.”

“They were in in under ten seconds.”

Silence.

“Mr. Welton?”

“ We will have a crew out to your house by noon today, Mr. McGill. They will replace and upgrade the system.”

“I thought every configuration you had was unique.”

“ We will also launch an internal investigation . . . Are you and your family all right?”

“No thanks to you.”

SHELLY WAS
at the house when I called. Twill, she said, was having tea in the little front room with Katrina. Dimitri and Tatyana had moved into D’s room. There were cops down on the street, watching the front door.

“One of them comes up every couple of hours or so to check on us,” my earnest daughter reported.

“Put your brother on the line,” I said. I didn’t have to tell her which brother.

I told Twill about the security company. Told him that I needed any extra keys left downstairs in our mailbox.

“Something’s wrong with Mom,” Twill said.

“Of course there is. Armed men broke into our home.”

“No, Pops, it’s more than that. I don’t know how to describe it but there’s definitely something wrong.”

“I’ll sit down with her when I get home. Is there anything else?”

“One thing.”

“ What’s that?”

“You said that you wanted me to work for you so I could be safe, right?”

“You wanna quit?”

“No, sir.”

SITTING THERE
in the dowdy but private dining room, listening to traffic from the street and the clinking clanging of the restaurant workers getting ready for their clientele, I wondered about Velvet, crouching over her spent works.

Maybe I was being punished for breaking my oath and covering up yet another crime . . . Try as I might I could not muster up any faith in superstition. I laughed and looked up.

At just that moment big, brutal Clarence Lethford banged into the room.