Corsican Death (3 page)

Hey, I know. Jesus, I know. The bastard’s telling them why Claude Patek’s not coming. Lying his ass off. Well, you and I know, don’t we, hot lips? You fucking wrapped a coat hanger around his neck, didn’t you, little brother?

So your friend Patek’s off on the big sleep and you are talking some trash in a hurry. Yeah. I’d sure like to get closer and hear your story on my man Claude.

You have a
lot
of stories going for you, little brother. Like telling us you’re just a vacationing French businessman, not a Corsican dope dealer. Well, maybe your high-priced lawyer believes that bullshit. Not me, Jack. No way.

Maybe you’ve got friends in the French consulate who’ll lie for you. Well, I’ve got French friends, too. In the Paris police department.

And you’ve got fingerprints—you left them all over your hotel room. Toilet seat, drinking glass, mirror, closet doors. Your fingerprints, my French friend, and three days to ask questions. And what do we come up with?

We come up with your real name, yours and Claude’s. And when we hustle over to the hospital, what do we find?

We find friend Claude half-naked and all dead, his face purple and blue and his goddamn tongue hanging out like he was a sheep dog on a hot day. He’s got a coat hanger wrapped around his neck like it was a silk tie, but he ain’t about to tell us whether or not he likes the fit.

’Cause he’s fucking dead, little brother. Nothing but cold meat now. And you, his one and only roommate, are the man of the hour. If you didn’t do it, your grandmother did. And since your granny’s molding in her grave, it’s you, lover boy. You.

And I want you. Not because you did in Claude, but because you got things to tell me. About Mr. X, the man inside the Justice Department, the man the street says you own.

Tell me about the two hundred keys, the load you’re sending to Dumas in New York. Next time, maybe Dumas shouldn’t beat the shit out of his women. That could hurt him. Like now. And it’s going to cost him.

Lorraine Lana Larum. A sexy black woman. Nice lady. Except she don’t look so nice anymore. Crushed nose, teeth knocked out, and she’s got trouble seeing out of both eyes.

But she didn’t have to see to betray Dumas, the man who kicked her out of his bed, kicking the hell out of her at the same time. All she had to do was talk, to inform, to drop the dime, to make that one telephone call.

That’s how we knew you were in town, little brother. A lady. Nice lady.

Somewhere behind John Bolt a car pulled out, tires squealing on concrete as the car headed up the ramp and toward the street. Off to the narc’s right, rock music shrieked from a garage attendant’s transistor radio. Farther behind the narc, an elevator wheezed to a stop, doors sliding open; then footsteps clattered on the concrete garage floor.

A woman’s laugh went with the footsteps, and a man said, “Really, it really happened that way. Honest.”

Honest. Bolt, still crouched low and feeling his legs stiffen, shook his head, eyes on Alain Lonzu. Who the hell was honest these days except the statues in the park? They didn’t steal your tax money or sell narcotics. Maybe that’s why pigeons loved them so much.

The stiffness in Bolt’s legs was turning into thin needles of pain. He shifted, dropping to both knees on the concrete, still watching Lonzu and friends argue. Now Lonzu was losing his temper, and Bolt, who spoke perfect French and Spanish, could pick up a few words.

Alain Lonzu, waving his hands in the air like an Italian peasant woman arguing with a butcher, said something about
it
being none of their business.
It.
That would probably be the late Claude Patek. Yeah. That’s Who
it
was.

Bolt could see how the three other guys would have a few questions to ask Alain. After all, they had probably been told to come back with two men.
Two.
Now they’re being told only one’s coming with them. Well, if John Bolt had his way, no one was going anywhere.

At least Alain Lonzu didn’t have manpower problems. D-3, the Department of Dangerous Drugs, damn sure did. Only six agents available to rush over to the hospital minutes after the fingerprint report had come in from Paris. A quick look at the late Claude Patek, then the six agents split up.

Three tearing the hospital apart and making telephone calls like crazy. And three agents down here in the garage. Because Claude’s body was still warm. Very warm. And that meant Lonzu
might
be still hanging around.

But he wouldn’t be for long. What I’d like to know, thought Bolt, is why kill Claude Patek. Why?

Claude’s brother, Remy, wasn’t going to like it. Not even a little bit. Remy had a bad reputation, and he got it by killing people. Even the Count, big bad Count Napoleon Bonaparte Lonzu, would have a rough time keeping Remy Patek in line after this. Just what the hell had been going through little brother’s mind to make him do a thing like this?

Why not ask the bastard? thought Bolt.

The narc stood up, half in shadows and darkness, half in pale dust-filled sunlight. His Colt .45, a handgun powerful enough to tear an arm off, was gripped tightly in both hands. Arms extended, knees bent. Just like on the firing range.

Except that the targets were men.

“Freeze! Nobody move! Federal narcotics agents! You’re under arrest!”

The yelling ripped at his vocal cords, scraping his throat raw, turning his voice hoarse in seconds. Make sure they hear you the first time. Quickly he spoke in French, same words, his eyes never leaving the four men whose heads had all snapped toward him as though all four necks were on the same string.

“You’re surrounded. We have men on each side of you and in front! Hands on your head, and
kneel!
Now! Now, goddamnit!”

Come on hard. Nasty. Get control right away. Put them on the defensive. Take charge.

That’s the way it’s supposed to work if you’re lucky.

Bolt’s voice echoed throughout the huge concrete garage, bouncing off damp gray walk stained with dirt, oil, and past rainfalls, off steel pillars patched with orange rust and peeling gray paint.

To Bolt’s left, a quick motion. Left, and slightly in front of him. He flinched, holding his breath, feeling his heart stop as though embedded in ice. Bullets burned when they dug into you, and they hurt like hell for a long time after the shooting. A man died too quickly in this business.

Yeah, I’m uptight right now. I tell you truly.

Vanders. Jesus, it was Vanders. Behind a green panel truck, both hands cupped around a .38 Smith & Wesson and resting on top of the motor. Bolt sighed, feeling the sweat crawl down his face and neck. Close.

Vanders yelled, “You heard the man. Everybody put them hands on your skulls in a hurry!” His voice was high with tension, and he kept blinking as though he had dust in his eyes. He didn’t. Nerves and fear, but no dust.

Rage and fear fought a quick, hot battle in Alain Lonzu’s mind. Damnit! His face turned hard, and he began breathing loudly, chest rising and falling.
So close, so close.
He was within seconds of escaping, of getting out of this stupid, crazy country.

If he didn’t have to argue with these fucking idiots about Claude, he would have been gone. But no, these assholes, French and Corsican sailors from the ship
La Rochelle,
are like barnyard animals. No brains.

Where’s Claude, Where’s Claude?
Like a damn broken record. Alain was getting hoarse telling them that Claude wasn’t coming, and anyway, it was none of their business where he was.

Alain knew why the sailors were scared: Remy Patek would kill them if they came back to France without Claude. Well, too bad. Right now these sailor bastards had better be afraid of Alain Lonzu, because Alain Lonzu had a brother, too.

Just you bastards wait until I get back to France, he thought. You fucking sailors will be lying on the bottom of the sea, mouths open, sucking raw fish. You pricks got trouble coming. My brother will see to that.

If
I get back.

Because, right now, it was only more rotten, shitty luck. Grabbed by the American police again, second time in three days. Jesus, how unlucky can one man be?

And that voice, thought Alain, that voice coming at me from the shadows. Yes, I know him. The man with the scar, the man who looks like he kills you and eats your flesh raw. Yes, I know him.

I wear your Marc, scar man. Give me the chance and I vow you will wear mine. By my mother’s blood, I swear to get you.

Vanders, impatient now, his breathing loud and harsh, shouted again. “Move it, you cocksuckers! We ain’t got all morning. We wanna see them hands go up and press down on top of your curly heads. Pronto!”

Jesus, what a score, he thought. The Count’s baby brother. We squeeze his ass, and we can maybe come up with enough to make us look good for the next year.

Vanders was excited. Nervous. And pleased. You don’t grab a big one like Alain Lonzu every day. Vanders, thirty-one, slim, rarely wearing anything but brown sport jackets, blue shirts, and red ties, bit his lip and let the thought flash across his mind that maybe he could work with John Bolt on the report on this bust.

That’s one way of making sure your name’s included. Shit, why not? How the hell do you get promoted unless the big guys in D.C. know who you are, right?

John Bolt was hardly breathing. He was waiting. Seconds ago, just seconds ago, he had yelled to the four men to freeze and kneel. Now he was waiting. And sweating. And grinding his teeth together to keep his stomach down.

His stomach was being a bastard about the whole thing. It kept turning colder while throwing a bitter taste up into his throat.

Near the front door of the Ford, the four men, all Corsicans, shifted dark, hard, bright eyes from the sound of Vander’s voice back to the sound of Bolt’s voice.

They didn’t move. No hands on their heads, no kneeling. They stood still, barely breathing, moving nothing but their eyes.

One of the four, Pietro Giannelli, forty-two, a large man with a balding head, a wide slit of a mouth in a thick jaw blue with ingrown hairs, did something. Pietro, a tough man, was only beginning to be afraid now. But that was enough.

He was beginning to fear Remy Patek and what he would do if Claude wasn’t on the
La Rochelle
when it returned to France. Somewhere in the back of his mind there was the start of another fear, this one concerning the Count. That fear was put there by Alain, his arguing and his threats.

There was also a fear of spending the rest of his life in an American prison, because these men shouting in the garage were American policemen. Pietro Giannelli knew that. He spoke no English, only Italian and French, but he knew the men yelling at him were policemen.

So Pietro Giannelli did something.

Since he was standing behind Alain Lonzu, and maybe, just maybe neither of the policemen who had shouted could see him, Pietro eased his right hand into his jacket pocket.

Stubby fingers topped by torn, dirty fingernails closed around a hand grenade.

Casually, as though it were a pocket handkerchief, Pietro took out the grenade, covering it with both hands now, the forefinger on his left hand slipping through the grenade’s ring.

An American voice yelled at them again, this voice coming from Pietro’s left, almost behind him. Fuck the voice. Pietro didn’t care. He faced prison or death anyway, so what did he have to lose?

He had no time for voices now. But the voice came at him again, louder, more shrill. A warning? A threat? Pietro only half-heard it, and it didn’t matter anyway. The voice was his enemy, after his freedom or his life.

Pulling the pin free with his left hand, Pietro jerked his right hand back to his ear, fist tightly around the grenade. His eyes were wide and his thick pink tongue was jammed into a corner of his open mouth when he tossed the grenade at one of the American voices.

Fucking American cops, he thought. We Corsicans are tough bastards. You’ll see. You’ll see.

The grenade exploded, roaring and echoing throughout the huge garage. An agent’s high scream almost made it above the roar, but the roar won out, swallowing the man’s sound and absorbing it.

A bright orange fireball swallowed up the man. The fireball’s heat sent invisible waves racing across the floor, while its light was a harsh brightness stabbing the eyes.

The car in front of the man was wrapped in flames that snapped like a hundred whips.

Gunshots. Flat, ugly sounds. Men yelling, cursing. The Corsicans were
all
moving now, pulling at hidden guns, pulling at car doors, each man swift with the jerky speed caused by tension and the rush of events now out of his control.

A gunshot cracked and echoed throughout the garage, and a man screamed in agony as a bullet dug into him. The man, spinning and falling with the impact of the bullet, cried out loud for Jesus.

I
T ALL HAPPENS SO
goddamn fast. You curse, yell, kill. As fast as you can. You watch somebody else die, and you push that out of your mind as fast as you can.

Because you’ve got something else to do: you’ve got to save your own ass.

Oh shit, thought Bolt. Jesus. It’s going down now. It’s happening. Christ. Vanders, that poor bastard.

Vanders’ scream pierced John Bolt’s brain like a frozen ice pick, stabbing his mind again and again. That sound. Christ. Fucking horrible. The instant Bolt heard it, he knew he’d hear it again and again. Coming at him from darkness and shadows in months to come, and worst of all, coming at him from his own mind.

That sound. High-pitched. Eerie and scary as hell. A pathetic sound, helpless with unbelievable agony and the horror of dying.

The sound of a man staring at death. And you trembled because it could be you. So very, very easily. Ripped apart by the hot metal pieces of a grenade, pink-and-gray-colored guts slithering out of your stomach onto oily concrete. Your skull exploding into pieces of pink, bloody bone.

And the flames. Jesus. Christ, the flames. All over you. Swallowing you in bright orange and red.

Bolt, hot with fear and hatred, his brain pounding out the message “Stay alive, fool, stay alive,” dropped to his stomach in a hurry, feeling the sudden ache in his bones as the concrete hurried up to meet him.