THE VIRON CONSPIRACY (JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS #4) (13 page)

CHAPTER 21 - FISH EYE

Burke showed surprise, but not fear. It was not the first time he’d had a gun pointed at him. The fact that Scarne had not already shot him dead may have reassured him somewhat.

“Who are you?”

Scarne ignored the question.

“Where’s your cell phone?”

Burke hesitated.

“I don’t bring it with me when I go fishing.”

“So, when I go over to your bag over there I won’t find it. If I do, you are going to be short one kneecap.”

“It’s in the bag.”

Scarne walked back to the bag and found the phone.

“How do they contact you when there’s a job?”

“What job?”

Scarne timed the next breaker, which crashed with a roar just behind Burke, drowning out the sound of the Bersa. The round splashed in the water in front of Burke’s legs and he jumped.

“Jesus Christ!”

“No one’s going to hear the next one, either. Come on, Burke. The tide’s coming in. Unless you want to go out with it, stop wasting my time. You and your friends killed Bryan Vallance and three other people. You’re hired help. Who hired you and how do they contact you?”

The mention of Vallance shook Burke. So did the fact that the man knew his name. But he hung in there.

“We use throwaways.”

“I don’t doubt it. But not when they just want to get in touch with you. It would be too inconvenient. I’m betting that when we go through the past-call records in your account we will find the number of your contact. It’s a number you are going to give me now to save us the trouble of sifting through the numbers. I don’t have to tell you how important it is that you tell me the truth. We can find you again, and we will. What is it?”

Scarne had used the “we” because he knew it would get Burke thinking that he was in over his head. Who they hell were they? And a “we” would also be a lot more intimidating to a family man. If the man with a gun was with him, where were the others? Back at the rental? Scarne wasn’t particularly happy using the ploy, but Burke, after all, was part of a team that slaughtered Campbell’s wife and daughter.

“I have a wife and kids,” Burke said. “Give me a break.”

“I wouldn’t play the family card, Mike. Not after Hawaii.”

“It won’t do me any good for the people who hired me to know I ratted them out.”

“They’re not standing here holding a gun on you. You can worry about them later. Focus on the here and now. I want a name and number.”

“It won’t help you. The guy is just like me. Hired help. Someone calls him. He calls me. We’re just soldiers.”

“You’re lying. It was your team in Hawaii. You made an executive decision to leave the baby alive. A subordinate wouldn’t take that responsibility. You live in a million-dollar house in the best neighborhood in Columbia. By the way, Lucy has nice taste in furniture, though I didn’t care much for the curtains. And you’ll need a new dog door.”

Burke looked confused.

“Dog door? What the fuck are you talking about?”

Scarne told him.

“Shit. We don’t even have that mutt anymore. Got rid of it when the twins were born. It got too jealous.”

Scarne fired again. The bullet splashed behind Burke, this time having gone between his legs.

“The next one takes one of your balls off. The right one.”

Now, Burke looked frightened. The man holding the gun on him seemed implacable.

“You Government? It was the Russian, right?”

Scarne was surprised but hid it. He decided to see where it would go. He smiled and nodded.

“Figures,” Burke said. “Should have known the deal was queer. But I thought the Cold War was over. They’re our pals, now, right?”

Scarne took a chance.

“Depends on which Russians. Some are, some aren’t.”

“I don’t want any trouble with you guys. I was in the service. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt the country. I figured this was some kind of international corporate bullshit. That’s where we get a lot of our work now.”

“We know it’s the Russians, Mike.” Scarne was winging it. “But not which ones. Give me a name.”

“Name? We don’t ask, and they don’t tell. What sense is there in that? I just got a call from a guy I trust who tells me to expect a call from this Russian. He calls and tells me I’d get another call from someone else telling me what’s up. I get that call and I put together a team and we go to Hawaii. It was kind of a rush job. I didn’t like it, but the money was in my account before I even left. A lot of fucking money.”

“How did you know it was a Russian?”

“Like I said, I trust the source. And the guy had a Russian accent. Hard to miss.”

“What about the last call. Tell me about it. Another Russian?”

“No. German. Very slight accent.”

“How can you be sure? Why not Dutch? Or Norwegian?”

Burke shifted his weight.

“Careful, Mike,” Scarne said. “You move like that again and I might accidentally shoot both balls off. Get back to the accent.”

“Definitely German. I’m good with accents. Even went to school in the Army about them.”

“What else?”

“Nothing, that was it. Short and sweet. He was an arrogant cocksucker. ‘Make it so. Make it so’.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s what the Kraut prick kept saying. He liked to give orders. That’s how he ended the call, too. ‘Make it so’.”

“I’ll need the name of your contact. The one who told you to expect the calls.”

Another large wave broke, spraying them both. Water splashed in Scarne’s face.

Burke seized the chance. He swung his fishing rod across his body. The move took Scarne by surprise. Burke was standing too far from Scarne to hit him with the pole, but that wasn’t his intent. His aim was almost perfect. The heavy sinker caught Scarne high on his forehead, staggering him. He fired a wild shot that missed and he sank to his knees, the Bersa digging into the sand.

Burke lunged toward him, bringing the fishing pole back in another arc. The sinker glinted in the moonlight, giving Scarne just enough time to get his other arm up. The piece of lead wrapped around his forearm barely missing his face. He reached for the automatic but the other man crashed on top of him.

Scarne saw the glint of a long fisherman’s knife as it slashed toward his throat. With his left arm still attached by line to the heavy surf rod, Scarne was barely able to block the knife thrust with his gun arm. He kneed Burke in the side and they rolled together. The man cried out. He dropped the knife. The piercing scream was all out of proportion to Scarne’s action, but the cause was soon apparent.

The large hook attached to the sinker had impaled itself deep in Burke’s right eye. Scarne could see a trail of blood beneath the tail of the bait shrimp hanging down
the hit man’s cheek. He quickly brought his arm under Burke’s chin and wrapped the fishing line tight against his neck. Then he rolled on his back, grabbed some free line with his other hand and tightened it. The back of Scarne’s head was in the wash and an occasional wavelet filled his nostrils with sand and salt water but it was bearable.

Not so for the man he was throttling. With the fishing hook digging ever deeply into his eye and the monofilament line cutting into his neck, the hit man thrashed wildly, his hands desperately reaching back to claw Scarne’s face. But it was no use. Scarne had done this kind of work before. He buried his face in the man’s neck as the frantic fingers slipped through Scarne’s wet hair, unable to get a purchase. Finally, it was over. Just to be sure, Scarne rolled over and pressed Burke’s face into the water, holding it there for several minutes.

He rolled Burke over. He was dead.     

Scarne looked up and down the beach and saw no one. Burke’s body started drifting out, head first, tongue protruding from a gaping mouth and a soggy shrimp hanging from one bloody eye. The burial at sea would be temporary; the body would wash up along the beach within hours.

Scarne wasn’t worried about repercussions. An investigation into Burke’s background was sure to turn up some interesting reading. The police would make the natural assumption about a dead hit man floating ashore on a deserted beach strangled, with a fish hook in his eye. Obviously some sort of macabre retribution. It would be relegated to the “Chickens Coming Home to Roost” file. As for Dave Fogelson, the realty agent — even if he put two and two together, he might be reluctant to admit he probably gave a killer directions to his victim.

Scarne found his gun. He’d have to clean and oil it later. He put it into his pocket. Only then did he notice the stinging in his left forearm and right hand where the fishing line had cut into his flesh during the strangling. He was bleeding in both spots, but not excessively. The cuts weren’t deep enough for stitches.

Scarne washed the wounds off in the surf. He knew he was luckier than he deserved.

“Better than a hook in the eye,” he muttered.

Scarne turned, picked up his fishing equipment and walked casually back to his car. He couldn’t help but recall an earlier case that also involved a brutal killing of a fisherman on a beach, in Miami. Surfcasting was apparently a dangerous avocation.

On the drive across the bridge spanning the Intracoastal, Scarne also remembered what he’d said to Winston Todd in the restaurant when the old lawyer mentioned the $100,000 fee. “I don’t do assassinations.” Well, technically that was true. Scarne knew he would not murder a stranger for hire. But he’d killed in war and in self-defense. He’s also killed to save someone from unbearable torture. And now he’d killed to …. well, it was self-defense, but just barely. The line was getting more blurred all the time.

“Fuck it,” he said to himself.

The bridge was deserted. He got out of his car and dropped his fishing gear into the water below. Then he drove to Charleston and found an all-night chain drug store, where he purchased antiseptic alcohol, some gauze pads, tape and a bottle of ibuprofen. After bandaging himself in the car, he drove back to Columbia. He bought some sandwiches and beer at a convenience store and checked into a motel near the airport. The next day he caught a 9 A.M. flight to Chicago.

It was time to talk to Kate.

CHAPTER 22 - TARGETS

“My God, Jake! What happened to your head?”

Scarne’s hand inadvertently went to the right side of his forehead to touch the bruise left by the fishing sinker. It was more of a raised bump now and he winced at the sharp pain, which settled into a dull throbbing.

“And your hand. It’s cut up.”

Kate’s eyes shifted to his other hand.

“Both hands. Were you in fight?”

Scarne resisted the temptation to say, “You should see the other guy.” Instead, he said, “I could use some coffee.”

“Of course. I’ll put on a fresh pot.”

Scarne followed her into the kitchen and sat, rather gingerly, on one of the stools surrounding the center island. The bruise on his head wasn’t the only damage he’d suffered in his battle with Burke. While Kate busied herself with a drip coffeemaker, he looked around the ultra-modern kitchen and smiled. Cooking was never one of Kate Ellenson’s strong suits. Across from him was a stainless-steel, double-doored oven combination that must have been six-feet wide. There were six separate stove-top cooking configurations. The whole apparatus reminded Scarne of stoves he’d seen in the galleys of Navy frigates.

“Where’s Aurelia?”

“This is her day off.” Kate smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m perfectly capable of making a pot of coffee. If you’re hungry, I can probably even make you some scrambled eggs.”

“On that,” he said, pointing to the stove.

“Isn’t it marvelous,” Kate said. “It’s a La Cornue Grand Palais 180. One of the ovens is gas, the other electric.”

The name meant nothing to Scarne, who knew she could burn a roast in either.

“Coffee will be fine,” he said. “Don’t forget to add water.”

She laughed and they exchanged a look. It was the first time Scarne felt comfortable with her since taking the case.

A few minutes later Kate poured them both steaming mugs of coffee and put out cream and sugar. The coffee was good and he said so. Kate stuck her tongue out at him.

“Now, will you tell me what happened?”

Scarne looked at her, trying to gauge how much he would tell her, and how much she could bear. He decided she deserved to know everything. 

“You were right, Kate. Bryan’s murder was a setup, made to look like the random act of a crazed man.”

Scarne left nothing out, except the goriest of the details in the crime scene photos involving her husband. Kate’s face remained impassive. When he finished, she got up and walked out of the kitchen. He assumed she wanted time to compose herself, but he was mistaken. Instead, she came back holding a bottle of brandy and her cigarettes. She took some water glasses from a cabinet and sat back down. Scarne poured their drinks while she lit a cigarette, offering him the pack. He took a cigarette. Scarne thought smoking was a dirty, unnecessary habit. Unless you really needed a smoke.

Kate poured more coffee and found an ashtray.

“I can’t find it in my heart to hate Campbell,” Kate said. “He died to save his family. And the bastards killed them anyway. Except for the child.”

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Scarne said.
“That’s how I found Burke.”

“I’m glad you killed
him.”

“I didn’t plan to. He left me no choice.”

Scarne knew that wasn’t exactly true. There was a point where he could have let up when he was throttling the hit man. Perhaps gotten him to reveal more than he had. But he had been taught, both in training and in combat, to fight to the death. Like cigarettes, some old habits were hard to break.

“Did he work alone?”

Kate let out a long stream of smoke. She was remarkably calm. But, Scarne knew, finding out what one suspected can concentrate the mind. Humans prefer targets over suspects.

“No. He would have needed others to help control the family, and someone to report that Campbell had succeeded. At least one, but probably more.”

“Can you find them?”

“Eventually. But it will take time. And I don’t know what good it will do.”

“They killed my husband. And the others.”

“They were hired help. Professionals. They probably don’t know who was behind the contract.”

“I would still like them to pay for what they did! To kill them!”

Scarne looked at her. Her eyes were flashing.

“Kate, I’m not an assassin or a vigilante. I didn’t sign on to be your sword of vengeance.”

She lit another cigarette and drank.

“God. I’m sorry, Jake. Forgive me. What shall we do next? Go to the police?”

He reached out and covered her free hand, which was trembling.

“It’s OK. This is hard, I know. But this is what I do. It’s too early to bring the cops in. But I’ve given some information to Dick Condon in New York, just in case.”

Kate gripped his hand.

“You mean, in case something happens to you. Do you think you are in danger?”

“Not really. None of the bad guys should know what I’ve been up to. But I always try to prepare for the worst.”

“What about Burke? When his death is reported won’t that alert whoever hired him?”

“I doubt it. Men like Burke go through life collecting enemies. They’d probably figure his past caught up with him. But if we go to the police now I’m pretty sure someone will put two-and-two together and link it to Bryan’s death. Then the people behind this, who have to be very powerful, might decide to tie up all the loose ends. They’d probably go after the others on Burke’s team. They might cover their tracks so well that we’d never find out who they are. And there’s another consideration.” He smiled. “Knowing how the cops work, especially the Feds, and I’m sure they’d get involved, they’d want to know how I got to Burke and why he’s suddenly dead. They’d probably arrest me. Withholding evidence would be the least of the charges.”

“But it was self-defense!”

“Sure,” Scarne said, “in a manner of speaking. But to them it might not look that way. It would be my word against a dead man’s. A man whose wife and kids were waiting for him back at the house.”

“My God, Jake. How do you feel about that?”

He laughed, harshly.

“Just peachy. Look, Kate, I didn’t like doing it, but the guy was a stone killer. Who knows how many widows he’s made. I’ll sleep fine and I’m certainly not anxious to go to jail for killing the son-of-a-bitch. What would I say to the cops? This guy attacked me with a fishing rod, so I stuck a hook in his eye and strangled him with monofilament line?”

“But he had a knife.”

“All fishermen have knives. And it’s probably buried under the sand by now. Look, I would beat it. I have friends. The cops would find out about Burke’s past. But while they were sorting it all out, I’d be no use to you.”

“Condon knows you went after Burke. Won’t he figure out what happened right away?”

“I don’t try to abuse our relationship,” Scarne said, with a grin. “But he tends to give me the benefit of the doubt where dead bodies are concerned.”

“Oh, Jake. What have I done to you?”

“Don’t be an ass, Kate. You haven’t done anything to me. This is what I am. It’s why I’m good at what I do. Our past relationship aside, it’s why you came to me. And you were right to do so. Don’t forget that.”

“What now?”

Scarne poured more brandy.

“Now? I guess I’ll visit BVM and do my Hemingway impersonation. Burke told me he got his marching orders from someone with a German accent. I know you think that must be Lenzer. But we need proof. There’s a lot of Germans running around the Midwest.
I still can’t figure out a Russian connection. It’s like I’ve fallen into a Cold War spy novel.”

“When will you leave?”

“Tomorrow. But now I want to lie down for a couple of hours. I’m going to accept your hospitality. Give me a bottle of Advil and point me in the direction of the nearest bed. Make a reservation at your favorite restaurant. I’m taking you out to dinner. We can discuss what my next move is then. I’ve been living the bad life recently. I want some of the good life.”

“Are you sure? Do you feel up to it? I could make us something here.”

“I know you could, Kate. But I’ve cheated death enough lately. Let’s eat out.”

It was good to hear Kate laugh, Scarne thought.

“I’ll make the reservation,” she said.

***

“Is this a restaurant or a museum?”

They were sitting at a window table in Everest, a restaurant located on the 40th floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange on South La Salle Street. The city gleamed below them. Their table, like all those in the restaurant, had as its centerpiece a small bronze Ivo Soldini sculpture. The restaurant’s walls displayed the modernistic paintings of Adam Siegel.

“You said you wanted a taste of the good life,” Kate said.

“I was thinking more in terms of food,” Scarne said. “I’m more a Richard Prince guy myself.”

“Oh, I love him, too. I have one in my bedroom. But I think you will find the food here rivals the artwork. Chef Joho is a marvel. He is Alsatian and does wonders with French cuisine. He is a member of the Academie Culinaire de France.”

“I’ll have to ask him to cater my arraignment.”

Kate laughed.

“I’m sorry. I know that sounded pretentious. But the food is really good.”

They were both drinking Grey Goose martinis. Scarne began reading from his menu, with a faux French accent: “I can’t decide between the Magret of Mulard Duck, Pine Honey and Marinated Turnips à la Colmarienne; the Roasted Maine Lobster in Alsace Gewurztraminer Butter and Ginger, or the Roasted Grass-Fed Rack of Lamb, Mitonnée of Coco Beans, with Veal Bacon Flambée.”

“You mean ‘among’.”

Scarne smiled. That was Kate. In all their time together, she never failed to correct him when he used the wrong terminology.

“You use ‘between’ when it’s two items, and ‘among’ when there are three or more.”

“I was confused by all the ingredients,” Scarne said. “I think Chef Tonto is cleaning out his pantry.”

“It’s Joho, you dope. And I know you are teasing me. Just order the steak. I know that’s what you want.”

In the end, that’s what Scarne did, although he couldn’t resist asking the waiter why a restaurant featured “Dry Aged New York Steak” in the middle of Chicago.

“Don’t you have the largest stockyards in the nation? Why can’t I get a Chicago steak
? Carl Sandburg must be turning over in his grave.”

“Actually, sir, he called Chicago the ‘Hog Butcher for the World.’ So, might I suggest the Crusted Berkshire Pork Cheeks, Poached Veal Tongue, Choucroute Salade, with Petite Ravigote?”

“Touché,” Scarne laughed. “The steak will be fine, rare.”

“Since Madame is having the lamb, may I suggest a bottle of the 2006 Highland Estates Cabernet Sauvignon. It will complement your steak, as well.”

“As long as you first complement us with another two martinis.”

“Of course, sir.”

***

The stress, drinks and meal worked their magic on Scarne. By the time they returned to Kate’s apartment, he was pleasantly exhausted. He accepted her offer of a bed for the night “in the guest room.”

He took a long, hot shower and was asleep moments after he slipped between the luxurious silk sheets. He fell into a deep sleep and dreamed about Kate lying naked
next to him, her hands on his ….

Except it wasn’t a dream. It must have been close to 2 A.M. when he felt her hand. When he rolled over, she threw the sheets aside. They were both naked in the moonlight streaming in from the wall-to-wall windows of the room.

“Kate.”

He had to clear his throat.

You don’t have to say anything,” she said, moving her hand in familiar circles. “You don’t have to do anything. Just lay back.”

“Kate.”

Her hand was gentle, but practiced. She remembered exactly what he liked.

“I haven’t made love with anyone since Bryan died. I need this. I want this.”

Kate moved astride him and he settled into her. She began to move slowly, her breasts swaying above him. He reached up and fondled them, and drew them down to his mouth. She groaned and her hips began to pump faster. A moment later she cried out and collapsed on top of him. When she finally controlled her breath she said, rather sheepishly, “I told you I needed it.”

“That has to be a record, even for you,” Scarne said. When they were together, he had often teased her on the quickness of her response. “But I feel so … used.”

She looked at him and saw his grin.

“You’re a son of a bitch, Jake,” she said, laughing.

He rolled her on her back. In a few minutes, neither of them was laughing.

***

“It’s almost the same, but not quite.”

“What is
?”

“The sex,” Kate said. “We remember what each of us likes but it’s more, I don’t know ….”

“Mechanical. Clinical. Automatic. By the numbers.”