All He Saw Was the Girl (17 page)

    "Sounds
a little odd," Teeg said.

    It
did to Ray, too, but that was the best he could come up with on short notice.

    Teegarden
gave him the address of the guy's house in Harrison Township and the car lot on
Van Dyke, said good luck and hung up.

    Ray
went to the used car lot first. He found Venice Motors just south of Twelve
Mile on Van Dyke Road after passing every fast-food restaurant he'd ever heard
of. He pulled in the lot, parked and walked in the showroom that didn't have
any cars in it. There were two big dark-haired guys eating dinner, white paper
napkins tucked into the necks of their shirts. They were sitting across a desk
from each other, rolling their forks through spaghetti with red sauce, using a
spoon to balance the load. They were eating and washing it down with red wine
they drank out of plastic cups. Neither seemed interested in waiting on a
customer.

    "What
can we do you for?" one of them said.

    He
had curly hair that looked like a perm. He nodded at the guy sitting across
from him, got up and pulled the napkin out of his shirt and wiped his mouth.

    "How
you doing? I'm Anthony. Looking for something in particular? I got a Caddy STS
that's so clean, 2,500 original miles, I'd sell it to my own mother, but she
don't need a car."

    He
grinned, showing food in his teeth, probably thinking that was clever. He was a
big dude, six two, baggy island shirt hanging out over black pants and
thin-soled loafers with tassels.

    Ray
said, "Seen Joey around?"

    Anthony
said, "Joey who?"

    "Joey
Palermo," Ray said. "Swinging Joey."

    The
guy at the desk still eating his dinner said, "Never heard of him."

    "That's
strange," Ray said, "because we agreed to meet here. I owe him some
money. But you've never heard of him, huh?"

    The
guy at the desk got up now, still chewing, pulled the napkin out of his shirt
and laid it on the desktop.

    "What's
your name?"

    "Vito
Corleone," Ray said.

    "Come
on. This is a friendly establishment. We like to know who we're dealing
with."

    "I'm
not here to make friends," Ray said. "I'm here to pay a gambling
debt."

    "I'm
Dom, you can give it to me. I'll make sure it gets to the right people."

    Ray
said, " Who're the right people?"

    "Don't
worry about that, my friend," Dom said.

    Ray
didn't know if they thought they were intimidating him, or they were just dumb.

    The showroom
walls were floor-to-ceiling glass, banners festooned across them with an
advertising message that said:
The car of your dreams for a down-to-earth
price.
Ray turned, heading for the door, but Anthony had moved quickly
across the floor, cutting him off.

    Anthony
said, "We can't let you go till we figure this out."

    Dom,
the bigger of the two guys, was coming toward him. Had to be 250 pounds, but he
had a gut and looked out of shape. Anthony was ten feet away, standing in front
of the door that was all glass and said Venice Motors in a typeface that looked
Italian, featuring a stylized gondola and a gondolier holding an oar.

    Ray
stopped, watched Dom approach, Dom reaching out to
grab him. Ray took his hand and using the momentum of
his body, threw him through the plate-glass window, the big guy landing on the
concrete walkway outside the building.

    Anthony
charged him now. When he got close, Ray grabbed the front of his shirt, turned
sideways and threw him over his hip. Anthony went airborne, landing hard on the
tile floor. Ray walked out and got in his car. Saw Dom on a bed of glass,
trying to get on his feet as he drove out of the lot.

    He
had Joey's address on Lake Shore Drive. He took Sixteen Mile Road/Metro Parkway
to the east side and got on I94 for a mile and a half and got off at exit 273,
North River Road, went left toward Harrison Township. He passed Selfridge Air
Force Base on his left, a military installation. He could see runways and
military buildings in the distance, set back a couple hundred yards behind a
fence topped with razor wire. He'd read somewhere - in the event of war -
Selfridge had missiles with long-range nuclear capabilities.

    He
could see the Clinton River on his right now, boats cruising along, houses
close together, lining the water on both sides. It was a strange contrast of
styles — old dilapidated single-story cottages next to huge new over-the-top,
two-story brick colonials with three and four-car garages, rich and poor living
side by side. He passed the Captain's Quarters Condos and a subdivision called
Brigantine Estates and the Crews' Inn Restaurant, Marley Marine and Sundog's
Marina: Bait, Gas and Cold Drinks. He turned on South River Road and took it to
Lake Shore and caught glimpses of Lake St Clair between the houses that were
big and new. Joey's was the last one on a dead-end street, bordering the lake
on the north side and a Clinton River tributary to the east. His house was
built in the middle of two lots, a five-thousand-square-foot colonial with a
four-car garage.

    Ray
parked in the cul de sac just past the house. He watched a cigarette boat
rumble past him on the river and then gun it as it hit the open water of Lake
St Clair, two girls in jeans and sweatshirts standing on the rear seat with
cans of beer in their hands. He sat there for twenty minutes, watching Joey's
house, the front windows of his Jeep down, a breeze coming in off the lake. A
dozen more boats came down the river heading for open water, a non-stop armada
of partiers, drinking, listening to music, and having fun.

    He
could see the side of Joey's house, his backyard extending to the lake. He
could see the dock and a boat on a hoist in a custom boathouse. He waited for
an hour. He didn't see anyone come out of the house or go in. He got out of the
car and walked to the front door and rang the bell. The garage was on the west
side of the house, four varnished wood doors facing east. He rang the bell
again and looked through a small round window into the foyer, didn't see
anyone.

    He
went around to the back. Saw sailboats with trim white sails out on the lake
and motorboats zigzagging, kicking up white spray. There was a patio made out
of decorative pavers, a two-tone color scheme: rose and plum. There was a table
with a closed umbrella through the center of it and four chairs. The back of
the house had French doors that opened to the patio.

    He
picked the lock and went into a big room with a cathedral ceiling and big
windows that looked out on the water. There was a furniture grouping, two
couches and a coffee table and four leather armchairs in the middle of the
room. There was a fieldstone fireplace against one wall, and in the corner, a
sixty-inch Sony flatscreen on a custom stand. The room was spotless, everything
neat and tidy. There were no newspapers or magazines, nothing out of place. It
reminded him of a model home, furnished and decorated but nobody lived there.

    He
moved through the room down a hallway to the kitchen. There was a Krups coffee
maker on the counter and a toaster, but nothing else. He opened the
refrigerator. It was empty, cleaned out. He moved past the dining room to an
office. He looked in. There was an antique desk. He went in and sat behind it
and checked the drawers, opened each one. They were all empty. There was a
glossy picture book on a table across the room that showed a little girl posing
with her hand over her mouth and a title that said
A Day in the Life of
Italy.

    He
went upstairs and checked the bedrooms, four suites that had big attached
bathrooms with Jacuzzi tubs. Two had spectacular views of the lake. Like the
downstairs everything was perfect, beds made, carpet spotless. No clothes in
the closets. No toothbrushes or combs or shaving cream or mouthwash in any of the
bathrooms.

    He
went back downstairs through the kitchen into the four-car garage. The enormous
space empty except for half a dozen moving boxes sealed with clear packaging
tape. Whoever had cleaned the place out didn't have time to finish the job. He
squatted and pulled tape off one of the boxes and opened it. There were framed
photographs wrapped in newspaper. He unwrapped one. It was a shot of a
dark-haired guy in a bathing suit, had to be Joey, posing on his boat. He
unwrapped another one and saw the same guy in a golf outfit, grinning with
three other guys, big white clubhouse in the background, looked like Oakland
Hills. And in the third one, Joey wearing a Softball uniform, same colors as
the Oakland As, posing with the team.

    He
found Visa and American Express credit-card receipts in a manila envelope. He
found the title to a 2009 Cadillac STS-V, a 2008 Corvette and a thirty-two-foot
Century pleasure craft - everything in the name Joseph S. Palermo, Jr. on Lake
Shore Drive.

    He dug
deeper and saw an Apple PowerBook. He brought it out and put it on top of a
wardrobe box. He opened it and pushed the power button and waited till it
booted up.

    He
checked the document file, mailbox and address book. Everything was empty,
cleaned out like the refrigerator and the closets. He stared at the icons lined
up on the bottom of the screen. He moved the cursor with his left index finger
and clicked on Microsoft Entourage. It brought up Mail and he clicked on
"Send & Receive." Nothing there. He checked Deleted Items.
Nothing. Clicked on Sent Items. Everything was erased. He stared at the screen.
Scanned the icons again. It didn't look like there was anything in the trash
but he clicked on it and opened it, and under Name, he saw: Re- "I'm yours."
He clicked on it and took it out of the trash and put it on the desktop and
opened it. The message said, "I'll be a little late, but I can spend the
night so we can take our time. Love, S." It was from
[email protected]
,
dated October 2nd 2008. Ray felt sick to his stomach.

    He
walked out to the boathouse. There were ropes and dock lines on the wood plank
floor. He turned a lever on the hoist and lowered the boat into the water. He
stepped down on the bow and walked back to the cabin and went below into the
galley. He opened drawers and cabinets. Checked the refrigerator. Like the
house, it was cleaned out, spotless.

    He
went forward, looked in the bathroom, tiny closet-size room with a shower and a
toilet and sink. He moved into the bedroom or stateroom, whatever it was
called. It was dark. He found the switch on the wall, flipped it and half a
dozen recessed ceiling lights came on. There was a queen-size bed, comforter
tucked neat and tight over it. He sat on the bed, glanced up at a Mitsubishi
flatscreen on the wall, then looked through a porthole into the boathouse. He
got up, looked at a framed painting of a sunset over the bed. He turned to go
and the glint of something caught his eye. He got on his knees. It was stuck in
the corner between the carpeting and baseboard. He picked it up and looked at
it, a diamond earring. It looked like one he'd given to Sharon, remembered
buying it at Astrein's in Birmingham for their tenth anniversary. Sharon
couldn't believe he'd actually gone into a store and picked something out for
her. He didn't tell her two attractive salesgirls helped and advised him. The
earrings had even more significance because he'd missed their ninth
anniversary, completely forgot it.

    He
was coming out of the boathouse when he saw the two meatheads from the used car
lot on the dock, coming toward him. Dom's face, after taking a dive through the
plate-glass window, was covered with band-aids. Anthony was a step ahead of
him. He had a crowbar in his hand this time.

    Ray
reached back, felt the bulge of the Colt under his shirt in the small of his
back, but he decided not to draw it. They were twenty feet away when Ray said,
"What a surprise. You guys showing up at Joey's and you don't even know
him."

    "We
know
you
though, don't we?" Anthony said.

    He
moved toward Ray now, raising the crowbar over his head. When he got close he
swung big and wild and Ray stepped back and he missed him, swishing air,
Anthony puffing, breathing hard.

    Ray
said, "Come on, you pussy, is that all you've got?"

    Anthony
came at him again, swinging and missing with his right hand, going all the way
around with the crowbar and this time Ray stepped in, chopped him between his
neck and shoulder, a karate shuto, and sent him in the lake.

    Dom
came at him, balancing prodigious weight on little feet. Threw a big angry,
off-balance punch at Ray and Ray sidestepped it and hit him in the ribs with a
body shot that drove him in the cold October water.