The Righteous Cut (4 page)

Richards slowly put the dead receiver back into its cradle. “Get your men and your stuff out of my house.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I don't need the police to handle this. He wants to bargain with me. Swell, I'm going to give him whatever he wants. The longer you birds are sucking around here, the longer this is going to take, so get lost.”

Casey folded his arms as he studied Richards' face. “You're out of your mind. You can't order us off the case.”

“Goddamn you, get your shit out of my house. Do it, or by Christ I'll call the mayor and have your badges. Now get out, Goddamn it. Get out!” Richards' voice rose to a shrill scream, veins standing out in his temples as he pointed a quivering finger at the door.

Casey knew he was licked. Richards' money and influence had helped put Mayor Trask in office. He swallowed the bile in his throat. “I hope you don't live to regret this. You're playing with your daughter's life.” He turned on his heel and quietly ordered his men to break down their equipment and evacuate the premises.

In less than fifteen minutes, Richards felt quiet settle over the house as the last policemen departed. He stood at the study window, satisfying himself that he once more ruled his own domain. He felt, rather than heard Georgia standing behind him.

“I was right, wasn't I?”

He turned, his expression cold and distant. “I don't know what you mean.”

She choked back angry tears. “You know who took Jess. Who is it, Whit? Tell me who it is.”

He rushed her with a speed that took her breath, shaking her by the shoulders until her teeth rattled. “Listen, you dizzy bitch. Jess is my daughter, too, and I'm not going to let anything happen to her. I'll get her back, do you hear me?
I'll
get her back. Now get the hell out of my sight.” He shoved her violently from him, and was gratified to see her run down the stairs.

He closed the study door and bolted it. He knew exactly what he had to do. He sat down at the desk and unlocked the bottom right drawer. From it he lifted a second telephone, one of the new ones with a rotary dial. It was an unlisted number the police knew nothing about.

He already knew the name of the man who had called him Rico, just as he knew that, somehow, the man would know his unlisted number, and would call him on it. He willed himself to patience. Today was the other man's day, but the days were short in December.

***

Jimmy Doughtery parked his Hudson Terraplane across the street from Bockman's Shoe Repair on Magazine Street. He removed a pair of black bluchers from the floorboard and took them with him as he went inside the shop. He didn't really want any work done on the bluchers. They were camouflage, just like the shoe repair shop wasn't quite a shoe repair shop.

The little bell over the door announced his entrance, but there was nobody at the counter. “Hey, Hugo,” he called. “Hey, you got a customer out here.” He looked at his watch. In ten minutes he wanted to be down the street at Ubertino's Oyster Bar with a dozen on the half-shell and an ice-cold glass of Jax in front of him. He pounded the flat of his hand on the counter. “Hey, Hugo. Fer Christ's sake, man. I got places to go.” He went around the counter and into the back where the work benches were.

The odors of new leather and shoe dye back there were strong enough make your eyes tear up. Wrinkling his nose, he continued to the door at the back that led to the room where the telephones and the safe were. He jerked it open, expecting to hear the usual hubbub of bookies taking bets over the telephone. He wasn't expecting the muzzle of the small-bore revolver that met him at eye level.

“What the fuck—?”

“Gimme the take,” Joey Parmalee said.

“The—the take?”

Parmalee smiled gently. “I know the route, asshole. I know you already been to ten other parlors by the time you get here. This is the last one on your route. So make with the kale and do it quick. My hand's gettin' tired.”

Doughtery looked past the gun at the man's face, finally recognizing him. He saw, too, the unnaturally small pupils of the gunman's eyes. He was higher than a kite on coke or morphine. “Joey Parmalee. You sonofabitch. You think you're just gonna take the money and go have a party with it?” Doughtery was shocked at the young man's effrontery. “Christ almighty, man—Vic D'Angelo'll nail your hide to a barn door and set the barn on fire.”

Joey cocked the target revolver. “The money. Now.”

Doughtery swallowed. He'd said the gunman's name out loud. He was starting to get an idea he didn't like. “It—it's in my coat.”

“Take it off,” Parmalee ordered.

Doughtery gingerly removed his coat, held it out with shaking fingers. The gunman took it.

“Thanks, Jimmy.” The small-bore revolver snapped twice, the sound like firecrackers in the small room. The muzzle was so close to Doughtery's face that it burned all the skin around the ragged hole where his left eye used to be. Parmalee took several packets of bills from the dead man's coat and transferred them to his own. He dropped the coat across Doughtery's face. Joey snickered as he reloaded his gun, casting a last look back at the three other dead men stacked in the corner. “Got the world by the tail, Joey. The world by the tail.” He snickered some more as he walked away from the shop.

***

Jessica Richards awoke in a drab, high-ceilinged room without windows. She sat up on a creaking cast-iron bed rubbing her eyes. The last thing she remembered was being tied up and dumped into the trunk of a car.

“H-hello?” The tentative word was immediately swallowed up by the emptiness of the room. Her head ached.

She got up and began to explore her cell. An old bureau sat in a corner, all three of the drawers empty. The mirror had lost much of its reflective silvering, and the image it gave was something from a bad dream. The girl shivered, turned away.

A dry sink supported a bowl and pitcher with some water in it. Impulsively she picked up the pitcher and drank from the spout, spilling some down her blouse. It cooled her, helped wash out the fear clotting her throat.

With her thirst satisfied, she continued the investigation, finding a smelly slop bucket with a badly fitting wooden lid, and a two-year-old calendar decorated with a grainy photo of a nude woman. The woman had tiny little breasts that she flaunted as she leered at the camera. Jessica blew a defiant raspberry at the picture.

She moved on to the door, finding it securely locked. As she turned, she saw a closet. Upon opening it, a flurry of dust rose, making her sneeze. It was empty save for a fifteen-year-old
National Geographic
devoted to Richard Evelyn Byrd's flight over the South Pole and a
Screen Stories
with Clark Gable on the cover. She removed the magazines to the cot, figuring they might help her stave off boredom later on.

A rattling of the latch startled her and she jumped, placing her back to the wall. The door swung open and a man stood there. He was big, with a square Irish mug, scar tissue thickening his heavy brow. He looked dangerous, but not cruel.

“W-what do you want?”

The man stepped into the room. He had a paper bag in his hands. “Brought you some chow,” he said. He put the bag on the bureau then leaned against the doorframe, his arms folded.

She hesitated. “Why am I here? What are you going to do with me?”

The big man's expression didn't change. “Your old man has something another man wants. Your old man gives it up, you go home. It's as simple as that.”

“My—my father? He's on the city council. He's rich. Is it money you want?”

The big man stirred uncomfortably. “It ain't up to me to tell you, kid. Eat your food and keep quiet. Your old man wants you back so it won't be long.” He backed out of the door, closing it firmly behind him.

As she listened to the tumblers fall in the lock, she hugged herself to still the trembling in her limbs. It continued until her eyes lit on the bag, and she suddenly realized she was ravenous. She crossed the room in two long strides and dug into the food.

***

Farrell woke up and for a moment forgot where he was. He blinked, pushing the hair out of his face as he looked at the other side of the bed. Savanna was gone, but a note pinned to her pillow explained that she'd risen earlier to visit friends, and would meet him at her club at midnight.

He and Savanna had lived together in Havana without raising a public eyebrow for almost fourteen months, becoming practically inseparable. He was largely immune to loneliness, but it felt a bit strange to have her gone from him for the rest of the night. He saw from the clock that it was almost 5:00 in the afternoon.

A quarter of an hour later he was knotting a tie beneath the collar of an oxford cloth shirt when the house phone rang. He picked it up.

“Hello, Harry. How's business?”

“Okay, boss. A lady down here's askin' to see you.”

“She give a name?”

“Georgia Miles Richards.”

The name silenced him for a moment. They hadn't spoken since 1924, and it had been a bitter parting. He felt surprise that the sound of her name could gall him so badly, yet curiosity sank a spur into his flank. “Send her up.”

He was waiting at the stairwell door as she mounted the stairs. She looked at him with her wide green gaze, her face still the same but for a few small lines around her eyes. Her hair was shot with silver strands, but he noted with chagrin that she was still a dish.

“Hello, Georgia. Come in, won't you?”

“Thank you, Wes. It's good of you to see me.” She smiled demurely and offered him a hand. In the light he could see the strain in her eyes and a certain stiffness in her bearing. He took the red fox stole from her shoulders and draped it across the back of a chair.

“Can I get you a drink?”

“Pernod and water, if you have it.”

He nodded. Pernod and water was what they had drunk together in the old days, and she was telling him she hadn't forgotten. He went to the kitchen and a couple of minutes later he returned with two tall glasses wrapped in paper napkins. He handed one to her then stood there, looking down into her eyes. “You're looking good, Georgia.”

She raised her glass to him and took a sip. “You don't look so bad yourself.” She blotted her lips with the napkin, leaving a red imprint on the paper.

Farrell sat down across from her. “After all these years, it must be something big to bring you here.”

She put the glass on the table, not looking at him. “I need help. A kind I can't get from just anyone.”

“What makes you think I can help you? I'm just a businessman.”

Her green eyes flashed up at him, and he saw heat smoldering in them. Her face stiffened for the briefest of seconds, then she forced a smile. “You get too much space in the newspapers for ‘just a businessman,' Wes. Unless trouble is your business.”

“I've been in the wrong place at the wrong time a bit too often. I live in Cuba most of the time now, and I've got business interests that keep me busy.”

She nodded, her eyes heavy-lidded. “Will you at least listen before you tell me no?”

It hurt him to see her. He hadn't realized until now how raw this old wound was. He felt foolish, and that galled him all the more. “I'm not stopping you.”

“It's about my daughter, Jessica.”

“What about her?”

“She was kidnapped from school this afternoon.”

He hid his surprise. “Is the FBI in on it yet?”

She snorted. “Nobody's on it. The kidnapper called and right after Whit threw the police out.”

Farrell raised an eyebrow. “He must be very sure of himself.”

She glared at him balefully. “He's sure, all right. He probably knows who's got her. Somebody he's double-crossed. Or—”

“Or what?”

“Or whoever has Jessica took her on Whit's orders and he's using this kidnapping to cover some scheme of his own.” She wiped a hand tiredly across her face. “I'm just guessing. I have no idea what's going on.”

“Neither do I. I just got back from Cuba today.”

She settled back in the chair and a look of utter weariness suddenly added years to her face. She bit her lip, hesitated, then spoke. “I know what you're thinking: that I've got a hell of a nerve coming to you after what I did.” She dropped her gaze, biting her lip again. A single tear escaped her left eye and traced a line down the curve of her cheek. “I'll say it for you. I'm a miserable grasping bitch. I left you high and dry for a man with a lot of money and I didn't look back.”

He snorted. “You don't have to write a song about it. I know what you did.”

She held up her head, hearing the wounded pride in his voice. “I did what I did. I won't make any excuses for it. Would it help if I told you I made a mistake? If I told you he's a lying, thieving rat? That he's cheated on me with every tramp who twitched her ass at him?”

He studied her with his brows lowered down over his eyes, hiding the emotion in them. “So you found out he was no good, yet you stayed with him.”

“What did you expect me to do? I was on the street when you and I met, and everything I had to sell I gave you for nothing. Did you expect me to leave a big house and my own car and a fat bank account because I was married to a heel? I did what I had to do.” Her green eyes had fire in them now, and her flushed face complimented the deeper red of her hair. For some reason he liked this woman better than the one who'd crawled in and asked for Pernod to call up a happy memory. He felt the hardness in his face relax.

“You've got guts, Georgia. I always said that. I'm glad to see you haven't lost them.”

She shifted around in her seat, breathing harshly through her nose and she clamped her mouth. She wanted to cry, but she knew she couldn't, not with Farrell. She let the bitterness in her run free. “Whit's got to be behind this. He's played footsies with every grifter and shark in the state. This is somebody he double-crossed, I know it.”