Murder by Candlelight (29 page)

About the man himself, Z's first impression
had been right. He was made of muscle: the kind manufactured in a
lavishly equipped gym.

Keeping his flat eyes on Z, gun steady in
his right hand, the hood used his left to slip a packet of
cigarettes out of his front shirt pocket. Tapping up a cigarette on
his gun hand, he lipped the cigarette into his mouth and replaced
the pack.

Fishing a gold lighter out of his pants
pocket, he snapped on the flame, glancing down to apply the fire to
the end of the cigarette, at the same time taking a draw. Replaced
the lighter, the thug hissed smoke through white teeth, Z smelling
perfumed tobacco.

No mistake.

This was the man who'd tossed Z's place.

Z reviewed what he knew about the young
mobster.

Bright. Chain-smoker. Careful. A check of
Z's apartment.

"Gonna ask you only once."
Though undistinguished, the man's voice carried the impact of the
inevitable. On the other hand, that's what they
all
said: "I'm going to ask you only
once." Cops
and
robbers. "Where you got him hid?"

"Who?"

"You know who."

Z tried to look confused.

"Dosso."

"Johnny? I know him, but
..." No sense claiming Z wasn't a friend of John's. Never deny
anything they
know
you know. To
either
cops or robbers.

"But you don't got him hid out?"
Cynicism.

"No. Haven't heard from him. Been
awhile."

Reaching his left hand behind him, the
trigger man took a thin pair of leather gloves from his back
pocket. Slowly -- switching the gun from hand to hand -- stretched
the gloves on.

A bad sign.

"You been shadowing me. Why?" Z might as
well ask.

"You know why."

"You said, you're looking for John? That the
reason?"

"Why you think?" The man wasn't buying the
innocent routine.

"I've done some work that
made me enemies. Could be you were one of
them
."

"When you spot me?" Taking the cigarette out
of his mouth, the man reached down to flip ashes at an ashtray on
the end table beside Z's chair; straightened up immediately to
continue sucking on the shrinking cancer stick.

"Tonight. Out front." It was the best lie Z
could think of at the moment.

"Piece of shit couldn't
locate your ass with both hands. Supposed to be a private dick?"
Emphasis on "dick." "I been back of you day and night for a
week
."

Z tried to look impressed.

"Spending a lot of my time. And for what?
For a piece of shit."

His cigarette glued to his mouth, the mob
man continued to blow smoke, the room filling with the tobacco's
strange smell. Z wondered if the hood was smoking some drug (other
than tobacco.) Decided if he was, it wasn't slowing him down.

The place smelled of smoke and ... something
else, an odor Z remembered detecting when he'd first been herded
in.

Something Z never smelled in his own
apartment; but a scent he could associate with Susan's place. A
"girl" smell.

The smell of ... fingernail polish.
......

No. Fingernail
polish
remover
.
Strong ... even though the thug's woman had been sent away some
time ago.

Glancing around quickly, Z saw a large, open
bottle of remover, upturned lid beside it, the bottle on the table
next to his chair. And cotton balls. Plus an emery board and a
bottle of pink nail polish.

The fact that the bottle of remover hadn't
been capped was another sign of how dangerous the tough was. When
he'd ordered the girl to leave, she'd jumped so fast she hadn't
done the "woman thing" of putting the cap back on the bottle. A
sharp blow across Z's face stunned him, the man's backhanded slap
bringing tears to Z's eyes.

"Thought you might be goin' to sleep on me,"
the man said, grinning evilly.

As Z would have guessed, the gorilla had
strong, too-perfect teeth.

"You hit me and I still won't know the
whereabouts of Johnny D." Given the circumstances, the most sincere
lie Z had ever told.

"Yeah," the man said, frowning.

Could this be an opening? "And you know
it."

"How you figure?"

"You said you been following me for a week?"
(It hadn't been a week.) "Then you know I got no contact with
Johnny. You got a tap on my phone?" Z hadn't thought about that
until just now. But it made sense (Z too upset lately to have
picked up on this completely predictable bugging of Z's apartment.)
Putting in a "bug" something the man didn't bother to deny. "And
what you found out is I got no contact with Johnny."

For no reason, the man hit Z again, once
more with the back of his gloved left hand. "That's for wasting my
time on a piece of shit like you."

While attempting to look hurt, Z was careful
not to sigh his relief. Apparently, the punk's ego had convinced
him he'd have come up with a Dosso connection if there'd been
one.

Again, the man grinned
under lifeless eyes. "But I got me another plan, now, thanks to
you." Z didn't like the sound of
that
. "You said, yourself, you're a
friend of Dosso's. So maybe I can use you to smoke Dosso
out."

The muscle-man paused, thinking, leaning
over to snuff out the butt of his cigarette in an ashtray beside Z,
all the time keeping his eyes on Z and the gun leveled at Z's
chest. "If you took a hit, maybe he'd show himself, looking for
vengeance."

"No." What else could Z say?

"You're probably right. But, what the hell?
You don't know 'til you try." The man had made his decision. "Get
up!"

This was going to end with a bullet to the
back of the head unless Z thought of something fast!

With a corner of his mind,
Z realized he was afraid, also discovering he was
surprised
to be afraid.
His life had been going so badly Z hadn't thought he'd mind if ....
Cancel that unproductive thought.

Back to the desperate present.

Slowing down his racing mind, Z tried to be
rational about his situation. There was no way, for instance, he
could get away with throwing his body at the man's gun. Not with
Z's hands taped behind his back. The man was also keeping back far
enough so Z couldn't kick him.

Z had to think of
something else ...... the utter bleakness of his situation seeming
to provide a new notion. A poor idea, maybe, but at least based on
his knowledge of the man.
If
Z got the chance ....

"Get up!" the man repeated, threatening to
hit Z again.

Nodding quickly -- no need to take more
punishment than necessary -- Z hunched forward, as if trying to
rise.

Finally struggled up, only to let his knee
collapse, breaking his fall by leaning back against the small table
beside the chair, bracing himself with his elbows.

Getting his feet under him, Z was finally
able to stand -- but with a difference. While bend backward over
the table, Z had gotten hold of the bottle of polish remover.

Thin plastic bottle, by the feel of it. From
the weight, nearly full. A bottle Z maneuvered to keep hidden
between his hands and his body, pressing hard with the backs of his
hands to hold it there.

He'd get only one chance ... if he got
that.

"Move," the hoodlum said.

And Z moved, Z as shaky as he'd been for
some time.

Shuffling Z back through the dining room,
kitchen -- the gangster stepping past Z to snap inside switches to
light the utility room and garage -- the torpedo stepped back to
let Z precede him.

Both of them arriving in the one-car
emptiness of the floodlit garage, Z turned as if to ask for
directions.

At which point Z got the break he'd been
hoping for! Already in need of another cigarette, the man paused to
slip the pack out of his pocket. Keeping his distance and watching
Z carefully, the man hit the top of the pack against his gun hand,
using his lips to extract a cigarette he'd tapped up.

Putting the pack back in his pocket, the
thug reached into his pants pocket for his lighter.

Meanwhile, as the crook was going through
his cigarette routine, Z was fumbling the open bottle of remover
into his right hand; had shifted his hands sideways behind him so
that the bottle top cleared his left side.

The man then flicked on the lighter, his
eyes leaving Z to focus for a single second on the end of the
cigarette -- all the time Z needed to squeeze the plastic bottle,
the thin, flammable fluid squirting toward the lighter's flame.

Whoosh!

Fire everywhere! On the man's hand and on
his face! Flame dripping to his upper chest!

Z had to admire the criminal for getting off
a misdirected shot before dropping the gun to bat both hands at the
searing flames.

Another second, and Z had taken the single
step necessary to launch a kick hard enough to double the man over,
a second kick to the temple, putting out the gangster's lights, a
third kick skittered the man's gun into a dark corner, Z once again
in charge of the evening's program.

No longer needing to "pour fuel on the
fire," Z backed up to an open green plastic trash barrel and
dropped in the bottle of remover.

Seeing what he needed next, backing up
again, Z slid an old "garage" towel off a nail; used the thick
cloth to smother the flames on the hoodlum's face, a process that
took awhile with Z's hands taped behind him.

Too bad.

After damping out the flames, Z rose to
inspect his work, the unconscious man on his back at Z's feet.

Satisfied, Z walked over to paw -- as best
he could with his hands still taped -- through the usual, built-in
tool cabinets at the back of the garage. Found what he'd expected
in one of them: a gardening knife.

Able to saw through the tape around his
wrists, a tough job with his hands fastened behind him, he pulled
off what remained of the severed tape, wadding it into a ball and
tossing it in the trash. Retrieving the man's gun from the corner
where Z kicked it, he spent the time it took to figure out how the
pistol "broke," upending it to dump out the bullets on the
floor.

After snapping the trigger
a number of times to make
certain
the piece was empty, Z chanced sticking the gun
in his belt.

Checking to see that the mobster -- now
developing the worst case of puffy sunburn Z had ever seen -- was
still out, Z continued to riffle the garage until he found what he
was looking for: three fat, strung-together plastic packages of
braided clothesline rope.

Using the garden knife to slit the packs, Z
cut short lengths of cotton rope, rolling the punk on his face to
tie the man's hands behind him. Then tie his feet and knees.
Finished the job by stuffing a piece of torn-off toweling in the
man's mouth, securing the gag with a length of rope between the
thug's teeth, and tied around the back of his head.

All Z had left to do was cut the remaining
rope in two long pieces, fashioning a noose on the end of one of
them. The ropes ready, dropping the knife, Z tossed the noose-rope
over one of the open two-by-fours bracing the garage ceiling,
pulling down the loop end to put it around the thug's throat,
cinching up the slipknot.

The man secured, the rope ready, Z was free
to go back into the house for one of the three-legged stools he'd
seen under the kitchen breakfast bar, the seats about
two-and-a-half feet tall, Z bringing a stool out into the
garage.

What followed was the inevitable wait for
the guy to wake up, Z trying to speed the process by locating, then
filling a plant-watering can, returning to the garage to drizzle
water over the man's red face.

The fellow groaned. Opened his eyes. Tried
to struggle free.

"
Now
who's a piece of shit?" Z
purred.

It was strange, Z thought, working without
his black ski mask -- the mask still in Z's valise in the Cavalier.
No need in this instance, of course, the punk knowing perfectly
well who Z was.

Z's plan -- at first a desperate one aimed
only at escape -- had begun to develop in interesting ways, ideas
sometimes coming from nowhere.

If this worked right ...
it might solve a
couple
of problems.

"You think tonight was the first time I made
you?" Z started, sensing the man was awake enough to understand.
"Outside my apartment? No way."

Though the crook was in
obvious pain, Z was certain he was listening. "As for Johnny Dosso,
he's dead. Yeah. Me. When I found you were trailing me, I got in
touch with certain persons who put me in contact with Mr.
Minghetti. Sure. I knew where John was. I just didn't know Mr.
Minghetti wanted him. So, one of the times you
weren't
'back of me' -- off
somewhere on the crapper -- I squared things by bopping John
myself.
I'm
in
the clear.
You
?
Mr. Minghetti's not pleased with
you
. Said you couldn't get the job
done. Mr. Minghetti
may
even have gotten the idea you and Dosso were a
team. So, after proving my reliability, he hired
me
to make sure
you'd
have a little
accident." It was Z's turn to grin. "Get up!"

Z pulled out the gun. Pointed it at the
thug.

With the same
struggle
Z
had --
except more so since the mobster was flat on the floor, his feet
and knees tied -- the hood finally did as he was told, getting
first to his knees, then to his feet. (At least Z didn't have to
listen to the "crime lord's" groans, the gag doing its
job.)