The Killing Kind (18 page)

And it was clear to Engelmann the Council was losing patience with him. He heard it in his contact’s tone when they spoke over the phone. He saw it in the resources the Council offered by way of assistance—once unlimited but now often withheld. He was certain the only additional rope they’d be giving him would be used to bind his hands and feet before they killed him should he fail.

No matter, he thought. Such maudlin concern got him nowhere. And besides, he was right about Purkhiser and his quarry both—he
knew
he was.

And though he assured himself of exactly that a thousand times in the musty stillness of the abandoned house, Engelmann relaxed perceptibly when he heard Purkhiser pick up the phone and dial.

Hendricks’s burner phone rang long-short-long. That meant Purkhiser. The only other person who had Hendricks’s number—as far as Hendricks knew—was Lester, and his ringtone was set to an ascending scale, four trilling tones from low to high.

Hendricks wasn’t surprised when Purkhiser called. In the years he’d been at the job, they nearly always did. What he hadn’t figured on is what Purkhiser would say.

“You get my money?” Hendricks asked without preamble.

A hesitation. “Not exactly,” Purkhiser replied.

“Then this conversation is over.”

“Wait—don’t hang up!”

In spite of his own better judgment, Hendricks didn’t hang up. “I’m listening,” he said.

“I want you to take it all.”

“Excuse me?”

“The whole six mil. Every fucking penny. Just get these guys off my ass long enough for me to rabbit, and it’s yours.”

Six million dollars.

Six
million
dollars.

It was more than Hendricks could make in three jobs— in
five.
All he had to do for it was pop some low-life Outfit button man.

A six-million-dollar payout would ensure neither Evie nor Lester would ever need to worry about money again. It meant that someday, once Hendricks had finally made his penance, there might be an end to this violent life he led.

But Purkhiser didn’t need to know any of that. So Hendricks played it calm, cool.

“And how do you propose to get me this money?” he said.

“That’s the beauty part,” replied Purkhiser, relief apparent in his tone. “We just have the casino give it straight to you. See, that big check is just for show—I’m supposed to give ’em my account info ahead of time so they can transfer the funds directly once their dog-and-pony show is over. But I figure a big-shot hitman like you has probably got a numbered account somewhere, all nice and anonymous-like, am I right? So who’s to say for the purpose of this transaction that account ain’t mine?”

Hendricks should have said no. Should have realized that the Purkhiser he’d met a few hours ago would never have parted so easily with so large a sum. He should have sensed that something wasn’t right—should have up and walked away.

But six million dollars buys a lot of bad decisions. So what he said instead was: “You try to screw me, and

I’ll kill you—you know that, right?” Purkhiser, hopeful: “That mean we got a deal?” Six. Million. Dollars. “Yeah, we got a deal.” “Cool—let me grab a pen.”

19

Pendleton’s Resort and Casino was a tacky riverboatthemed complex overlooking the Missouri River from an industrial park just north of Kansas City proper. The approach was like pulling into an airport—a confusing tangle of roads peeling off toward various parking lots, some of them vast asphalt plains dotted by sodium vapor lights resembling bare husks of long-dead trees, and some multilevel concrete structures, open on all sides. Sleek black shuttle buses ferried people to and fro, their mirrored windows a false promise of debauchery within. The fact was, Pendleton’s was more a family place. Their shows tended toward the squeaky clean, mostly traveling productions of Broadway staples, and their upscale steak house and French-inspired fine-dining restaurant sat shoulder-toshoulder with a dinosaur-themed rib joint and a NASCAR-branded bar and grill.

Michael Hendricks left his rental car in one of the outermost satellite lots, opting to hoof it rather than hitch a ride in the shuttle bus. The sun blazed orange as it touched the western horizon, streaking the cirrus clouds that stretched across the evening sky. The lights of the casino glinted like a mirage in the distance. It was seven p.m. Tuesday— twenty hours and change since Purkhiser had hired Hendricks, and less than two days from Leonwood’s planned hit. Hendricks had spent the morning on the phone with Lester, who’d worked his digital mojo to put together a dossier on Purkhiser’s would-be assassin, Leonwood, which he read to Hendricks in its entirety. Hendricks never traveled with his laptop, because it contained no shortage of incriminating evidence, and he refused to download anything that might later implicate him to his cheap, unencrypted burner phone.

Lester’s dossier painted a picture of a seasoned hitter with a rep for high-risk, high-stakes jobs—public figures, law enforcement, you name it—and his MO seemed to be the nastier, the better. Rumor was, Leonwood was the one responsible for stringing up that First Circuit Court of Appeals judge on Boston’s Zakim Bridge after he ruled against the Winter Hill Gang back in ’04. If the Outfit wanted Purkhiser’s death to be messy, they’d sure as hell hired the right guy.

Once Hendricks had memorized the salient details, he made the drive from Springfield to Kansas City—just under three hours at a sensible five miles per hour over the speed limit. He made a stop at the FedEx shop in Belton— a sprawling suburb south of town—where Lester’d sent along a package to be held for pickup by one Steven Rogers.

The contents of the package were listed as “Cookies,” and the sender as “Grandma Rogers.” Inside the box was a tin containing one thousand dollars cash (all the excuse one ever needed to be in a casino); a ceramic knife, which was invisible to metal detectors and twice as sharp as steel, with a pebbled grip designed to thwart fingerprinting; a functional penlight that doubled as a single-shot zip gun, loaded with a jacketed 9mm hollow-point round; a mug shot of a young, fresh-faced Leon Leonwood, taken decades ago when he was arrested for manslaughter, but hopefully bearing enough resemblance to the man he’d grown into for Hendricks to ID him; and four oatmeal raisin cookies.

The mug shot and weaponry, Hendricks stashed inside his rental’s spare tire, protection against the unlikely event the car was searched. Today’s mission was one of reconnaissance, not violence, and carrying weapons—even ones as unlikely to be detected as these—would potentially create as many complications as it would guard against. Once his scouting was complete, if Hendricks decided more fire-power—such as handguns, rifles, or small explosives—was required, he’d acquire it locally; it was foolish to travel with such items when they were so readily available, so unwise to hold on to, and so easily discarded.

Lester’s cookies, as ever, were delicious.

Hendricks’s boot leather creaked as he ambled along the sidewalk that ran parallel to the casino’s main drive. A job like this, the key was blending in, so he’d decked himself out as a full-on gambling cliché. A red-and-white checked cowboy shirt with white trim. Dark-blue boot-cut jeans over alligator cowboy boots. An off-white Stetson on his head, a pair of BluBlockers hiding his eyes, and as much of a horseshoe mustache as he could muster from three days’ stubble. Even his walk was affected: a slouching, duck-footed swagger that took two inches off his height. He looked ridiculous—but it was precisely the same sort of ridiculous as half the gamblers in attendance, the sort of ridiculous that caused one’s gaze to slide right by.

Hendricks was greeted at the casino entrance by a smiling bellhop. An old-timey marquee awash in the light of a thousand bulbs gave way to an interior whose decor was as loud and jarring as the din rising from its endless banks of clanking slots.

Purkhiser’s ceremony was supposed to take place in a banquet hall just off the gaming floor called the Fountain Room. Today, the Fountain Room featured two performances by a ventriloquist—lunch and dinner, complete with buffet. Later tonight, it hosted a country act Hendricks had never heard of.

Hendricks bought a ticket to the ventriloquist’s buffet— fifteen dollars, food included. The clink of flatware on glasses filled the hall as he entered, and the tables—round and draped in coarse white linens—were about three-quarters full. Though the show had yet to begin, the buffet’d been open twenty minutes by the time he arrived, so the line was short. The buffet ran half the length of the room along the left-hand side. Hendricks got in line—a good excuse to walk the length of the room and scan the crowd.

The room was big and dimly lit, with plush carpeting of green and red and floor-to-ceiling curtains on each wall. The stage was small, set up at the far end of the room from the main entrance. There was a bar in the corner to the right of the stage, people crowded all around. The only points of entry were the main doors through which Hendricks had arrived and two emergency exits, one on the right-hand wall and another behind the stage. At each of the emergency exits was a security guard—husky, uniformed, armed. Another two security guards stood offstage at either side.

Hendricks didn’t like it.

Assuming the setup on Thursday was the same, the hall was too full—of people and furniture both. It had too few exits and too much security. Not to mention the half-domes of tinted plastic that protruded downward at regular intervals from the ceiling—security cameras, watching every inch of the place.

But like it or not, he had six million reasons to make it work.

So he fixed himself a plate and grabbed a seat up near the front, where a corner table was vacant by virtue of the fact that it afforded an awkward view of the stage. Fine by him. He didn’t care to see the performance, and from his perch in the nine-o’clock position at the table, he had sight lines on the bar; the crowd seated at the tables; the room’s main entrance; and, in the reflection of the chromed water pitcher on his table, the buffet patrons behind him.

As Hendricks settled into his seat and draped his napkin across his lap, the overhead lights dimmed, signaling that the show was about to begin. Hendricks didn’t pay any mind to the tired old man who took the stage with his dummy.

He had a job to do.

Albert Tuschbaum was having a lousy day.

For one, his throat was killing him. Thirty shows in thirty days will do that to you. Well, that and the sinus infection he’d picked up somewhere between here and San Antonio. He’d spent the last month snaking upward through the country on Greyhound after Greyhound: north on I-35 to Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Oklahoma City, then east on 44 to Tulsa and Joplin. To get to the gig in Branson, he got stuck on a local bus instead of an express, which meant stops every other mile it seemed, and damn near twice the travel time—all while wedged between a grubby, ponytailed biker-type too long since his last shower, and a woman whose snot-crusted toddler kept coughing like he had the plague. On the leg from Branson to Springfield, they’d lost his dummy, Mickey—though they claimed they’d loaded him into the luggage compartment before departing, he wasn’t there when they arrived—which meant he had to go onstage with the backup dummy he kept stuffed into the bottom of his other suitcase, whose threadbare clothes and chipping paint seemed to mirror Albert’s own sorry state. And from Springfield to his Pendleton’s gigs, his bus’s toilet had backed up, meaning that he not only couldn’t pee—his cholesterol meds made him piss like a racehorse—but he also couldn’t eat, the foul stench of human waste ensuring the lunch he bought at the station went untouched. Hell, he’d been in town for hours now, and still he felt as though the awful reek of chemical toilet clung to his clothes, his hair, his skin.

Then again, maybe that was the smell of his career.

How could he have let it come to this? Time was, he played the Vegas strip, warming up the sold-out crowds for acts like Tom Jones and Neil Diamond. Twice, he’d appeared on Carson, once even getting invited over to the couch. But that was years ago—decades. Two divorces and countless hip flasks of Canadian Club. The booze had eaten through his stomach, his marriage, and his reputation, etching its mark deep into the lines of his face, into the broken corpuscles draped like lace across his nose and cheeks. It drove away his wife and friends, and left his children flinching every time the phone rang, not knowing if the voice at the other end would be that of their maudlin old man, or the inevitable rote sympathy of some faraway police officer, informing them they needn’t flinch any longer.

Then Grace came and changed everything.