Cold Shot to the Heart (20 page)

“Maybe they found what they were looking for,” she said. She thought about the twenty thousand she'd given Hector, wondered if this was where he'd hidden it.

“Hector mixed up in anything else that might blow back on him?”

She shook her head. “He's straight. Just a go-between these days. That's all.”

“That's hardly straight.”

“You don't have to worry about Hector.”

“Then who
do
I have to worry about?”

She looked at him.

“Nothing personal,” he said, “but this thing's going farther south every day. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

“What's that mean?”

“I don't know. He's your guy.”

She shook her head in irritation. “You look through the rest of the house?”

“Yeah. Same thing. Someone took their time, didn't care about the mess they left.”

She looked around the room, thinking it all through, felt his eyes on her. “His car's down the block,” she said. “I'll take a look.”

He got up, put the gun away. “I'll go with you.”

She went first, downstairs and out the back door. They met up in the street, walked along it until they got to the Nova. She came up on the driver's side, shone the penlight in. The front seat was empty except for a folded newspaper. Nothing in the back. She tried the door. Locked.

“Back here,” Chance said.

She came around, shone the light on the trunk.

“On the bumper,” he said.

She guided the beam along the chrome, saw it then. Two fat blood drops, dark and dry, on the shiny metal.

Her stomach tightened. She clicked the penlight off.

“We have to look,” he said.

“I know.” She took out the pick set.

He turned his back, shielded her as she chose a pick and wrench. She worked by the light of the streetlamp, fit the wrench in, raked the cylinder, heard it click. The trunk lid rose slightly.

She put the pick set away, looked at the trunk, not wanting to open it.

“This is no good, being out here like this,” he said. “Go on.”

With the penlight in one hand, she lifted the trunk lid with the other, let the spring take it. A coppery smell drifted up, mixed with the scent of excrement. She thumbed the light on, played the beam inside.

There was a tarp there, splotched with paint and deep rust-colored stains. She picked up a corner of it, saw a pair of Timberlands.

Go ahead and look, she thought. Get it over with.

She pulled the canvas back. Hector lay on his left side, facing her. He was shirtless, his arms tied behind him. His eyes were half open, his face swollen. There was a deep cut across his throat, crusted with dried blood.

“Ah, Jesus,” Chance said behind her.

She couldn't look away. There were other cuts on his chest and arms, long and deep. His pants legs were soaked through with blood.

Nausea welled inside her. She let the tarp drop back.

“We need to get out of here,” Chance said.

She clicked the light off. He reached around her and shut the trunk.

*   *   *

He was staying in a motel near the airport. She followed him in her car. Up in the room, he locked the door, closed the curtains.

“We can't leave him there like that,” she said.

He put his gun on the desk, took off his gloves and jacket.

“Nothing we can do for him now,” he said. “You call the police, that starts a murder investigation. Maybe some nosy neighbor saw one of us going in there. Might be we've got a couple days grace period before they find him. Let's use it.”

“He's got children. A wife. He deserves better than being left to rot in a car trunk.”

“We have to look out for ourselves. He'd understand.”

He crossed to the sink, ran water, palmed it into his face. He dried off with a hand towel, looked at her.

“But I guess you'll do what you want anyway,” he said. “Regardless of what I say.”

“That's right.”

He sat on the edge of the bed. “It's just one thing after another, isn't it? This whole deal was fucked from the start.”

“There's more.” She told him about Jimmy Peaches, what he'd said.

“Great.” He got up, started to pace. “It starts off as simple work, and now we're in the middle of a bunch of guido shit.”

“Nothing for it. We are where we are.”

“He's right. The best thing for both of us is to get as far away as possible.”

“I have a life here,” she said. “For the first time in years. I have a place I can go back to, call home. I'm not giving that up, and I'm not letting someone run me off it without a fight.”

“Stimmer and Hector weren't amateurs. Whoever did this got the drop on both of them. Pretty easily, too. I don't see the sense in waiting around for him to take a crack at us.”

“Do what you think is right,” she said, “but I feel like I've been running my whole life, one way or another. I'm tired of it.”

He leaned against the sink and crossed his arms, watching her.

“Anyway, I've got this thing down in Texas,” she said. “With Wayne. I need to be in a position to handle that. I can't do it on the run.”

“I know.”

“There's no reason for you to stick around, though. You've got no ties here, nothing to protect.”

“That's right.”

“If I were you, I'd bail. Go to Cleveland, or wherever it is you were heading. If I need to reach you, I'll call Sladden.”

He shook his head. “That route's gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I walk away, I walk away. From you, from this whole mess. For safety's sake. I need to protect Sladden, too. We've all got a lot to lose.”

“I understand.”

“I'm sorry, Red.”

“You're doing the right thing.”

She opened the door and looked out into the parking lot. A plane droned low and massive overhead, landing lights flashing.

“It was good while it lasted,” he said. “We made a good team.”

“We did,” she said. “Be seeing you.”

*   *   *

At a Turnpike rest stop, she found a phone booth without a security camera nearby and called 911. When the dispatcher came on, Crissa told her she'd just seen teenagers breaking into a car in Jersey City. She gave Hector's address and a description of the Nova. When the dispatcher asked her name, she hung up.

*   *   *

It was 3:00
A.M.
by the time she got back to the city. Lionel, the night doorman, greeted her sleepily. She was feeling the leaden aftereffects of stress as she rode up in the elevator, remembering Hector's face, the marks on his body. Knowing she wouldn't be able to sleep.

At her door, she worked the key in the locks, listened for the cat. It had taken to greeting her when she came home, mewling on the other side of the door until she got it open. Silence.

When she opened the door, a cold breeze blew past her into the hall.

She stayed where she was, listening. On the wall, the alarm keypad was blinking red, waiting for the code. It hadn't been tripped.

She drew the .38, pointed it into the darkness. With her left hand, she tapped in the code. The light turned green.

The apartment was cold. She went through it with the gun up, finger tight on the trigger. The futon had been overturned, the pad slashed. The living room window was open, cold air pouring in. There was a perfect fist-sized circle cut out of the top pane near the lock, sticky remnants of tape around it. That was how they'd gotten in. The storm window had been forced up. There were shiny pry marks along its bottom edge.

In the kitchen, cabinets had been opened, pots and pans pulled out onto the floor. The refrigerator stood out crooked from the wall, door ajar. All its contents had been tipped out. On the floor, piles of sugar and flour spilled out of shattered ceramic containers. Wine bottles were broken in the sink, staining the porcelain like blood. There were footprints in the flour. Two sets. One with a sneaker pattern, a bigger one without.

She went into the bedroom. The bed had been stripped, the mattress pulled off, slashed. The closet door was thrown wide, and the maroon suitcase lay open on the floor, clothes spilling out. The lining had been cut open. The packets of money were gone.

She looked around, realized then the laptop was missing. The desk had been pulled away from the wall, the drawers taken out and dumped.

She went back into the living room, looked out the window onto the fire escape. On the outside wall, the rubber stripping that covered the alarm wiring had been peeled away. A pair of tiny alligator clips dangled from bare wire. They'd bypassed the system, done it quickly enough that no one had seen them and called the police—but they'd left quickly as well, forgotten the clips. She looked across the street. A handful of smokers stood outside the bar, puffing away in the cold.

She heard a meowing below, looked down, and saw the cat staring up at her from the fire escape, one floor down. It had fled through the open window, hidden out until they were gone. Smart.

She put the .38 atop the TV, looked around the apartment, felt the knife-edge of anger and loss, a stinging wetness in her eyes, all of it piling up on her. She thought about the laptop, the pictures of Maddie. Hector in the trunk.

All right, you bastards, she thought. You've got my attention now.

The cat appeared at the window, looked at her, then leaped down onto the floor. It brushed against her legs, hid behind her, arched its back, still freaked.

She looked out the window into the night.

You didn't find what you wanted, she thought, but you'll try again, won't you? And I'll be ready.

TWENTY-THREE

She spent the night on the futon, awake and dressed, the .38 in her lap. She'd locked the window again, patched the hole with cardboard and duct tape, but part of her was hoping they'd come back. Back up the fire escape and to the window, an easy target there against the streetlights.

Toward dawn, the cat curled beside her. She felt its warmth, its rhythmic breathing. After a while, her eyes grew heavy. She set the .38 on the floor, still in reach, and drifted into sleep.

When she woke, bright sunlight was pouring through the window. She reached out to touch the gun, make sure it was still there. The cat jumped to the floor, fled across the room to watch her from the kitchen doorway.

She sat on the edge of the futon, ran fingers through her hair, the night coming back to her. Hector's face. His throat. The realization she'd been fighting since she'd found him: that it was her fault.

In daylight, the apartment looked worse. She took the .38 with her into the bathroom, leaving it on the toilet tank while she showered. After she dressed, she cleaned up the kitchen as best she could. Then she stood on a chair and dislodged the panel in the drop ceiling. The box of shells was still there. She felt around beside it, had a moment of panic until her fingers touched metal. She drew out the key ring. Four keys, four safe deposit boxes, four banks.

She took down the box of shells and fit the panel back into place.

At nine, she called the number Jimmy Peaches had given her, his private phone.

“Are you all right?” he said.

She paused, unsure how much to tell him. “I'm okay.”

“You don't sound it.”

“How well do you know Tino Conte?”

“What's that mean?”

“Well enough to reach out to him?”

“Why?”

“That issue we were talking about,” she said. “It got serious last night.”

“How serious?”

“As serious as it gets.”

He was quiet for a moment. “My advice for you is to stay as far away from him as possible.”

“You said whoever was doing this had their own agenda, one Tino wouldn't like.”

“So?”

“So maybe we have a mutual problem.”

“No way I'm putting you in a room with that guy. Or anyone that works for him. Like I said, the man's a snake.”

“I can't just sit around, waiting for someone to come at me again,” she said. “Not knowing who or from what direction. Or when.”

He sighed. “Okay. Forget about Tino, that's not happening. But there might be another way. Let me make a couple calls, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Don't do anything until you hear from me.”

“I won't,” she said.

In the bedroom, she got the overnight bag from the closet shelf, packed it with clothes, the box of shells. Then she walked the apartment, looking for anything else she might need. It occurred to her again how little she'd acquired in her life, how few were the things she called her own.

The cat followed her from room to room, making noise, getting underfoot. She opened a tin of cat food, spooned all of it onto a dish, then filled a bowl with fresh water. She set them down in the kitchen doorway, then sat on the futon and watched the cat while it ate.

When it was finished, she put on her leather jacket, dropped the .38 into the pocket, looked around the apartment a final time.

The cat stopped licking its paws, watched her, suspicious. She unlocked and opened the living room window, then pushed up the storm pane. Cold air flowed in. The cat backed away under a chair.

“Come on,” she said. It didn't move. When she crossed the room, it backed away farther, as if it knew what was coming. She reached down, scooped it up, held it to her chest as she went to the window.

“Sorry, cat,” she said. “You're back where you started.”

She let it go. The cat half leaped, half fell from her arms, landed on its feet on the fire escape, turned to stare back up at her.

Don't look at me like that, Crissa thought. It was nice while it lasted, that's all. Now it's over.

She shut the window, locked it. The cat looked at her through the glass for a long moment, then turned and sprinted down the fire escape. She watched it go.