Baby, It’s Murder

Chapter Eleven

The night was cool, not cold, but I was both.

In my makeshift ninja apparel — black polo, black jeans, black trainers, the .38 Police Special in a holster on my left hip, grip out — I was in full combat mode. In foxholes in the Pacific, a few decades and a lifetime ago, I had learned to go into a state of consciousness that was purely reactive, where my only thoughts were processing sounds in the daytime jungle and noise in the nightmare landscape lurking after dark.

Right now it was dark, but with a nearly full moon in a glittering star-flung sky casting a soothing glow of visibility. I’d already thought through what my approach would be. The obvious next step was to confront Garrett Andrew Williams the First. What needed determining right now was whether First was unaware of his son’s corrupt activities or was in fact the puppeteer behind them. That would define whether the father was a potential ally or an out-and-out adversary; but either way First ought to be able to point me in Second’s direction, specifically to where his son was likely to have taken Mikki to hold her hostage.

The massive two-story tan-brick mansion was bordered by greenery, thick protective natural walls around the place that might include security devices triggering alarms or cameras that would put me on the screens of a possible surveillance center. Sneaking in, without having surveyed what awaited me, seemed a poor option.

That left a frontal approach.

I pulled the heap down the brick lane through the lushly landscaped grounds, where it wound up in that circular drive around the burbling, bubbling cupid fountain, the front of the manse lit by so much exterior lighting this might have been opening night. That thought was encouraged by the presence of four vehicles, three with New York license plates and another with New Jersey, parked at the curving curb out front, cars that shouted money — a silver Cadillac Eldorado, an olive-hued Lincoln Continental, a deep-purple Ford Thunderbird, a hearse-black Pontiac Gran Prix.

My heap would be the turd in the punch bowl at this party, whatever it was.

I reached in back for my black sports coat and got into it. The weather justified that and the revolver on my hip demanded the concealment it provided. I had already gotten the canvas zippered pouch that was my goodie bag out from under the front seat and onto the rider’s side.

Batman had his utility belt and I had my goodie bag.

From it I withdrew a sheathed Ka-Bar knife with a seven-inch blade, three pairs of police handcuffs, a slim black five-inch flashlight, an extra .38 ammo box, my packet of lock picks, roll of silver duct tape, and a six-inch retracted baton (a push button release extending it to just under a foot). The Ka-Bar went on my belt, handcuffs into my right sports coat pocket, the flashlight and ammo box into the left; the baton I clutched in my right hand.

I was about to drop by the Williams place.

First up was getting past the guardian at the gate. I presumed that big Black bruiser was live-in help, and if he wasn’t, someone else like him would be. This wasn’t all that late to be calling, barely eight o’clock, so my ringing the bell shouldn’t have alarmed anyone.

Except maybe its lowlife inhabitants and the company they were entertaining.

Like the postman, I had to ring twice, but eventually the door came halfway open and there he was, that big bald Black butler in a black suit and tie, his face impassive with only the narrowed eyes to express his displeasure. Like the heavyweight boxer he’d once been, George was bigger than humans usually are, and it took no effort from him at all to intimidate.

“I’m here for the meeting,” I said. “Running a little late.”

He didn’t buy it. He shook that big head. In his medium-range baritone, which was deceptively civilized-sounding, he uttered, “Not on my list.”

Unless it was his Shit List.

“Check with Mr. Williams,” I advised. “He’s expecting me.”

“Don’t think so. You best go.”

“You better check with your boss. He won’t be happy, you sending me away.”

The former boxer was processing that when I brought around the baton that I’d been shielding behind me and clicked the button extending it and whipped it alongside his head.

Despite what you might think, this guy was human and the blow left a slanted red bloody streak along one cheek and encouraged a woozy backward step, which was all I needed to push my way in. I gave him another clout with it, along the other side of his head, and the towering figure went down on one knee. I was ready to clout him again but he fell on his face — I had to get out of the way before the tree of him landed on me.

I shut the door behind me.

The butler in black was face down, not dead or anything, but well and truly visiting the land of fucking Nod. I plucked a Sig Sauer automatic from a shoulder holster under his black jacket and stuck the extra rod in my waistband — a nice opportunity to add a weapon to my limited arsenal.

The hard part was dragging his unconscious ass over to the staircase, seating him below the bottom step to use two handcuffs to secure each of his wrists to separate metal posts of the banister, arms above his head, putting him in a position as awkward as it was humiliating. I duct-taped his mouth shut, too, to add insult to injury, and then bound his ankles together with the stuff. When I was finishing up this operation, he started to come around, and his eyes were getting big with outrage when I gave him another rap alongside the head, raising more wet red and putting the fucker to sleep.

Maybe it killed him. I didn’t really care. I’d done my best to leave him with a future and anyway I had more pressing things on my mind.

For a few moments, catching my breath, I stood listening, searching for any sounds on the main floor. The quiet was such that I decided to check out the upper floor first, but all I found was two ridiculously large bathrooms and six bedrooms big as ballrooms, beautifully appointed in a modern way, their gleaming wood floors bearing throw rugs the size of wall maps. One bedroom was decidedly feminine with a blue spread and other tones of blue with an elaborate mirrored vanity; obviously this was where Mrs. First camped out.

No humans, however. Not even any animals, unless you counted the beast handcuffed at the foot of the stairs.

So I tried the main floor, quiet though it had been, and became increasingly afraid the master of the house was away — at his country club, having transported his visitors there for a summit meeting — and found more pointless opulence and needless space by way of a den/family room with a full wall given over to a TV and audio setup; a stainless-steel kitchen; formal dining room; breakfast nook; home office; bathroom you could hold a well-attended orgy in (and maybe from time to time they did); and of course my unaware host’s elaborate home gym with wet bar. Most rooms had at least some lights on, so my flashlight had not yet proved necessary.

That’s all I can remember to report, other than the general feeling that these rooms were all ridiculously spacious, not a single one you couldn’t raise an echo in.

But the notable discovery was that my duct-taped greeter and I were not actually alone in the place. Well, not in the mansion itself, anyway. Of three patios, one was around the pool, which opened off the kitchen (where a few minimal lights were on) by way of double glass doors.

And through those doors I could see — and luckily was not seen, before tucking myself with my back to the wall and my head craned near those double slabs of glass — a meeting in progress. A meeting of the minds — if twisted ones.

In the flaring yellow-orange glow of Tiki torch lamps on poles, five men were seated around the white wrought-iron, beige marble-top table. They sat under the starry sky, the pool their backdrop — a radiant blue with recessed lighting under its surface making a glimmering carpet out of it. Everyone had a mixed drink in front of him and ashtrays were home to cigars and cigarettes.

One of these men, at the far head of the table, was that older variation on Second, his father, wrapped in a paisley brown-and-blue smoking jacket/robe, what might have been pajama bottoms, and sandals; the other four, all angled to look at their host, I recognized, although I had only met one of them. The other three were in the Daily News just a little less often than the funnies.

Four wore sports coats in a colorful shade — sky blue, mint green, bright yellow, rust red — apparel with the currently fashionable clownish wide lapels and shirts with pointed collars; slight bell bottoms, too, where I could see them.

These might have been guests at First’s country club, or even members — as, like so many men these days, they wore untrimmed sideburns and the kind of long hair they’d probably slapped their sons for wearing a few years ago — and dressed in colors reserved for their wives in the past. None wore ties, though scarves and gold necklaces and even a crucifix were in evidence, but which necks wore what adornment is irrelevant. Let’s settle for the following:

In pastel blue we had Gasper Mortelliti.

In pastel green we had Anthony Russo.

In bright yellow we had Carmine Evello.

In rust red we had Maxim Solonik.

See if you can pick the Russian mob boss out of that Sicilian mafioso line-up.

Mortelliti and Russo were seated on my side of the table, Evello and Solonik on the far side. At the head, down to the right, sat Garrett Andrew Williams the First.

Positioned protectively were a pair of nameless hoods, nameless to me anyway — one with his back partially to the double doors, so very close to where I’d snugged myself against a wall; another between the pool and Evello and Solonik on the table’s far side. Mine looked Italian, the other Russian, but I’m just guessing. These apparent bodyguards sported leisure suits, the Italian in blue, the Russian (appropriately) in light red... you might call it pink. Maybe he was confident in his masculinity.

Though not exactly the United Nations, this was nonetheless a significant gathering of ethnic groups. All but Williams wore the kind of faces the lighting made grotesque angular masks out of. These pastel pricks could have posed for a sculptor fashioning gargoyles.

I could hear Garrett Andrew Williams the First conveying his vision of the future.

“What my son has undertaken,” he was saying, “at my behest, gentlemen, demonstrates a pattern we can duplicate at high schools and particularly on college campuses. I intend to continue using my gifted boy on further college New York State campuses over the next several years — he can transfer from one school to another, creating small armies of dealers wherever he goes. This same approach can be undertaken in virtually every state of our great country.”

Bullet-headed Mortelliti, whose skeptical look suggested he found even the milk from his mother’s tit suspect, said, “I would feel better, Williams, if your boy was here. His insights into this distribution scheme would be worth hearing.”

“I know, I know,” Williams said placatingly, patting the air with a palm, “and he wanted to be. Business called Second away unexpectedly, and we all know business comes first. He has a Phi Beta Kappa mind, my son.”

“Vot kind uv brain?” the square-headed Russian asked, squinting at his host.

White hair threaded black, skull so narrow it might have been squeezed at birth, Evello said, “He means the kid is smart. I dealt with Second. That’s what they call the boy. Sharp as a tack.”

“It’s a good move,” Russo said, nodding. “Jersey is in.”

“Speaking for the six families,” Evello said, “it makes a lot of sense. But we roll out gradual. Don’t want too much attention all at once.”

“Let it be a social problem,” Mortelliti said, a smart man, if not Phi Beta Kappa. “Something to blame on the fuckin’ hippies.”

“Our experience,” Williams said, with a smarmy smile, “is that someone clean-cut like my boy attracts little attention. All these damn freaks and SDS types running around campus will take the heat... and give us a lot of business.”

That got a general laugh out of the group.

I slid a door open and stepped out onto the patio with the Ka-Bar in my left hand and the .38 in my right, edging behind the apparent Italian hood and putting the blade of the Ka-Bar to his throat. The bodyguard stiffened and blurted, “Jesus fuck!” in half-prayer, half-surprise. He smelled of Old Spice — easier than bathing, I guess.

All faces turned toward me and eyes were wide and mouths open and down-turned, emitting various cries of anger and alarm, mostly in English, but some Sicilian and Russian in there too, a polyglot of outrage.

“I won’t start killing people unless I have to,” I said. “Here’s what I want.”

“Fuck you, Hammer!” Evello said, but it lacked confidence.

“Everybody put any hardware you got on the table,” I said, ignoring the mob boss’s outburst. “By the grip with two fingers, please. Includes little-girl pocket guns. If you got an ankle piece to get rid of, tell me first. Suspicious moves make me... suspicious.”

Nothing.

“Now, gentlemen, or I cut a throat and start shooting.”

Guns clunked onto the table.

The bodyguard standing behind the seated Evello and Solonik got his weapon out from under his arm — like him, the gun was Russian, a Makarov — and he played by my rules, removing it from its underarm holster with two fingers...

...but swiveled it into his grasp and fired toward me, hitting and spider-webbing a glass door to my left. With the .38 in my right hand, I returned fire, and the head shot misted red as the Russian thug fell backward into the pool as with my left I cut the other bodyguard’s throat and blood sprayed the men at the table, dotting them like some disease broke out, and maybe it had because every one of them grabbed for the gun they’d just politely laid on the table and Mortelliti and Russo scattered to the right, toward the white-curtained poolside cabana. I picked the runners off like ducks on the fly, head shots that made red fireworks and they tumbled into the pool and made a splash.

Meanwhile Evello and Solonik collaborated in upending the table to take cover behind, but the marble top shattered and exposed them, and as they crouched to return fire, they were suddenly unprotected and took head shots as well, ribboning spurts of scarlet not mist, tumbling backward and joining the others in the water.

I moved toward Garrett Andrew Williams the First, who was cowering behind his white, blood-spattered wrought-iron chair, which made pitiful cover. But he had managed to stay out of the line of fire, smart enough not to grab for any of the guns when things had gotten abruptly real.

“Have a seat, Garrett,” I said.

He rose slowly and settled himself in the wrought-iron chair and I pulled one over. Dead men floated on their faces nearby like huge grotesque pastel flowers with shimmering scarlet stems.

“Where’s the girl?” I asked him. Businesslike. Almost casual. “Where does your boy have her?”

Flecked with blood spray, Williams replied in a fear-soaked tremble. “He’s going to call you. You should go home. Sit by the phone. He’ll call.”

“And set something up to trade the girl for... what?”

“Your... your willingness to drop this whole thing.”

“Does that seem likely to you?”

“Second didn’t anticipate... any... any of this...”

He gestured to the lit-from-beneath pool and the corpses bobbing there.

“It’ll be a trap, of course,” I said.

“No! No, he’ll be a... an honest broker in this. He’ll exchange the girl for you just agreeing to, to... fade away.”

“Not how it’s going to be,” I said. “You’re going to tell me, Garrett, where your son is holding her. Or you’re going to join your guests for a nighttime swim.”

“All right... all right...”

I heard crunching on glass behind me, and whirled from the chair and dropped into a crouch.

The Black protector of the Williams estate had staggered onto the patio through the kitchen and his massive form seemed to dwarf all else, his wrinkled black suit making a ghastly undertaker out of him, his wrists each bearing a loose handcuff, ragged duct tape trailing off his legs, his expression narrow-eyed, open-mouthed rage, and in his right hand was a nine-millimeter semi-auto handgun that looked like a toy prop in that immense mitt.

I think the only reason the heavyweight paused before shooting was how close his employer and I were to each other, and that half-second was enough for me to fire a round that caught him in the throat, his hands rising there with the dangling handcuffs like terrible jewelry, the automatic dropping to the tile floor, the gurgling coming from him like a drain taking on water. Then that huge frame staggered back and the spider-webbed glass door finally shattered and he went through it and crashed to the floor in a discordant crackling as the mighty carcass met glass fragments.

Garrett the First threw himself toward the puzzle pile of broken marble where various handguns belonging to dead gangsters were mixed in, and grabbed a gun and was on his back looking up at me, pointing the late Solonik’s Makarov when reflexively I shot him in his left eye.

Didn’t take long at all for the remaining orb to film over.

“Shit,” I said, getting on my feet.

The host of the party lay in a pile of marble chunks and firearms and spilled drinks and spilled blood with his paisley robe serving as an insufficient shroud and I was fucked. Fucked!

“Buy you a drink?” a female voice asked.

I whirled, 38 in hand, and at the white-curtained mouth of the cabana stood my late host’s wife, Tammy Williams, her hands up, palms out; she looked cool and lovely in a form-fitting red-and-white sarong and red kitten heels. There hadn’t been any fear in her voice, but her eyes said something else.

“I’d prefer you not kill me, Mike,” she said. “I was just the bartender here. Garrett insisted I stay away from the meeting itself.”

I crossed the patio to her, skirting the bodies of the bodyguard whose throat I’d slit and the fallen heavyweight whose fingers at his throat still oozed blood. My .38 remained in hand, but lowered some.

“I could use a beer,” I said.

An eyebrow lifted casually over one of those money-green eyes. “All I have is imported. Lowenbrau? Light or dark?”

“Dark.”

Then we were sitting again at the little bar in the cabana. She brought me the bottle of beer from the mini fridge on a shelf lined with liquor behind the counter, then came around and took the stool next to me. She didn’t want me to think maybe she had a gun back there.

“You don’t seem too upset,” I said, “you’re a widow now.”

She was having a Lowenbrau, too. “Not at all. My husband’s passing nullifies the portion of my pre-nup that’s been hanging over me. The only way I inherit anything is if Garrett goes first. And thanks to you, he has.”

I swigged the beer, studied the lovely cold face. “And where does that leave you?”

Her smile was slight, her gesture large. “This house is not mortgaged. The sale of it will fund me nicely, probably for the rest of my life. And there’s money in the bank, several banks, actually. You’ve done me the greatest favor anyone ever has, Mike... unless you kill me, too, of course.”

“Of course. But why would I?”

Her bare shoulders above the red-and-black of the sarong shrugged. “Well, I am a witness. But then, what exactly did I witness? Seems to me what I saw was a falling out among, shall we call them, thieves? Which got rather out of hand? I was lucky enough to survive by hiding in here. Who knows exactly what happened after that?”

“Then you want no part of Garrett’s business?”

She made a face, shook her head. Blonde hair bounced. “No! No. I want nothing to do with any of his business dealings, or practices. Oh, I might refurbish that country club of his. He’s been using it as a tax dodge for years, deducting improvements and renovation that never took place. It’s a money laundry with bad carpet.”

She put on a phony sad face.

“I did lie to you about one thing, when we spoke earlier, Mike.”

“Oh?”

Tammy seemed embarrassed to admit it as she said, “Garrett and I hadn’t slept together in years. You see, his gate swung both ways, as they say... but as he got older, he only preferred swinging it in a direction that didn’t include me, or frankly any female. Got obsessed with body building... and builders. I’ve lived a lie for over a decade, Mike, that has been at once cushy and a damn nightmare... Another Lowenbrau?”

“Better hold it to one.”

Was she stringing me along? Improvising a story that might save her life? Or keep me here till the cops showed up?

“I should probably be going,” I said, lifting off the stool.

She gently guided me back down. “No rush. We have no neighbors nearby. This is a seven-acre estate, after all. Your little shooting match wasn’t heard by anyone but the participants. And me. You probably already figured that.”

“You won’t use the phone the moment I leave?”

Her smile was as confident as it was beautiful. “Of course not. Oh, I’ll make a call in half an hour or so, when I tell them my story — the one you and I concocted. And when you’re long away.”

“I’d like to believe you.”

She put a hand on my thigh. “What would it take, Mike? I don’t believe you’re in a romantic mood right now. A raincheck? Unless your kink is doing it among the recently dead.”

“No. I’m the least kinky guy around. Just your average boring joe.”

“That secretary of yours is lucky to have you.” Tammy smiled on one side and lifted an eyebrow on the other. “How about I tell you where you’re likely to find Second and the missing girl? How would that rate as a show of good faith?”

“Just fine.”

She sighed, as if a difficult negotiation had just transpired; and maybe it had.

“The family has a cottage,” she said. “Nothing terribly fancy, just a place Garrett used to take the rabble he’d pick up in bars or at some gym. All very distasteful. Oh, I have nothing against alternate lifestyles. But not when it’s my husband.”

“I can see that. Where is this cottage?”

Tammy raised a red-nailed forefinger. “I’ll tell you. I’ll write it down.”

She utilized a notepad and pencil on the counter nearby.

As she wrote, I said, “I guess you have no maternal instinct toward Second.”

She tore the little sheet of paper off the pad. “Not at all. He’s a vile young man... and due to inherit half the estate. But if something happened to him...”

“Something could,” I admitted.

Tammy leaned close; stroked my cheek. “I hope you don’t think I’m a terrible person, Mike.”

“Even if I did, I think you’d get over it.”

She backed away a little, laughing. “Disappointed I’m not the femme fatale in all of this?”

I shrugged. “Well, from your stepson’s point of view, you kind of are. You’re doing fine with me as long as you stick to the story that you hid when all the carnage went down. That I was never here tonight.”

She opened both hands and shrugged. “You never were. Sure you won’t have one for the road, Mike?”