When the Devil Comes to Call (A Lars and Shaine Novel Book 2) (8 page)

“Hey, turn up the heat a little more, will you?” Bruno still couldn’t get warm. He pulled on one of his dad’s old sweaters, the wool pilled and worn thin in the elbows.

He’d returned to his parent’s house, peeled off his wet clothes, taken a hot shower and still had a chill in his bones. He thought about sitting in the Jacuzzi tub in his parent’s bathroom for a while, but he hated sitting alone in a hot tub. Hot tubs were made to be enjoyed with a lady friend. A hundred and four degree foreplay was how Bruno saw it. The thought also turned him off from using his parents’ hot tub in case they had the same ideas.

Respect for his parents was what he told himself kept him from calling the coroner to clear away the bodies.

Rudy, the driver of the car who rescued him from the hotel, couldn’t sit still in the living room with Mrs. Ramoni a few feet away laying dead under a fake rabbit fur coat.

“Hey, Bruno,” Rudy said. “I know some people . . . we could take care of this and nobody has to call the cops or nobody else.”

Bruno blew at the edge of a hot cup of coffee. “Take care of it how?”

Rudy shrugged his shoulders, not sure what the right answer might be.

Bruno addressed him with an unnerving calm. “Take them out and bury them in the woods? Is that it? Or maybe burn them up like a pile of garbage. With a pile of garbage? Take care of them how, Rudy? You tell me, take of my parents how?”

Rudy looked around the room, swinging left to right. “I . . . I didn’t mean nothing by it. I’m just saying.”

Bruno sipped his coffee.

The front door opened and two men walked in. “We’re back, Bruno,” said the smaller of the two.

“I can see that,” Bruno said, but he eyed the larger man. Anthony stared back at him. Once Nikki’s closest man, Bruno had liberated the bodyguard from Nikki’s house that morning.

“I’m glad I kept you around,” Bruno said.

“I’m glad you did too, Mr. Ramoni.”

“I got a job for you.”

“Whatever you want, Mr. Ramoni.” Anthony pledged allegiance to no flag. He stood in a Ramoni house, therefore he worked for a Ramoni. No hard feelings, Nikki. Anthony had been thinking of a way out for a while, what with Nikki’s health problems, those men in cheap suits who kept coming by. He saw the obvious.

“I want you to find me Lars,” Bruno said.

“Not easy,” Anthony said.

“I’m a patient boy.”

“You want me to kill him?”

“No,” Bruno said, loud. “I’m going to do it.”

To Anthony, Bruno had a bit of the whiny little brother to his voice. In reality, Bruno had a bit of the whiny only child in his voice, and his demeanor, and his friendships, and his temper, and his attention span . . .

“Be easier to find him if I was back with Nikki.”

“Back in his house you mean?”

“Yeah, closer to him. He’s the only one who’ll know where Lars is.”

Bruno stepped closer to Anthony, passed through the shadow of his looming figure. “You work for me now, though. Right?”

“Right, Mr. Ramoni.”

Bruno sized him up. “And you’re dedicated to me now, right?”

“No question, Mr. Ramoni.”

Bruno wished he’d had an army of Anthony’s when he stormed Lars’s hotel room. This guy was the real deal. The kind of guy who would have worked for his dad.

“Prove it,” Bruno said.

“How?” Anthony wanted to know. He was matter-of-fact about it, not complaining, like he knew this would be part of the job interview. From across the room, Rudy watched the hulking new guy with a skeptical eye.

Bruno looked around the room. His eyes landed on the smaller man who came in with Anthony. A physical personification of everything Anthony was not. Not strong, not big, not intimidating. Disposable.

“Kill him.” Bruno said to Anthony, pointing at the smaller man.

Anthony didn’t balk. “You took my gun.” True. An act of the abduction back at Nikki’s house, despite Anthony not resisting at all. When he saw Ramoni and his crew roll up, his holster was empty by the time they jimmied the lock on the back door, his gun on the floor in front of him and his hands raised over his head. Complete surrender.

Bruno nodded his head twice. The small man looked nervous. “You’re kidding, right?”

Bruno didn’t answer. He crossed the room, a thin wisp of steam coming off his coffee. He definitely felt warmer now.

Rudy had to look away when Bruno stepped over his mother’s corpse and put a foot down between her ankles so he could reach the shotgun abandoned beside her, the long barrel making it look as if she had three legs sticking out from under  the fur coat turned funeral shroud. He bent down with one arm, holding his coffee flat with his other, and lifted the last thing his mother ever touched off the carpet.

The smaller man hadn’t been around Bruno enough to know if this was a prank. He’d worked for Leo long enough to know Bruno was slightly unstable, completely spoiled and held no respect among the ranks. Something like this, he couldn’t put it in the realm of the impossible.

Rudy touched the gun in his shoulder holster as he watched Bruno march across the living room to hand the gun to Anthony.

“Okay, guys,” the small man said. “Enough’s enough.”

Bruno held out the shotgun for Anthony. “Here you go.”

Anthony didn’t hesitate. He racked a shell into the chamber and spun on the small man who cowered while inching limply to the door.

“Hold on,” Bruno said. Anthony held the shotgun on the little man, but kept his finger off the trigger.

“Jesus H. Christ” the small man said, nearly crying.

“Come to think of it,” Bruno said. “I need all the men I can get right now. You’ll have to prove it some other way.”

Anthony let the gun down, turned the barrel to the floor. Rudy loosened his grip on the gun under his arm. He hadn’t been aware he reached for it.

The small man continued to cower and sniff back tears.

“What then?” Anthony asked.

Bruno sipped his coffee. “Kiss my mother,” he said.

The whimpering stopped. The rustling of clothes stopped. Breathing stopped. Only the sound of Bruno slurping another mouth full of coffee.

Anthony didn’t question it. His eyes ran to the half-covered figure on the far side of the sunken living room, the tiny landing like a stage for the corpse. He looked back to Bruno. “On the mouth,” his new boss said. “Show some respect for the lady of the house.”

Anthony tried to decide if old and infirm outweighed crazy. Nikki was done for. He knew it. His future stood right there in the living room, sipping coffee and creeping everyone out. His immediate future lay decomposing twenty-five feet away.

Anthony started walking.

“Any of you clowns want to beat him to it?” Bruno asked, smiling. Rudy and the small man stayed mute.

Anthony reached the body. He lifted the coat off her face. She hadn’t been shot there, that was the good news. But that was the extent of the good news. The past thirty-odd hours had not been kind to a face being held together by surgeries and injected botulism. Mrs. Ramoni’s eyes had gone cloudy and sunken. Her mouth hung slack and her tongue had disappeared down the back of her throat. Not that he planned to French kiss the old broad, but her bottomless pit of an open mouth left Anthony wondering where he could place the kiss so he wouldn’t have to do it twice.

“Take your time,” Bruno said, clearly enjoy this.

Anthony didn’t want to spend any more time with this zombie than he needed to. Where he knelt was directly over a vent for the heating system and hot air exhaled around his neck, drawing beads of sweat to his face. He still hadn’t taken off his coat when he came inside. He decided on the top lip, one quick peck and then out. As he leaned in a housefly buzzed in and cock blocked him, landing on the lip he aimed for. Anthony recoiled for a second.

“Something wrong with my mother?” Bruno asked. Anthony didn’t like the weird Norman Bates tone to his question and ignored him. He adjusted course and planted a peck on her lower lip. It was dry and the moisture on his lip made them stick together so when he pulled away he brought her lip with him for an inch before it peeled away and slugged back into place like a creature crawling back into a burrow to wait for the next victim to amble by.

Anthony stood up, careful to resist the urge to rub his sleeve all over his mouth and to spit. Bruno watched him.

Anthony replaced the fur over Mrs. Ramoni’s head and waited for his next instructions.

“You’ve earned my trust,” Bruno said. “What’s your plan?”

“I’ll go back to Nikki’s tomorrow. Say I’m going back to work there.” Every word was an effort. He wanted vodka, whiskey, grain alcohol to wash his face. “I’ll find out where Lars is and call you. Rest is up to you.”

“Up to me, yes.” Bruno finished the last of his coffee.

The small man had stopped his whimpering. He even felt a little bad for Anthony, despite that the man had been a second away from killing him.

Rudy hoped maybe Bruno was done with the bodies now. Proven what he needed to prove. “So, should we call someone now? About the . . .”

“Not just yet, Rudy.”

Bruno went to the thermostat and set the temperature down a few degrees.

Shaine lay on the bed contemplating murder.

When she first walked into the small bedroom on the second floor she wondered if anyone had ever used it. Everything was neat, the bed made, the pictures hanging straight on the wall, but the room had a fine layer of dust and an abandoned cobweb took up a high corner over the bed.

She spent the day getting to know the massive house. She counted five bedrooms, Nikki’s office, five bathrooms, a finished basement with a pool table.

She stopped by windows to look out, but did not venture outside. The sky remained grey all day and she could see a vicious wind snapping the bare tree branches around like a fistful of switches itching to tan someone’s hide. All day long she couldn’t get her feet warm. She’d always wanted a pair of UGGs, now more than ever.

After dinner, Nikki excused himself to his bedroom to lie down. He detached himself from one oxygen tank, made his way up the steps to get in bed and hook up to another tank. The upstairs tank was hooked to an alarm in case he stopped breathing during the night. Sleep apnea. She knew about it from her days in school.

She and Lars cleared the dishes, mostly in silence, the way they did the same chore in Hawaii. Lars excused himself to go do some stretches and Shaine went to her room for the night, which is when she started thinking about killing Nikki.

Shaine knew she’d been too focused on the gun. There were a dozen ways to kill Nikki right in his own home and maybe have half a chance of it coming off as an accident.

The obvious thought was to use his illness, but to do so seemed like it took some medical knowledge. She hadn’t seen him taking any medication so an overdose would be out of the question. Cutting off his air would make him uncomfortable, but wouldn’t kill him. She didn’t get much of a sense of how weak he was to know if smothering him with a pillow was an option.

The more she thought about it, the more her spaghetti dinner seemed to disagree with her stomach. She remembered playing
Clue
with her dad and tried to recall all the murder weapons from the game. A lead pipe? No. Candlestick? No. Noose? No.

Her stomach couldn’t handle it anymore. She had to move quickly to the bathroom to make it in time.

***

Lars finished his stretches. He put in his earbuds and followed the step by step instructions Shaine had given him for playing music on the iPhone she’d thrust in his hands one day. He went for some vintage ZZ Top as he recalled the day she forced the phone on him.

“What if I need to get in touch with you?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll text you. Just . . .” Shaine huffed in frustration. “Don’t be such an old man.”

“Fine.”

And now he’d brought her on a hunting expedition. To the wilds of New England to stalk the exotic and elusive Mafiosis Sicilianis. As she learned, they usually traveled in groups and were very deadly.

He couldn’t deny he was a little proud of her. After her hesitation with Mrs. Ramoni, she stepped it up and saved his skinny ass when she needed to. He could trust her.

***

Shaine went to the kitchen to get a ginger ale from the refrigerator, hoping to calm her stomach. She tried to put thoughts of murder out of her head, but as she opened drawers in search of a bottle opener, she came across a collection of kitchen knives.

A long carving knife stood out to her. It seemed handcrafted for the art of slicing open a neck.

It would allow her to get close. She wanted him to know why she was ending his life. She wanted Nikki to understand and to hear her father’s name again. To know he’d been beaten by a little girl.

Smother with a pillow, carve open a neck, in the end the only difference was the blood. And even there she could learn from Lars. She remembered how he put a pillow over the head of the man he shot. If she put the pillow over Nikki, the blood wouldn’t get on her. She’d have a bit on her hand, but blood would wash out.

Before she knew it, she was out of the kitchen to the bottom of the stairs, the knife still in her hand.

***

Lars stood from his second set of stretches. He lifted the glass from the dresser, but found it empty. Hydration—the key to any good workout. He walked out of his room to head down to the kitchen for more water.

He passed by Nikki’s door next to his, best place for a bodyguard to be, noticed the light out. When did we all get so old? he wondered. It wasn’t much past nine o’clock and the old man was already asleep and Lars wasn’t far behind. He remembered years when the sunrise was more common to him from the backside. Sun up meant time for him to go down. Now he kept hours like a normal person.

Lars almost bumped into Shaine on the stairs.

“Woah, didn’t see you there,” Lars said.

Shaine said, “Sorry.”

“What are you doing?”

“I was thinking of switching rooms. Maybe find one with a TV.”

“I know there’s one in Nikki’s room, but I think that’s it. Why don’t you use the one in the living room? It’s freakin’ huge, did you see that thing?”

“Yeah. I guess that’s okay. Just kinda wanted to fall asleep to a movie, y’know?”

Shaine felt a drop of blood where the knife tip dug into her finger. With the long blade inside her sleeve, running cold steel along the inside of her right arm, her pointer finger was the only thing keeping the carving knife from falling to the floor, and now her fingerprint would have a new crease in it. The tip dug deeper the longer Lars talked about fucking TVs.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be back home soon and you’ll have your TV in your room again. Although with the two million, maybe we can get you one of those monster screens for your room.”

“It would take up the whole wall.”

“Aw, splurge once in a while.”

Shaine started backing down the steps. “Okay, I’ll go see if I think it’ll fit.”

“I think I’m gonna turn in. Been a long day.”

“You said it.” Shaine reached the bottom step.

“Good night.”

“G’night.” She turned for the living room and walked quickly out of Lars’s sight.

Shaine eased the knife out of her sleeve. She stuck the tip of her finger in her mouth to suck on the blood. It was more than she expected and she nearly gagged. She could feel a loose flap of skin with her tongue.

She entered the living room and pushed the knife down between two sofa cushions and pulled a tissue from an ornate outer box covering a generic cardboard box of tissues. She wrapped her finger, the white tissue instantly turning red. She really hoped she didn’t need stitches.

An hour later the blood stopped running. Without a bandage, she left the tissue in place, fused to the tip of her finger with clotted blood like she used to see on her dad’s neck some mornings when he ran late. A movie on cable about a man who lived his whole life on a cruise ship failed to catch her interest.

Lars would be asleep by now. Nikki would be deep into his nightly trip half way across the River Styx. So close to death, he only needed a small push to reach the other side.

Shaine tried not to think about it, only to move with her goal in mind. Like any unpleasant task that needed doing—plunging a toilet, finishing off a rat the trap didn’t quite kill, getting out a shovel to scoop up the car-squashed cat blocking the driveway—best to simply get on with it and not think too hard. And breathe through your mouth, not your nose.

She thought about the upside to a cut throat–Nikki wouldn’t be able to call for help. If she cut deep enough, that is. Press hard, one slow pull of the knife, keep pressure on the pillow, try to staunch the flow of blood and keep him from bucking wildly.

Remember the hotel room. She didn’t think about it, just fired the gun. Did what needed to be done. She could do it. Shaine Kenney, woman of action.

The pain in her finger vanished as she pulled the knife from the sofa cushions. She couldn’t feel her legs move across the room. Her bare feet were silent across the marble floors of the foyer.

As she turned to face the stairs again, from behind her the front door opened.

Shaine spun, brandishing the knife toward the intruder.

The thick man put his hands up. “Woah, woah there.”

Shaine recognized him. Anthony, the man who made her a sandwich.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Coming back to work.”

Shaine kept the knife out at arms length, the point trembling in her hand. The tip of her finger throbbed again, making up for the time out in pain.

“Where were you?”

“They took me, kept me in some house. I don’t know where. Then some guy comes in and says I can go.”

Shaine didn’t know why she still held the knife. This was one of Nikki’s men. It should be Lars’s replacement. They were free to head back to the islands. Nikki had his bodyguard back.

Shaine let the knife down. “It’s been a stressful day around here,” she explained.

“I bet.”

“Nikki wanted us to stay. Be his bodyguards, y’know?”

Anthony nodded toward the knife she held down by her leg now. “So I can see.”

“Yeah, well, you’re here now.” Shaine was done talking. She walked to the kitchen, put the knife back in the drawer and went to her bedroom. Her hands shook. Her fingers slipped off the lock twice before she managed to turn it.

She sat on the bed feeling hot tears held back by her eyelashes, defiantly not falling. She knew she wouldn’t have been able to do it. She knew she couldn’t have dragged a knife edge across another person’s throat.

Shaine sat on the edge of her bed, angry at herself because even though she wasn’t able to do it, she knew she still wanted to. The gap between the two was narrow, but seemed impassable.