Last Dark Place Page 6

  “No,” said Hanrahan.

  “You look like him,” said the other man. “You’re sure you’re not him?”

  “I’m Dick Butkus,” said O’Neil.

  “Like hell,” said the first man at the table.

  “I’ve had plastic surgery,” O’Neil insisted.

  “Like hell,” the man repeated.

  The two cops moved through the door and out onto the sidewalk.

  “Berg recognized the description,” O’Neil said.

  “He recognized,” said Hanrahan.

  “It’s his kid,” said O’Neil.

  “It is.”

  “Stakeout?”

  “They’ll probably call him, tell him we’re looking for him,” said Hanrahan.

  They both looked back through the window where Berg couldn’t help looking at them for an instant from behind the counter. An old man with a Cubs cap and a walker accompanied by a younger woman with a coat and scarf moved into the store.

  “Give him a few hours and come back?” asked O’Neil.

  “Yeah, let him think,” said Hanrahan.

  “About junior’s dirty hands,” said O’Neil.

  They walked down the sidewalk and got into their car.

  Inside the store, the woman in the apron whispered, “I heard, Bert.”

  Berg turned to look at the man with the walker who moved slowly toward him.

  “Ma, forget it.”

  “They’ll come back,” she said.

  “And I still won’t know anything. Ma, let it be.”

  “Paul did something wrong, Bert, something very wrong.”

  Berg wiped his hands and said to the man with the walker, “Mr. G.G., the usual?”

  5

  WAYNE CONSIDERED WHISTLING. HE was a good whistler, whistled right along with songs on the oldies radio station while he worked. He could warble, trill, and keep up with any tune. “Heartaches,” “Yesterdays,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Hard Drinking Woman.” Wayne decided it wasn’t the right thing to do.

  Lee Cole Carter was visiting his father and mother. He came back when he was in the area doing a show. He brought them something they didn’t need or want and gave them tickets to his show they wouldn’t use. Lee Cole’s mother and father always acted pleased to get the modern-looking lamp or new television to replace their new television. Lee Cole never stayed long, an hour or two at the most. He was always in a hurry, had someplace to go. Lee Cole’s mother had come to expect this. She would always have coffee and some butter cookies ready. Sometimes he would drink a half-cup of coffee and eat a cookie or two before looking at his gold Rolex.

  “Go, Lee,” she would say. “I know you’re busy. We’re proud of you.”

  “Very proud,” Lee Cole’s father Gregory would say with a smile he didn’t mean, happy that his son, who had dyed his hair and wore an earring and a cowboy hat, would be out of his life till the next visit. Gregory was a cop, retired. He couldn’t carry a tune. Neither could his wife, and Gregory didn’t think their son Lee Cole did an awful goddamn good job of it either. Besides, Gregory could tell from his breath that Lee Cole had been smoking. The smell was also on his son’s clothes. He was glad when Lee Cole, named for his mother’s father, was gone, back on the television and the radio and the tapes where he could be turned off.

  It was toward the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Gregory Carter that Wayne, clean-shaven, hair freshly cut, determined look on his face, headed. He wanted to look his very best for the photographers. He was about to earn respect and recognition. People would remember the man who killed Lee Cole Carter. Some country-and-western song might even be written about him. George Strait would be the one who should sing it. Or maybe Faith Hill.

  He walked. He could have taken his car. He had a 1997 GEO Prizm. It was blue. He kept it in good condition, but didn’t have much of anywhere to drive it.

  He didn’t need his car. Not today. He was going to shoot Lee Cole Carter with the gun in his pocket and then wait for the police. There might be someone with Lee Cole. He would shoot him or her or them, too. He might have to shoot Lee Cole three or four or more times. There were enough bullets in the gun. He wanted to be sure. He didn’t want to be the man who tried to kill the sort-of-famous Lee Cole Carter. He wanted to be the man who killed the celebrity.

  Emiliano “El Perro” Del Sol, which was not his real name, had never personally killed anyone in a hospital. Two of his men had thrown someone off of a hospital roof a little over a year ago, but that had been a favor for Lieberman, El Viejo.

  However, El Perro was now considering murder in a hospital. His room was private. Piedras, he of great strength and little mind, stood guarding the door, hands at his side, ready to do whatever El Perro ordered.

  El Perro considered.

  Piedras could silently kill both of the Chinese men in dark suits who stood next to the bed. Getting rid of their bodies would be as easy as opening the window and throwing them out. That could be done while they were alive, but since it was only the fourth floor, El Perro would want to be sure they didn’t survive. Besides, he thought as he fingered the white scar on his face, true satisfaction could come only if El Perro did the killing himself. But, why not?

  David Sen looked down at the mad Puerto Rican, hoping that he appeared cool and inscrutable. At his side was Victor Tung, short, muscled, expendable. David knew he, too, was expendable.

  “So?” asked El Perro, hands under the blanket. He was propped up and waiting impatiently.

  “The Twin Dragons will accept your apology,” Sen said. “You must do so publicly, on Wednesday night.”

  On Wednesday nights—and Saturdays, too—El Perro called the bingo numbers at the hall he owned on North Avenue. He called numbers with a wild abandon that was known throughout the Hispanic community. He had names for each number, each ball.

  “Alive, alive, before B-five,” he would shout, holding up a white ball as if it were a trophy eyeball.

  “You’re the one who shot me,” said El Perro.

  “Me? No. We all look pretty much alike, don’t we?”

  “Not to me,” said El Perro.

  “Well?” asked Sen, fighting the urge to escape those mad brown eyes looking at him.

  “I have a message for Liao,” El Perro said. “But you can’t deliver it. The message is he can get on his hands and knees and I’ll drop my pants so he can do me. Then he can have the choice of killing himself with a knife or me killing him with a baseball bat.”

  Sen said nothing. Victor Tung said nothing.

  “You want me to deliver that message?” asked Sen.

  “No,” said El Perro. “Your friend there. You’re dead.”

  El Perro’s left hand came out from under the blanket, a gun with a silencer. He fired as Piedras moved forward to put an arm around the neck of Victor Tung.

  The first of two fired bullets crushed the bridge of David Sen’s nose. He stood, mouth open, and the second bullet ripped through his tongue and the back of his head. Sen crumpled forward, hitting his head on the metallic foot of the bed as he dropped to the floor. He was most certainly dead.

  Piedras relieved Tung of the gun under his leather jacket.

  “Piedras, la ventana,” El Perro said, gun aimed at Tung.

  Piedras nodded and moved to the window. It was already opened a crack. He finished, gently pushed out the screen, pulled the screen in, lifted the window, and turned to the bed.

  “How much blood?” El Perro asked.

  Piedras examined the floor.

  “No hay mucho,” he said.

  “Clean it up fast.”

  Tung watched, left hand twitching uncontrollably. Piedras went to the bathroom, got paper towels, and cleaned up quickly. When he was done, he turned to his leader, who said,

  “Ahora.”

  Piedras picked up the body like a bouncer in an old movie, one hand on the seat of his pants, the other on his collar. He heaved the dead man out the window, quickly replaced the screen, closed and locked th
e window, and moved to the bed. El Perro handed him the gun. He tucked the gun in his belt and pulled out his shirt so it would cover the weapon.

  “Give Liao the message,” El Perro said to Tung as Piedras went to the door and opened it.

  “What message?” asked Tung.

  “What message? The one you just saw, you fucking stupid Chink.”

  “‘Faubus,’ you ever hear that name?” asked Lieberman, sitting next to the bed.

  There was a rumbling outside the hospital. Sounded like thunder.

  “Garbage pickup,” said Billy Johnstone. “I know the sound of garbage pickup.”

  He still looked terrible, but terrible was better than hopeless.

  “You a garbage pro?”

  “That I am,” said Johnstone with what might have been a smile. There was a catch in his throat as if he needed to get something reluctant down and out of the way. “Been lots of things, but right fielder and janitor are what I’ve known best.”

  Lieberman nodded and said, “Janitor? Not sanitary engineer?”

  “Hell no,” Johnstone said, trying to keep his fluttering eyes focused. “Indians are Indians, not Native Americans. Chinese are Oriental.”

  “And Asian.”

  “And Asian,” Johnstone agreed.

  “And people like me are Negroes or Blacks, not African-American. Why should all of us minorities keep changing our names?”

  “Keeps white people off-guard,” said Lieberman.

  “Maybe.”

  Silence in the small room. Garbage bins kept rattling.

  “Faubus,” said Lieberman again. “About six-two, forty years old, white hair tied back.”

  Billy Johnstone shook his head, but slowly and just a little.

  “James Faubus, Cowboy Faubus?”

  “In Yuma about half the white people call themselves Cowboy this or that,” said Johnstone. “Closest all of them ever came to a cow was when it was medium rare and on a plate. There was a Faubus, governor of Mississippi, Louisiana, someplace like that back when I was in Triple A back in the fifties.”

  “Arkansas,” said Lieberman.

  “Threw Negroes out of diners or kept them from going to college or something.”

  “High school,” said Lieberman. “Little Rock.”

  “Right,” said Billy. “Now I’m remembering. This Cowboy of yours some relation to him? The governor of Arkansas?”

  The garbage truck was grinding away now. Lieberman paused to wait till it was finished digesting.

  “That was Orville Faubus. I don’t know if the gentleman I talked to an hour ago was related. You never know. I do know he was following me. Want to know why?”

  Billy didn’t answer.

  “Cowboy Faubus has a record. Nothing big. Black market cigarettes. Attempted extortion.”

  “He steal a horse?” asked Billy hoarsely. “That’s a hanging deal in the West. Saw it on Bonanza way back.”

  “You’re amused,” said Lieberman.

  “Just getting tired,” said Billy softly.

  “I’m coming to the good part,” said Lieberman. “I’ll give you the short version. Faubus says a man paid him five hundred dollars to follow me and report to him. Man didn’t give him a name or number. Man said he’d check in from time to time.”

  Billy said nothing.

  “The Cowboy described the man,” Lieberman continued, crossing his legs, feeling the ache of sitting in one position for too long. “Pretty ordinary. White. Five-eight maybe. Fifty years old maybe. Average weight maybe. Face that looks like everybody else.”

  “You believe him? I mean that he can describe this fella?” Billy said.

  “Yes, because of one detail. The thumb on the man’s left hand.”

  Billy’s eyes popped open, suddenly alert.

  Lieberman had the photo he had taken from Billy’s apartment in his hand. He held it up so the man in the bed could see.

  “How’d you get the picture?”

  Billy pursed his lips and his head nodded forward and back as if a song were running through his memory. Then he spoke.

  “Had the camera in my hand. Taking pictures at the river. He came up to me. Knew all about me. Made the proposition.”

  “To kill Gower and get your grandchildren’s college education paid for.”

  “Not saying yes and not saying no here.”

  The garbage truck rumbled away slowly, hitting bumps in the street, playing trash music for the masses and the sick and dying.

  “He didn’t know you took the picture.”

  “Didn’t have a hint,” said Billy.

  “Too good an ID to pass up,” said Lieberman.

  “Maybe something like that. Wasn’t thinking too much at the time. Crazy proposition comes out of who knows where by this guy. I see his messed-up thumbnail, got the camera in my hand. What the hell.”

  “What the hell,” Lieberman agreed. “Did he pay you everything he promised or was there going to be a payment after you killed Gower?”

  “Paid up-front,” said Billy. “Made it clear if I didn’t do it, he’d want his money back or my grandkids dead. That’s the part he shouldn’t have said. Money’s already in a trust for them. You can’t get it. He can’t get it. And if you say I got it, it’s your word against mine and I can call you a liar with the emotion of a weeping old man if it comes to that.”

  “I don’t want to get at your grandkids’ money. I want the guy with the bad thumbnail. Give me something I can work with.”

  Billy was looking at the ceiling now. He looked at the ceiling so long that Lieberman considered looking up there to see what was so interesting, but he didn’t. The policeman sat quietly, wondering if there was a Jewish deli in Yuma. He doubted it.

  “He’s not in Yuma anymore,” Billy said, still looking at the ceiling.

  “Where is he?”

  “Don’t know that but I know where he was going. Chicago.”

  “Chicago?”

  “Answered his cell phone while we were standing there and he was conning me about how I’d be doing the world a big favor by getting rid of this Gower guy.”

  Billy grew silent again, looking at the ceiling.

  “Cell phone,” Lieberman said, bringing Billy back to the hospital room.

  “He said ‘meet you tomorrow at six at the place on Hoyne.’ Don’t know how many Hoynes there are in the U.S. but I know there’s one in Chicago near Wrigley Field. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And the guy I killed, Gower, he’s from Chicago, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Two and two adds up for me.”

  It did for Lieberman, too.

  “Know what Mr. Thumbnail’s mistake was?” asked Billy.

  “Being born?”

  “No,” said Billy, meeting the detective’s eyes. “Threatening my grandkids.”

  A heavyset nurse in white with a perfect pink complexion and a round face opened the door and said apologetically, “I’m sorry. Visiting hours are over.”

  “You know if there’s a Jewish deli in Yuma?” Lieberman asked the nurse.

  She shrugged. Billy said “no.”

  “Then I’m going back to Chicago,” Lieberman announced, standing up.

  “You find him,” said Billy. “If he comes back to Yuma, goes anywhere near my grandkids, I plan to send him to hell if I have to rise from the dead to do it.”

  Before he left, Abe would check on how many outgoing flights had gone to Chicago in the past three days. He’d get a passenger list and turn it over to Captain Kearney when he got back to the station. Abe fully expected that he would be calling a lot of recent visitors to Yuma in the next few days when he got back to Chicago. Meanwhile, he would have to decide between Tex-Mex and pizza.

  The major problem for Blue Berg was finding something to do, almost anything to do that required action and not a lot of thought.

  He sat behind the wheel of his car, rubbed a finger across the little beard under his lower lip, and looked throug
h the windshield up at the moon.

  Next to him in the passenger seat, Easy Dan hummed nothing softly and spun the monkey dangling from the rearview mirror.

  In the backseat, Comedy, that was all, just Comedy, leaned back with his eyes closed, hands folded, thumbs twitching. He had a name but no one used it.

  They were waiting for Blue to decide what they were going to do tonight. They had to do something. None of them could sit through a movie, a ball game, the first five words of a book or even more than a short paragraph in People magazine. Music? If it pounded and they didn’t have to pay attention.

  Easy Dan and Comedy moved to Blue Berg’s music, the thumping heels of his hands against the steering wheel, his nodding head while he decided what they were going to do. Only when they did whatever Blue told them to do did they begin to feel the rush. Wound tight, tight, tighter, Blue would drive, scanning the streets, palms pounding the steering wheel to the beat of something on the radio. Comedy and Easy Dan would scan, too, but they relied on Blue to make the decision.

  And when he did, it was like fucking magic. There were a couple of spic girls, or a woman and kid, or an old bag lady. He didn’t have to tell them what to do. They heard the trunk pop open, got out, pulled the bats and felt their blood going nuts inside them.

  Then, when it was over, and they could feel their blood rumble-rambling like a runaway El train underground, they would turn the radio on, high, something that sounded like aluminum bats on a drum, that their hearts could keep time with, racing along with a squealing electric guitar.

  Blue’s name wasn’t Blue. It was Paul.

  Easy Dan’s real name was Daniel Rostinski.

  Comedy had been born and christened and stuck George Grosse.

  Together they called themselves the Blue Glee Club. The name had been Comedy’s idea. He had funny ideas like that.

  Blue started the car and shot into traffic on Western Avenue, almost hitting a white pickup truck. The pickup’s driver swerved, almost hitting a yellow subcompact in the next lane.

  The pickup driver sped up as Blue stepped on the gas. The pickup came alongside Blue’s car. Blue smiled. The pickup’s driver was a man wearing a baseball cap. He needed major dental work. A cigar was clenched in his teeth. He glared down at Blue, who kept smiling. The pickup hit his horn-beep, beep … beep, beep. Blue looked over at the man, who gave Blue the finger.