Three To Get Deadly

CHAPTER 16

I left Morelli and pulled Vinnie outside the coffee shop, so we couldn’t be overheard.

“I got an address,” Vinnie said, still smiling, knowing his bond was close at hand, pleased to report on a fellow sexual deviant.

A rush of excitement shot from the soles of my feet clear to the roots of my hair. “Tell me!”

“I hit pay dirt with the first phone call. You were right. Moses Bedemier, everyone’s favorite uncle, makes dirty movies. Not the kind you can rent in a video store either. These are the real thing! Genuine underground, quality porn.

“He goes under the name M. Bed. And he specializes in discipline. According to my source, you want a good spanking flick, you look for an M. Bed movie.” Vinnie shook his head, grinning ear to ear. “I’m telling you the man is famous. He’s done a whole series of fraternity initiation films. He did Tits and Paddles, Gang Spank, Spanky Goes to College. Real collectors’ items. No holds barred. Lots of close-ups. Never fakes anything. That’s the difference between the commercial junk and the underground. The underground stuff is real.”

“Hold it down, Vinnie,” I said. “People are staring.”

Vinnie didn’t pay any attention. He was waving his hands, and spittle was forming in the corners of his mouth. “The guy is a genius. And his masterpiece is Bad Boy Bobby and the Schoolmarm. It’s a historical, done in period costume. It’s a classic. The best ruler-spanking scene recorded on film.”

I thought of Larry Skolnik with dropped drawers and a dunce cap and almost passed out.

“Once you set me in the right direction it was easy,” Vinnie said. “I got a friend in the business. Only he does stuff with dogs. He’s got a Great Dane that’s hung like a bull. And he’s got this dog trained to…”

I slapped my hands over my ears. “Ugh! Gross!”

“Well anyway,” Vinnie said. “I was able to find out where Mo makes his movies. This friend of mine uses some of the same actors and actresses as Mo. So he gave me this woman’s name. Bebe LaTouch. Heh, heh, heh. Says she’s the Dane’s favorite.”

I felt my upper lip involuntarily curl back and my sphincter muscle tighten.

Vinnie handed me a piece of paper with directions. “I called her up, and according to Bebe, Mo has a house south of here. Off in the woods. She didn’t know the address, but she knew how to get there.”

This corresponded with the information I’d received from Gail and Larry. Gail told me that Harp had done business with Mo at a location other than the store. She remembered the place because she’d ridden along once when Harp had delivered a “virgin actress.”

I took the directions and looked in at Morelli. He was picking at his potato chips and watching me through the door window. I gave him a finger wave and got into the pickup. I rolled the engine over and listened to the idle. Nice and even. No embarrassing backfires. No stalling.

“Thank you, Bucky,” I said. And thank God for doohickeys.

I took 206 South for several miles and cut off at White Horse, leading toward Yardville, dropping south again to Crosswicks. At Crosswicks I followed a winding two-lane road to an unmarked cross street where I stopped and checked my map. Everything seemed okay, so I continued on and after about five minutes hit Doyne. I turned right onto Doyne and checked my odometer. After two miles I started looking for a rusty black mailbox at the end of a dirt driveway. I’d passed one house when I’d first made my turn, but nothing now. It was wooded on either side of the road. If Mo was out here, he was well isolated.

At three and a half miles I saw the mailbox. I stopped and squinted through the bare trees at the clapboard bungalow at the end of the driveway. In the summer the bungalow wouldn’t be visible. This was the winter, and I could clearly see the carport, and the house. There was a car in the carport, but I had no way of knowing if it belonged to Mo.

I eased down the road about a quarter mile and dialed Ranger’s cell phone.

Ranger answered on the fourth ring. “Yo.”

“Yo yourself,” I said. “I think I have a line on Mo. I’m staking out a bungalow south of Yardville. I need a backup for the takedown.”

“Give me directions.”

I gave the directions, tapped off on the cell phone and opened the small duffel bag I had on the seat beside me. I was wearing jeans and a turtleneck under my black leather jacket. I took the jacket off, zipped myself into a flak vest and put the jacket back on over the vest. The next item I took out of the duffel was a black nylon webbed gun belt with pouches to hold pepper spray and bludgeoning batons, not to mention my Smith & Wesson. I got out of the truck and strapped on the gun belt, filling the pouches, buckling in my gun. I adjusted the Velcro straps that held my .38 secure to my leg, tucked cuffs into the back of the belt and stuffed two spare nylon cuffs into my jacket pockets.

Now that I knew what Mo was up to I sort of wished I had rubber gloves, too.

I got back into the truck and cracked my knuckles, feeling nervous and stupid, all decked out like SWAT Princess.

I sat there until Ranger rolled to a stop behind me in the Bronco. I walked back to him and saw him smile.

“Looks like you’re serious.”

“People keep shooting at me.”

“That’s about as serious as it gets,” Ranger said.

He was already wearing his vest. He strapped on his gun belt while I explained the situation.

“This is your takedown,” he said. “Do you have a plan?”

“Drive in. Knock on the door. Arrest him.”

“You want the front or the back?”

“I want the front.”

“I’ll leave the Bronco here and circle around through the woods. Give me a couple minutes to get in place, then you do your thing.”

It was a long shot that Mo would be in the house. If I’d had more time I’d have set up surveillance. As it was, either we’d scare some poor soul half to death, or we’d risk getting drilled at the door. Then again, maybe Mo really didn’t do any of the killing and wasn’t all that dangerous.

I gave Ranger a lead and then drove down the driveway, parked behind the car in the carport and walked directly to the bungalow’s front door. Shades were drawn in all the windows. I was poised to knock on the door when the door opened, and Mo peered out at me.

“Well,” he said, “I guess this is it.”

“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

“Actually, the sound of a vehicle on my driveway gave me quite a start. But then I realized it was you, and to tell you the truth, I was relieved.”

“Afraid it was Reverend Bill?”

“So, you know about Bill.” He shook his head. “I’ll be happy when this is all cleared up. I don’t feel safe here anymore. I don’t feel safe anywhere.”

I stood just inside the front door and looked around. Two bedrooms, one bath, living room, eat-in kitchen with a back door. The rug was threadbare but clean. The furniture was shabby. Not a lot of clutter. Colors were faded into a blur of neutral nothing. A couch, an overstuffed club chair, a TV and VCR. No dust on the coffee table.

“I imagine you’re not safe either,” Mo said. “You’ve been making Bill real nervous.”

I did a mental head shake. I’d unwittingly camped out in front of the Freedom Church. Mo and Bill must have been panicked, thinking I was on to them. Sometimes I amazed even myself. How could a person’s instincts be so wrong and at the same time so right?

Mo pulled a shade aside and peeked out the front window. “How did you find me?”

“I took a sort of roundabout route through the burg grapevine.”

Mo turned back to me, horror etched onto his face. I looked into his eyes and saw his mind racing a million miles an hour.

“That’s impossible,” he said, anxiety pinching his lips, turning them white. “Nobody in the burg knows about this house.”

“Larry Skolnik knows. You remember Larry? The kid who wrote secret messages on his arm. Works in his father’s dry cleaning shop now.”

I walked to the open bedroom door and looked in. Bed, neatly made. Throw rug on the floor. Bedside table with lamp and clock. The second bedroom was empty. Tracks on the rug from a recent vacuuming. A few indentations in the rug from furniture or whatever. Clearly the room had recently been cleaned out. I checked the bathroom. There was a heavy drape on the small single window. Darkroom, I thought. Mo probably did some stills of his stars. I walked back to the front door.

“I know about the movies,” I said to Mo.

He gaped at me. Panicky. Still not believing. I rattled off his list of credits. Asserting my dominance. Letting Mo know that the game was over.

Mo pulled himself together and raised his chin a fraction of an inch. A defensive posture. “Well, what of it? I make art films involving consenting adults.”

“Consenting, maybe. Adults is questionable. Does Reverend Bill know about your hobby?”

“Reverend Bill is one of my most devoted fans. Has been for years. Reverend Bill is a firm believer in corporal punishment for bad behavior.”

“Then he knows about this house.”

“Not the location. And it’s not a hobby. I’m a professional filmmaker. I make good money off my films.”

“I bet.”

“You don’t expect me to retire on the money I make selling ice cream cones, do you?” Mo snapped. “You know what the profit is on penny candy? The profit is nothing.”

I hoped he didn’t expect me to be sympathetic. I was having a hard time not grimacing every time I thought about my picture on his kitchen wall.

He shook his head, the spark of indignant fire sputtering out. Mo collapsing in on himself. “I can’t believe this is happening to me. I was making a good living. Putting money away for retirement. I was providing entertainment to a select group of adults. I was employing deserving young people.”

I did some mental eye rolling. Moses Bedemier paid street dealers to recruit fresh blood for his porno movies. The street dealers knew the runaways and street kids. They knew the teenagers who still looked healthy and would do most anything to get a new high.

“I made one mistake,” Mo said. “One mistake and everything started to unravel. It was all because of that awful Jamal Brousse.” He paced to the window, clearly agitated, peeking around the shade, clasping and unclasping his hands.

“I hope you were careful not to be followed,” he said. “Bill is looking for me.”

“I wasn’t followed.” Probably.

Mo kept going, wanting to share his story, I guess, looking slightly dazed that it had all come to this, talking while he continued to pace. Probably he’d been talking and pacing for hours before I arrived, trying to talk himself into calling the police.

“All because of Brousse,” he said. “A drug dealer and a purveyor. I made a single unfortunate transaction with him for a young man to model for me. I just wanted some photographs.”

He held up and listened. “Bill will kill us both if he finds us here.”

There was no doubt in my mind. As soon as Ranger showed up we were moving out. “What about Brousse?” I asked, more to distract myself from thoughts of Reverend Bill arriving before Ranger, than raw curiosity.

“I honored my agreement with Brousse, but he kept coming back at me, making more and more demands. Blackmailing me. I was desperate. I didn’t know what to do. I might not make much money from my store, but I have a certain position in the community that I enjoy. Brousse could have ruined everything.

“And then one day Bill stopped in at the store, and I got an idea. Suppose I told Bill about this guy, Jamal Brousse, who was selling drugs to kids. I figured Bill would put a scare into him. Maybe punch him in the nose or something. Maybe scare him enough so he’d go away. Trouble was Bill liked the idea of community justice so much he killed Brousse.

“But Bill made a mistake on Brousse. Dumped him in the river, and Brousse bobbed in to shore two hours later. Bill didn’t like that. Said it was messy. I wanted to stop there, but Bill pressed me to give him another name. I finally caved in, and next thing, Bill had killed another dealer and buried him in my cellar. Before I knew it my cellar was full of dead drug dealers. Even after I got arrested, Bill kept up the killing. Only now it was harder to get to the cellar, so we just hid the bodies as best we could. Cameron Brown, Leroy Watkins.” Mo shook his head. “Bill was obsessed with the killing. He organized a death squad. And that was so successful Bill started killing not just dealers but hard-core drug users. The death squad learned how to kill the addicts with ODs, so it’d look more natural.

“That’s why I hired an attorney. I couldn’t be part of all that craziness anymore. They were even talking about killing you. And you wouldn’t believe who was taking part in this. Cops, shoe salesmen, grandmothers and schoolteachers. It was insanity. It was like one of those cult things. Like those militia people you see on the television out in Idaho. I even got caught up in it for a while. Carrying a gun. And then that police officer discovered it, and I panicked. It was the gun that had killed Brousse. What was I thinking?”

“Why did you hire a lawyer? Why didn’t you just turn yourself in?”

“I’m an old man. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail. I guess I hoped if I was cooperative and had a good lawyer I might get off easier. I didn’t kill anyone, you know. I just gave Bill some names and set up some meetings.”

“You were still participating after you’d gotten a lawyer. You set up Elliot Harp.”

“I couldn’t get out. I was afraid. I didn’t want anyone to know I was talking to the police. As it is, every time I hear a car on the road out there I break into a sweat, thinking it’s Bill, and he’s found out and come to get me.

“I just wish I’d had some other choice right from the beginning. I feel like I started this in motion. This nightmare.”

“There always are choices,” Ranger said, laying the barrel of his .44 Magnum alongside Mo’s head.

Mo rolled his eyes to look at Ranger. “Where’d you come from? I didn’t hear you come in!”

“I come in like the fog on little cat feet.”

I looked at Ranger. “Very nice.”

“Carl Sandburg,” Ranger said. “More or less.”

Gravel crunched under tire treads outside, and Mo jumped beside me. “It’s him!”

I pulled the shade and looked out. “It’s not Reverend Bill.”

Ranger and Mo raised their eyebrows at me in silent question.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I said.

I answered the knock at the door and revealed Lula standing on the stoop, beaming, looking pleased.

“Hey girlfriend,” she said. “Vinnie told me all about this hideaway house, and I came out to give you a hand.”

Mo’s voice cracked. “It’s the lunatic in the red Firebird!”

“Hunh,” Lula said.

I got Mo’s jacket from the hall closet and bundled him into it, at the same time checking him for weapons. I ushered him out the front door and was standing with him on the stoop when I caught the far-off sound of a car on the road. We all paused. The car drew closer. We caught a flash of blue through the trees, and then the vehicle turned into the drive. It was a Ford Econoline van with FREEDOM CHURCH lettered on the side. It stopped halfway to the house, its forward progress halted by Lula’s Firebird. The side door to the van slid open and a man in mask and coveralls got out. We stared at each other for a moment, and then he hefted a rocket launcher to his shoulder. There was a flash of fire and a pfnufff! And my truck blew up, its doors shooting off into space like Frisbees.

“That’s a warning shot,” the man yelled. “We want Mo.”

I was speechless. They’d blown up my truck! They’d turned it into a big yellow fireball.

“Look on the bright side,” Lula said to me. “You’re not going to have to worry about that puppy stalling no more.”

“It was fixed!”

Two more men got out of the van. They sighted assault rifles, and we all stumbled back into the house and slammed the door shut.

“If they can blow up a truck, they can blow up a house,” Ranger said, pulling car keys from his pocket, handing them to me. “Take Mo out the back door while I pin these guys down. Cut through the woods to my Bronco and get the hell out of here.”

“What about you? I’m not going to leave you here!”

The house was peppered with gunshot, and we all hit the deck.

Ranger knocked out window glass and opened fire. “I’ll be fine. I’ll give you a good start, and then I’ll lose myself in the woods.” He glanced over at me. “I’ve done this before.”

I grabbed Mo and shoved him toward the back door. Lula ran after us. All of us scuttled in a crouch across the small backyard to the woods while gunfire once again erupted from the driveway. Mo was struggling to run, and Lula was shouting, “Oh shit! Oh shit!”

We slid on our asses down a small embankment, scrambled to our feet and kept going, crashing through dry, viny undergrowth. Not what you’d call a quiet retreat, but quiet didn’t matter with World War III going on behind us.

When I thought we’d gone far enough I began curving back toward the road. There was another explosion, and I turned to see a fireball rise to the sky.

“Has to be the bungalow,” Lula said.

Her tone was somber. Ominous. Both of us thinking of Ranger.

Mo went down to his knees, his face chalk white, his hand holding his side where a dark stain had begun to spread on his gray coat. A drop of blood hit dry leaves.

“He must have caught one in the house,” Lula said.

I tried to hoist Mo back to his feet. “You can make it,” I said. “It’s not that much farther.”

Sirens sounded on the road, and I saw the red flash of police light bars flicker through the trees to my left.

Mo made an effort to stand and collapsed altogether, facedown on the forest floor.

“Run to the road and get help,” I told Lula. “I’ll stay here.”

“You got a gun?”

“Yeah.”

“It loaded?”

“Yes. Go!”

She hesitated. “I don’t like leaving you.”

“Go!”

She swiped at her eyes. “Shit. I’m scared.”

She turned and ran. Looked back once and disappeared from view.

I dragged Mo behind a tree, putting the tree trunk between us and the house. I drew my gun and hunkered down.

I really needed to find another job.

It was dark when Lula dropped me off in my parking lot.

“Good thing Morelli and a bunch of cops were following that Freedom Church van,” Lula said. “We would have been toast.”

“The cops were following the Freedom van. Morelli was following me.”

“Lucky you,” Lula said.

Mickey’s hands were pointing to seven o’clock, but it felt much later. I was tired to the bone, and I had the beginnings of a headache. I shuffled to the elevator and leaned on the button. Thank goodness for elevators, I thought. I’d sleep in the lobby before I’d be able to muster the energy to walk up the stairs.

Lula, Ranger and I had answered questions at police headquarters for what seemed like hours.

Dickie had popped in while I was talking to yet another detective and offered to represent me. I told him I wasn’t being charged with anything, but thanks anyway. He seemed disappointed. Probably was hoping he could plea-bargain me into the license plate factory. Keep me away from Mallory. Or maybe he was hoping I’d done something heinous. I could see the headlines: EX-WIFE OF PROMINENT TRENTON ATTORNEY COMMITS HEINOUS CRIME. ATTORNEY SAYS HE ISN’T SURPRISED.

Just before I left the station word came down that Mo was out of surgery and looked pretty good. There’d been a lot of blood lost, but the bullet had entered and exited clean, missing all vital organs. The news had brought a sense of relief and closure. I’d been psyched to that point, hyped on adrenaline. When I finally signed my name to the printed statement of the day’s events and realized Mo would make it, the last dregs of energy dribbled out of me.

Rex and I checked out the feast on the coffee table. Rex from his cage. Me from the couch. Bucket of extra-spicy fried chicken, tray of biscuits, container of cole slaw, baked beans. Plus half a chocolate cake, left over from Saturday dinner with my parents.

The Rangers were playing Boston at the Garden, which meant I was wearing my home team white jersey. It was the end of the first period and the Rangers were ahead by a goal.

“This is the life,” I said to Rex. “Doesn’t get much better than this.”

I reached for a piece of chicken and was startled by a knock on my door.

“Don’t worry,” I said to Rex. “It’s probably just Mrs. Bestler.”

But I knew it wasn’t Mrs. Bestler. Mrs. Bestler never knocked on my door this late at night. No one knocked on my door this late at night. No one who wasn’t trouble. It had been a couple weeks since the two masked men had pushed their way into my apartment, but the experience had left me cautious. I’d enrolled in a self-defense class and was careful not to get so tired that my guard was down. Not that the men in the masks were still threatening.

Reverend Bill and the death squad were living rent free, courtesy of the federal government. And that didn’t include Mickey Maglio. There’d been cops involved, but he hadn’t been one of them. The man who’d burned me had been Reverend Bill’s brother-in-law, imported from Jersey City. At least I’d been right about the accent.

Undoubtedly there were some closet vigilantes still at large, but they were keeping a low profile. Some of the wind had gone out of the movement’s sails when Mo’s secret life was made public information. And whatever vigilante momentum had been left had died a natural death without Reverend Bill acting as catalyst.

I quietly walked to the door and looked out through my peephole. Joe Morelli looked back at me. I should have guessed.

I opened the door to him. “You must have smelled the chicken.”

Morelli grinned and rocked back on his heels. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

Yeah, right. I got him a beer from the fridge. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Not since we closed the case on Mo. You never returned my phone calls.”

I flopped onto the couch. “Nothing to say.”

Morelli took a pull at his beer. “You still pissed off at me for withholding information?”

“Yes. I helped you out with Dickie, and you gave me nothing in return.”

“That’s not true. I gave you Reverend Bill.”

“Only because you knew I’d get it from other sources. I’m glad I ralphed on you that night in your kitchen.”

“I suppose that was my fault too?”

“Damn skippy it was.” I actually accepted full responsibility, but I had no intention of conveying this to Morelli.

Morelli took a piece of chicken. “Everyone at headquarters is very impressed with you. You were the only one to pick up on the movie angle.”

“Thanks to Sue Ann Grebek and her motor mouth. When she told me about Larry Skolnik I thought about Cameron Brown. The Cameron Brown murder never felt right to me. He sold some drugs, but he wasn’t a major player. His primary source of income was prostitution. Then Larry and Gail confirmed it. In fact, Larry had already figured most of it out.”

The Rangers scored another goal, and we leaned forward to watch the replay.

I’d been reading the papers and talking to Eddie Gazarra, so I knew some of the details on Mo and Reverend Bill. I knew that both of them were coming up to trial. I wasn’t sure what would happen to Mo, but Bill was up on seven counts of murder one. Plus, in a late-afternoon raid, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms people hauled enough weapons out of the two Freedom houses on Montgomery Street to fill a five-ton U-Haul. That was way over the limit for anarchist stockpiling.

“I hear you’re back to working vice.”

Morelli nodded. “I didn’t have the wardrobe for homicide. And they actually expected me to shave every day.”

“You still living in the house?”

“Yeah. I like it. It’s got more space. Lots of closets. Bigger kitchen. Cellar.” He leaned close. “It’s even got a back door.”

I slid him a sideways glance.

He drew a little circle at my temple with his fingertip, and the pitch dropped on his voice. “It’s got a backyard, too.”

“Backyards are nice.”

The fingertip traced down to my collarbone. “Good for summer activities…like barbecues.”

I hauled back and looked at him. Morelli barbecuing?

“Play your cards right and I might invite you over for a hamburger,” Morelli said.

“Just a hamburger?”

“More than a hamburger.”

This brought to mind the old adage—be careful what you wish for because you might get it.

Morelli let some smile creep into his voice. “After the hamburger I could show you my garage. Did I mention that I had a garage?”

“Not until now.”

“Well, I have a garage, and I know a game…”

Oh boy. “I think I know this game.”

The smile spread to his eyes. “Yeah?”

“It has to do with…transportation. Trains and such.”

“I’ve learned some new routes since the last time we played,” he said.

And then his lips brushed the nape of my neck, sending a jolt of fire straight to my doodah.