Agnes and the Hitman (10 page)

“Not much of a future,” Agnes said.

“He serves and protects,” Maria said.

“I think he has a girlfriend,” Agnes said, having no idea what Hammond had.

“I’m engaged,” Maria said coolly.

“Okay, then.” Agnes began to clear up the cake plates. “Now I have to get Maisie Shuttle back on the job with the daisies and bake you some cake. What kind do you want?”

“Whatever holds up the icing,” Maria said. “The coconut was good.”

“Thank you,” Agnes said. “I’ll give you the chocolate raspberry for the rehearsal dinner.”

“Wonderful,” Maria said, but her voice was flat as she looked past Agnes to her intended, coming up the steps.

“Everything okay?” Palmer said.

“Yes, dear,” Maria said.

They looked at each other in fairly cold silence.

No, no, no,
Agnes thought. “I have some cake,” she said to Palmer and prayed that whatever it was, they’d get over it by Saturday.

God, I’m shallow,
she thought, and headed back to the house to make out her list of cake supplies and to work on her column. That had to be done by Saturday, too. Everything had to be done by Saturday.

Sunday’s going to be a good day,
she thought.

Assuming she lived that long.

WRONG TARGET HIT

CASEY DEAN STILL ACTIVE

CALL TO SET UP MEET TO DISCUSS ASAP.

“Fuck.” He’d killed the wrong guy. Too many intel screwups like this lately. Somebody needed to go in there and kick some ass. Wilson would have once, but he was getting old.

Rhett was hanging his head out the passenger window, looking miserable.
I know how you feel,
Shane thought. He slammed his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. First Joey and his little Agnes and his mysteries, and now this screwup.

Shane flipped open the cell phone and punched in number 2
on the speed-dial. It was answered on the second ring.

“Wilson.”

“I’m in Keyes.”

“Why?”

“Personal business. What happened with the intel?”

Three seconds passed, which was a very long time in Shane’s experience
dealing with Wilson. The emptiness was tilled with clicking noises as the signal was encrypted, bounced between government satellites, and decrypted.

“I’ll meet you in Keyes this evening, twenty-two hundred hours,” Wilson said. “Location?”

Shane blinked. He always came to Wilson. “There’s a floating dock at the junction of the Blood River and the Intracoastal Waterway.”

The phone went dead and Shane closed it. He saw Joey lock up his diner and come slowly over, a newspaper in one hand. For the first time, he looked old to Shane.

“What’s in the back?” Joey asked, jerking his head toward the large box in the bed of the truck as he got in, shooing Rhett over at the same time.

“Air conditioner unit,” Shane said. “The one at Two Rivers isn’t enough.”

Joey raised his eyebrows. “Agnes come into some money, did she?”

Shane started the truck. “You shutting down for the day for real?”

“There’s someone I need to talk to,” Joey said. “Anybody I know?” Joey hesitated.

Shane figured he’d shown enough patience. “I got some questions, Joey. That’s just the first.”

Joey nodded. “Charlie ‘Four Wheels’ Thibault. Grandpa of the kid who died last night.”

Shane waited.

“I used to know him. Thinking I better go see him.”

Shane nodded. “I’ll drive you. Mind the slobber.”

“Nice ride,” Joey said, thumping the heavy side panel.

Shane pulled into the street and Joey pointed which way to drive. “So how’d you get to know this Four Wheels?”

“He was one of the guys back in the day,” Joey said. “How’s Agnes doing?”

Not subtle,
Shane thought “She was with Evie Keyes and Brenda when I left.”

Joey shook his head. “Poor little thing.”

Shane thought of Agnes, round in those thin sweats, attacking that pepper on the chopping block, smacking him with the frying pan. Agnes was a lot of things, but
poor
and
little
weren’t two of them. “Why’d you ask Agnes about Rhett last night, Joey?”

Joey looked out the window. “I always ask about Rhett. I worry about them both out there all alone.” He turned back to Shane. “I’ve known her since she was a kid. She used to spend summers down here with Lisa Livia when they was in boarding school. They’d come into the diner and ask questions. Lisa Livia wanted to know how to run the place, she was all about the money.” He laughed. “That Lisa Livia, she’s no dummy. But Agnes, she wanted to know how to cook. All the time, wanting to know how to make this, why’d you put that in there, Joey?”

Shane kept his eyes on the road. He couldn’t get two words about the Thibaults, but about Agnes he was getting a book.
Nice try, Joey.

“Then they grew up and didn’t come back anymore,” Joey went on, seeming almost wistful. “I get a Christmas card every year from Agnes, sometimes she’d send me stuff in the mail, stuff she finds she thinks I like, diner stuff. But then about three, four years ago, here Agnes comes again, asking questions ‘cause now she has a newspaper column, and she remembered me, she’s gonna write about me.”

Shane looked over at the old man. He was grinning like it was a joke, but he was proud.

“About me,” Joey repeated, shaking his head. “And then this editor in New York read the columns about me and said she wanted a book, and Agnes wrote one. The editor called it
Mob Food.
It came out last month, been selling real good, too, they say. That’s where Agnes got some of the money for her half of the down payment on the house.” He looked away, out the window. “My picture’s on the cover. Leaning on the diner counter.” He looked back at Shane. “I told her to forget about it, but Agnes said I had to be on the cover. And you know Agnes.”

Shane nodded. “I’m starting to.”

“She uses a lot of my stuff in her column, some other people’s, too. She got a lot of stuff from Brenda, too, see Brenda’s the one who taught her to cook—”

Enough.
“So why did you ask Agnes about Rhett right before the kid broke in to take him?”

Joey looked out the window again. “Coincidence.”

Shane swerved to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes, putting a hand out to keep Rhett from sliding off the seat. Rhett looked up at Shane, then at Joey, then sighed and put his head back down.

Shane stared at his uncle. “That gun at Agnes’s was an old mobster’s gun. That kid was the grandson of an old mob guy. There weren’t that many old mob guys who retired down here, Joey. Just two, you and Frankie Fortunato, and now I hear about this Thibault guy. And I have to say that you retired down here pretty fucking young. You couldn’t have been forty, either one of you. So I’m thinking there’s a lot going on here that I need to know. Are you going to tell me this story? Or we gonna sit here all day?”

The seconds ticked away as Joey met his eyes; then he turned and looked out the window at the dark green woods of the swamp. Shane waited. The seconds turned into a minute, then two, and Rhett sighed once more. Then Joey sighed, deeper than Rhett, and looked back at Shane. He had a wan smile and he did look old. “You grown up, haven’t you?”

“I grew up a long time ago, Joey. You saw to that.”

Joey nodded. “Yeah. That was the idea.” He looked out the window, still nodding, and Shane waited. When he turned back, the man Shane remembered was there. Solid. The shark smile. “Okay, Frankie and me was driving down to Miami to do a job for the old Don, Frankie’s father. Our engine blew up right outside of Keyes. We got stuck here for a couple of days and we liked it. So we kept coming back every summer and then when we decided to retire,

Frankie and I figured we’d come here, do some work for the Don on the side.

“Then Frankie and I got a tip, this would be about twenty-five years ago now, that there was a freight car full of cigs on the rail line, ready to load to go overseas. We made most our money boosting freight cars when the port was still active. We kick up half the take to the Don in Jersey, split the rest twenty/twenty/ten with Charlie ‘Four Wheels’ Thibault getting the ten percent ‘cause all he does is drive. Took Frankie’s Caddy ‘cause it had the big trunk. Went down to the rail siding, bust in, but no cigs, just a safe, and it has this box on top, got a necklace in it, made of big hearts, junky-looking thing.”

Joey shook his head. “I had a weird feeling about it. But the tip come from the Don, so we lift the safe out, and Frankie, he takes the necklace for Brenda because she’s on his case all the time, he says, ‘cause she thinks he’s cheating on her, which he is, but that’s Frankie for you. We throw the safe in the trunk of Frankie’s Caddy. Beat feet to Frankie’s place, where Agnes lives now. Park just over that damn bridge; it was in better shape then. Take the safe down to Frankie’s basement, open it up. Inside, no cigs. Five million dollars in nonsequential bills.”

Shane raised his eyebrows.

Joey nodded. “Yeah, too much money. Four Wheels, he’s scared shitless, he goes home. I go home. Frankie goes upstairs to Brenda. We figure we’ll lay low, work something out. Except the next day, Frankie’s gone, the safe’s gone, the necklace is gone, the five mil is gone. Nobody knows nothin’. Four Wheels moves out to the swamp and shoots anybody who comes close.”

“Where’d Frankie go?”

Joey shrugged. “Tahiti. Meet his maker. I dunno. Never seen or heard from again.”

“Anybody come after you?”

Joey rubbed the scar over his eye. “A couple of times.” He looked away.

There’s more,
Shane thought. “What’s this got to do with Agnes?”

“This weekend, Agnes’s column is on cooking for dogs, so her picture is a special one with Rhett.” Joey held up the newspaper and gave it to Shane.

Shane spread it open. Inside was a column with a headline that said,
cranky agnes
and a picture of Agnes, smiling, big glasses and curly dark hair, with her arm around Rhett.
Cute as all hell,
Shane thought. “So?”

“Look at the dog’s collar.”

Shane peered closer. Rhett had a collar on that looked like it was made out of big junky-looking glass hearts.

Joey tapped the paper. “That’s the necklace Frankie showed us that night. No one’s seen it since that night, but there it is on Rhett. I think maybe the necklace and the five mil never left the house. And I think Four Wheels saw that picture and that’s what he thinks, too. And maybe Four Wheels told somebody that, like one of his dumb-shit grandsons.”

“Oh,
fuck,”
Shane said. All of Keyes County could be coming for little Agnes if they thought she was sitting on five million bucks; that was why Joey had called in the heavy artillery. “You couldn’t have told me this from the beginning?”

“I haven’t told anybody this in twenty-five years,” Joey said.

“Great.” This, plus he’d killed the wrong guy in Savannah. Not a good week. And it was only Tuesday.

Joey seemed a little more relaxed now that his secret was out. “Xavier was the responding deputy on the case. Hell, the entire police force of Keyes, all four of them, was on the case. Everyone except Xavier kinda gave up when Frankie’s Caddy was found abandoned at the Savannah Airport the next day and there was no sign of Frankie. But Xavier, he never gave up on it. It’s the one he never solved, and it was his biggest one and he thinks it kept him from becoming sheriff and marryin’ Evie Beale, Evie Keyes now. But Frankie wouldn’t have blown town without saying nothing to me. We was closer than brothers.”

“So who killed him and look the money?”

“No idea.” Joey nodded to the road. “This is about Agnes. We go talk to Four Wheels and find out if he sent that little bastard alter our girl and what the fuck he knows. Drive.”

Shane pulled back out onto the road, trying to find the wedge into Joey’s story. Anybody could have killed Frankie for five million, but what that had to do with Agnes now—

“Turn left on that dirt road,” Joey ordered.

A large
no trespassing
sign was tacked to a tree. It was barely legible given that it had been riddled with buckshot.

As soon as he turned, Shane reached down next to his seat and pulled out his Glock Model 20
and placed it on his lap. He wasn’t surprised when Joey pulled out his own pistol from his waistband and did the same. Shane recognized the make: a Colt Python revolver. Powerful and small. And the handle was wrapped with medical tape. Old dogs didn’t learn new tricks. Rhett must have sensed the mood change, because he was peering ahead, out the windshield.

The road they were on barely deserved the moniker as it narrowed into a rutted track. The trees overhead linked branches to form a green tunnel.

“I don’t like it,” Shane said.

“Don’t worry,” Joey muttered. “Four Wheels ain’t got—” He didn’t get the rest of the sentence out, as there was a sharp snap and a hairline crack appeared in the windshield. “What the fuck?”

Rhett let out a bark as Shane slammed on the brakes. There was a ping, and Shane threw the truck into reverse as he spotted two teenagers with caps on backward, firing away with rifles from behind a log about fifty yards up the road.

“What the fuck is going on?” Joey demanded.