The Undertaker (49 page)

The big lawyer towered over Hardin, raising the automatic and taking careful aim at the side of the Senator's head. Even in the dim light, I saw Hardin's eyes grow wide with fear as he realized Tinkerton really did intend to pull the trigger this time. The big lawyer seemed to glow triumphantly now. All the talking and the arguing had been mere preface, so had the beating and the blood. Tinkerton needed those to humiliate the Senator. It would not do to simply kill him. If that was all Tinkerton wanted, he could have shot all of us back in the office or as soon as we entered the park. No, first he had to drag Hardin down to his own level. Then he could kill him, make it look like a street crime, and calmly walk away with at least a shred of self- respect. That was the depths to which Tinkerton had now fallen. He intended to pull the trigger and then turn the gun on us.

Tinkerton was a good fifteen feet away from me now. If I could get to him, at least as far as his legs, I might have a chance before he turned the gun on us. If I could grab a leg and maybe knock him off balance, I could pull him down to the ground with me. It was a desperate thing to try, but I didn't see any choice. Sandy must have had the same idea. From her knees, she swung around and tossed her heavy shoulder bag at him as if she was doing the hammer throw. I shoved her aside and went for Tinkerton, scrambling across the grass on all fours as fast as I could move. He saw the big leather bag flying at him, but he raised his arm and managed to block it. The heavy bag did knock him off balance, but that wasn't enough. Before I got halfway to him, he had his gun arm pointed at Sandy and me again. And from his angry expression, I knew he was going to shoot.

As the Glock lined up on my head, I heard a “Phutt! Phutt! Phutt!” as the soft, coughing sound of a silenced pistol cut through the night air of the park.

My heart stopped. First, I figured I was dead, but I was still kneeling on the grass, no worse for wear. My eyes then went to Hardin, expecting to see him crumpled on the ground with his brains all over the grass, but he was still kneeling, terrified, but apparently he was okay, too. Then I thought of Sandy. I turned my head, terrified that Tinkerton had carried out his threat and shot her first. No, she was still sitting on the grass, also unharmed. Finally, I looked up at Tinkerton. The big lawyer's jaw mouth hung open and his expression of total victory melted into shock and confusion. His hand went to his chest and he looked down at three neat red holes that formed a nearly perfect triangle in the center. Blood ran thick and dark over his fingers. The Glock slipped from his fingers and fell on the grass at his feet. He wobbled back and forth. His knees buckled. His eyes rolled up in his head, and he toppled forward on the grass like a big felled oak, landing on his face only inches from where Hardin was kneeling.

Hardin, Sandy, and I found ourselves staring at each other, then down at Tinkerton's body without the slightest clue as to what had happened to him. The big lawyer had been shot, but by whom? That was when we saw a dark, hulking figure slowly emerge from the bushes and walk toward us, backlit by the distant glow of the city. Whoever he was, his left hand leaned heavily on a cane and his right hand held a long-barreled chrome pistol that also had a silencer screwed to the end of its barrel.

“You know, Ace,” the man finally said. “You can get yourself in some of the damnedest fixes.”

“Oh, my God! It's Gino!” Sandy jumped up and ran to him, throwing her arms around his waist and hugging him.

“Hey!” he growled affectionately at her. “Easy with the freakin’ leg, you ditz!”

“Who are you?” Hardin demanded to know.

“You okay, Sweat Pea?” Parini completely ignored the Senator as he held Sandy out at arm's length and looked her up and down. “You ain't hurt or nuthin’?” He went on, ignoring Hardin and ignoring me too, but I expected that. Finally, Parini looked down at Hardin. “The name's Parini, Senator. Gino Parini.”

“Parini?” Hardin puffed, taking some newly found confidence from the fact he was still alive. “You're Jimmy Santorini's hit man.”

Parini glanced down at Tinkerton's body, then over at Hardin. “Given the general situation here, I'd be careful with the name-calling, if I was you.”

Hardin must have figured that the statement did not bode well for his future. Slowly, his hand reached out for Tinkerton's Glock, which was lying on the grass next to the dead lawyer.

“I wouldn't do that, if I were you, Senator,” Parini warned as he waved his .45 in Hardin's general direction, then motioned for him to move back. “Looks to me like you're the one keepin’ the questionable company here.”

“Uh, look, Parini... Gino -– may I call you Gino? Great!” Hardin turned on his famous, if now somewhat battered, TV smile.

Parini chuckled. “That smooth-guy shit don't work so well when you're missing a couple of teeth, Senator. And all that blood? You're gonna need some serious fixin’ up.”

“Never mind that, Parini,” Hardin tried to focus. “You see that briefcase over there?” He pointed at the alligator leather case lying in the grass next to Tinkerton. “There's seven-and-a-half million dollars inside. Take it. It's all yours.”

“Seven and a half? All mine?” Parini feigned surprise. “Gee, thanks, for what?”

“For cleaning up this little mess for me.”

“Cleaning up? This… mess?” Gino looked confused.

“Yeah, get rid of him.” He pointed at Tinkerton's body. “And get rid of these two, too. Do that for me and the briefcase is yours, okay?”

Parini limped painfully over to where Tinkerton lay, picked up the briefcase, and set it next to his foot. “Get rid of ‘em? Didn't I hear you and this crud Tinkerton talking about that very same thing just a few minutes ago?” Parini bent down, reached into Tinkerton's jacket pocket, and pulled out the three flash drives. “All because of these things huh?”

Hardin looked at the disks and began to panic. “Look!” He bristled. “Do you want the damned money or don't you?”

“Me? You know, I think I'll pass. You see, I'm FBI, Senator, undercover. Remember those guys you never called? The FBI really does indeed have an Organized Crime Strike Force, and I'm on it. That means you're busted.”

“The FBI? You?” Hardin blinked. “What about all those men you killed?”

Parini laughed as his wise-guy Jersey accent began to fade. “Reputations can be funny things. Sometimes they're deserved, and sometimes they're not.”

Hardin looked up at Parini and the realization slowly sank in. “You can't touch me.” He smiled all too knowingly and shook his head. “You can't prove I did a damned thing.”

“Want to bet?” Parini smiled. “I have Panozzo's accounting records, the ones that show all the payoffs, including yours. I have a briefcase full of cash and diamonds with your fingerprints all over it. And as the
fait accompli
, I have this whole conversation on tape,” he said, patting his jacket pocket. “But none of that matters. When Rico finds out how badly you screwed this thing up, you'll be the one begging for Witness Protection, if you don't want to end up in that cement mix over in Paramus.”

Parini bounced the flash drives up and down in his hand, taunting Hardin.

“Personally, Senator, I'm glad this operation is finally over. It's taken four years, and if I never see Italian food again, it'll be too soon. However, we did put Jimmy “the stump” in Marion, we shut down Tinkerton's security operation. And with Panozzo's accounting files, they'll need a whole new wing at Marion. I can just see you in a cell right in the middle of all the boys. You ever played “drop the soap”, Senator? Well, you're gonna be taking some real interesting showers for the next ten-to-twenty.”

Hardin saw his world crashing down around him and he panicked. His eyes darted back and forth between Parini, the flash drives, and the briefcase looking for some way out, but there was none. Suddenly he lunged for Tinkerton's pistol. A Hardin's fingers found the grip of the Glock, Parini shot him twice in the face. The bullets snapped Hardin's head back and his lifeless body crumpled on the grass next to Tinkerton.

I stood and looked at Hardin, then at Parini. “You wanted him to go for the Glock, didn't you, Gino? That's why you left it lying there and why you kept taunting him.”

“It was his play and that was fine with me. If Hardin had been a more competent lawyer than he was a crook, he'd know that a briefcase full of cash doesn't mean squat. Truth is, we'd have had a hell of a time proving anything against him. Now we don't have to.”

Parini slipped the pistol back inside his jacket and looked down at the two bodies. “Will you look at this!” he made a dramatic gesture toward the two bodies. “A U. S. Senator and a former ‘High Ranking Justice Department Official,’ cut down in the prime of their lives. Another ‘senseless act of urban violence’, a tragedy, that's what I'd call it, a real tragedy.”

“Like the tragedy in the basement of the funeral home in Columbus?” I asked him. “You waited back there in the bushes to see how things would shake out before you made your move?”

“They shook out fine,” he answered with cold, dead eyes.

“Well it's a damn good thing you didn't wait any longer,” Sandy barked at him.

“Don't worry, Sweat Pea, I wouldn't have let them touch a hair on your pretty little head, he said, reverting to the old Newark accent. “Hell, if I wasn't married with four kids, I'd run off with you myself and start makin’ a bunch ‘a little Italian babies. But him?” he looked over at me with disdain. “Him, I'd have let them have.”

“We're a “we” now,” she told him as she scampered over and threw her arms around my waist.

“So I see.” Parini scowled. “But if this dumb mope ever causes you any grief, you let me know and I'll break his freekin’ legs. You hear me Ace!” His face broke into a big smile as he slipped the flash drives into his jacket pocket and handed me Hardin's briefcase.

“I don't want this,” I told him.

“Oh, yes you do,” Parini quickly answered. “He said there's seven-and-a-half million in there that belong to no one. It can get the two of you out of here and buy you a fresh start some place else. In a couple of years, maybe three or four, this whole business should finally be over. Jimmy Santorini will realize he isn't getting out of Marion, Rico Patillo should be sitting in the cell next to him, and no one will remember the
two
of you,” he said as his eyes locked on mine. “Do you understand me?”

From the expression on his face, I understood exactly what he was trying to tell me and I knew he was right. So I took the briefcase.

“I'll get the manhunt for you called off in a couple of hours, but remember, Hardin and Tinkerton aren't the only rotten apples in this town, not by a long shot. There are a lot more that need thrown out before it's safe for you two to come back. So you disappear.”

“But where?”

“I don't know and I don't want to know,” came his quick reply. “Like I told you in Chicago, for a couple of bumbling amateurs, you haven't done too bad figuring it out by yourselves. We would never have gotten Tinkerton without you and we would never have gotten Hardin, either.” Parini pointed north at Union Station, sitting flood-lit at the far end of the park. “Take the first train headed out of town and keep going. Hell, you even have some luggage now. And if I know the two of you, you'll do just fine. Now go!”

I took Sandy's hand and we began to walk away as Parini said, “When the time's right, when it really
is
safe back here, I'll run a classified ad in the New York Times on the first Sunday of the month, in the Personals. It'll say, “Ace: You and Sweet Pea can come on home now, signed Gino.” You got that?”

We looked at each other and nodded, and then we took off running away down the sidewalk. That was the last we ever saw of Gino Parini.

Under the scorching Baja sun…

T
he
scorching yellow sun had finally risen above the row of palm trees on the other side of the courtyard wall. There wasn't a cloud in the high, blue sky, and to the east, the sun sparkled off the iridescent, blue-green water in the bay. The cool morning breeze we had enjoyed was now wilting and the air inside the courtyard would soon become hot and languid. In another hour or two, it would chase us inside the thick, cool, adobe-walled house but not yet. For the moment, the courtyard was still very pleasant.

The mornings down here were my favorite time of the day. I could lie back in my old canvas beach chair, sip a cup of strong, black coffee, and read. The patio was alive with the sweet smell of Bougainvillea, the rich cooking smells from the kitchen, and the sharp, salty tang of the sea. Of the entire week, it was Wednesday mornings I liked best. The Tuesday afternoon mail plane usually delivered some new books for me, some photography magazines and country music CDs for Sandy, and the Sunday edition of the
New
York
Times
. It was as thick as an oak log and I could spend all day Wednesday reading it from front to back at my leisure. Sometimes that would take me well into Thursday or even Friday, since time was a commodity we had in abundance now.

A dark shadow passed over me and I put the paper down. “Peter,” Sandy said as she stood blocking out the sun. “Watch the baby for a minute, will you? I've got to help Rosaria with the salad.”

“Right,” I replied as I glanced over at the baby playing happily on a blanket in the shade. Sandy smiled and let her hand pass lightly up my chest. She knew the effect that had on me and we both knew why she did it.