Killer

chapter 28

present

The only light inside the house came from the kitchen. I crouched outside one of the windows and watched while a man in his thirties sat alone at a small Formica table, one of his legs tapping anxiously as he chain-smoked his way through half a pack of cigarettes. He had a much skinnier body type than Sal Lombard, but there was enough resemblance in his face – especially that familiar cruel mouth – to know he was Lombard’s son. It was possible there were other people inside the house, but I didn’t think it was likely. Anyway, it didn’t much matter if there were.

I went back to the front door and knocked. I heard footsteps, then the same voice that had been calling me on my cell phone yelling through the door, “Yeah?”

I muffled my voice with my coat, and doing my best to impersonate one of the wiseguys, said, “Fucksake, Nick, it’s Joey. We got your merchandise. Open the fucking door.”

“You got a death wish talking to me like that?” the man inside yelled back out. There was nothing but mottled fury in his face as the door flung open, then a stunned dumbness as he stood staring at me. Before he could react I tapped him on the forehead with the butt of the gun I was holding, and he sat down hard on the floor. I let myself in and closed the door behind me.

“Hands behind your neck.”

He blinked stupidly at me for a few seconds before complying. I patted him down but he wasn’t carrying.

His eyes darted left and right before settling on me. He asked, “Where are my men?”

“They’re in their car,” I said, “and they’re not in any position to help you.”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, trying poorly to force a bravado. I raised a finger to silence him.

“It’s not going to work that way,” I said. “Right now I either kill you, or the two of us figure out a way so I don’t have to.”

The way his lips twisted, he was about to make a snide comment, but something about my expression made him look away from me instead.

“What do you suggest?” he asked without much hope.

“First some questions. Why’d you wait until now?”

His mouth weakened momentarily. He lowered his gaze. “The FBI was watching you,” he said. “They were using you as bait hoping I’d go after you. It was only last week when I found out from my source that they dropped their operation.”

I remembered the blue Chevy sedan that Sophie had run up to warn me about. I could almost see the faces of the two men in it. I remembered the other times I’d catch glimpses of other cars waiting for me after work. It made sense that it would’ve been the Feds watching over me.

“Why wait even a week?” I asked.

He made a face. “I wasn’t sure until today I was going to go through with this. I was trying to get past what you did, ratting us out and putting my pop and my brother Al away, but then seeing you being built up like a hero was too much.”

“Did your boys search my apartment?”

“I don’t know where you live,” he said. “If someone searched your place it wasn’t us. Probably the Feds.”

I considered that for a moment, then asked, “Was the plan tonight to torture and kill me?”

A hitch showed at the side of his mouth. “I was first going to get some information out of you,” he said.

“That office building hired me for you?”

He nodded. He was trying hard to keep his composure, but he was cracking. His voice wasn’t quite right, and a tic had started to pull at his left eye.

“Why the anonymous calls to my cell phone?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I was trying to let off steam, but it didn’t do much good. In the end I had to have you brought here.” He hesitated for a few seconds, then asked, “Any ideas yet so you don’t have to kill me?”

His skin color wasn’t looking too good, neither was that tic pulling on his eye. If I kept him sitting there much longer he was going to expire on me. I had him get up and sit on a loveseat, and I pulled up a wooden chair so I could sit opposite him.

I said, “The only thing I can think of is for you to give me something incriminating enough so you can’t afford to let anything happen to me.”

He gave it some thought and nodded. “I’ve got something like that,” he said. “It’s back at my house.”

“You also have to pay me something. A lot actually. How much cash can you get your hands on tonight?”

“Maybe twenty grand,” he said.

I whistled softly. “Twenty grand? That’s how little you value your life?”

I raised the gun to level it at his chest and his eyes bulged at the sight of it. He told me then that he had over a hundred grand that he could give me. “It’s buried right in this basement,” he said in a voice that showed fear, but also how disgusted he was with himself. “I keep it there as an emergency fund.”

I followed him downstairs and watched as he pulled back a section of the carpeting. He then removed a part of the subflooring that had earlier been cut away and started digging with a shovel. The stress of the situation was getting to him, weakening him, and it wasn’t too long before he was sweating and his arms were shaking like they were made of rubber.

“Take a deep breath,” I said. “Concentrate on what you’re doing. As long as the money’s there and you’re not lying to me you have nothing to worry about.”

“The money’s there,” he grunted. His breathing remained labored as he struggled to lift each shovelful of dirt. “You should rot in hell,” he said angrily, tears mixing with his sweat. “Pop died in prison because of you. After everything he did for you, you gonna betray him like that? He gave you a Rolex, even had it personally inscribed, you rotten sonofabitch!”

“Yeah, he did,” I said. “It was a nice one too. And someone in his organization tipped off the Boston Police to what was going down at the docks. So fuck your pop, and fuck your brother Al, too.”

Nick’s face was locked in a hard grimace. Sweat poured off of him as he shook his head. “The tip didn’t come from us, you paranoid fuck,” he said. “It came from South Boston.”

I thought about what he said and decided it probably made sense, but still, Lombard should’ve had better control of the operation and not shared it with the South Boston crowd.

“Well, my mistake, then,” I said. “But fuck it, no use now crying over spilt milk. And watch your goddamn mouth with me. I’m not warning you again.”

He clamped his mouth shut after that and focused on his digging. It was another twenty minutes before he hit a wood plank. He pried it out with the shovel, then reached in and pulled out a valise. Inside were packets of bills wrapped in cellophane.

“You can count it if you’d like,” he said. “There’s over a hundred grand in there.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Let’s go get your incriminating evidence.”

I followed him up the stairs and out of the house. Nick Lombard saw the Cadillac parked off in the distance.

“Let me check on my guys,” he said. “I want to see they’re okay.”

I waved my gun at him, dismissing the idea. “For now they’ll keep where they are.”

He had a red Mercedes sports coupe convertible parked off to the side. I took the passenger seat while he got behind the wheel. It was a shame it was too cold to put the top down. When we drove past the Cadillac, I could see the worried glance he gave it.