Sizzle (6 page)

Damn dogs. Should have killed them, too.

He reached his car, got inside, and howled when he sat down. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands and continued crying all the way to the hospital.

Needless to say, he didn’t mention these details as he talked to Mr. Merriam about his experience. He didn’t want to tarnish his image. Mr. Merriam only cared about results.

The third lesson he had learned was still so raw he couldn’t put any kind of spin on it yet, couldn’t even think about it without shuddering.

Lesson three: learn to swim before you try to kill someone beside a swimming pool.

Case in point: George Villard.

Milo still had nightmares about that one. Villard, the man he’d been ordered to kill, was a bodybuilder. He was also a notorious drunk and womanizer. Mr. Merriam hadn’t given Milo any background information on this assignment. His only orders were to get rid of Villard, and do it immediately.

Milo didn’t have time to research or plan. He made sure there were bullets in his gun and headed out. By the time he found the house in the maze of twists and turns up in the hills, it was after midnight. Villard was in his backyard next to his kidney-shaped pool. Milo hid in the shrubs observing his target, who was teetering on his feet. It was only a matter of minutes before the hulk passed out.

As drunk as Villard was, Milo figured he wouldn’t put up much of a fight, but he was wrong about that. Milo burst through the bushes and was fumbling to get his gun out of his raincoat pocket when Villard spotted him and his weapon and attacked, getting in one solid punch before tossing Milo into the pool.

Milo tried to dog paddle to the side and climb out, but his clothes and his panic worked against him. He was going under for the third time when, with one hand, Villard hauled him out and began screaming questions at him.

“Who sent you? Was it Jo Ann’s husband or Crystal’s? Tell me,” he yelled. His head rolled to the side and his eyes drooped as he slurred the words of his demand. Suddenly jerking his head up, he kicked Milo in the stomach. “Answer me, damn it!” Milo couldn’t speak. Flopping around on the concrete like a dying carp, he was fully occupied with choking on all the water he’d taken in.

Impatient to get answers, Villard kicked him again. “Was it Lenny? It was, wasn’t it?

That no-good bastard.” He gave him another vicious kick in his side and snarled, “You’re going to tell me who sent you, and then I’m going to throw you back in the pool and watch you drown.”

The threat wasn’t much of an incentive to cooperate, Milo thought, though he doubted Villard, in his drunken stupor, realized it. As inebriated as he was, the bodybuilder could still do some damage. Milo wanted to run away, but he was afraid to even move, afraid to reach for his gun—which he wasn’t sure would work since it, too, was probably waterlogged—afraid to provoke the drooling muscleman in any way.

While Milo desperately tried to think of a plan to save himself, Villard began blinking furiously and squinting down at him, obviously trying to concentrate. He must have remembered what he was doing because he suddenly nodded and smiled, then swung his foot back to kick Milo again, but the vast amount of alcohol he had consumed interfered with his balance. His body swayed; his eyes closed, and still grasping his glass in his hand, he plunged headfirst into the pool. He was too drunk to know he was drowning.

The death was ruled accidental.

It was another near disaster for Milo, yes, but as he did with the other hits, he took credit, and in Mr. Merriam’s eyes, he had a perfect record. Three for three. Merriam was so impressed, he gave Milo a bonus for a job well done.

Two weeks later on a Thursday afternoon Milo was called into Mr. Merriam’s office for a new assignment.

His boss usually wasn’t one for idle chitchat, but today he wanted to talk.

“You may have noticed how distracted I’ve been this past couple of weeks.” Milo hadn’t noticed, but he thought maybe he should have, and so he nodded. “Yes, sir, I have,” he lied.

“I’ve got a situation, and you’re the man for the job. This one is going to be tricky and will require a little more guile. You understand?”

“Yes, sure,” he lied again. Guile? He’d never heard the word before. He wasn’t about to admit it, though, for showing his ignorance might diminish his standing with Mr. Merriam, and he couldn’t have that. Just as soon as he left the office, he would find out what guile was and where he could get some.

“A business associate I once considered a friend screwed me. Screwed me good. Bill Rooney is his name,” he added with a sneer. “I took that weasel to dinner more than once, sat down across from him and broke bread with him, and what does he do in return? He stabs me in the back, that’s what. He’s got something I want.” Milo didn’t know if he should say something sympathetic or not, so he stayed silent and waited.

“Just goes to show, you can’t mix business with pleasure. I learned my lesson, and Rooney’s about to learn his. I’ve got the edge here because Rooney doesn’t know I found out.”

He pulled the chair out from behind the desk and sat down. “I discovered quite by accident where he’s hiding it. I knew he had a safe in his office. Everyone knows. It’s the first thing you see when you walk in the door. It’s big and must be a hundred years old.” He opened a carved wooden box on his desk and reached inside for a cigar. He stuck the stogie between his lips and continued talking as he struck a match and sucked the flame into the tobacco. “He doesn’t have to worry someone’s gonna pick it up, and run out the door with it. It would take a crane to lift it.”

He motioned for Milo to take a seat before continuing. “Rooney wants everyone to see the safe. Naturally, they’d think that’s where he keeps his valuables. Right? The shmuck.

It’s all a sham. Turns out he’s got another safe in his office. It’s built into the floor under the desk. I got the combination. Let me tell you, that took some doing.”

“Do you want me to break into his office—”

“No, no, I’ve got Charlie on that. I want you to take care of Rooney and his wife.” Though Milo knew Merriam’s office was soundproof and was checked for bugs at least once a day, he skittishly glanced around the room. “You want his wife dead, too?”

“That’s right. Rooney might have told her what he did. Keep her alive, and she could go to the feds. Too risky. So here’s how I want it to go down. Rooney always leaves his office at four o’clock on the dot, and it takes him an hour to get home. He never goes out on Friday night. Never,” he stressed. “He’s predictable and that’s going to work for us. He takes his loudmouth wife out every Saturday night, and Sunday he rests up for his mistress.

He sees her every Monday and Wednesday.

“I want this to look like a murder-suicide. Wife kills husband, then kills herself. The police will investigate, of course, and they’ll find out about the mistress. They’ll assume the wife found out, too, and that’s why she killed him. Everyone knows she’s got a hell of a temper.”

“When do you want this done?”

“Tomorrow night at five o’clock. Charlie’s going into Rooney’s office then, and he’ll be in and out of there in no time. If there’s a problem, he’ll let me know, and I’ll call you.

Take this cell phone,” he ordered, tossing it to Milo. “It can’t be traced. Don’t kill anyone until you hear from me. Got that?”

Once again, Milo was being rushed. He didn’t have time to do much surveillance, but he vowed there weren’t going to be any glitches this time. He drove through Rooney’s neighborhood the next morning to familiarize himself with the layout and to see if there were any nosy neighbors. Once he’d checked out all the entrances into Rooney’s house, he drove to a grocery store about a mile away. Milo purchased a couple of pounds of hamburger meat he planned to stuff in his pockets just in case there was a dog lurking inside the house.

He still had a lot of time on his hands, so he strolled back to his car, pulled out one of the girly magazines he kept under the seat for those times when he needed a little pick-me-up, and flipped through it to pass the time.

At 3:30 he put the magazine away and headed over to Rooney’s. His house sat in the middle of a long, gently-sloping hill, and Milo’s plan was to park at the top where he would have a clear view of the driveway. As soon as Mr. Merriam called, Milo would sneak into the house and take care of business. While he waited, he would put the cell phone to his ear and pretend he’d pulled over to talk. Nothing suspicious about that.

The plan was flawless.

FOUR

MILO SLAMMED ON THE BRAKES AND STARED IN ASTONISHMENT at the mob gathered on the lawn in front of Rooney’s house.

They were everywhere, hordes of men and women—no, no, mostly women—all carrying away as much as they could hold in their arms. A couple of them, Milo noticed, had that same glazed look of unadulterated joy he sometimes saw on the faces of the men who frequented strip clubs with him.

The Rooneys were having a yard sale.

“Now what am I supposed to do?” he muttered. The question was followed by a stream of curses. He couldn’t call his boss because that was against the rules, so he guessed he would just have to wait until Mr. Merriam called him.

A yard sale. He cursed again. In such an exclusive neighborhood, this kind of middle-class activity seemed out of place. Rich people threw stuff away. They didn’t sell it.

A couple of women, red-faced and screaming, were fighting a tug of war over a leather chair. Look at them, Milo thought with disgust. Someone else’s junk had become their treasure. Slap down a dime or a dollar, and a piece of crap was all theirs. He would never touch anyone else’s used stuff. He had more class than that.

The front doors of the house were wide open, and a steady stream of shoppers came and went. One carried a pretty lamp, the cord dragging behind her. Another had what looked like a fancy humidor. He noticed she had a bottle tucked under her arm. Then he saw another woman carrying out two bottles of wine. More followed. Were the Rooneys emptying their bar or maybe their wine cellar? Why would they do that? Were they moving or something?

Milo checked the time. Rooney should be pulling into his driveway any minute now, unless he didn’t work at the office today. That was a possibility. Maybe he was at home helping. Mr. Merriam had given Milo a photo of the couple, but so far he hadn’t spotted either husband or wife. Bill and Barbara. Cute the way their names went together, he thought. They sure weren’t cute in the photo, though. Bill looked like he was wearing a shag rug on his big head, and Barbara—or “loudmouth Babs” as Mr. Merriam called her—

had had one too many face-lifts. Her lips ended where her ears began.

Yard sale. Mr. Merriam wasn’t going to believe this. Surely he wouldn’t want Milo to continue with the job. There were close to forty people in the yard alone, and God only knew how many more were inside the house.

A woman dressed in a pale gray maid’s uniform came out of the house with a stack of books and CDs. She ran down the steps, dropping a couple of the CDs, but she didn’t stop to pick them up. Pushing another woman aside, she raced across the lawn. Her expression was frantic. She slowed down long enough to dump all the books and CDs in a pile, then furtively glanced over her shoulder at the front door and ran like hell down the street.

What was that all about? Milo watched her disappear around the corner before he turned back to the crowd. He shook his head at the frenzy of bargain hunters darting from one pile to another, snatching up their booty as though it would disappear if they didn’t have their hands on it. His gaze stopped at one woman who didn’t seem caught up in the chaos. She knelt on the grass beside the pyramid of books gently picking them up and examining them one at a time. He couldn’t see much of her. Her long dark hair hid her face, and frenzied people pouring in and out of the house kept blocking his view.

Finally the dark-haired woman stood and he got a better look. He whistled. A real knockout, this one. Real nice body. He tried to picture her without clothes, which was a pleasant little fantasy, until he realized he was beginning to react physically. Now wasn’t the time. He tried to look away but couldn’t. Dressed in jeans and a pink T-shirt, she definitely wasn’t trying to sell her attributes. Yet on her, the clothes looked sexy. She was even sexier than the Bond girls. She was tall and slender, not skinny like those stick runway models, more like the athletic type with curves in all the right places. Bet she’s a dancer, Milo thought.

She turned her head as she reached for another book, and Milo caught a glimpse of her face. Beautiful. He couldn’t remember the faces of the Bond girls. He’d never really bothered to look at their faces, and yet he couldn’t take his eyes off of hers.

With all the good stuff, why was she wasting her time on that junk? Must be the brainy type, he concluded.

He continued to stare as she carried a stack of books to the street. She was taking such care with them, cradling them as though they were important.

She drove a Ford SUV maybe five or six years old. The back was open, and he could see that it was already crammed full of books and what looked like a box of DVDs and CDs. A beauty like her should be driving a brand-new car every year.

“Throw out the junk books, lady,” he said, exasperated. “Go for the good stuff. If you don’t want any of it, you can sell it on eBay and get yourself a new car.” A parking spot opened directly across the street from her car. Milo threw his into gear and nearly sideswiped an Acura as he pulled into the space.