Killer (10 page)

“What do you do for work?” I asked.

“Wow, a bit abrupt, aren’t we?” she said, her voice light, amused. “But to answer your question, a little bit of this and that, but right now I’m in between jobs.” Her eyes lowered as she took a sip of her coffee. When she looked up and met my eyes again, her smile had turned wistful. “I’d heard about you in the news before, but really didn’t pay much attention. After we met the other day, I went to the library and dug up some of the stories about you. I was so sorry to read that your wife died while you were in prison. That must’ve been hard.”

I nodded, didn’t say anything.

“Those people you killed, let me guess, they weren’t quite as innocent and pure as the driven snow as the papers made them out to be?”

“No, they weren’t,” I said with only a slight hesitation. The two men I had killed with Behrle turned out to be friends of his, and they both turned out to be even worse scumbags than he ever was. I had looked into it after the hit, and they were involved in a string of home invasions, one of which left a teenage girl paralyzed. I had no remorse for those two.

“Fucking newspapers,” she said. “They can make the worst scum out to be a fucking saint.” A hardness momentarily tightened her smile, and I had this sense about her then that she had blood on her hands also. Maybe an abusive partner, maybe some incestuous relative. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had done a stretch in prison too, but I didn’t ask her about any of that.

She was still absorbed in her thoughts, and had absently pulled a pack of Newports from her jacket pocket. She tapped a cigarette out, slid it in her mouth, and was about to light up before she remembered where she was.

“Think they’d throw me in jail if I lit up in here?” she asked, the cig now out of her mouth and held lightly between her index and middle fingers.

“No doubt,” I said.

Her gaze wandered past me, and she stuck out her tongue at a coffee shop employee who had been glaring openly at her. Smiling to herself, she put the cig behind her ear.

“I need this badly right now,” she told me, referring to the cig. She gestured with her eyes that I was welcome to join her outside while she lit up, but I stayed in my seat. She opened her eyes wider in mock surprise over the fact that I wasn’t jumping at the chance to join her, and before she turned to leave, told me she was sure we’d bump into each other again. I was sure of that also.

I was a little surprised she hadn’t given me her name yet. I would’ve thought that would’ve happened after our second “chance” meeting. It turned out she didn’t disappoint me. She was halfway to the door when she turned on her heels and walked back to my table, offering me her hand.

“By the way, my name’s Sophie Duval,” she said.

“Leonard March,” I said.

“As if you’re telling me something I don’t already know,” she said with a wink. I watched the way her slender hips moved as she headed back to the front door. Christ, she was gorgeous. At least thirty years younger than me and absolutely gorgeous. When she reached the door, she stopped to snap off a quick army-type salute in my direction, then left. I wondered briefly when I’d be bumping into her again. I knew it wouldn’t be long.

It was Tuesday when I saw her next. At around seven-thirty in the evening I was walking along Moody Street to my job when I heard footsteps racing behind me. Next thing I knew an arm was hooking mine and a small hand resting on my leather jacket sleeve below the elbow. It was Sophie. Her face was flushed. In a breathless whisper she told me that it looked like a car was following me.

It was a cold late October night with the wind whipping up, and I’d been walking with my head bowed and hadn’t been paying much attention to the street. I turned and saw that she was right. A light blue Chevrolet sedan was creeping along keeping pace with me. There were two men in the car. Both looked hardened. The driver slid his glance sideways and noticed me looking his way. His eyes were cold and empty, his face scarred and with a toughness to it. Without any change of expression, he stared straight ahead and sped away.

Sophie recited some random numbers. I stared at her, confused.

“The license plate,” she said. “Damn, Leonard, you have to pay more attention to what’s going on around you. There are obviously people out there holding grudges.”

“I was hoping I had already slipped into yesterday’s news.”

“Obviously not.” Her face had flushed to a deep red. There was so much excitement in her eyes. “You know, I might’ve saved your life tonight. I might have to think of a way for you to repay me.”

It was possible she was right. Those two in the blue Chevrolet could’ve been Lombard’s boys. They had the look of it. But it could also be part of the game Sophie was running. An awful big coincidence her being there at the right time to warn me about that car, but not if she had arranged it in the first place.

“Any idea how I’ll be able to do that?” I asked.

“I’ll think of something.”

I had thrown it out there, and she decided to play me the right way and not be too anxious for her pitch. If she had asked me then about writing a book with her, she’d be tipping her hand that it was all a con and that she already had her payoff in mind. I wondered which it was with that car. It could just as likely have been Lombard’s boys as an arrangement by Sophie, but the more I thought about it the more I was leaning towards Lombard. Sophie probably knew my routine by now, and was most likely out there looking for me when she happened to see me and the car, then realized quickly how she could use it.

We walked another two blocks without either of us saying a word. The feel of her hand on my arm and the occasional touch of her hip against mine damn near took my breath away, and she knew the effect she was having on me. We were a block away from the side street I needed to take for my job when she told me that this was where she was getting off and that she’d see me around. She let go of my arm and I watched mesmerized as she walked into a small Hispanic grocery store. For a few seconds all I could think of was the feel of her hand on my arm. After the door had closed behind her and she was out of sight, I felt a heavy sigh rumble out of me, and I trudged off to work.

Chapter 17

1979

Vincent DiGrassi opens an eye as I approach him. He’s lying propped up on his bed. Both his eyes are now open. As yellowish and bloody as they are, there’s still an alertness to them. He knows full well why I’m there. I pull a chair up next to him and sit so I’m resting the forty-five and its attached silencer on my thigh. What used to be such a robust bull of a man is now only skin and bones. He’s probably dropped eighty pounds in the past year.

“Sal send you?” he asks, his voice not much more than a croak.

“Yeah.”

He digests that, puckers up his mouth, and says in an aggrieved tone, “So you’re dealing with Sal directly now.”

“Yeah, ever since it’s been clear how sick you are.”

The little that’s left of his face folds into an ugly frown. At first I think he’s going to start bawling, but he turns his eyes towards me and stares with utter fury.

“This is bullshit,” he insists.

I shrug. What is there for me to say?

“I’m not talking to no cops. There’s no reason for Sal wanting this.”

I scratch behind an ear, smile at him sadly. “What if you end up hopped up on drugs? Who knows what you say then.

Vincent, you know this has to be done.”

“You little punk, you calling me Vincent now? What the fuck happened to Mr DiGrassi?”

I don’t say anything. His color’s not much better than gray now. He looks away, the fury fades from his eyes leaving them glassy.

“You can tell Sal I’m not going to any hospital,” he says. “I plan on dying in my own bed.”

My smile grows more genuine thinking how right he is. I realize this and force a somber look. “Your wife or kids might think differently. Mr Lombard can’t take the chance. You have to know that.”

“Don’t you fucking patronize me,” he spits out. Then, showing his self pity, he adds, “Fuck you. After everything I’ve done for you.”

“I’m sorry.”

His eyes slide sideways to look at me. “That business last year with that skirt you were supposed to hit. The one you claimed was tipped off and made a run for it.”

He was referring to Joey Lando’s inside person. The one I let get away. “Yeah, what about it?” I say.

“Sal and some of his boys thought it sounded funny. They thought maybe you’d gone soft and couldn’t hit a skirt. I went out on a limb for you and convinced them you were on the level. I hadn’t done that you’d be buried in a landfill now.”

He’s staring hard at me, trying to read inside me. He sees what he’s looking for and turns away. “What the fuck do you know,” he mutters. “They were right.”

His thick lips curl to show the contempt he feels for me.

“She was just a kid,” I explain. “It wouldn’t have been right.”

“Who the fuck are you to make that decision? A bank guard died in those robberies your rat punk buddy did and she was as responsible as the other two of them.”

He realizes then the irony in chastising me for being sentimental and not killing one of my targets while at the same time trying to talk me into doing the same now. I can see the confusion clouding up his eyes.

“You don’t have to use the forty-five,” he says after a while. “You can use the pillow instead. That way Angie and my kids can have an open casket.”

He’s bracing himself waiting. I don’t move. There’s been something I’ve been wanting to ask him for a long time.

“That hit I did right before my wedding. Who the fuck was that guy?”

His eyes come alive once he remembers the hit. He starts laughing. It’s a weak, broken-down type laugh, and before too long he starts choking on it, then breaks into a coughing fit. After he settles down, he nods and tells me, “You.”

I’m confused. I ask him what he means.

“The guy you hit was the same as you. Another hit man for Sal.”

“Why’d I hit him?”

DiGrassi makes a face showing his disgust. “’Cause he got soft. Claimed one of his targets skipped town to parts unknown without him tipping the target off. Sal didn’t believe him. Neither did I. So are you going to use the fucking pillow or what?”

I shake my head, push the barrel of the forty-five against his right temple. He’s too weak to put up any fight.

“I’m sorry, Mr DiGrassi,” I say. “But I have to do it the way Mr Lombard told me to do it.”

“Motherfucker,” he starts, “you owe me at least a call to Sal to ask him—”

Before DiGrassi can finish the sentence I pull the trigger and send a good chunk of his brain splattering against the wall. Then I shove the barrel into his dead mouth and shoot off three more rounds. Sal wants his boys to think DiGrassi was a rat. That’s the reason for the violent death. It’s easier to explain the hit of a loyal friend that way. Who knows, maybe we get lucky and the cops think that a rival did the job.

I use the sheet to wipe the blood off the gun. I give DiGrassi’s lifeless body one last look before leaving. He should’ve been grateful to me for taking him out of his misery the way I did instead of all his bitching and moaning, but I don’t want to let a last few minutes color my memory of him. Jenny’s pregnant with our third kid. She’s convinced it’s going to be a boy. I play around with the thought of Vincent March for a name, but decide against it.

DiGrassi’s wife and kids are out of the house, which makes things easier for me. With the house empty, I think about taking a shower to clean the smell of death off me, but I decide that can wait until I go to the YMCA. Besides, they have a steam room there. I let myself out the back door, same way I came in.

chapter 18

present

It was the next day when I spotted two punks working themselves up to rob a liquor store. At the time I was walking to the library and they were standing across the street, both in their early twenties, their heads shaved and their bodies thin to the point of emaciated. They were dressed the same, wearing loose-fitting khaki pants and the type of faded dungaree jackets that you used to be able to buy at army surplus stores. The one that I could see more clearly looked like he was having a tough time standing still, his face folded into a scowl and his eyes fixed in a death stare. I’d been around enough crystal meth users in prison to see immediately that these two were on the stuff. In my younger days I’d also robbed enough stores to know what they were planning even without seeing the bulge a gun made tucked inside one of their waistbands. I knew even before I saw them pull their ski masks out.

I wanted to keep walking. The last thing I wanted to do was get involved, but I stopped in my tracks, paralyzed. I could see how wired these two punks were, and all I could imagine was how trigger-happy they were going to be once inside the liquor store. The people they were going to kill in there would be more blood on my hands. Reluctantly, I found myself jogging across the street, then tapping the one with the gun on the shoulder and asking him if he had a smoke.

He turned to face me, his ski mask pulled on three quarters of the way. His eyes empty as he faced me, his exposed mouth ugly and his body twitching.

“What the fuck you want?” he demanded, his voice just as tight and wired as I had imagined.

“You got a cigarette?” I asked again.

“Yeah, I got something for you to suck on, you stupid fuck.”

He was taking the .38 from his waistband. There was no doubt from the violence shining in his eyes that he was planning to shoot me. I stepped in quickly, and with my left hand took the gun away from him while at the same time hitting him in the throat with my right. The punch left him making funny noises as he struggled to breathe. Without giving him a chance to recover, I sent him hard on his ass on the concrete sidewalk, then kicked him in the head hard enough to bounce it off the concrete and put him out.

His buddy turned around then. He was still pulling his ski mask on, and I could see the dazed look in his eyes as he first stared at me and then his buddy on the ground. Slowly comprehension worked its way in.

“You dumb motherfucker,” he near spat at me.

It turned out he also had a gun in his waistband, but he was too hyped up to see that I was holding a .38 on him. He started to pull his weapon out. I could’ve blown him to hell, but instead I flipped the .38 in my hand and rapped him in the jaw with the gun butt. The blow sent him to his knees and his own gun tumbling out of his hand. I picked it up and dropped it in my jacket pocket. He looked up at me, blood coming out pretty good from his mouth, a thick purple bruise already showing on his jaw. His eyes were big as he noticed for the first time that I was holding a .38 on him. One of his pupils looked dilated, showing that he had concussion. A little known fact: a blow to the jaw can cause a concussion.

“Get on your stomach,” I ordered.

“Hey, man, you don’t have to do this.”

I gestured with the gun that he’d better listen to me.

“If you quit acting like a dumb fuck, we can give you a cut,” he said.

It was laughable. His buddy out cold, him bleeding and with concussion, and he was still thinking of robbing the liquor store. I shook my head at him, and something about my expression made him listen to me and get down on his stomach.

A couple of people came out of the liquor store curious about the commotion. Their faces blanched when they saw the two punks bleeding as they lay on the sidewalk, and me holding a gun on them.

“Can someone please call the police?” I asked them.

Somebody already had. The next moment I heard the sirens approaching, then tires screeching. Without turning to look I knew that two cruisers had pulled to a stop behind me. I didn’t want them coming out with their weapons drawn and me holding a gun on these two. I lowered the gun I was holding and placed it by my feet, then raised my hands so they were visible. The punk on his stomach watched this, and I caught the calculating look in his eyes as he tried to decide whether it was worth making a run for it, or maybe even a dive for the gun. I heard the doors to the police cruisers being thrown open, then one of the cops yelling for nobody to move.

“Officer, I have another gun in my jacket pocket,” I yelled to them. “I took both guns off these two meth heads right before they were about to rob this liquor store.”

“That old man’s a psycho,” the punk on his stomach tried arguing, his voice barely a rasp. “We weren’t going to rob nothing, and I ain’t on any meth. This psycho attacked me and my brother for nothing. And those guns are his. I never saw them before.”

Maybe what he was saying would’ve carried more weight if he and his brother weren’t wearing ski masks. I glanced over my shoulder and saw one of the cops giving the punk a glazed-eyed stare. This cop noticed me looking at him and told me to stand where I was, then walked over to me so he could take the gun from my jacket pocket and pick up the one by my feet.

The bystanders shook their heads in response to his question. One of them told him that they came out of the store after they heard a fight outside, but didn’t see anything except me holding a gun on the two youths.

This older cop let out a tired sigh. He told me I could lower my hands, and asked me to tell him how I knew these two were planning on robbing the store. The would-be robber lying on his stomach tried arguing that they weren’t planning on robbing anyone. Another cop who was in the process of handcuffing him pushed his face into the sidewalk to shut him up.

“The two of them looked suspicious standing outside the liquor store,” I told the older cop. “When I saw a gun sticking out of that one’s waistband” – I nodded towards the one who was out cold – “and then saw them both putting on ski masks, I knew what they were going to do, and knew that if I didn’t stop them, as hyped up as they were acting, they were going to be killing people in there.”

The cop I was telling this to stared at me incredulously. “What did you do to stop them?” he asked. I told him and his incredulity only intensified. He looked as if I were telling him a joke and he was waiting for the punchline. One of the other cops recognized me then. I could see it in the shift in his expression. He pulled this older cop aside and said something to him. I was warned then to make sure to keep my hands visible, and I watched as the cop I’d been talking to went back to his squad car and got on his two-way. When he came back his attitude towards me had changed.

“Put your hands behind your back,” he told me.

“What for?”

“We need to bring all of you in and sort this out,” he said.

I caught the rapt attention on the punk’s face. Concussion or not, he knew something was up, and he was trying to figure out what it was. I looked back at the older cop in front of me, the one who wanted to handcuff me. His eyes wavered as I met his stare, and I could see some worry there. I was sure he dealt with more than his share of violent crime, but it was probably domestic stuff or kids acting stupid. I was different; a hit man with twenty-eight kills, and someone who had been all over the news for months. He wasn’t quite sure how to deal with someone like me.

“What’s there to sort out?” I asked him. “What the fuck do you think went on here with these two meth heads wearing ski masks and carrying guns?”

“We took the guns off you, not them,” he said stiffly. “And until we sort this out the only crimes we have evidence of so far are assault and battery committed by you, and possession of unlicensed firearms, also committed by you. Now put your hands behind your back. I’m not telling you again.”

There was still a lot of worry in his eyes. The other cops with him edged closer to me. I put my hands behind my back and felt a throbbing pain in my right shoulder. I must’ve hurt it earlier and didn’t realize it until now because of the adrenaline rush. I told the cop about the pain in my shoulder and asked him if I could be cuffed in front instead. He ignored me and cuffed me behind. The punk who had been on his stomach was pulled up to his feet. He smirked at me. He had no idea what was going on but he knew something was working in his favor.

While I was being put in the back seat of a squad car, an ambulance pulled up to the scene. The guy I had knocked out cold was mostly still out, and they were loading him on to a stretcher. I watched all this until the squad car I was in drove off.

At the precinct, I was brought to an interrogation room, and only then were the handcuffs taken off. They took my cell phone from me, and I was left alone for an hour until a Detective John Fallow came in. He was in his forties, balding, pasty complexion, and in his cheap suit looked more like an accountant than a cop. I told him about my shoulder hurting. He ignored me and told me we needed to clear up what happened at the liquor store, and he had me go over my account of what happened.

“Here’s the problem we have,” he said. “One of the men you accosted, Jason Mueller, has given us a completely different version of the events. The other man, his brother, Thomas Mueller, has only recently regained consciousness and is receiving medical attention, but we’ll get his version soon.”

“Did Jason tell you why he and his brother were wearing ski masks on a day when it was over sixty degrees out?” I asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact he did.” Fallow offered me a grim smile. “He claims you tried forcing them into committing armed robbery. That you made them put the ski masks on, but that when they refused to rob the liquor store you beat them both up.”

He had said that with a straight face. All I could do was stare at him and wonder where this was coming from; whether someone in the District Attorney’s office thought they could use this to send me back to prison, or whether they believed that punk’s story. Or maybe it was a matter of them wanting badly to believe his story.

Fallow and me kept up our staring contest; him offering his grim, polite smile, me trying hard to keep my temper in check.

“This is ridiculous,” I finally said, breaking the silence in the room. “If you check their arrest records, I’ll bet they’re lengthy and with other armed robberies.”

“Possibly,” he admitted, “but I doubt they’re as lengthy as your own.”

“You’ve got a bet,” I told him. “I was only arrested once.”

He smiled at that. I could see the argument forming that all the crimes I admitted to would be a far longer list than their arrest records could possibly be. Instead, he asked why I would’ve wanted to stop them from robbing the liquor store.

“I don’t understand what you’re asking,” I said, genuinely confused.

His smile turned patronizing. “If what you’re telling us is true, that you saw the two men standing outside a liquor store and you knew they were about to rob it, why would you get involved? I’m sorry, Mr March, but from what I’ve read about you, that doesn’t make sense.”

“How am I supposed to answer that?” I asked. “Are you saying that I’m incapable of doing something decent?”

He scratched the back of his head as he thought about that. “Yes, I guess that’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s not believable, Mr March, that you’d stick your neck out the way you did, nor is it believable that a man of your age and slight build could disable and overpower two armed men in their twenties, especially, as you claim, two men hopped up on crystal meth.”

“What’s hard to believe is you accepting this meth head’s story. Have you tested these two punks for drugs?”

He didn’t answer me. Just kept smiling his polite, grim smile. I took a deep breath and fought a losing battle with my anger.

“Why would I have two guns with me?” I heard myself asking him. “What the fuck was I doing with them, trying to force those two punks to take them off me to commit an armed robbery? Then what happened, they refused and I beat them up? Christ, use some fucking brains. If any of that were true – if they were such innocents – why wouldn’t they take the guns from me and hold me until the police arrived? Talk about your shitbrained fairy tales. You really think there’s a chance the other brother will tell the same story, at least if he isn’t prepped?”

“You have quite a temper, don’t you, Mr March?”

I closed my mouth. I understood then that he was only trying to get a rise out of me, trying to get me to say something that could be used later against me. It wasn’t worth saying another word to him.

He waited patiently, and only when he realized I wasn’t going to answer him, he continued, “To answer your question, I don’t fully believe Jason Mueller’s story, just as I don’t believe yours. The truth most likely lies somewhere in the middle. If I had to guess, you recruited these two brothers for the liquor store robbery, then had some sort of falling out with them at the last minute and things turned violent between you. But if that’s the case, we’re never going to find that out, and given your extremely violent past, their version of the events has to be considered more credible. While it would be nice to lock all three of you away, I’ll settle for sending you back to prison, Mr March. Or should I call you Leonard?”