Marked Man

8

It had seemed a simple enough plan. I had one agenda for my client and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenna Hathaway had another. The easiest way to get us all on the same page was to have someone else involved, hence my visit to the Randolph Trust. A few discreet phone calls from the powerful members of the board about a missing Rembrandt would have the FBI eating out of my hand.

I was so sure it would all work as planned, I hadn’t even thought much about the strange questions raised by the visit, like why had Mrs. LeComte been so concerned about my meeting with Spurlock? Or why did Stanford Quick seem to recognize Charlie’s name? Or even the strangest of all: How had a loser like Charles Kalakos and his ragtag neighborhood gang been able to pull an impeccably planned, brilliantly executed professional heist? Still, why should I care about any of that? I was a man out to make a deal, and it looked like a deal was at hand.

Until somebody let loose our laundry and hung my client’s life on the line. And not just my client’s life.

“I know you,” said a man with a harsh strain of Philly in his accent. “You’re that Victor Carl.”

He had stopped me right after I left my office. I had been working late, it was after seven, and Twenty-first Street was pretty much deserted, the shoe-repair shop closed, the Korean grocery closing. There was plenty of traffic on Chestnut, but I was heading away from Chestnut, just past the alley at the edge of my building, when the man had stepped in my way.

“That’s right,” I said. “And you are?”

He raised a small digital camera and took a snap, the flash momentarily blinding me.

“Whoa,” I said, blinking away the afterimage. “What are you, a reporter?”

“Not exactly,” he said, and he wasn’t exactly dressed as a reporter either, no ratty sport coat, no wrinkled shirt, no mustard stains on his tie, no air of bored disappointment with his life. Instead he was wearing shiny white sneakers, pressed jeans, a retro 76ers jersey over a white T-shirt, silver chains hanging down, and a white baseball cap with the Sixers logo embossed in cream. It was a strange look, stranger still on a guy with gray hair who was shaped like a pear.

“You mind turning your head a bit to the side, Victor, so’s I can catch your profile?”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Hey, pal, I’m just trying to snap some pictures here. No need to get hostile. Now, be a Joe and turn to the side.”

“Go to hell,” I said, and as soon as I said it, something hard clamped down on the back of my head, holding it stiffly in place.

I reached back and found a gnarled hand attached to an absurdly thick wrist. The hand turned my head to the side. From that angle I could see what had hold of me, a younger man in the very same outfit, except his retro jersey was green, for the Bucks, and his chains were gold. This second man was a foot shorter than me, but with the girth of a bull.

Camera guy took another photograph, checked the outcome on the camera’s small screen.

“Jesus, I hope that isn’t your good side,” he said. “Turn him around, Louie.”

Louie twisted his wrist and spun me around 180 degrees, like we were partners at a square dance.

Camera guy took another photograph.

“I think we’ve got enough here,” he said. “I want to thank you, Victor, for your generous cooperation.”

Louie let go of my head. I shook my neck, straightened my jacket, tried to restore some level of dignity.

“What the hell is going on?” I said.

“Louie and myself, we’ve come here to deliver a message.”

“From who, the mayor?”

“The mayor? Now, why would the mayor be sending someone like you a message?”

“For his buddy Bradley. To threaten us off the Theresa Wellman case.”

The guy in the Sixers jersey raised his eyebrows in sadness as he shook his head.

“Isn’t that what this is about?” I said.

“Unfortunately for you, no,” he said. “We didn’t get dispatched from City Hall. But let me tell you something, Victor. If the mayor’s irritated at you, too, maybe you ought to rethink your life. No, we’re here with a message for your buddy Charlie.”

“Charlie?”

“Yeah, Charlie. Your boy Charlie the Greek. And this is the message. You tell that bald piece of dick we haven’t forgotten that he spilled last time he was in the stir. Fifteen years is but a snap of the fingers to us. You tell him painting or no painting, if he shows his face in this town, I’m going to personally rip it off his skull.”

That’s when Louie piped in. “Off his skull, boysy,” he said, his voice soft and gravelly, like the crush of bones underfoot.

“We’ve picked a bog for him already. He’ll understand. Tell him he’ll be crapping cranberries into eternity.”

“Cranberries,” said Louie.

“And you tell Charlie, wherever he is right now, he ought to be running, because we’ve called in our friend from Allentown.”

“Your friend from Allentown?” I said.

“Allentown, boysy,” said Louie.

“Charlie will know who we’re talking about,” said the man with the camera. “He’ll know enough to take it seriously.”

“Who the hell are you guys?”

“The name’s Fred. Charlie will remember me because I’m the very guy he was running from fifteen years ago. And you, Victor, let this be clear. If Charlie shows up, it won’t be so good for your health neither.”

“What makes you think I’m representing this Charlie?”

“Are you saying you don’t?”

“I’m just saying-”

Fred pushed me. I started going backward and then flipped over some huge solid thing, which turned out to be Louie, bending at his waist. I hadn’t fallen for that since grade school.

“You stupid little pisspot,” said Fred, now standing above my prostrated body. “This thing with you and Charlie and that painting, it’s all over the freaking news.”

I was still on the ground when, side by side, they started walking away from me, south, toward Walnut. I sat up on the sidewalk, my legs spread before me, my arms behind, propping up my torso.

“Hey, guys,” I said.

Fred and Louie turned together. In their twin outfits, they looked like part of a sanitized hip-hop dance troupe. Up with Hoods.

“What was with the photographs?” I said.

Fred took a couple steps forward until he was leaning over me. “Our friend from Allentown,” he said. “After what happened one time in West Philly, he let it be known from here on in we should take photographs. It cuts down on the mistakes. Very meticulous, our friend from Allentown.”

“Why don’t I find that comforting?” I said.

So much for dire threats. And I have to give him this, as far as I could tell, Fred hadn’t been lying, because yes, I was a stupid little pisspot, and yes, Charlie’s story was all over the freaking news.