When the Devil Comes to Call (A Lars and Shaine Novel Book 2) (6 page)

Nikki woke up with a gun in his face.

“Get out of bed, you fuck.”

Nikki didn’t recognize the voice, or the face at first. He thought he was still dreaming because it looked like Leo was telling him to get out of bed. But Leo from forty yeas ago, back when they both ran street whores and poker games. Always trying to one up each other, cutting into the other one’s business a bit. The start of a beautiful rivalry.

Here it goes,
thought Nikki,
I’m cracking up. Seeing faces from the past.

“I said get the fuck up.”

Nikki was brought back to the present. He wasn’t staring down Leo’s gun. The man behind the barrel was Bruno, Leo’s son.

Nikki needed his oxygen tank. He sat on the edge of the sofa, trying to keep his spine straight and let his lungs fill as much as they could with each breath. Still he struggled.

Bruno had brought six men with him. Nikki’s two house guards were no match.

Think, Nikki, think. Plausible deniability.

“Look, Bruno,” Nikki said. “I don’t know what you think happened—”

“You sent him to kill my parents. That’s what happened.”

Bruno was intimidating. His slicked back hair reminded Nikki of a film star in the fifties. He was tall, taller than his old man. Hard around the eyes, too.

Bruno waved the gun in Nikki’s face again. “Where is he?”

The gun in his face reminded Nikki why he needed FBI protection in the first place. He kicked himself for not planning on Bruno. Nikki should be safely tucked away by now, but he’d gotten the timing wrong. Now chances were good this would be his last day. Even if that turned out to be true, at least he wouldn’t spend it in jail.

“Where is who?” Nikki asked.

“You think we don’t have security cameras around the house? You think I can’t see him clear as day on those tapes?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nikki needed to stall, to think of something.

***

It was Bruno’s mom who tripped the silent alarm. When she was inside Leo’s office rifling through his gun rack and deciding on the shotgun. She reached under his desk and pressed the button, rousing not an alarm company, but her son and his own personal army.

But by then it was already too late. She was seconds away from death. Not before she got off a few shots, but she went down to Lars’s bullets all the same.

Bruno watched it all in HD. He’d been through the angles from upstairs, he’d seen them approach from outside and take down the night man on the door all too easily. This young girl and the old man, who the fuck were they?

Bruno made phone calls after he punched a hole in the wall beside his dad’s desk. The bank of video monitors were arranged in a grid behind a painting of a fox hunt in the English countryside. Bruno slammed the painting back in place, the frame cracking. He massaged his hand as he woke up Leo’s top three in charge. They all knew they’d be working for Bruno someday soon, so when he told them to get to the house, they all said yes. By 4:30
a.m.
the house was busy.

Each man stepped over Mrs. Ramoni’s body as they gathered in Leo’s office. Bruno hadn’t called the police or the coroner. He wasn’t sure if he was going to at all. This was family, and family took care of its own.

“Who did this?” he asked the room. Three heads of grey hair stared blankly back at him. The men were tired, confused and more than a little shocked their boss had been murdered in his own house.

Bruno played the tape of Leo’s bedroom. The man standing over him, prodding him with a gun, then laying the pillow over his face and shooting him. Bruno watched it again, letting the images burn onto the backs of his eyes. Never forget that face. Never forget.

“Looks like . . . no, it can’t be.”

Bruno turned to Harvey, one of Bruno’s many “uncles” of no relation.

“Can’t be who?”

“It looks like a guy named Lars. Used to be a big player in town. Ice cold. Lotta hits back in the day.”

“Is he freelance?” Bruno asked.

“No, he worked for Nikki Pagani.”

“Pagani,” Bruno repeated.

“But I haven’t seen him in years. I thought he was dead,” Harvey added.

“He’s right,” Frankie said, nodding along to Harvey’s tale. “He ain’t been around for something like twenty years.”

Bruno paused a tape from the stairway. Lars frozen, halfway down the steps, his body glowing in the night vision.

“But that’s him?”

Harvey and Frankie exchanged a look, each waiting for the other to commit.

“It looks like him, Bruno,” Harvey said. “But like I say, it’s been a long time.”

“Yeah,” Frankie said. “It’s hard to say.”

“Okay,” Bruno said, clenching the remote control in his hand until the plastic creaked, ready to break. “Let me ask you this, back in the day, could this Lars character do a job like this?”

Harvey and Frankie swapped another look. They both turned to Bruno and nodded.

“Yeah, Bruno,” Harvey said.

“And who the fuck is the girl?” Bruno asked.

“I don’t know.”

“He always worked alone, far as I knew,” Frankie said.

Bruno turned back to the monitor, stared at the frozen ghost of Lars on the steps.

“Worked for Pagani, huh?”

“Be careful, Bruno.” For the first time Nino spoke up. The elder statesman. Two years older than Leo, even. “You don’t want to go starting something with Nikki.”

“It seems to me,” Bruno said. “Nikki already started something with me.”

“I’m just sayin’”

“Just sayin’, huh?” Bruno set down the remote and came around the desk. “Are you seeing, Nino? Huh? Are you seeing?”

Bruno grabbed the old man by the scruff of his neck. Harvey and Frankie protested.

“Hey, ho, Bruno,” Frankie said

At the same time Harvey said, “Take it easy.”

Bruno forced Nino to his knees, then walked him like a dog across the floor and out the door of the office to where Bruno’s mother lay under a long fur coat, her legs sticking out and looking like she’d been caught running.

Bruno lifted the jacket and pushed Nino’s face down close to the body. The old man struggled to stay on his knees, grunting and making deep phlegmy sounds from his throat.

“Do you see? Are you seeing?”

Bruno pushed Nino down until his face touched Mrs. Ramoni’s chest and the blood pooled there. Nino struggled to breathe as Bruno pushed harder, the old man’s silver hair soaking up the blood.

“Do you see what he did to me?” Bruno clenched his teeth as he spoke, trying to stave off a rush of tears. “You still gonna tell me not to start trouble?”

Bruno lifted Nino. He came away with one side of his face smeared with blood, his hair spread out over his forehead, the left side a deep red.

Bruno let go. Nino collapsed to the floor. Bruno turned to Frankie and Harvey who watched from inside the office.

“I ain’t stupid. I ain’t gonna start something I can’t handle.”

Frankie and Harvey slowly nodded.

***

Nikki was dying for some oxygen, maybe dying for real.

“Let me tell you something, if you had a wife anymore, I’d kill her. If your dumb fuck of a son was still around, I’d kill him too.” Bruno gave Nikki a sly head tilt, letting him know the details of Nikki Jr.’s death were common knowledge on the street.

“So why not kill me?”

“Because, unlike you, I’m not stupid. I don’t want a war. All I want to know is where to find Lars and the girl.”

Nikki looked at the guns in the hands of every man in the room. His white chariot was coming to take him to safety, but he needed to hold on another day, maybe two or three. He wasn’t about to get this close and get taken out by a kid most people said was born to a whore then taken in by Mrs. Ramoni when she learned of her husband’s infidelity.

“I heard Lars was back in town,” Nikki said. “But he didn’t come to see me. If he had, I’d have talked him out of it. But he was so worked up over something, you know?”

“Over what?” asked Bruno.

Nikki tuned out the other men in the room. He locked eyes with Bruno, knowing if he sold the story to him the others wouldn’t matter. “I don’t know.” Keep the details vague. “I heard he came here looking for your dad, and that’s all I know.”

Nikki watched Bruno’s face go pale, then flash through anger and regret.

“You’re saying he came here on his own?”

“Why the hell would I send him to kill your dad?” Nikki had a dozen reasons, all alphabetized and color coded. Forty-five years of reasons.

“So where do I find him?”

“What I heard,” Nikki said, and he gave Bruno the name of the hotel, all of ten minutes away. Said he was supposed to go see him later that day, try to find out why he was here. “But now I guess we both know.”

“And you know there’s no reason to go see him later.”

“I know that now.”

Bruno adjusted his grip on the gun in his hand, he licked his lips, looked to Nikki like he was deciding something.

“Three men I trust a lot told me not to come here. They told me I could start a war.”

“More like break a truce,” Nikki said. “Your dad and I didn’t always see eye to eye, but we had respect. And an agreement.”

“And I respect your agreement.” Bruno leaned in close. “But truces can be broken.” He lingered, his face in Nikki’s. He stayed until Nikki nodded his head, acknowledgement that he understood, then he hit Nikki across the temple with the butt of his gun. Nikki went down with a groan. Bruno stepped over him and pistolwhipped him again. Nikki lay still.

Bruno turned to his men. “C’mon.” They filed out. 

***

Nikki woke up, but couldn’t open his right eye. He felt around him, touching the rug beneath his desk, the chair. He reached up to his eye and picked crusted blood. His eye opened and he remembered how he’d gotten on the ground, and what he hadn’t gotten a chance to do yet. But first—air.

Nikki got up and walked as fast as his feeble lungs would carry him to his bedroom and the foam green tank of oxygen waiting by his bed. He fumbled with the tubes, looping them around his ears and then fitting the two holes into his nostrils. He turned the crank on the valve up to full and inhaled deeply.

He didn’t want to wait, but he needed air first. After a minute of deep breathing he picked up the phone.

Lars clicked off his electric razor, turned an ear to the room. He’d been right, the phone was ringing. He set down his shaver, ran a hand over his still wet hair and answered the hotel phone on the third ring.

“He’s coming,” a wheezy voice said. “Leo’s son. He’s on his way. You gotta get out of there.”

“Nikki?”

“I had to tell him.” Nikki labored to breathe.

“How long do we have?”

“I don’t know. Don’t know how long I been out.”

“He alone?”

“No.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Lars hung up, reached under his pillow for the gun, didn’t bother to rack it. Always one in the chamber. He took three wide strides across the carpet to the door joining his room with Shaine’s.

The first heavy foot hit the door to his room. He had only enough time to duck into the bathroom doorway, out of sight from the room’s front door. He snatched the wet towel from his shower and held it in his left hand, the gun in his right. The tiny room was still steamy, the fan too weak to clear out the moisture.
At least they gave him time to get out of the shower
, thought Lars. He’d hate to go into a shootout naked.

The outside door caved in, wood spitting into the room and a jumble of footsteps behind it. Bruno hadn’t come alone, but Lars didn’t know how many. Didn’t matter much. They all had to die.

Lars spun out from his hiding place and put two bullets in the first man, then pivoted and put two more in the man nearly touching shoulders with him. As they fell Lars threw his wet towel at the rest of the men piled up in the narrow doorway and he dove for the bed.

***

Shaine heard the gunshots over her hair dryer. She powered down the machine and turned her head toward the common door between their rooms. More shots erupted, less disciplined than the first two sets of two. Multiple guns firing this time.

She dropped the hair dryer and went to her bed, reached up under the pillow and took out her gun. She paused, let the weight of it settle into her hand. She switched off the safety.

***

Lars felt the bed shake as bullets pounded into the mattress. Last night he didn’t appreciate how rock hard the thing was, but he did now. Looking under the bed he saw three sets of legs move into the room. Lars leaned out and fired twice, hitting a foot and sending the man to the floor.

He slid under the bed. Shimmying on his back he moved like a sidewinder toward the advancing men. He felt bullets rake the bed over him. He couldn’t have felt safer under the rock hard mattress if he were wearing Kevlar.

As he moved he watched the two remaining sets of feet charge toward the far end of the bed where he’d just been, where they thought he’d still be.

Lars rolled as he came out from under the bed again on the side of the steam-filled bathroom. He did a sit-up and aimed his gun back across the unmade bed at the two men who were now on the far side of the room by the balcony, looking confused. He pulled the trigger twice, but only one bullet came out. His single shot landed on target and one of the gunmen hit the ground, a fresh hole through his heart. The middle-aged man with the slicked back hair watched his partner go down, then turned to Lars, listening to the empty clicks of his gun. Lars ducked behind the mattress fortress.

“Bruno, you hit?” came a voice from the hall.

“He’s by the bed!” Bruno yelled, though Lars couldn’t see him from his back on the floor. Lars turned to see the sixth man enter the room, thick in the chest and neck. His gun swept the air in front of him on the hunt for something, anything, to shoot. His aim fell on Lars. Lars stared to scramble his legs out from under the bed, mindful of the man he now knew was Bruno still standing by the glass doors of the balcony with another gun on him.

He’d barely gotten his feet under him when a single shot came from the doorway between the rooms. The thick-chested man flailed, dead on impact as the bullet pierced the base of his cranium, taking out a big hunk of the back side of his skull.

Lars looked down and saw Shaine crouched low to the floor in the doorway, a terrified look on her face, but her gun steady in her hands.

Lars looked to his right. Bruno had turned his gun from Lars to the new threat, the one who still had ammunition—Shaine.

“Shaine, watch it,” Lars said. From his crouched position on the ground he pounced like an animal, his coiled legs launching him across the bed. Bruno fired at Shaine, but Lars was mid-flight and couldn’t see if she’d been hit.

Lars hit Bruno in the chest and together they flung backward through the glass doors of the third floor balcony. The glass shattered louder than any of the gunshots. Tiny pebbles of tempered glass coated them like a sudden hailstorm. Bruno hit the balcony wall and railing with his back and pushed out what remaining air he held in his lungs.

As Bruno fought to draw another breath, Lars clenched his fists, got a firmer grip on Bruno’s clothes, and lifted. Lars had a body sculpted by yoga, not weightlifting. Bruno had a body sculpted by spaghetti dinners and red wine. Lars pictured the image of Shaine, the terrified look on her face as she crouched in the doorway, the same look the day he met her back in New Mexico. He hoisted Bruno almost over his head, but couldn’t quite finish the clean and jerk. He pushed out, away from his body and Bruno went over the edge.

Lars fell forward, gripping the railing of the balcony as his muscles protested the exertion. He watched as Bruno’s body fell, the gun still in his hand. Lars saw Bruno gasp, finally drawing a lungful of air, right before he went into the pool.

Goddamn swimming pool, a blue all-weather cover pulled tight over the top. Bruno hit hard, his back slapping the covering which swallowed him inside a blue wrapper, ice cold water leaking through the mesh. Lars could be fairly certain Bruno got the wind knocked out of him for a second time. He could also be fairly sure he wasn’t dead.

Lars turned back to Shaine. She lifted the gun and fired. Lars flinched, then saw the man on the floor, the one with the ruined feet. His arm was extended out toward Lars, gun at the ready. To match his feet, he had a new hole in his back.

Lars walked forward, took the gun out of the man’s hand, then pulled a pillow down from the bed. He put it over the man’s head and fired once to be sure.

He crouched down to Shaine. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Are you?”

“Thanks to you.”

“Who are they?”

“Long story. One’s still out there. Get packed, both of our stuff, we gotta go.”

Lars bolted for the door. He hopped over the two bodies blocking the threshold and ran down the hall to the stairs. He popped the clip on the new gun as he ran, checked his ammo. A few left. He slapped the clip back in as he burst through the door and hit the top step. He moved quickly, but quietly. The hotel management would be in full panic mode. Cops would be on their way.

Lars hated how long it took to reach the ground floor. He left the stairwell and had to spin in a full circle to figure out where he stood on the hotel grounds. He felt the slap of cold, was sure the icy water had slapped Bruno harder.

He saw a fence surrounding the pool and ran for it. He got to the entry gate and saw the hotel card key reader and sign warning
No Admittance without a room key
.

Lars could see Bruno pull his legs out from the blue tarp over the pool. He dripped water as he lurched like a full bottle drunk away from the pool. Lars grabbed the metal bars of the gate and pulled himself up.

He heard the first siren. Then he saw a car pull to a stop and throw open the passenger door. Bruno’s ride. Lars fell off the gate onto the pool side, landed awkwardly on his hip, then pushed up and ran. Dodging all weather recliner chairs he made it to the edge of the pool, but he knew he couldn’t catch up.

Bruno had reached the car and the driver hit the gas before his last wet leg made it inside.

A thin mist rose off the exposed water in the pool. The growing sound of sirens pushed Lars back to the stairs.

He was winded by the time he got to the third floor. Shaine waited in the hall, two small carry-on bags in her hands. Lars waved her over to the stairs. She joined him with an expectant look on her face.

“You get the car keys?” he asked.

“No,” Shaine said, the panic turning her face flush.

“Wait here,” he said. Lars ran back to the room, kept the gun down by his leg in case. He passed through the broken door to his room, stepped over the wet towel, the two bodies and went to the nightstand and opened the drawer. His wallet and car keys sat next to a Bible. He left the Bible and took the rest.

***

“What the hell’s going on out there?”

Shaine turned to the man’s voice, saw a bald head poking out of room 323.

“A shooting,” she said, keeping it vague.

“You shouldn’t be out there,” he said. The man opened the door wide enough she could see inside where his chubby wife huddled against his back shoulder, using him as a shield.

“Come on inside,” the wife said.

“No, that’s okay—” Shaine started.

“There’s a goddamn crazy person out there.” The man reached out and latched a hand on Shaine’s forearm and starting reeling her in. She fought him like a marlin on the line.

“No. I have to wait.” The jostling made the gun she had tucked in her belt come loose. It fell to the densely pattered carpet. The bald man froze. His wife kept up her calls to bring the girl to safety from inside.

The bald man looked from the gun to Shaine. Her mind spun with possibilities. Do I have to shoot him now? she wondered.

“Police activity, back in your room.” Lars led with the gun. The dark metal, the black hole of the barrel spoke louder than his words. The bald man retreated to room 323 and locked the door.

“Get that,” he said, gesturing to the gun. Shaine bent down and put the gun back into her belt.

“You go first,” he said between panting breaths.

Shaine entered the stairwell. Lars followed behind. 

“You don’t take that out again for anything or anyone unless I tell you to, okay?”

“It fell,” she said.

“Then maybe you should zip it up inside one of the bags. We don’t have room for mistakes if the cops are all over like I think they’re gonna be.”

They reached the ground floor. Lars directed Shaine to the lobby instead of back out to the pool area. Shaine pushed through the door and into a room busy with voices. She knew where she was going – across the lobby, outside to the car, get the hell out of there.

Hotel employees scurried around. A navy blue outfitted security guard looked in over his head. Shaine noticed the flashlight on his belt, noted that she was more heavily armed than him. She didn’t wait for instructions from Lars, Shaine paced quickly across the stone tile floor of the lobby, past the gas powered fireplace and the free coffee station.

“Sir? Ma’am?” The hotel manager crossed the floor from the opposite side to intercept them. “You’ll have to return to your room. We’re in lockdown mode.”

Shaine didn’t slow down.

“Ma’am? Sir?” the manager repeated with growing urgency.

“What kind of place are you running?” Shaine said, slowing her pace, but not stopping. “Shootouts? At these prices? Honestly. We’re getting the hell away from here. You couldn’t make us stay for all the free continental breakfasts in the world.”

She pushed out the lobby doors with a flourish and had never been so grateful for the shock of cold air. She could hear Lars offer some sort of apology to the manager and then he banged out the door behind her. Lars took off running for the car, got it unlocked and the trunk open by the time she got there and took the bags from her.

A trio of police cars arrived at once. The cops got out and all scurried toward the lobby looking at bit scared. 

Lars started the car. The heater resumed its work, trying vainly to cut through the thick fog on the windshield. Lars pulled his sleeve over his hand and started wiping a small circle in the condensation so he could see. Shaine followed his lead and got up on her knees to do the same. With Shaine making a small window for him, Lars put it in gear and drove away.

“Nice job,” he said.

“Thanks.”

Shaine shifted in her seat, adjusting the gun in her waistband, trying to find a comfortable position.

“You put the safety back on?” Lars asked.

Shaine leaned back in her seat as if a live snake were coiled in her lap. She reached down and slowly drew out the pistol and moved the safety switch to on, the little red dot indicating it was safe to shove into pants again. She unzipped her carry-on bag and put it inside.