Exit Strategy

Toilet paper.

Before Russ Belding had left the house, his wife had asked whether there was anything else they needed from the grocery store. Now, watching his mutt-terrier, Champ, squat in the bushes, Russ remembered that he’d put the last roll of toilet paper on the holder the day before and forgot to add that to Brenda’s list. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and caught sight of the time on it: 7:57. Too late. Brenda liked to go shopping as soon as the store opened at eight, before it got busy, and she didn’t have a cell phone.

Should he pick some up on the drive home? He hated leaving Champ in the car. It was a cool fall day, but here in Florida, “cool” didn’t mean the same thing it had back in Detroit. Even with the window open, that blazing sun would turn the car into a furnace.

Would they have enough paper to last until tomorrow? A full roll, put on yesterday, would last approximately-

Russ stopped himself and chuckled. Thirty years in the navy and his engineering skills were reduced to calculating the rate of toilet paper consumption. The joys of retirement.

At the sound of his master’s laugh, Champ bounded across the grass and twined his lead around Russ’s legs. As Russ untangled himself, he thought of a better use for his abundance of free time: dog training. A squirrel darted through the bushes and Champ shot after it, nearly yanking Russ to his knees. Amazing the amount of velocity one small dog can produce. Now there was a scientific question worth considering.

Russ walked off the path to check the spot where Champ had squatted. Even before he could see anything, the smell of dog shit wafted past him. He reached into his pocket for a baggie and found…nothing.

Getting old, captain, Brenda would say. Memory is the first thing to go.

A furtive glance around. This stretch of path was empty, as it almost always was since the town opened the new park. Joggers flocked there for the trails, and parents and children for the playground equipment, leaving this dark, overwooded bit of green space for those who preferred privacy to scenery.

Russ looked down at the brown pile, steaming in the crisp morning air, then sighed and picked up a big oak leaf. Leave a mess on the deck and someone’s bound to slip in it. As he bent over to pick up the dog shit with the leaf, Champ barked.

“You want to do it, sailor? Be my guest.”

Something hit the base of his skull. One split second of blinding pain, not even enough time to form a thought. Then darkness.

The man slid the gun back into its holster and pulled his shirt down over it. As he did, he glanced around, reassuring himself that the path was still empty. The small dog yipped hysterically, darting between him and the body on the ground.

The body lay where it had fallen, a few scant feet from the path. He tugged the folded page from its plastic covering. One more look around before he leaned over and tucked the paper into the dead man’s rear pants pocket. Then he proceeded north, walking alongside the path on the grassy edge where his running shoes left no mark.

FOURTEEN

Evelyn and I walked up the cobblestone path. A cartoon Halloween black cat hung from the wreath hook on the door, with a Pull Me sign dangling from its tail. I obliged. The cat screeched and quaked, eyes rolling in terror. I smiled. Evelyn shook her head and rang the bell.

A moment later, a handsome woman in a wheelchair pulled open the door. As Evelyn leaned down to kiss her cheek, another woman scurried from a back room. She was smaller, rounder and plainer, with a mop of white curls and faded blue eyes.

“ Frances!” she said. “I told you I’d get the door. The locks are too high.”

The first woman shook my hand. “You must be Dee. I’m Frances. This hovering mother hen is Maggie.”

“I’m not hovering. The doctor said you aren’t supposed to lift yourself. You’d have to lift yourself to reach that lock.”

“I’m almost six feet tall. I can reach the lock on my frigging knees.” Frances looked back at me. “Forgive us. The wheelchair is, I’m afraid, a recent development and Maggie isn’t adjusting well.”

“Me?” Maggie sputtered. She swept past Frances, beamed a wide smile at us, embraced Evelyn and clasped my hand between hers. “So you’re the new hitwoman. Lovely. We’re so pleased to meet you.”

Frances rolled her eyes and looked at me. “Bet you’ve never had that greeting before.”

Maggie shooed us into the living room. As with the exterior of the house, one could see that great effort had been made to transform substandard housing into a warm and inviting home. An Oriental carpet, perhaps once worth thousands, now faded and threadbare in places. Jewel-toned pillows adorned an antique sofa and chair set, their upholstery patterns rubbed clean at the edges, their wood trim smooth with wear and shiny with polish.

Unlike at Evelyn’s house, these walls bore no artwork. Instead, they were decorated with photographs. Picture frames were everywhere, covering the walls, the end tables, the fireplace mantel, frames of every description, from dime-store plastic to contemporary wood to silver antiques. A lifetime of memories.

“Coffee for Evie,” Maggie said. “And you, dear? Coffee? Tea? Cold drink?”

“Coffee’s fine, thank you,” I said. “Cream or milk, please, whichever you have on hand.”

“How polite. Evie, are you taking notes?”

Evelyn opened her mouth, but Maggie vanished before she could respond. I continued to look at the pictures, then zeroed in on an old one propped next to the telephone. In it, two young women grinned before Mount Rushmore. Maggie and Frances. I could tell by the smiles, which hadn’t changed in the forty-plus years since the photo had been snapped. Age had favored Frances best. In the old picture, she was severe looking, her features too strong for her youthful face. And Maggie? She’d been jaw-droppingly gorgeous, with blond curls, dimples, flawless skin and a figure that could have body-doubled for Marilyn Monroe.

“A knockout, wasn’t she?” Frances said. “Of course, she still is.”

“Nice save, darling,” Maggie said as she pushed through the kitchen door. “Time has not been kind to this old broad, but it got me what I wanted.”

“An early and comfortable retirement,” Frances said. “We didn’t make a fortune, but we did well enough.”

Maggie grinned wickedly and slid her fingers down Frances ’s arm. “That’s not what I meant.”

Frances blushed and dropped her eyes like a sixteen-year-old, then quickly grabbed two coffee cups from the tray Maggie had laid on the side table. She leaned forward to hand me one.

“Has Evie told you what we did in the old days?” Frances asked.

I shook my head.

Maggie held up a hand, motioning for Frances to let her explain. “A variation on the oldest and best female confidence scheme in the books. First, you find a lonely rich man…and believe me, all rich men are lonely. Then you send in someone who looks like that.” She pointed to her image in the old photo. “She wrangles a private invitation back to his house, and makes sure the doors are left unlocked behind her. While she’s busy cooing over cocktails, in comes her partner and cleans the place out. Frances could pick a mansion clean in thirty minutes.”

Frances grinned. “And Maggie could tease for thirty-five, so it worked out fine.”

“Thirty-five? Darling, I could tease for sixty and do no more than peck his cheek.”

Frances rolled her eyes. “Sixty? Remember that Swede? In Atlanta? If I hadn’t-”

“I’m sure Dee and Evie didn’t come to hear us reminisce,” Maggie said. “How may we help you ladies?”

“We need to talk to someone who would have been with the Nikolaev family in the seventies. You still keep up with Peter, don’t you?”

“We’re going down to Florida next month to see him and Chance.” She frowned at Frances. “Is it Chance? Or Enrico?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Frances said. “Since Ivan died, it’s a new Chance or Enrico every time we meet him. Eighteen-year-old pool boys. Some men hit a certain age-straight or gay, it doesn’t matter-they’ll empty their wallets on the first flat stomach that comes along.”

“But we don’t need to call Peter to find you a Nikolaev contact,” Maggie said. “Little Joe is in an old-age home outside Detroit.”

“A retirement home?” Evelyn said. “Little Joe is Boris Nikolaev’s brother, isn’t he?”

“Hell of a thing to do to your own brother,” Frances said. “But Boris never had much use for Joe. Not that I blame him. There was some scandal a couple of years back, Joe flapping his gums when he shouldn’t have. Boris shipped him off to a fancy rest home. Joe was never the sharpest tool in the family shed, but if you’re looking for someone to talk, he’ll talk all right. Problem always was getting him to shut up.”

“Will there be a problem getting in to see him?” I asked. “They’ll have him under security still, won’t they?”

Frances shook her head. “When the family puts someone out to pasture, he’s persona non grata. They’ll visit him, keep up appearances but, as far as they’re concerned, he’s out of the business. They won’t tell him anything, so there’s nothing he can tell anyone else. On current events, that is. The past? Well, no one cares much about the past these days.”

Frances searched the Internet for private rest homes in the Detroit suburbs until she found the one that tweaked her memory. Then we took our leave and prepared for a trip to Michigan.

“He’s an old man,” Evelyn said as she pulled into a mall parking lot. “Flash him some T and A, and he’ll tell us everything we want to know.”

“Great,” I said. “We’ll find you a push-up bra and miniskirt.”

She pinned me with a look. “After a certain age, all the push-up bras in the world don’t help, as you’ll discover. With a man like Little Joe, the horseflesh has to be young and it has to be firm.”

“Did I mention I don’t do Mata Hari?”

“ Dee…”

“I’m not pulling some feminist bullshit. I can’t play the seduction card-I don’t have the look for it. When I was on the force, Vice nabbed me once for undercover, stuck me in a microskirt and halter top, put me on the street corner. I looked like the world’s only crack ho with a personal trainer.”

“We can skip the microskirt.”

“And the halter top?”

A sigh. “And the halter top. Let’s see what we can find.”

I folded my sandwich wrapper into quarters, tucked it into the take-out bag and folded that into a neat square. Then I leaned forward to shake the crumbs from my cleavage. Amazing what they can do with bras these days. Slap together some elastic and some underwire, toss in a couple of gel-filled “contouring pads” and I felt like I should be ticketed for false advertising.

Evelyn had picked out my sweater-a low-cut job that was 50 percent Lycra, 20 percent angora and 100 percent skanky. She’d completed the ensemble with skintight jeans, ankle boots, red press-on nails and jewelry that clanked when I walked.

Back at her place I’d finished up with hair and makeup. I’d considered Jack’s platinum wig choice, but it tweaked the outfit over the line to street whore. So I’d kept on Evelyn’s long brown one, borrowed a curling iron and hair-spray, and teased the wig until it looked like what I’d worn for my eighth-grade yearbook photo-a shellacked ode to the era of big hair and heavy metal. Mafia bait. All I needed was a wad of bubble gum and a Jersey accent.

We’d taken turns driving, picked up lunch and arrived at Glory Acres just past three-thirty. The place had once been a home-a real one-occupied, undoubtedly, by a real family. It appeared to have begun life as a two-story Victorian but, like most of us, had spread with age. There was an addition here, a wing there, none of it the same style as the original building. Two skeletons of porch swings were propped against the house, seats and cushions gone. Burlap covered the shrubs and rosebushes. Birdbaths had been emptied and turned upside-down. A house in hibernation.

“I’ll talk to him alone first,” Evelyn said as we walked up the front steps. “I need to refresh his memory on some…past deeds of mine. So he knows I’m not conning him.”

“Maybe you can get him to talk to you, skip my role altogether.”

She said nothing, and I had the feeling it wouldn’t matter if she could get Little Joe to talk-she’d still bring me in. Testing me. Or showing me who was boss. Probably both. Typical “new partner” bullshit. One reason I liked working with Jack-he never pulled this crap.

“It might take ten, fifteen minutes, so use the washroom, freshen up.” She gave me a once-over. “Put on more lipstick. And pull the sweater down.”

“If I pull it down anymore, I’ll fall out.”

“All the better.”

“So what’s my story?” I said as I pulled open the front door. “Your niece? Nurse? Tax accountant?”

“For occupation, we’ll stick with the truth.”

I stopped, the door half open. “Seriously? Dressed like this?”

“He’ll love it.”

FIFTEEN

I waited in the atrium. The nurse had said there was a sitting room, but I preferred to stick close to the door, where escape was within sight. The smell is what did it to me, that unforgettable mix of disinfectant, overcooked vegetables and mortality that hits you in the gut and screams “run, while you still can!”

The last time I’d set foot in one of death’s holding pens-sorry, “retirement homes”-I’d been thirteen, visiting my great-aunt Anna. The same Aunt Anna who’d sworn she’d die if her kids ever put her in a home. She didn’t belong in a retirement home. First, she’d never retired, having run a cake-decorating business right up to the minute her kids stuck the For Sale sign on her front lawn. Second, though she was ninety-one, her brain was as sharp as ever, which was part of the problem. With her body wasting, she needed live-in help and she could be difficult. When the third nurse quit, Aunt Anna’s children gave up and put her in a home. Two weeks later, the old woman’s prediction came true. She died. There’s a moral in there somewhere. I think it’s “don’t have kids.”

Evelyn came to collect me about ten minutes later.

“Now, he knows what you are,” she whispered as she steered me down the main hall. “But I didn’t give a name. Don’t use Dee. That’ll be your official name and we don’t want him knowing that.” She stopped outside a room and grasped the handle. “We could go with-”

“I’ve got one,” I said and pushed open the door.

The door opened into the living room area of a hotel size suite. A couch, a chair, a coffee table and art prints on the wall, all very Holiday Inn, reasonably new, but definitely bargain-basement quality. A decent enough place to spend the night…but the rest of your life? I fought back a shiver.

A man sat in the chair, his back to the door, affording only a view of a liver-spotted bald head. He stood as we came in. I blinked, and hoped my surprise didn’t show. He was three inches shorter than me, and I was only wearing one-inch heels. With a name like Little Joe, maybe this doesn’t seem surprising, but blatant irony is the favored form of criminal nickname humor. Any guy with the words “tiny” or “little” in his moniker was certain to be six feet plus. Obviously the Nikolaevs didn’t share the usual sense of mob humor.

Like many undersized criminals, Little Joe had over-compensated in the weight room. He’d pumped iron for so many years that even now, stuck in a rest home, his biceps would be the envy of a man a quarter his age. He had, however, neglected the lower half of his body, which left him looking like a balloon character squeezed from the bottom, a massive chest topping spindly legs. His eyes were sunken brown dots that glittered when he saw me. He smiled, revealing a perfect set of fake pearly whites.

“Is this her?” he asked, his gaze dropping to my chest and staying there.

“Jess,” I said, stepping forward and extending my hand. “But my friends call me Jezebel.”

He wheezed a laugh. “I bet they do.” He vice-gripped my hand. I squeezed back and he fairly licked his lips, eyes never rising above my neckline. “I bet you are very good at your job, no?”

“The best. No one ever complains.”

I extricated my hand from his and sashayed to the sofa. Evelyn tried to take the seat beside me, but Little Joe slid into it with the speed of a twenty-year-old.

“Now this, Evelyn, this is how a hitwoman should be,” Joe said, waggling a finger at her. “Not dressing up like a man, running around, shooting people. She must be subtle. Use her assets.” A sidelong look at my “assets.” “Yes, this is how it should be.”

I wriggled like a praised puppy. Joe sidled closer.

“Evelyn tells me you’re a very important man,” I said.

My use of the present tense didn’t go unnoticed. Joe preened and regaled me with a few glimpses into his former life. As he talked, I was aware of time ticking past, but also knew this wasn’t someone who could-or should-be rushed into answering questions. I took my cue from Evelyn, who settled into her chair as if not expecting to rise for a while.

Little Joe was the older brother of Boris Nikolaev, long-time head of the Nikolaev family. To hear Joe tell it, he’d voluntarily abdicated his role as heir because he didn’t want the responsibility. My guess was that he’d been passed over, like a Fortune 500 CEO’s screw-up son-given a big corner office and invited to all the meetings, but never asked to actually do anything.

After about a half-dozen surprisingly boring mob stories, Joe made the segue himself.

“So you girls need help, you come to Little Joe. This is good. I may be old, but I can still help. You said it was about a former associate of my family?”

“A man who worked for you. Leon Kozlov.”

“Kozlov?” Joe’s face screwed up and I expected him to make the connection with the Helter Skelter victims, but instead he said only, “From the seventies?”

“Late seventies, maybe early eighties. He seems to have parted ways with the family. Kicked out, probably. His fortunes didn’t exactly improve after he left you.”

“Kozlov. Leon Kozlov.”

Joe’s eyes rolled back, as if searching his mental files. Then he turned his head and spat. Didn’t just make the motion. Actually spat. Fortunately, in the opposite direction. He muttered something in Russian. I didn’t need to know the language to know it wasn’t a compliment.

“The Fomin hit,” he muttered. “Sasha Fomin.”

Evelyn frowned. “Kozlov was a hitman? I don’t think-”

“No, no. Kozlov, he was not a hitman. He was security. A bodyguard. Not for the family, but for our associates, people we wanted to protect. Only he didn’t do so good a job.”

“So this Fomin got whacked on Kozlov’s shift?” I said.

Joe squeezed my thigh. My upper thigh. Upper inner thigh, to be precise. I resisted the urge to squirm back into the sofa cushions…or break his fingers.

“Smart girl,” he said, kneading my thigh. “I said she was a smart girl, no?”

“How did the hit go down?” Evelyn asked.

“Hit-and-run. Looked like an accident, and this Kozlov tried to tell us that is what it was, but we were not fooled. The Nikolaevs know accidents. Remember that senator? From Texas? Now that, that was genius. First, we-”

“About Kozlov,” Evelyn said. “Do you remember anything else about him?”

Joe puckered his lips, obviously displeased with being cut short. I turned toward him, pulling my elbows in to spring my breasts up closer to the old man’s face. His eyes zeroed in on target, lips smoothing in a smile. I inched back before my cleavage caught drool.

“Did you know Kozlov well?” I prompted.

A snort. “As you say, he was not an important man. Not important enough for me to know.” He hesitated. “But, if you wish to know more, there was a man who worked for us, was friends with this Kozlov. Volkv. Nicky Volkv.”

“Any idea where I’d find him?”

“More than an idea. You will find Mr. Volkv is a guest of the state, serving a life sentence for murder. Like Mr. Kozlov, he did not do so well after he left our organization.”

Evelyn found out where Volkv was being held, then she thanked him and rose. “You’ve been a great help. If there’s ever anything I can do for you…”

Little Joe turned his gaze on me. All over me. He grinned and opened his mouth, but I pressed my finger against his lips.

“I don’t think you’re ready for that,” I said. “You look like you still have a lot of good years left ahead of you.”

He barked a laugh. “Maybe, someday, if that changes, I will call you. Send me off in style.”

I grinned, pressed against him and kissed his cheek. “It would be a pleasure.”

As we stepped outside, Evelyn murmured, “Seems someone is quite the accomplished actor. Jack give you lessons?”

“Jack?”

“He doesn’t seem the type, does he? Like you.” A sly look my way, as if expecting a response. When I didn’t comment, she continued. “Now, me? I bet you think I’d make a good actress.”

“Probably.”

She took out her keys and opened the car door. “Well, I’m not. I can’t stand it, and no amount of practice makes it any easier.” She slid into the driver’s seat and waited for me to get in before continuing. “I just never could get the hang of being someone else. Nearly blew a job over it once.”

She started the car and pulled from the lot. I expected the “story” to end there but, when she reached the main road, she continued.

“I had to hit a mark at a big party. I was about your age. Now I was never what you’d call pretty, but there are ways to make men forget that. Under the circumstances, what’s the easiest way to make the hit?”

“Honeypot.”

“Exactly. A little vroom-vroom-like you did in there-lure your mark away, then take him out while his brain’s hiding in his trousers. So I bought the dress, put on my disguise, showed up at the party, got my first really good look at the old geezer and knew there wasn’t a hope in hell I could pull it off.”

“Ugly?”

“Made Little Joe look like a fireman’s calendar centerfold.”

“So what’d you do?”

“Waited until he found a little morsel he liked, let her do the dirty work, then shot him while she was in the bathroom cleaning up afterward. Improvisation, Dee. That’s what I’m good at-not acting. The point is, everyone has strengths. Jack can teach you some. I can teach you others. There’s no need to limit yourself.” She slid a look my way. “But remember I’m the one with the teaching experience. Jack’s only ever played the pupil.”

I nodded and said nothing.

By the time we made it to the jail where Volkv was being held, visiting hours would likely be over. Besides, this wasn’t a “fly by the seat of your pants” type of mission. It would require planning.

As we switched places and I drove back to Evelyn’s, she kept me amused with stories about Little Joe, none of which were complimentary and all of which wouldn’t have been nearly so funny if I’d hadn’t met the man.

“-nearly blew a year’s worth of planning,” Evelyn said. “And why? So he wouldn’t have to pay for the goddamned blow job.”

“Isn’t that the same story he told us? The payroll heist?”

“Now you know why the man’s stories are so boring. He takes out all the parts that make him look like a moron, which means there’s no goddamned story left. Between making things up and letting things slip…Volkv! Yes!”

Her sudden outburst nearly had me wearing my Coke.

Evelyn waved an apology my way. “I’ve spent the last hour trying to figure out where I know the name Nicky Volkv from. Thinking about Joe’s loose lips just reminded me. Volkv tried to turn pro after he left the Nikolaevs. His first hit, he screwed up big-time. Put a car bomb in the wrong car, killed a young couple.”

“Sounds like Volkv and Kozlov would have hit it off well. Two Mafia incompetents.”

“It’s the mob. Competence is a recessive gene. That’s what keeps us in business.”

I changed lanes, carefully passing a school bus. “You did mob work?”

Evelyn waggled her hand. “Fifty-fifty. For contract killers, mob hits are like office work-steady employment, decent pay…and boring as hell. There’s far more lucrative and interesting work out there.” She glanced my way. “Even for someone with her own rules. Drug cartels, political assassinations…”

I said nothing. To Evelyn, I suppose this made sense. If I didn’t mind killing thugs, why not just kill bigger ones? But that would take me places I didn’t want to go.

Didn’t want to go? Or wasn’t ready to go?

I shook off the thought and concentrated on the road.

Evelyn sipped her coffee. “Do you like working for the Tomassinis, Dee?”

“They treat me well. When they give me a mark, I check it out, and it’s always exactly what they say it is. No tricks.”

Evelyn gave a slow nod. “The Tomassinis are good. A small, old-fashioned family. Not many of them left. They haven’t changed much from back when I worked for them.”

“Ah, so that’s how you know Frank Tomassini.”

Her eyes glinted. “It didn’t seem strange to you that a Mafia don had no problem hiring a woman? You have me to thank for his enlightened employment policy and, believe me, it took some work to bring him around. I spent a year pretending I was a man before I told him. When I did, he fired me…until he had a job no one else could do.”

“And hired you back.”

“Frank always said I was the best damned hitman he had, which I was-and which is why he probably jumped at the chance to hire another woman.”

“I guess I should say thanks.”

She snorted. “You’ll do better than that. You owe me, and I’m collecting.”

“I’d owe you if you got me the job. You made it possible, but you didn’t get it for me. That I did myself.”

“True, which begs the question. How the hell does a New York Mafia don find a Canadian girl living in the middle of the goddamned forest, and recruit her as a contract killer?”

I let out a small smile. “Fate.”

“That better not be all I’m getting. We have an hour left, and I expect to be entertained with a damn good story, especially considering what I’m offering in return.”

“Which is?”

Her gaze still on the windshield, she lifted her coffee cup to her lips, but not before letting an enigmatic smile slip out. “Questions answered, as I said. Specifically, one question for one question. A fair exchange of information, that mightiest of commodities.”

“And what information will I get?”

The smile tweaked the corners of her lips. “That depends on you. On what you want to know. For now, give me your story.”

I hesitated, but could see nothing in the tale that could satisfy more than idle curiosity. She could always find out through the Tomassinis. Better for me to give it, and take something in return, some knowledge or skill I could use.

So I began. “The offer came through Frank’s nephew, Paul…”

SIXTEEN

As for how Paul wound up at my lodge, that I do chalk up to fate. He’d come up with two of his cousins-also Tomassini wiseguys-for deer hunting season. They’d checked into a lodge 50 kilometers from the Red Oak. But the place hadn’t been up to Paul’s standards, and someone had recommended mine. He came, he liked, he stayed…even if he had to do his actual hunting off the property.

I figured out that they were Mafiosi pretty fast, but Paul and his cousins were quiet, well-mannered guests-better than those with the corporate team-building getaway I was hosting at the time-so I didn’t care. Deer season ended, and Paul booked a week for duck season. Then he reserved the deer season for next year. Paul’s cousins kept their distance from their ex-cop host, but Paul and I hit it off well-not friends, but friendly.

By his fourth visit, I could see foreclosure on the horizon and was scrambling to push it off a little further, but had finally come to realize I was only postponing the inevitable. My second life was about to crash-not as spectacularly as the first-but all the more devastatingly. I’d kept my problems to myself…until Paul tried booking his next visit, and I had to admit the lodge might not still be around.

The next day, when I was out back chopping wood, he’d appeared, looking dapper and well groomed even in a lumber jacket and jeans.

“Got another axe?” he asked.

I wiped sweat from my cheek and shook my head. “Just the one. Wouldn’t be good for liability.”

“Let me take a turn.” He flashed a grin. “Never know when axe-wielding might come in handy.”

I handed him the axe and showed him how to use it.

“I’ll grab the pieces as they fall,” I said. “Just watch my fingers.”

For a few minutes, he just cut wood, alternating between cursing and laughing. Guys like Paul swing moods like they swing axes, swiftly and decisively, the smiles no less sincere than the scowls.

“You want me to take over?” I asked.

A mock glower. “When I’m just getting the hang of it?” He swung and embedded the axe in the stump I used as a chopping block.

“Hate to see you lose the lodge, Nadia,” he said. “You work your ass off, and you’ve got a great setup here. It’s the damn economy. You just need a little cash, to get you past this.”

I nodded and grabbed the split pieces.

He wiped his brow, then pulled the axe out of the stump. “We might be able to help each other out. I have a problem that needs a solution, and I’m thinking maybe you could help with that.”

I felt his gaze on my back as I added the pieces to the woodpile. He waited until I turned, giving him my full attention.

“A couple of years back, we had this young man start work for us. My sister’s brother-in-law’s stepson. A tenuous connection but…” A shrug. “Still family.”

He put another log on the stump.

“The kid’s not with us six months and there’s trouble. An associate tells us he’s been roughing up whores, paying them with bruises. My uncle’s not happy but he thinks ‘Who knows how the kid was raised? He just needs to be set straight.’ So we set him straight. And it seemed to stop.”

Paul swung the axe, shaving a sliver off the next log.

“Seemed to stop…until the kid’s arrested for beating on a whore, and he’s not just using his fists anymore. Almost killed the girl. So my uncle’s furious, but still, the kid’s family, just needs help to make better choices.”

He swung again, taking off yet another slice.

“Kindling,” I said when he swore.

I picked up the pieces.

“You know what’s coming with this story, don’t you?” he said.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

“We’re kicking ourselves for not seeing it. To a cop or shrink it’s probably obvious as hell. But us? We’re optimists. Always trying to see the good in people, their ability to change.”

I didn’t dare comment on that.

Paul continued. “So what happened, as you cops or shrinks might say, was your standard escalation of violence, and now we’ve got ourselves one dead whore and a kid who doesn’t seem to understand what he did wrong. After all, he says, she was only a whore.”

My hands tightened around the log I was holding.

“You and I both know it isn’t going to stop at one. My uncle, he knows that, too. He wants the matter resolved.” Paul put the axe down, headfirst, and leaned on the handle. “I’m thinking maybe you could help us with that.”

It’s a testament to my desperation that I even considered the offer. For all I knew, I was being set up. But at that point in my life, on the brink of losing everything, it was a chance I had to take.

When I finished, I drove for another five minutes before Evelyn reminded me that she now owed me an answer.

“I think I’ll save mine,” I said. “I don’t know what you can do, what you can teach me. When I find something, I’ll ask.”

“Professional knowledge?” She put her empty coffee cup in the holder. “Stop being so damned polite. When I offered information, I meant an exchange in kind. Personal for personal.”

“Something about you?”

“I suspect I don’t interest you that much. I’m an old woman whose sole importance is how I can help solve this case and what I can do for you professionally, and I don’t take any offense at that. But I’ll bet there’s someone you do want to know more about.” A small, unreadable smile. “Jack.”

I turned onto the off-ramp. “You’re offering me personal information on Jack?”

“Nothing too personal, of course. Ask me who he is or where he lives or how to find him when he doesn’t want to be found, and I’ll tell you to go to hell. But I can’t imagine you’d ask that, so the point is moot. What I can offer is some…smaller answers.”

“No, thank you.”

She laughed. “How very polite you are. Let me guess. You don’t want to pry; when he wants to tell you, he will. If that’s what you’re waiting for, you’re a fool. He won’t tell you anything.”

“Then I guess he doesn’t want me to know.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. With Jack, it’s not so much a matter of not wanting to give things away as assuming you wouldn’t be interested in hearing them. But if you are…”

I said nothing, but I could feel her gaze boring into me.

“You are interested, aren’t you?” she said, voice deceptively light.

I turned and met her gaze. “If I want to know anything, I’ll know who to ask.”

“This isn’t an open-ended offer, Dee.”

“You said Jack doesn’t talk about anything personal because he assumes I’m not interested. So if I am interested, all I have to do is ask him. First thing Jack taught me? Avoid the middleman. The price might look reasonable, but you’ll end up paying more for it than you expect.”

Evelyn went around front to collect the mail as I headed for the rear door. I’d barely cracked open the gate when a black-and-tan torpedo hit the other side, nearly slamming my fingers in the gap. A dark nose squeezed between the slats, snuffling like a pig finding truffles.

“Hello, girls,” I said, heaving the gate against their dead weight. “Come on now. Get back so I can get in.”

Scotch stuck her head through the opening and tried to wriggle through as Ginger danced and whined behind her. I turned to Evelyn as she came up behind me.

“I thought you left the dogs inside,” I said.

“I did. Seems someone made it to his contact and back in record time.”

We stepped through the back door into the kitchen. Jack looked up from the newspaper.

“See, she’s still in one piece,” Evelyn said. “I haven’t devoured her yet.”

Jack’s gaze flicked over my outfit. “And I got shit for the wig.”

“It was a necessary evil,” I said. “Very necessary. Very evil. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going upstairs to burn this sweater before anyone can suggest I wear it again.” I glanced at Jack. “Unless you have news.”

“It can wait.”

I climbed from the shower and changed into jeans and a pullover. As I tried to finger-comb my curls, a brown blob looked back from the mirror, swirling in the steam. I groped at the wall, fingers searching for the fan. Flicked a switch. The room went dark.

I pulled open the door to get some air just as Jack crested the stairs.

“I seem to have a sauna going here,” I said. “Is there a fan?”

“Nah.”

I retreated into the bathroom, expecting him to take his duffel wherever he’d been heading. He laid it on the hall floor.

“Need a blow dryer?” he asked.

“Not unless I want an Afro.” I raked my fingers through my shoulder-length curls. “This is definitely wash-and-wear.”

I sifted through my meager selection of nondisguise makeup and decided against it. If Evelyn was offended by the sight of my naked face, so be it. As for Jack, well, he was still standing there, getting a eyeful of what I looked like without it, so it was too late for vanity.

“Did Evelyn tell you what we found out?” I asked as I pulled on socks.

“Not yet.”

Something in his voice made me look up. His face was impassive…and yet.

“There’s been another one, hasn’t there?” I said. “Another murder.”

“Yeah.”

“When did it happen?” I said. “Where?”

He nodded toward the stairs. “CNN’s on. When you’re ready.”

I was crouched over, my sock half on. I yanked it up and he reached out, as if to help me keep my balance. I shook my head, slipped past him and down the stairs.

SEVENTEEN

That morning, retired naval captain Russ Belding and his dog had gone for their usual morning walk through a wooded park near his home. He was last seen at approximately 7:45 by a jogger. An hour later, two teens taking a shortcut through the woods had found Belding’s dog, dragging its leash, and within minutes, found Belding himself, shot through the base of his skull. A bullet through the central nervous system-dead before he hit the ground.

At noon a courier delivered a registered letter to five major media outlets. Inside the envelope were two sheets of paper. One was another page from Helter Skelter. The other was a letter in which the killer claimed to be the son of Charles Manson.

During the next few hours, every so-called expert the news station could drag out of his lead-lined nuclear-bomb/alien-invasion/Ebola-outbreak underground shelter got his fifteen seconds of fame. We listened to a few of them spout paranoia, then Evelyn started turning down the volume.

Jack lifted a hand to stop her.

Evelyn arched her brows. “What? Don’t tell me you’re buying this son-of-Manson shit.”

“There’s more.” Jack crouched beside the TV set and hit the channel button. Static fuzz filled the screen.

“It’s satellite,” Evelyn said, waving the remote. “In the twenty-first century, we use these. What channel do you want?”

“Just flip through. Look for breaking news.” He checked his watch and frowned. “Surprised it’s not on yet. Leaked two hours ago.”

“What leaked?” I asked.

“No idea. Heard about the letter, called Felix. Quinn said something-”

“Wait!” I’d caught a glimpse of the scrolling text that always accompanied breaking news. “Go back. No…one more. There!”

Evelyn stopped on two dour news anchors. Middle-aged news anchors. Never a good sign. When a network wants a report taken seriously, they always pick bleak and Brylcreemed over bouncy and blond.

“The FBI are refusing to comment, but a source within the department claims that completed DNA analysis on the hair found at the second murder…”

“Hair?” Evelyn cut in. “What hair?”

Jack shook his head and waved her to silence. The announcer droned on, regurgitating the details of the second Helter Skelter murder for all those hermits making their annual pilgrimage into town to get the latest news.

“As for that test, the results apparently confirm that the Helter Skelter killer is, as claimed in his letter, a close blood relative of notorious murderer Charles Manson, who is currently being held…”

Jack shook his head. “Fuck. Thought it was a hoax.”

“What about this hair?” Evelyn said, cranking the volume. “Where did they find a hair?”

The announcer ignored Evelyn and proceeded to ensure that all those hermits knew who Manson was before continuing.

“We take you now to our regional bureau, where reporter Angela Fry is interviewing Dr. Frederick P. Myers, a leading Manson expert-”

“Screw this,” Evelyn said, tossing down the remote. She crossed the room and turned on her computer. “Let’s find out more about this hair.”

The hair had come from a piece of duct tape used on the second victim. An arm hair. The tape had presumably brushed against the killer’s arm.

As for what evidence the FBI could gain from a single arm hair, well, I bet they’d sweated over that themselves for a while. Limb hairs aren’t the most studied source of evidence, and with only one, the results are often inconclusive. They could tell whether it was human or animal, where on the body it came from and whether it had fallen out or been pulled. The big question, though, would be whether they could get DNA evidence from it, but they obviously had.

Once we’d cleared up the hair mystery, I suggested we find that letter. It was probably pure bullshit, but it wouldn’t hurt to see what the killer had to say. We located it on a media Web site.

The letter began without an opening salutation.

You call me the Helter Skelter killer. That name comes from the pages I’ve been leaving, but let me assure you there is nothing “helter skelter” about my methods, as you may have determined. I chose that book not for the title, but for a deeper, more personal reason. My father, Charles Manson, had a vision. My goal was to take that vision to a new level, which I believe I have accomplished. I am now willing to end the killings, in return for a small favor.

It ended there. Evelyn checked copies posted on a few other sites, but they were all the same-stopping before he made his demand.

“He’s playing with us,” I said. “With everyone. Claiming to be related to Manson. Nattering on about taking his vision to a new level. Making unspecified demands. He said just enough to stir up speculation and panic.”

“What’d you find?” Jack asked.

“Huh?”

“Today. Earlier.” He flicked off the television. “Forget this. He wants people to panic? Fine. Doesn’t work on us.”

Right. I took a deep breath, and told him what Evelyn and I had uncovered. Then I asked about his trip. It turned out that Carson Morrow’s “cartel client” was a nephew who’d gone straight, and been out of the business for years. So that lead was dead. When Jack asked whether Evelyn had heard anything on Baron, she checked her messages and found a few tips to check out.

“You do that. I’m gonna take Dee out.” He looked at me. “Dinner?”

“Um, sure,” I said.

“It’s too early for Martini’s,” Evelyn said. “You know I hate eating there before eight-”

“Didn’t invite you. Giving Dee a break.”

He waved me to the back door as she sputtered an obscenity-laden answer.