City of the Sun (21 page)

She looked up from them, all puffy and red, to his towel-clad waist, across his naked torso, to his face. “Were you boxing again?” As far as she knew, the heavy bag had hung dormant in the garage for some time.

He didn’t meet her eyes. “Yeah. That’s right.” He went to the closet and dressed. Her eyes were clear and she recognized the lie immediately.

Something is going on
, she thought, but she didn’t know what.

Paul left the room and went downstairs. She could hear him in the kitchen making something to eat. After a moment a car horn sounded. The front door opened, then closed behind Paul. She felt the house empty. She went to the window in time to see him, carrying two sandwiches, cross to Frank Behr’s car and climb in. Then they drove off.
Something is going on
repeated in her head.

O Loving Jesus, meek Lamb of God, I miserable sinner
, Oscar Riggi incanted, kneeling in the mottled light of St. Francis Church,
salute and worship the most Sacred Wound of Thy Shoulder on which Thou didst bear Thy heavy Cross, which so tore Thy flesh and laid bare Thy Bones as to inflict on Thee an anguish greater than any other wound of Thy Most Blessed Body
. The church smelled of stale frankincense, an odor that brought him back to his youth, to his long hours spent in service as an altar boy. Mass had become routine for him on those endless, repetitive mornings, and it was only the old habit that kept him worshipping these days. He said the words to himself, but there was no longer any connection to what they meant. In fact, the words would hardly come anymore. He was a long way from the Church. Further than he’d ever been.
I adore Thee, O Jesus most sorrowful; I praise and glorify Thee, and give Thee thanks for this most sacred and painful Wound
. …

As he stared up at the image of the mournful One in black brass hanging crucified before him, Riggi imagined their faces: the boys’, bright and innocent. He only imagined them, as he’d never met or laid eyes on a single one of them, even after they’d fallen under his control. He wondered idly if he’d ever happened to have unknowingly seen one of them in passing
before
. He tried to calculate their number now, so far in, but could not. It had been twelve years, three cities, since he’d begun. There had been quite a few. He had encrypted records that held the answer and kept an accounting of all the amounts, but he had not consulted them in a long, long time.
… beseeching Thee by that exceeding pain, and by the crushing burden of Thy heavy Cross to be merciful to me, to forgive me all my mortal and venial sins, and to lead me on towards Heaven along the Way of Thy Cross. Amen
. The ancient cadence of prayer ground to a halt inside his head.

He stood and felt the blood flow back through his knees. He couldn’t keep his thoughts on what he was doing, and lack of focus was the earmark of a poor manager. Tad Ford was dead. His main man, Rooster, was unreachable. His business was off the chain, and not in the way the niggers meant it — to describe something incredibly good. Rather the machinery he had painstakingly built was no longer functioning. It had seemed like a minor thing when Tad bowed out a few months back. The guy had been half a lummox, a burro who had merely followed orders, but replacing him had become surprisingly difficult, before he’d made himself an outright liability and had to go. It was the first killing Riggi had ordered. The only other death on his tab had been ten years back, a beating he’d assigned that had gone wrong. Now he’d closed the regular office, too, given everyone their two weeks’ pay just to keep things nice and tight. As far as restaffing went, Riggi knew plenty of young men willing to do just about anything in order to get a wad of cash pressed into their palms. Several of them, two guys in particular, Wenck and Gilley, who worked together as a team, had proved sure enough to steal some cars and dump some others, but he’d found himself hesitating when it came time to broach the subject of making a run. Maybe he was getting too old and too cautious. He’d always listened to his instincts, though, and in turn they spoke to him in a clear, nearly audible way. Lately they’d been screaming
wait
. His heels rang off the stone floor as he headed for the door, pausing to bob and make the sign of the crucifix across his chest as he passed the font of holy water.

Outside, the air was steely with cold. He buttoned his cashmere coat, twisting his silk and cashmere muffler up around his throat to block any stray wind. The winter felt never-ending and he longed to get away to the Bahamas, to Paradise Island. His joints craved some warm, humid air. He envisioned a massage on the beach, tropical drinks and a bit of time in the casino at night, smoking the Havanas that were abundant down there. He could call the travel agent and head out for a couple or three days, the only decision being which young lady to take with him. He could afford it. He still had plenty of rental income from his properties, but it just didn’t feel like the right time. His work ethic was such that when things were faltering, his first reaction was to buckle down and apply himself until they were running well again. Of course, when things were cooking, he felt the urge to push the advantage and was reluctant to break the momentum with something so indulgent as a vacation. The result was accumulated tension that at the moment was beating him. He was a workaholic and he knew it. He slid into his car, the leather seat cold as a marble slab, and kicked over the engine. He drove out of the lot and headed for the office as if on autopilot.

“I’ve got two addresses so far. An office and a residence,” Behr said when Paul got in the car. He spent some rubber pulling out and drove across town. “This guy, Riggi, he comes up as a real estate broker. I’ve got his home on Heatherstone in Carmel.”

“He must be doing well,” Paul said, handing him a sandwich.

“Yeah. I say we try the office first.”

They finished their turkey and Muenster on seven-grain sandwiches by the time they reached the small stand-alone building of a faux Tudor style that housed Hemlock Point Realty. They approached the thick brown wooden door, which was locked. They peered in through a small glass square in the door. A main room held three desks, which bore computers and listings books, but were currently unoccupied. The whole place, in fact, including the waiting area, and what they could see of some back offices, was empty.

“It’s around midday. The office could be out to lunch.”

“They could be closed for the day. Or longer.”

“Yep.” There was no sign informing them as to which.

They returned to the car and sat there, the ignition turned off as Behr had been taught, breath clouding the cold air.

“We could chase around to the home address, but we could end up missing him all over the place. I say we invest a few hours in waiting.”

Paul nodded his agreement.

They sat for a quarter hour in attentive silence, both scrupulously avoiding the events of the morning, Paul’s methodic flexing and rubbing of his hands the only tangible reminder of what had gone on. Then Behr spoke.

“It was a chance I took bringing you to County. Lots of guys would’ve collared up in that situation” — Behr put a hand near his throat in a choking gesture—”but you did good.”

“If lots of guys would’ve collared up, why’d you risk bringing me?” Paul asked.

“You’re not lots of guys.”

Paul nodded his thanks. “Neither are you, Frank.”

They fell silent again and watched midday slide through to early afternoon. Before long Paul’s breathing deepened. His eyelids began to flicker and he drifted off into a light sleep.

Paul felt his bones go to rubber. His mind released to a place without thought. A golden darkness surrounded him. He walked down a beach of powdery sand. He was in Destin, Florida. They had gone there as a family three years ago Easter, but he was there now, in a time out of time. A para-sailer floated by him, towed by a boat, black in silhouette against the sky. As the canopy cleared it, the sun shone bright in his eyes. He did not look away. He felt his thudding footsteps absorbed by the sand, sucking his feet downward. He knew he was dozing, dreaming, but the images were more real than any reality he’d known. He kept walking and began to come up on the figure of his wife. She was in a bathing suit, her body young and firm. His eyes traveled down her arm, with aching slowness, to her hand. Hers held on to the small hand of a boy. Jamie. His son’s feet moved in a youthful dance, like a colt’s, light sand kicking up around his ankles. Paul walked faster, his legs feeling incredibly heavy. Still, he gained ground, one step, two steps closer. Suddenly, his wife’s and his son’s hands broke free. Jamie skipped down the beach, nimble, free. Paul had no hope of catching him. His legs were rubber. Jamie wasn’t fleeing, though; he turned where he was, as he used to when he was a young child, exploring the boundaries of independence but wanting to be sure his parents were still there. Paul’s wakeful mind rose up and he asked himself the very clear question of whether this was a mere dream or if he was being visited by the spirit of his dead son.

His eyes snapped open and he was back in the cold car. There was no time to revel in or mourn the vision, as a man was crossing from a gleaming sedan toward the Tudor building. Paul looked out at him and saw with the fleeting, penetrating clarity that the edge of consciousness brings. He’d believed he’d faced a difficult, ugly fact of the world that morning at the jail, but in that one look through the windshield he recognized that there were layers upon layers of filth and meanness, and he’d only been at the surface.

Behr was already halfway out of the car when Paul went for his door handle.

“Yeah, Mr. Riggi, how are you?” The eyes of the man in the expensive coat darted and revealed they had the right person. “We’re interested in some property—”

“No, you’re not,” Riggi said, stopping and squaring, cutting right through Behr’s little pretext. “What do you want?”

“You’re right, it’s not about property. It’s about your side business—”

“Side business? No. I’m a Realtor. If it’s not about property, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

“We spoke to an associate of yours, a nasty guy in a nasty place. He says different.”

“Oh, yeah? Who was that?”

“Garth Mintz.” Behr watched Riggi’s jaw work, his face going a bit more florid than even the cold demanded.

“I don’t have any associate by that name. What is it you want?”

“Yeah, you do—”

“What, exactly, do you want? It’s the last time I’m asking.”

Behr recognized that they had reached the point where there was nothing to do but plunge forward. “We’re here about a boy named Jamie Gabriel, who went missing.”

Amazing things happened on Riggi’s face. Several complex emotions began and were then reined in, no single one allowed to reach full bloom. The net effect was a vacant sort of expression that revealed nothing. The guy was harder to read than a Chinese Bible. Behr realized he was witnessing deception on a very high level. He would need hours with the man, in a controlled environment, applying an array of interrogation techniques, if he hoped to be sure of a truthful response. When Riggi spoke, his voice was even and unhurried.

“Never heard the name. Don’t know anything about it. If this Mintz said I did, I should probably go talk to him about it. Where’s he at?”

Behr respected the man’s effort at turning the inquiry into a question of his own. “Don’t worry about that,” he countered.

Riggi’s chest practically heaved under his overcoat as he asked his next question, though his voice remained level. “Who are you, then? You know, in case I think of something that’ll help, so’s I can pass it on to you.”

Behr stared across the short distance into Riggi’s eyes. They were porcine, black and cold, but intelligent. He reached into his pocket and drew out a business card. It was a smart move by Riggi, putting Behr in a position to give information about himself.

“Here.” Behr handed him the card. Riggi looked it over.

“Okay, Mr. Behr.” Then Riggi’s eyes tracked over to Paul. “And how do I reach you, quiet guy?”

Behr answered for him. “Quiet guy’s
my
associate. He doesn’t have a card. You can reach him through me.”

Riggi nodded as if the answer told him much more than the words seemed to. “I see.” He tucked the business card away and made to move toward his office. “I’m going now. If you two ever plan on coming back, you better make an appointment first.”

“We’ll do that,” Behr said, matching Riggi’s stare. The man before him was no pervert wrestling with his desires. He was an organized man, a businessman. If Behr had thought he’d been in the presence of evil in the interrogation room at County, he knew he had now witnessed a much more evolved version.

Riggi sat in his vacant office in the dark. He’d locked the door behind him and drawn the blinds. A bottle of Lagavulin was in easy reach of one hand, the business card rested in his other. FRANK BEHR, INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES. There was a telephone number, a cell phone number, and a fax number. All the information he could possibly need. He’d read bad news off the guy as soon as the fucker and his mute friend had rolled up on him. And now, a few hours later, as he thought it over slowly, carefully, he was sure Behr was the same man who’d put the bitch-slapping on Tad Ford. He was certainly big enough to do it, and he must have had plenty of drive to end up on his doorstep. Riggi had assumed, or perhaps hoped, that Tad hadn’t given anything up the night he’d been braced, that there hadn’t been time before Tad was no more. He had half talked himself into believing that was the case, as time had passed since the incident and there’d been no further ripples. But he saw now that he’d been wrong. He had deluded himself. Believing what he wanted to, rather than seeing what was, was no way for a serious man to operate. There had been an article in the paper about a female cop being beaten. Police hadn’t released the name of the assailant. He had his guess. Either that, or Tad had spit out enough for this detective to have found Rooster, and the man had found some damn way to make Rooster talk. Riggi took a swallow of scotch against the chill that this thought delivered. Now it was all pressing up on him. He didn’t like that. It was time to make ready for war.