Cold Shot to the Heart (24 page)

“It's not boosted. All legal. In my name, too. This a rental?”

“Yeah.”

“We need another car.”

“That's our next stop.”

“I've got tools if you need them.”

“Good.”

He looked at her. “You sure about all this?”

“I've thought it over. It's the only way.”

“I don't know. This guy's already got two bodies on him, maybe more. No way he'd make any deal that leaves you alive afterward. And he's got to know that you know that.”

“You're right.”

“So why would he go along with you, take the bait?”

“Way I look at it,” she said, “he doesn't have a choice.”

*   *   *

She returned the rental at the airport office, rode with Chance over to the long-term lot. He dropped her outside the gate and drove on.

She walked the rows until she found what she wanted, an older-model Toyota Camry with smoked windows. It was a car she was familiar with, reliable and innocuous.

She took out a small rubber doorstop, wedged it between the driver's side window and door. It gave her room to work. She pulled Chance's Slim Jim from her belt, slid it down past the weather stripping and into the door. It took her two sweeps to find the control rod. She pulled up, heard the mechanism unlock.

She slid behind the wheel, took out the rest of Chance's tools, and spent five minutes working on the steering column. He'd given her a roll of black electrician's tape as well, and she used that to braid wires, then jammed a short-handled screwdriver into the ignition, twisted it. The engine came to life. She gave it gas until it was running smoothly.

The windows were iced over, so she had to run the defroster for a while. While she was waiting, she flipped the visors. The automated parking ticket fluttered down to the seat. She was in luck. The car had come in the day before. It might be weeks before anyone came to claim it.

When the windshield was clear, she backed out, drove to the gate. At the exit booth she handed over the ticket, gave the clerk ten dollars and a smile, and pulled out of the lot.

*   *   *

They met up at the rest stop again an hour later. He got in, looked at the steering column.

“Nice job,” he said.

She handed him a folded piece of paper. “Directions. In case we get separated.”

He took them. “When are you going to make that call?”

“Soon as we get up there, get settled. Have I told you how glad I am you're here?”

“Partly my fault we're in this in the first place.”

“Where were you when Sladden called?”

“Philly.”

“I would have figured South America, the way you were talking.”

“Like I said, I had a bad feeling. Thought I'd better stay close.”

“It's not too late,” she said. “You can still change your mind.”

He squinted, scratched his jaw. “Cold in Cleveland.”

“Cold here.”

“Yeah, but it'll always be in the back of my mind this guy's out there, running around loose. Better to deal with it now, I guess. Cleveland can wait.”

*   *   *

Eddie sat on the motel bed, fed shells into the shotgun. He pumped it once to chamber a round, pushed in another to replace it. He slipped the safety on, set the gun on the bed.

He'd slept less than a hour all night, and he could feel swollen veins in his temples, tightness in his neck and shoulders. His eyes stung.

The cell phone was on the desk, next to the canvas duffel bag he'd bought. He'd gotten all his money together, added what he'd taken from Terry's place. He wasn't coming back here. When he was done with the woman, he'd head south, figure out his next move. Get clear of New Jersey before Tino's people got organized enough to look for him.

He pushed the laptop into the duffel, put clothes on top of it. It might be useful somewhere down the line. He pulled the drawstring tight.

The razor went into his front pants pocket, the shotgun into the gym bag, along with the loose shells and Stimmer's Ruger. He put on his trench coat, dropped the reloaded Star in the right-hand pocket, Suarez's cell in the left. For the first time, he noticed the brown spots that dotted the side of the coat. Terry's blood.

He wet a thumb, rubbed at them. It didn't do any good.

TWENTY-NINE

The snow had been heavier up here, and it crunched under the tires as she drove the Camry up the driveway and parked in front of the garage. They'd left the Mustang about a mile away, in the lot of a recreation area, with a half-dozen other cars.

The light was fading, the moon already visible through the clouds. They looked at the dark house.

“You sure this is all right?” Chance said.

“Caretaker comes by occasionally, but the owners are out of the country.”

“What if that real estate agent decides to hold an open house tomorrow?”

“Let's hope she doesn't.”

He got out, worked the turn latch on the garage door, heaved it up and open. There was a cleared space inside, oil stains on the concrete floor, cardboard boxes against the wall, a lawn mower. She drove the Camry into the garage, twisted the screwdriver to kill the engine.

Chance had a flashlight out, was playing the beam around the inside of the garage. She got out, opened the trunk, unzipped the overnight bag that was in there. She took out the .38 and the box of shells. Beneath them were banded stacks of cash. She'd emptied one of her safe deposit boxes that afternoon.

“How much is in there?” he said.

“Ten thousand. He may call our bluff, want to see some money. We'll need something to show him.”

“I don't know,” he said. “I think first clear shot we get at him we should take it.”

“If we do and miss, and he rabbits, we may not get the chance again. We have to be sure.”

The gun went into her right-hand pocket, the rest of the loose shells into her left. She zipped the bag up, shut the lid.

“We'll leave the garage open,” she said. “I want him to be able to see the car, know I'm here.”

She looked out on the stretch of snow-covered yard, the skeletal trees, the woods beyond already deep in shadow.

“We'll have to be careful of tracks,” she said. “Try to walk where I do.”

The porch door was easy. She worked the tip of her pocketknife into the mechanism, popped it, then used the blade to flip open the hook-and-eye latch. At the back door, she got her pick set out, said, “Give me some light.” He shone the flashlight beam on the door as she worked the dead bolt and knob. Both locks were stiff with cold, and she had to go easy, not wanting to snap off the thin tension wrench. When she got the door open, they went into the darkened kitchen, kicked snow from their boots.

“Power?” he said.

“Yes, but be careful what you turn on.”

She walked around the house. Nothing was changed since last she'd been here. It was the same upstairs. From the back bedroom, she looked down on the driveway, garage, and woods.

When she went back down, Chance had switched on a light above the stove. It lit half the kitchen. He sat at the table, a black automatic in his hands, ejected the clip, and thumbed the shells out. He pressed them back into the magazine one by one, checking the spring pressure.

She went around the kitchen opening cabinets and drawers. Cheap silverware in one drawer, pots and pans in a cabinet. In the refrigerator, bottles of condiments in the door racks, a dish of baking soda. Nothing else.

It was almost full dark now. She flicked a wall switch near the back door. A light on the side of the garage went on, illuminating the yard.

He slid the clip back into the automatic, worked the slide, and lowered the hammer. The sound reminded her of what they'd come here to do.

She felt light-headed suddenly, as if she were on a fast-moving elevator, the floor pressing up against the soles of her feet. She took steady breaths until it passed.

“You all right?” he said.

She nodded. There was a sour burning in her stomach. “Time to make that call.”

*   *   *

When the phone in his pocket buzzed, Eddie was at a rest stop on Interstate 95, leaning against the hood of the Mercury. He took it out, looked at the number, pressed
SEND
, lifted it to his ear. Traffic blew by on the highway, past the sign that read
WELCOME TO CONNECTICUT
.

“I'm going to tell you where I am,” the woman said. “You need to write it down?”

“No.”

“Then listen carefully. I don't want you getting it wrong, getting lost up here.”

“One thing at a time. You have what we talked about?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“All of it?”

“All that's left. One hundred, like I said.”

“Tell me where you are.”

He listened to the directions. He'd brought a Connecticut road map, would trace the route when he got back in the car.

“You get all that?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“It should take you about two hours. You coming from Jersey?”

He looked up at the sign. “Yes.”

“You want to come over the GWB, get on I-87 North. If you don't, you'll get lost before you've started.”

“All right,” he said. He guessed the distance to where she was. An hour's drive at most.

“The house is set back from the road,” she said. “Come up the driveway. There's a light on the garage. My car's parked inside. I'll be in the house. When I see you drive up, I'll come out to meet you.”

He almost smiled at that.

“Right,” he said. “You alone?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” he said and closed the phone.

*   *   *

“Think he'll go for it?” Chance said.

They were sitting at the table in semidarkness.

“He's suspicious,” she said, “but the money's too much of a hook. He'll be here. Way I figure, if he's coming from Jersey, that means two and a half, three hours to get up here, find the place.”

“What bothers me is we don't even know what he looks like.”

“Whoever shows up, that's him.”

“And you say he might have a partner, too.”

“Nothing for it. We'll just have to deal.”

“He's got to know it's a trap.”

“He wants that money, and he's got no other way of finding it. He'll have to take the chance. If he doesn't, I might be in the wind and gone. He knows I won't go back to the apartment. Only way he finds out if I'm for real or not is by coming up here.”

Chance took two pair of flexicuffs from his pocket. “I brought these,” he said. “Just in case.”

“Let's hope it doesn't get to that.”

“Where are you going to leave the car when we're done?”

“There are some fire roads north of here, no houses around. I'll go up one of them, park the car in the trees, wipe it clean. The cold will keep the smell down. If we're lucky, no one will find him for a few days. We'll both be long gone by then.”

“You know,” he said, “it's not that easy.”

“What?”

“Killing a man.”

“I didn't think it was,” she said.

“Have you ever done it?”

“Never even came close. Never had to.”

He looked out the window. “I read once they did a study of soldiers in World War II. They wanted to figure out why, in a firefight, so many rounds get let off, but so few people actually get hit. They found only twenty-five percent of GIs could actually point a rifle at another human being and pull the trigger, even if that person was shooting at them. It's against human nature.”

“I believe that.”

“That changed with Vietnam, more automatic weapons. Soldiers could spray and pray, and were still likely to hit someone, whether they were looking in his eyes or not. Technology depersonalized it.”

“What's your point?”

“I was working outside Detroit once. Before I knew Wayne. It was an armored car thing. Guy running it was an ex-marine named Spencer. Out of his mind. I was young and stupid, didn't know any better.”

“What happened?”

“Four-man deal. Spencer, some seventeen-year-old punk he was bringing up, me, and the inside man, one of the truck guards, named Logan. It went okay, no one got hurt. Pretty big haul and a good split. Then the Feds started putting pressure on the guards.”

“They always do.”

“Spencer got paranoid. Whether Logan told them anything or not, who knows. Anyway, Spencer got the four of us together at an abandoned auto plant in Hamtramck to talk about it. Spencer's punk knew what was coming. I didn't.

“So we're sitting around what used to be the plant manager's office, and Logan's playing it pretty cool. I mean, if he had ratted, would he have come there in a million years? The punk gets up to take a leak. When he comes back, he goes behind where Logan's sitting, picks up this piece of wood, like this big, hits him on the side of the head, knocks him out of the chair.”

He turned the flexicuffs over in his hands, looked at them, then put them back in his pocket.

“Guy's dazed, but he's conscious, knows what's going on. They tie him to a chair with duct tape, and Spencer takes this gun out from under his coat, a Colt Python, big piece of iron. I can see it like it was yesterday. He shakes five shells out, leaves one in, spins the cylinder, hands the gun to me. I tell him no fucking way.

“Then he takes another gun out, a .45, points it at my head. He tells me to take the Python or he'll shoot me right there, and that Logan has a better chance than I do. I believed him.”

“What did you do?”

“I took the gun. I was a kid myself. Twenty-two. Scared shitless. So I point the gun at Logan, maybe three feet between us. His eyes are Ping-Pong balls. Spencer's got the .45 to my head the whole time. So I close my eyes and pull the trigger. Empty chamber.”