Private Heat (28 page)

“That means the heavy hitters are going to be looking for Karen,” said Wendy, her smile gone.

“Not until they can talk to Paulie, and he's on a chemical night-night.”

“You think they know that—Chuck and Paulie I mean?”

“I think Chuck is a loyal guy and he's guarding his friend. If he was smart, he'd head for some banana republic.”

“If he doesn't?”

“Doesn't matter. Karen has one shot: Spill it all to the feds before there's no one left to talk about.”

“Tomorrow!”

“You bet.” I wrapped my arms around Wendy and kissed her on the side of the head. “What's for dinner?”

“Fried chicken,” she said.

“Sounds great, I'm starved.”

“Then you can go and pick it up now and get a couple of movies while you're out.”

“I got about ten bucks and a check to buy tires,” I said.

“You can cash it at the grocery store,” she said. “We need milk, bread, and some lunch meat.”

“Marg will have my head on a stick.”

“I can handle Marg,” Wendy said and rubbed my back. That's her signal that she wants loose.

I let her go. “Did Karen eat anything?” I asked.

“Soup and some tea,” she said. “I was afraid to give her anything that she could choke on.”

“I'll look in on her before I go,” I said and padded gently down the stairs. Karen lay on the big double bed in the guest room propped up with pillows like she had been in the hospital. She was still wearing Wendy's robe. Music played on the radio but was turned down low. I watched her until I was satisfied that her breathing was strong and regular.

“I'm awake,” she said, her voice strong. “I thought I saw Paulie. I thought he came for me.”

“He did,” I said. “Paulie and Chuck both came to see you, but they had to go. They were going to take you somewhere, but we decided to bring you here.”

“I like it here,” she said. “The lake is pretty. I feel peaceful here.”

“I'm going to rent a couple of movies,” I said. “Do you want to come and watch them when I get back?”

“Sure,” she said. “Would you ask Wendy to come and help me to the bathroom?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said and eased the door shut.

Wendy took the potty detail, and I headed out with my youngest son, Ben, in tow. I made a couple of laps around the neighborhood before we really left for town. There were no strange cars, and I recognized all the boats on the lake. On the way to the store, Ben held me up for a burger and a shake at the drive thru Chuck and Paulie had taxied me around.

“I thought you wanted some prime time with your dad?”

“We're out of lunch meat,” he said. “Does Karen really have eleven million dollars?” he asked as he attacked his burger.

“The people around her stole that much, but I don't think they gave any of it to Karen,” I said.

“The newspaper said she had half a million in some numbered bank account.”

“The government froze that account, towed her car away, and put a lien on her home.”

“Crime doesn't pay,” said Ben.

“I'm afraid crime pays very well, and every day,” I said.

“But they took Karen's money.”

“That's the point,” I said. “If you work every day, you can have anything you set your mind on. If you work honestly, no one can take away what you've earned.”

“If she's just a crook, how come we're working so hard to protect her?”

“There are two kinds of trouble,” I said. “The kind of trouble you set out to get into and the kind you fall into. Karen's in trouble because the man she married and the man who raised her were both crooked. Mostly, Karen is guilty of loving and trusting the wrong people.”

We hit the grocery store and the video rental box. Ben picked out a vampire chop-sockey movie. I got a romantic epic about the Irish immigration for Wendy.

Wendy had deposited Karen in the recliner. She ate the chicken, mashed potatoes, and coleslaw with the same gusto as my teenaged, grocery-destroying sons. I worried about her going under again and strangling on her massive dinner.

The vampire chop-sockey movie was actually very good. The epic romance remains a mystery to me, because I fell asleep. Just before six in the morning, Rusty nuzzled me under the chin with his cold, wet nose. I found myself stretched out on the sofa that I'd been sharing with Wendy. Wendy's lap had been replaced with two of the throw pillows, and I had been covered with the afghan.

Rusty made it clear that he had important and pressing business in the yard. I sat up. My oldest son, Jim, sat on a straight-backed kitchen chair across from the sofa with a smile on his face and the Smith riot pump in his lap.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Morning,” said Jim. Like his brothers, he is a cookie-cutter replication of his father, but he has his mother's coloring. “Ma called and said that you hadn't had much sleep.”

“Thanks for coming, I'm sure it didn't sit well with Jill.”

“Me either,” he said. “Jesus, Pop, what are you doing here?”

Rusty nuzzled my knees. He had panic in his eyes. “I gotta let the dog out.” When I stood up, Rusty rocketed down the stairs to the landing and stared at the doorknob.

“You're scaring the shit out of Ben and Daniel.”

I opened the door. Rusty hustled out and set to hosing the red barberry bushes at the front of the house.

“You said that all you were doing was insurance work.”

“Your mother and her crew collared a coke dealer and busted a floating crap game at the paper mill last month.”

“She didn't bring them home.”

Rusty galloped across the yard into the garden and jumped a rabbit. The race was on. A silver Taurus turned into the drive.

I walked into the kitchen and retrieved the Colt from the top of the refrigerator. “Cover me through the window,” I said, “but keep the shotgun low unless you need it.”

“You haven't heard a thing I said.”

“Heard it all, son.” I punched out the magazine and locked the slide to the rear. “And I think I listened very politely.” I oiled the slide rails with a can of oil also kept on the top of the refrigerator. “And slide the window open. Don't mind about the screen. Your mother's cat has it all clawed up anyway.” I banged the magazine home, let the slide fall, and eased the hammer down. The Taurus crunched up on the gravel and stopped in front of the door. I slid the pistol into my waistband just behind my right hip and made my face into a smile. Too late to find shoes, I went out the door in my socks.

Elizabeth, the late Mr. Van Pelham's receptionist, sat at the wheel of the Taurus. I walked around the back of the car to the driver's window. Nobody in the back seat. The trunk was tightly closed, and I read the plate. I did a quick scan of the yard—no other cars or pedestrians on the road. Rusty dug furiously at the side of the shed. The driver's window slid down. “By golly, good morning, Elizabeth,” I said. “What brings you out here so early in the morning?”

She wore slacks, a sweatshirt, and looked as if she hadn't slept. “You know what happened to Martin,” she said, the words choked. She turned to dig in her purse.

I bent at the waist, rested my left hand on the window opening, and slid my right hand—just the tips of my fingers—into my hip pocket. “Yes. What an awful thing.”

Elizabeth produced a hanky and wiped her eyes, then her nose. “Martin made some stills from the security camera in the reception office and told me to mail them to you. There's no letter, just the pictures. Given the circumstances, I thought it best to deliver them myself.”

“That's very kind of you. You had my address?”

“Martin had it,” she said. She handed me an envelope. “They are pictures of a man who came to see him yesterday afternoon. He said his name was Vladimir. He didn't give me a last name. Martin was very upset when he left.” Elizabeth's eyes welled up and she sobbed into her hanky.

I opened the envelope. Mr. Van Pelham's visitor wore a rather bad wig and horn-rimmed glasses; nonetheless, I recognized him—Colonel Volody Rosenko, GRU, Soviet Military Intelligence.

“So who's this?” said Jim as he inspected the pictures.

“Beats me,” I said. “Some fella who visited Martin Van Pelham just before his car blew up. I'll turn the pictures over to the police when I'm in town today.”

“Finally!”

“Leave me the shotgun and go home and get some rest. You have a wife and two little girls to take care of.”

Jim laid the shotgun on the counter. “You were family first,” he said.

I hugged him. He hugged back. I patted him on the back. “And now I'm family second,” I said. “Go home and take care of the people that depend on you. I have to go check on Karen.”

“She's out on the deck. I pulled the curtain so the light wouldn't wake you up.”

“Oh, happy day.”

“It's all right. She's wearing mom's robe and that dopey straw hat you wear on the lawn mower. Besides, Walt's already out there in the weeds somewhere.”

“Walt's outside?”

“He got here when the sun came up. He said that you'd know where to find him, and that he didn't care if he got paid.”

“Denny come by?”

“Walt said Denny had an exam today.”

Jim left. I stumbled into the shower. When I emerged with a fresh shave and my teeth brushed, I could hear Rusty working on the screen door. I put a cup of water into the microwave and let the dog in while I still had some screen left.

My sinuses reminded me that I lived by the lake, so I stepped over to the kitchen cupboard for a decongestant and took my daily multiple vitamin as well. Rusty walked over and sat at my feet, looking up with expectant eyes. He got a treat every morning when I took my vitamin. Unfortunately for him, it was monthly heartworm pill day. Heartworm pills come in flavors, both chewy and hard. We'd tried them all, and Rusty hated all of them.

I shook out the aspirin-sized pill, and he wagged his tail.

“Okay, meatball,” I said, “open da woof.”

He looked away.

I patted Rusty on the head, then lifted his chin to a point.

“Say aaaawff,” I told him and wormed my right thumb between his massive molars. Rusty conceded the point, but lolled his tongue back to cover his throat. I flattened out his tongue with the fingers of my left hand. With the path open, I dropped the pill to the back of his throat, gave it a push with my finger, then held his mouth shut. He swallowed.

“That's a good boy,” I said and scratched him behind his ears. He stood up, sneezed, and shook his head, making his ears flap loudly. His tail wagged so vigorously that his butt swayed, as he stepped up to the refrigerator. I rinsed my hands in the sink and dried them with a paper towel. From the refrigerator I flipped him a slice of bologna. He snatched it deftly from the air and scarfed it down.

“Randy would have just beaten the dog and left it screaming,” said Karen from behind me as she shuffled in from the deck, the robe we had put on her the previous morning over the terry robe from the guest room.

“You get mellower as you get older,” I said.

“No,” she said. “That wasn't it. It was the steroids. They made him mean, crazy. It's like he was always
looking
for a reason to go off.” She rubbed her forehead with her hand.

I didn't have a tactful reply, so I said, “Well, you're up early. Can I get you a cup of coffee? tea? toast?”

“What happened to my face?”

“You choked on something while you were out. The little capillaries in your face broke while you were straining to breathe. My oldest son tried to swallow a whole cookie when he was two. I couldn't shake or jar it loose. Wendy finally pried it out with her finger. He looked just like you. It'll fade away in a week or so.”

Karen smiled. “Coffee!” she said.

“Instant all right?”

“Perfect,” she said.

“Cream? Sugar?”

“Hot and black,” she said and shuffled back out to the deck.

I toasted her an English muffin—put it on a plate with a butter knife and some cream cheese—and delivered it with the coffee. The sun had not yet defeated the night mist that hung like a halo about the shoreline of the lake. A mallard couple and their ducklings paddled about near the dock.

Karen set the coffee on the deck next to the chaise lounge where she'd curled up. With the plate on her lap she set to the muffin with the butter knife. I left her at peace and got my own cup of coffee.

I found the latex gloves I bought the night before lying on the counter. I snapped on a pair and picked up the shotgun, still damp from the steam in the bathroom. I wiped it dry and retired to the laundry room to tackle the bags of trash that Fay's wife had been so intent on discarding.

The first bag was not a total surprise, not like it might have been. This is often a truly nasty detail—hypodermic needles, dildos, and fish guts. This one was just filled with bundles of sports betting cards.

They listed college and professional basketball teams and the point spreads set by the Las Vegas sports books. At the bottom of each card was a notice that they were novelty items and not meant for gambling purposes. They also said that the player had to make at least five picks for no less than one dollar a pick. I found a sports section among the papers that I'd brought down to spread on the floor. The listed picks on the cards were for the upcoming week.

Tax returns tumbled out of the next bag. They went back several years. None for Arnold Fay. I sorted them by name and found that none of them had returns for this past year. All of the returns were for people who claimed earnings of more than eight or nine thousand dollars but none had earned more than eleven thousand dollars. Virtually all of them had been employed by Furniture City Temporary Service at the same small group of service businesses and job shops—the ones that we had discovered belonged to Campbell, Van Pelham, and Fay on our trip to the County Clerk's Office. I got a telephone book and attempted to locate the businesses. None of them were listed.