The Shadow Box

THE SHADOW BOX

BY

JOHN R. MAXIM

More praise tor John
R.
Maxim's
THE SHADOW BOX

“TOP-NOTCH WRITING, GREAT ACTION,

MEMORABLE CHARACTERS—WHAT MORE

COULD ANY SUSPENSE READER WANT?”

New York-Times
bestselling author Michael Palmer

”A SLICK, ENGROSSING ENTERTAINMENT WITH

PLAUSIBLY MOTIVATED CHARACTERS AND

CHILLING DETAIL ON AN UNDERGROUND

ENTERPRISE THAT'S EVIDENTLY AS

REMUNERATIVE AS NARCOTICS.”

Kirkus Reviews

“FAST-PACED . . . PULSE-POUNDING

ADVENTURE . . . MAXIM'S MASTERPIECE . . .

A VIOLENT, GRIPPING THRILLER . . . LIABLE TO

KEEP YOU UP FEVERISHLY TURNING PAGES

UNTIL THE WEE HOURS OF THE MORNING.”

Lansing State Journal

“SCARY . . . MAXIM KNOWS HOW TO PULL HIS

READERS IN WITH SOME WILD PLOT TWISTS.

JUST AS GOOD IS HIS CHARACTERIZATION.

EVEN THE SECONDARY CHARACTERS . . .

ARE VIVID. CREATIONS.”

Chicago Tribune

“TERRIFYING
...
A CRACKERJACK
THRILLER
...
A COMPLICATED STORYLINE
THAT MAXIM PLAYS OUT WITH SKILL,
BOOSTING THE NARRATION WITH FLUID WRITING
AND WELL-DRAWN CHARACTERS. HE ALSO
REVEALS ENOUGH FRIGHTENING DETAILS ABOUT
THE DRUG BUSINESS TO SCARE READERS OFF
PRESCRIPTIONS FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES.”

Publishers Weekly
(*Starred Review*)

Chapter
1

The killing
was to be done just so.

Exactly as ordered. Any improvisation would be punished.

This man, this Jake Fallon, would leave his nephew's
apartment building some time between ten and midnight.
He would be without a bodyguard. The taxi was to be waiting for him. During the ride back to Brooklyn, the
driver was to talk to him of baseball. First of baseball,
and then of the driver's wife and children. Nothing else.

But when the time came, when this Fallon climbed into
the taxi, and had waved goodbye to his nephew, he was
clearly in no mood to talk of baseball. The driver had
been warned that this might happen.

“He'll probably have a lot on his mind about then,”
said the man who had sent the driver. “Just keep saying
your lines. He'll rise to the bait soon enough.”

Jake Fallon, however, had said nothing at all except to
give his address and to say what route should be taken.
The driver knew these things already. Last night and this morning he had practiced the run from the nephew's build
ing—it was high on Manhattan's West Side—to Fallon's
fine brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. He had rehearsed,
each time, what he would say in the taxi. He rehearsed
what he would say when Fallon knew he was to die. He
had worked very hard on his English. He had to learn
many things about baseball.

The driver turned south on the FDR Drive. The bridge
to Brooklyn was ten minutes away and the Pierrepont
Street house was only ten minutes more after that. It was
time to try again.

“Such a wonderful game is baseball,” he said.

From in back there was only a grunt.

“Only two years have I been in this country and already
I am a fanatic. But here it
is November. Until April there is no more baseball. Waiting will be hard.

The man in the back only shrugged. He had been ex
pected to agree.

The driver reached into a bag at his feet. He pulled out
a baseball and held it to the partition where his passenger
could see it.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked his silent pas
senger. “It is a home run that was hit by the great Barry
Bonds of the San Francisco Giants and I myself caught it.
You don't believe? It was on television. Millions were
watching when I caught this ball.”

His passenger managed a smile.

”I know,” said the cab driver sadly. ”I talk too much when I am nervous. My wife, tells me this all the time. It
is why she told me to work tonight. She says
‘
please don't
come to the hospital. She says I'll drive everyone crazy.”
’

“Hospital?” The man raised one eye. “She's sick?”

Now about children. “Not sick. She is at last going to
give me a son. She thinks it's a daughter but I know it's a son.”

“Either way, you should be there.”

A sigh. “Of course you are right. I will call when I get
you home. Are there pay phones near this Pierrepont
Street?”

“Not at this hour. You can call from my house/”

This time it was the driver who smiled.

He had studied this man as he entered the taxi. This man known as Big Jake Fallon. The one who had sent him said, “This guy is no pussy. Don't take him head-
on.” But he did not seem so dangerous. In years past,
perhaps, but now he was old. He was a man in his sixties
and he had a big belly.

The nephew, who had come down with the girl to see
him off, was younger and fit. His turn would come soon.
He might at least make it interesting. Also the bodyguard.
But that one would be someone else's job. His death was
also to be done just so. They meant to bury the body
guard alive.

“That was your son?''
he asked Big Jake Fallon. “From
his looks he could hit home runs for the Yankees.”

“My nephew. And no, Mike mostly played football.”

“That beautiful girl was his wife?”

“She's
...
his fiancee.”

“They will have handsome children. Perhaps, one day,
their sons and mine will play for the—”

“Yeah . . . maybe. That's my house on the left.”

This was almost too easy, thought the driver.

The man had punched out a code that unlocked the door and turned lights on all over
the house. There was no wife. No one else would be home. Jake Fallon entered and bade
him to follow. A ceramic umbrella stand stood in the hall.
A baseball bat sat among the umbrellas. To the right was
a room that was nothing but sports. Photos of boxers and
basketball players and men wearing football helmets. All
with autographs and words of friendship toward Jake Fal
lon. But much of the room was baseball. There were bats
on the wall and a few under glass.

Fallon pointed toward the phone at one end of the room.

“Make your call,” he said. “Then feel free to look
around if you like.”

He turned and walked to a book at the room's other
end. It was a dictionary, a large one, that rested on a stand.
Fallon leafed through the pages. As he did so, he muttered
one word. The word was “Adler.” The driver heard it
clearly.

His instructions from this point were clear. It is to be
slow, it is to be painful, and the weapon must be a bat.

He is to be given the hope that begging for his life
might save him. Make him plead. Try to make him soil
his trousers. Tell him then, and only then, why he is to
die. Say, “This is from Armin Rasmussen.” It was a name
that the driver did not know. But this Fallon, he was as
sured, would remember it well.

The driver took a bat from a trophy case. He caressed
it with his hands, reading the names of the players who
had signed it. Jake Fallon glanced back at some sound
that he'd made. He was not alarmed. He was accustomed,
no doubt, to his treasures being touched. He turned back to the book, flipped one more page, and found what he
was looking for. Cursing softly, he straightened. He took
a long breath. By the time he released it, the driver had
crossed half the room.

His instructions were to start with the knees. But the shoulders were better. You can't draw a weapon if your
shoulders are smashed.

The driver raised the bat. He swung it with all his might.

Chapter 2

    His
housekeeper
found the body the next
morn
ing. She had to be treated for
shock: The police sent a car
for his nephew, Michael. He was needed to make the
identification.

 
Michael Fallon had to do so by the suit that his uncle
had worn that evening, and by his rings, and by the
Knights of Columbus pin on his lapel. There was little left
of his face.

“I'm real sorry, Mike,” said one of the detectives.

Michael could barely speak.

“Where was Moon, by the way?”

Moon was Jake's friend, his bodyguard. More than that,
he was family.

“He's
...
up in the Catskills,” Michael managed to
say. “Uncle Jake had a piece of some middleweight.
Moon's helping to train him.”

That Moon should have been here was left unsaid.

The detectives could only guess what had happened.
Jake would have arrived there some time before midnight. They would pin it down further f
r
om the cab company's
records. He walked in on a burglar who was looting his
collection of sports memorabilia.

The detectives had known Big Jake Fallon. It was just
like him, one said, to fight. Forget his age. Man to man,
h
e said, Jake could probably have taken his assailant. But
the burglar had one of Jake's baseball bats. It was probably
what he'd gone there to steal.

The police said he must have been an amateur. Maybe
some strung-out junkie. Maybe some local kid who had
seen it while delivering groceries. A pro, they said, would
have known that much of Jake's collection—especially a
bat signed by all of the 1969 World Champion Mets and
inscribed to Big Jake Fallon—would be impossible to sell.
And a professional would not have panicked. This one did.

He went into a frenzy. Big Jake had apparently tried to
ward off the blows with a heavy oversized dictionary that
he kept on a stand in his study. Perhaps, thought one of
the homicide detectives, he'd gone in to look up a word.
He heard a noise behind him, turned, probably saw the bat and grabbed the dictionary to use as a shield. It did
no good. It was knocked across the room, smashed out
of its binding. Then the man with the bat broke both of Jake's arms.

Jake must have kept fighting. He knew how to use his feet. He must have hurt the burglar, maybe marked him.
The police could think of no other reason that the thief
went so berserk. He kept pounding Uncle Jake long after
he went down. His ribs, his shoulders, his head. He
stopped, from the look of it, only when the bat split in two.

Michael's fiancee, Bronwyn, arrived at the house. He
had asked her not to come but she did. She said this
was no time for him to be alone. She took him away
from there.