The Reckoning (17 page)

The recently widowed wife of Frankie Maranzano was a ripe Latina number by the name of Delores, sleek as a seal pup, sexy as a pair of Louboutin stilettos, as deep down cold as glacier ice. Although she was sitting in Frankie's Eames chair behind Frankie's huge desk—a slab of black granite held up by two Lions of Saint Mark acquired illegally from a church in Venice—and all the splendor of Fountain Square lay spread out before her through the plate glass windows of her ten-thousand-square-foot penthouse suite in the Memphis, a glittering obelisk visible to all of Cap City—in spite of all this material splendor, Delores Maranzano was not a happy woman.

She absently stroked the silky pelt of an emaciated Chihuahua named Frankie Twice—a typical Chihuahua, fifty percent hate and fifty percent tremble—but since she had arranged for his vocal cords to be sliced, Frankie Twice was now a mute Chihuahua. Both she and Frankie Twice were staring out through a glass wall at the main living area of her suite, and not with loving affection.

The reason for their dissatisfaction—the reasons in plural, in
triplicate
—were out there in the open-concept living room of her penthouse in all their greasy-assed cigar-chomping glory, three syndicated thugs by the name of Desi Munoz, Mario La Motta, and Julie Spahn.

They were all recent graduates of Leavenworth Prison, courtesy of the late Byron Deitz, and now they were slouching about in various states of undress and inebriation on her previously pristine white sectional couches, scattering beer cans and pizza crumbs and cigar ashes all over her snow-white wall-to-wall carpeting, and talking in aggrieved tones about some fucking crisis that had come upon them and what they should do about it.

Circumstances—namely the fear of sudden death—had forced her to accept Mario and his two business partners as the inheritors of all of Frankie's business concerns, with the full and forceful agreement of Frankie's former associates around the country, an agreement worked out between Julie Spahn and Anthony Torinetti Sr., known as Tony Tee, who operated a waste management business out of Miami.

Although Delores was born in Guayaquil, she had always been attracted to Italian men, starting with Al Pacino in
Scent of a Woman
. She was ruefully aware, watching Mario La Motta through the wall of glass that separated Frankie's office from the living area, that although he was Italian, he looked nothing like Al Pacino.

Mario's head was perfectly round, perfectly bald, except for his thick black eyebrows, which he grew long and brushed upward, giving him a permanently surprised look.

His body, overrevealed in his wifebeater, was apelike in shape, as cold and white as sour milk, and covered in thick black hair.

Seated at an angle to Mario were his—her—other two business partners: Desi Munoz, not quite as pretty as Mario but hacked from the same slab of rancid fat, and on the other side of the triangle, Julie Spahn, spindly and birdlike, with a chicken-skin neck made for wringing and the sharp flinty eyes of a raptor. Spahn was the guy currently holding the floor, an iPhone clutched in one of his claws.

“So was the kid hurt?” La Motta wanted to know. Spahn shook his head.

“Not Little Anthony,” he said, holding up the iPhone, the display showing a lean hard-looking older white guy, barefoot, in a black tee and white slacks. It was taken on a beach somewhere, a flash shot, taken at night, and the man was staring—no,
burning
—into the camera.

The image was shaky and it was hard to make out the details—the shooter, Tony Torinetti, was backpedaling and peeing himself at the time it was taken, although the three Mafia guys didn't know that. But you could see the glint of serious and very effective hate in the man's eyes, a killing hate. It scorched through the camera lens and sort of sizzled there on the screen.

Munoz shook his head, blowing smoke from his cigar and littering the couch with ashes.

“Tony Tee says his son's okay. Shook up pretty good, but not hurt. But the other two, they're fucked. One a the kids, this Nate Kellerman mutt, his knee's like totally whacked. That guy—the dude in the picture—did some sorta karate thing and blew the kid's knee apart. I mean, it was like ripping the leg out of a roasted turkey. He's never gonna play ball again. He'll be in a fucking wheelchair for weeks.”

“That's the Notre Dame guy?” asked Munoz.

“Not anymore,” said Julie Spahn. “And he was second string with the Fighting Irish.”

“Fuck the Fighting Irish,” said La Motta. “What about the other kid? Ramey whatever?”

“Don't know about him,” said Munoz. “Anthony Junior was saying the Ramey kid basically got his teeth rammed halfway up the front of his face. Nose is all busted up, upper jaw shattered, all his upper teeth knocked out. Head went back so sharp he got nerve damage in the back of his neck. Lucky he didn't lose an eye. They're both inna private clinic down in Daytona right now.”

“Fuck me,” said La Motta. “That's one hell of a shot to the mouth. Banker guy's got skills.”

“A private clinic?” asked Munoz. “How'd they get there?”

“The banker guy,” said Spahn. “The dude in the picture here, he called some kinda private service, they scooped the kids up right off the beach into an ambulance. Daytona's only fifty miles from St. Augustine. Banker paid the whole thing too. Including the emergency stuff at the clinic.”

“What about the cops?”

“That's the thing, Mario,” said Spahn, looking at the phone screen. “No cops involved. No charges either way. Everybody involved wanted it kept under the rose. The Kellerman kid, his folks are away in Europe, and there had already been a beef with the cops on account of some house party they were having, and his older brother didn't want the cops there again, because it was like an unprovoked assault on the old guy—”

“Some fucking old guy,” said Munoz, spluttering out pulpy cigar bits, laughing, making a sound like a toilet backing up.

“Anyway,” said Spahn, going back to La Motta, who was the muscle in the room, “the upshot is no cops, all hushed up pretty good, no charges or lawsuits, and the banker is picking up all the—”

“What's his fucking name again?” asked La Motta. Spahn thought about it.

“Sinclair, I think. Morgan Sinclair. Looked him up, retired guy, used to be a money changer—”

“What,” said Munoz, “like money laundry?”

“No. Currency and shit. Buy Euros and sell deutsche marks and pocket the vig,” said Spahn, who understood these things pretty well.

Munoz and La Motta mulled that over.

“Okay,” said La Motta. “If Tony Tee's kid is okay, other than being scared shitless, and the other two assholes aren't squat to us, why are we even hearing about it?”

Spahn put the phone down, picked up his G and T, swirled it around, making the ice clink, taking his time to get his answer right. “Well, what Tony Tee is saying is, he wants this Sinclair guy…chastised.”

“Why?” asked Munoz. “I mean, why go looking for more shit to step in?”

La Motta was in line with the sentiment. “Yeah, and if Tony Tee wants the old fuck…what was it?”

“Chastised,” said Munoz, who liked the word.

“Yeah,
chastised
, then he's got people down there. Miami's got more zipperheads than fucking Palermo, send a couple of them up to this beach place, take care of it. Nothing to do with us.”

“Tony Tee is asking it as…a favor.”

The word
favor
had a certain vibration as it floated there in the middle of the room. La Motta glanced over in the direction of Frankie's office, saw Delores and Frankie Twice sitting there, staring back at them.

“Hey, Delores, whyn't you take that rat dog and go do some shopping, do lunch or something like that. Okay?”

“We're happy here,” she said with a thin smile. La Motta considered her for a moment, thinking
Gonna have to deal with her soon
.

“Yeah, well go anyway, willya, buy some jewelry or something. We gotta do some business here, you follow?”

Delores sighed, stood up, gathered Frankie Twice and stuffed him into her purse, got her car keys, checked the mirror in the hall, and left without saying good-bye, closing the door behind her gently. The three men watched her go, and after a moment Spahn said, “Mario, I don't think Delores is all that fucking happy here.”

“Fuck Delores,” said La Motta, “and fuck Frankie Twice too. Only dog puts out more fumes than that rug rat is a greyhound.”

“You need to think about her,” said Spahn.

“I am. I am, Julie. So what about this
favor
for Tony Tee. What exactly is it?”

“This Sinclair guy, he's got some serious fucking skills, like karate and all that Chink shit, he kicked the crap out of Little Anthony's buddies, crippled them, and, according to Tony Tee, he scared the living
fuck
out of Little Anthony. Kid was crying on the phone. Tony Tee, he don't like to hear his kid crying like a fucking pussy. So he figures he's gonna blood the kid, let him dip his beak inna blood, make an example.”

“I can see that,” said La Motta. “But why us? Why this
fucking
favor?”

“Tony Tee wants to make this…memorable. For Little Anthony. To make the point with the kid, stiffen his dick, make a man out of him.”

“Yeah? So?”

“So he wants to borrow one of our guys.”

“Yeah? One of our guys? Who?”

“Tito.”

There followed a shocked silence, broken only by the sound of Mario La Motta trying to breathe and Julie Spahn swirling the ice in his G and T.

“Tito Smeraglia? The
Istriano
? No fucking way,” said La Motta after a couple of minutes. “Anyway, he's not even in the country. He's…where the fuck, Desi?”

“In Trieste,” said Munoz, still trying to breathe. “Seeing his mother, she's got the cancer up her ass. How'd Tony Tee even
hear
about Tito?”

“My bet?” said Spahn. “Fucking Delores.”

“Delores?” said La Motta. “How would she even know about a guy like Tito? We brought him into the operation, recruited him off those fucking Slovenians, Croats, whatever the fuck country over there. He wasn't even one of Frankie's people.”

“Delores
listens
,” said Spahn. “We were talking about Tito a coupla weeks back at the table, you know, that thing he did for us in Montreal, that Frog lawyer and his wife?”

La Motta brought it back, and considered it. “The correction thing? Jeez, she'd sure as shit remember that. Was she around?”

“Delores is
always
around,” said Spahn, who didn't like women. Or men either.

“Why would Delores tell Tony Tee that story?”

“Tony Tee was sweet on Delores, Mario, even when Frankie was alive. I figure she's keeping him on the simmer, thinking maybe she can use him someday. So she feeds him this Tito story—you know, information is coin, like—and of course he's gonna remember what Tito can do if you let him loose.”

“Tito's…too fucking extreme,” said Munoz, “especially for this Sinclair guy. All that's needed here is a good professional beating. Break the guy up. Let Anthony get in a few hits, get his balls back. Tito's too…too much for this job.”

“We can't afford
not
to do a favor for Tony Tee neither,” said Spahn. “We're still figuring how things work down here and we need him on our side, need him to owe us something. So we make a decision. We tell him no, he'll want to hear that fast. Miami guys always like to get their bad news fast.”

“Tito's too valuable,” said Munoz. “He's a specialized weapon. We use Tito to send messages, to let people know the cost of fucking us over. We use him too much…no. I say no fucking way.”

Spahn took that in, turned to La Motta. “I'm saying we gotta do this,” Spahn said. “We gotta keep Tony Tee happy, show him some respect. He went to bat for us on this deal, brought the other guys around. Now he's asking for some payback. So, Mario, one for and one against. It's up to you.”

La Motta sucked on his cigar. It had gone out but he hadn't noticed until just now. “Fuck it,” he said, pulling out a matchbook. “Tony Tee wants Tito, give him Tito. Give him the whole Tito Smeraglia Experience. That's one fucking favor he'll never forget. We're showing him respect, show we're stand-up guys, onna team like. Plus we'll have something on Tony Tee, on all the Miami people—leverage or whatever. They'll owe us.”

The other two were nodding at this. It never hurt to do a friend a favor, especially if it gave you a fishhook in his balls for later.

La Motta put the match to his soaking wet cigar, sucked on the end. It smoldered and fell apart. He brushed it off his lap, looked around the apartment.

“Fucking Delores. Look at this rug. The sofa here. Shit everywhere. Place useta have some class. Now it looks like a Dumpster. What does that lazy bitch do all day?”

“She listens, Mario,” said Spahn. “She listens.”

Three thirty-four Sable Basilisk Street turned out to be a Federal-style townhouse in a row of similar houses built along a shady street across from the southwestern border of the Confederate Graveyard.

The graveyard, a former battlefield, was a hilly grass-covered triangular field fenced off by an undulating ribbon of black wrought iron spears surrounding acres of the Civil War dead, its crosses and barrows and tombs rising up and falling away into the autumn mists. This was a grim rock-filled terrain studded with live oaks and Georgia pines, each man's grave a white cross or a Star of David marked by a small Confederate flag fluttering on a black spear. There were also hundreds of low barrows, redbrick mounds half buried in the earth, tightly sealed and barred and covered with mold.

Looking at them, Nick remembered the night almost two years ago that Rainey Teague had been extracted alive from one of them, a barrow containing the body of a man named Ethan Ruelle, who had been killed in a duel on Christmas Eve in 1921. Whatever was going on in Niceville, for Nick at least, it had all started that god-awful night.

Beyond the barrows there were a few whited sepulchers made to look like Grecian temples or Roman tombs. Each one was a dim cold crypt populated by the glorious dead, and on each lintel was the carved name of a Niceville family—the Haggards, the Teagues, the Mercers, the Ruelles, the Cottons, and the Walkers—the founding families who had made Niceville what it was on this golden afternoon.

They pulled up in front of 334 and Mavis worked the Suburban into a space that should have been too damned small for a Prius; Nick was duly impressed. Mavis shut the truck down and they looked up at the yellow limestone townhouse for a moment. The dusty sash windows were shuttered and the front yard was running to weeds. A litter of faded circulars lay scattered across the stone porch in front of a heavy wooden door painted a dark English green. It had shining brass fittings that looked new and a stained-glass fan window that matched the stone arch that sheltered the porch.

A discreet
FOR RENT
sign on the lawn carried a number and the name
www.YarvikProperties.com
. The place had that tired look that a lot of rentals get. Too many people coming and going, no one really giving a damn. There was an attached garage in the same yellow limestone, with two wooden gates painted the same deep green as the front door. The brass handles on the gates looked brand-new, but the chain holding them shut was a rusted wreck and the padlock hanging from it looked like it should have gone to the home for retired padlocks back in the Eisenhower years.

“Looks empty,” said Mavis.

“It does. Let's check it out.”

They got out and walked up the pathway to the front door, stopping there to let their instincts work on the place. What their instincts got was
silence.
The house was calm, still, radiating nothing back, a house with a clear conscience.

Sunlight filtered down through the trees lining the street. A dog was barking in the distance. Across the street in the graveyard a worker was cutting the grass with a riding mower, the sound a distant purring murmur.

Nick moved across the lawn and examined the garage lock. Although the chain was new, the padlock was still firmly locked in.

He tugged hard at the chain and the doors creaked, but they stayed shut.

He looked at the gravel drive in front of the doors. A litter of dry leaves and dust coated the drive. Nothing larger than a dog or a possum had disturbed it in weeks. If there was a gigantic navy blue Cadillac Fleetwood inside this garage, somebody had slipped it in under the door.

Yarvik isn't here
, he thought.
The place just feels…empty
.

“I'll find the back,” said Nick, looking up at Mavis. “I'll click the radio when I'm in position. Then you knock on the front door. Knock hard. Remember to stand aside, Mavis.”

“Remind me again why we're not just using the key and walking in?”

“Because neither of us is alone and there may be neighbors watching us right now, so we have to follow the rules for legal entry, especially if Yarvik is in there and we end up shooting him dead. I'm not perjuring either of us in a courtroom when a little due process makes it all legal.”

“What if I just close my eyes?”

“Mavis, just bang on the door when I click you, okay?”

“I will. If there's no answer?”

“I'll hear you. If you get nothing, I'll bang on the back door. If we both get nothing I'll come around and we can use the master key.”

And that's what they did.

It took Nick a while to squeeze down the narrow space between 334 and the next townhouse, stepping carefully over a tangle of old wooden fence slats and piled-up leaves.

He came through a rusty gate that groaned when he pushed it open. There was a tiny backyard, no grass, just cobblestones surrounded by a rickety slat fence. There was nothing in the yard but dead leaves and an ancient gliding rocker made of brown wicker, sagging into twigs and rusted iron.

He came around and stood in the middle of the yard, looking up at a narrow wooden porch; a tattered screen door; a second door behind that, wooden, painted a faded yellow; and beside the porch a large picture window staring blankly out at the yard, covered with a Venetian blind, twisted and filthy. What little he could see through the slats was all dust and darkness, a dim suggestion of bare rooms and gloomy interior halls.

There was a coating of dust on the steps and on the floor of the porch itself. It looked untouched, except for some small scrapes in the dust that could have been made by a possum or a skunk. The house gave off nothing, an inert hulk. No subtle hum that houses seemed to give off if there were people inside, even people trying hard to be quiet.

He pulled out his radio, double-clicked the send button, and got a double click back. He took out his Colt, cocking the hammer back as he did so, and put a foot on the back stairs, lightly, no weight at all, waiting for…waiting for
anything
.

Less than three feet away from Nick, on the other side of the door, in the gloomy kitchen of the townhouse, a naked bloodstained man the size and build of a Kodiak bear was breathing softly through his half-open mouth and aiming a heavy Kimber .45 pistol at the middle of the door, waiting for the cop out there to step up onto the porch, which would bring his chest into the line of fire. The man's name was Maris Yarvik, but he wasn't Maris Yarvik anymore.

Mavis had stepped back and away from the line of the front door. She had her Beretta out, the safety off, and all her attention focused on the house. She was imaging the interior, trying to get a sense of it, trying to
feel
her way into it.

And she was now getting…something. It was in the air, a muted high-pitched whine, coming from nowhere and everywhere, like cicadas in summer, that continuous electrical hum.

Then it came to her that perhaps what she was hearing actually
were
cicadas humming, and she smiled to herself and got ready to pound on the front door hard enough to shake the hinges of Hell.

Sixty seconds had ticked past since Nick had first taken a position at the bottom of the back porch steps. On the sixty-first second he heard the forceful thudding of Mavis Crossfire's heavy fist on the front door.

The house was vibrating from the force of her blows. He could feel the vibrations coming up through the wooden step under his right foot. He could hear her saying
Police department, open up. Police, open up.

They both waited.

No response.

Mavis went through it again—pounding on the door,
Police, this is the police, open the door—
and she got the same result.

Nothing.

Now it was his turn.

He carefully put his weight on his forward foot, tense and ready, and he came up onto the first step.

And then one more.

His attention was fixed on that faded door panel. He reached the porch floor, stepped off to the left to get his body out of the line of fire—

For the thing that lived inside Maris Yarvik, everything was illuminated and clear. The biological on the other side of the door was level with the pistol, but had moved off to one side, as if it could read her thoughts. She moved the pistol to compensate for this action and felt sure that she had reacquired the correct aim point.

Nick raised a hand to knock on the door, and when he did he felt a kind of magnetic radiation coming off the wooden panel. He moved his hand closer to the door and he felt a tingle in his palm. The hairs along his forearm began to rise.

He held his hand a few inches off the panel, thinking
There is something waiting on the other side of this door—

Nick leveled the Colt at the door, steadied his grip, reached out with his left hand, palm open, to slam it against the door, and his cell phone rang. The sound made him jerk and he almost squeezed the trigger of the Colt, so tightly had he been holding it, already fully committed to firing. He swore, swore again even more creatively, and pulled the phone from his jacket pocket.

“What? What the
fuck
what?”

“Nick?”
It was Beau.
“Nick, you okay?”

Nick took a breath, trying to counter the adrenaline surge, backing away from the door, getting off the porch—going down a step, but keeping his eye and his gun on the door—
Something is in there, something is waiting.
His heart was hammering against his ribs, his throat felt tight—was he
afraid
?

“Beau, look, sorry—caught me at a bad moment—”

His radio came to life. Mavis calling. “Nick, what's up?”

“Beau, wait one—” He keyed the radio. “Nick, I heard your cell. Are we going in?”

“I have a call from Beau—”

“What's he want?”

“I don't know yet—wait one, Mavis.”

He came back to the cell. “Beau, what is it?”

“They think they've got Maris Yarvik.”

“What? In custody?”

“Not yet. But they located his Caddy and they're pretty sure he's in it. Air Unit spotted it in the trolley switching yards off Long Reach Boulevard. It was partially under the roundabout roof, but Air was able to get enough of a sideways look to make the plate. I have units there now, perimeter sealed and secure, but they're hanging back—”

“Why?”

“Air has a thermal sensor and it's telling them that there's someone inside. Big hot return, but no definition. And there's a heartbeat, but it's real odd, real rapid—”

“So it's a medical emergency. Go in.”

“Well, Tig is thinking maybe we need the BDU people. A stressed-out heart rate might mean that Yarvik is sitting in there with a bomb in his lap. They can't get a visual because the windows are all tinted. What do you think?”

“Tig's the CO.”

“He says this is on you. Your case.”

Yellow rat bastard.

“Okay. Hold off. Call up the BDU, but have them stand off. We'll be there in ten minutes.”

“Where are you?”

“At 334 Sable Basilisk. We're moving now.”

He came back around the side of the house at a run, leaping over the pile of fence slats, coming back to the front yard. Mavis was on the lawn, her Beretta still in her hand.

“What's happening?”

Nick told her as they headed for the Suburban. She got in behind the wheel and started it up, but she didn't get rolling immediately because Nick was still staring up at the townhouse.

“What is it?”

“I'd like to put a squad here. Right away.”

“Okay. I'll get Central on it. Can I ask why?”

“Yeah. There's something in that house, Mavis. I could feel it.”

“You think Yarvik is in there?”

Nick shook his head. “No. I don't know. But
something
is.”

“You want the squad guys to go in?”

He thought about it for a second. “No. But I want them to seal it up front and back. Fast as they can. Nothing goes in and nothing comes out. Front and back, sides and roof. Windows, doors, chimneys, mailboxes. Seal it all up. Make sure they stay right here until we tell them to stand down. No pee breaks or going for donuts.”

“Okay. Done.”

She put the truck in gear, worked it out of the parking spot, hit the lights and siren, and got onto Central, calling it in. Nick's cell beeped, an incoming text. It was from Kate:

Nick I know you're busy Rainey is at it again and now we can't find him or axel phones dead no GPS either they were at boudreau park can you send someone to check love K

Nick braced himself against the door, managed to text Kate back:

Yes will send squad to look right now mavis is with me going to the trolley yards may have found our guy will call you when things calm down

“What was that,” asked Mavis. Nick told her and she got on to Dispatch, spoke for a moment, clicked off. “They've got a squad a block away. Rolling on it now. They'll report in.”

“Thanks, Mavis.”

“Kid's a hat-full, isn't he?”

The question was rhetorical. Nick looked at his watch, thinking he had told Beau ten minutes.

It took them seven.

The Niceville trolleys operated out of a big railyard center that had once served the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line. Now it was the repair center and switchyard for the twenty-seven navy blue and gold trolleys that formed the main public transit system for Niceville.

When Nick and Mavis powered into the yard, bouncing over the track lines and scattering gravel as Mavis braked to a stop, there were nine cop cars, black-and-whites and a couple of unmarked Caprices, set up in a containment arc around the south rim of the big circular storage shed that housed the trolleys when they weren't in service.