The Murderers

by W. E. B Griffin

  “No disrespect intended, Mr. Cassandro.”

  “I know that, Sonny. Like I told you, Marco’s been saying good things about you. Look, I know you were mistaken, and I understand. But when you were mistaken, what did you think this guy did for me?”

  Sonny did not immediately reply.

  “Hey, you’re among friends. What’s said in this room stays in this room, OK?”

  “I feel like a goddamned fool for not knowing it was bullshit when I heard it,” Sonny said. “I should have known better.”

  “Known better than what, Sonny?” Paulo Cassandro said, and now there was an unmistakable tone of impatience in his voice.

  “He sort of hinted that he was a hit man for you,” Sonny said, very reluctantly.

  “You’re right, Sonny,” Paulo said. “You should have known it was bullshit when you heard it. You know why?”

  Inspiration came, miraculously, to Sonny Boyle. He suddenly knew the right answer to give.

  “Because you’re a legitimate businessman,” he said.

  “Right. All that bullshit in the movies about a mob, and hit men, all that bullshit is nothing but bullshit. And you should have known that, Sonny. I’m a little disappointed in you.”

  “I’m embarrassed. I just didn’t think this through.”

  “Right. You didn’t think. That can get a fella in trouble, Sonny.”

  “I know.”

  “Ah, well, what the hell. You’re among friends. Marco says good things about you. Let’s just forget the whole thing.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You know what I mean about forgetting the whole thing?”

  “I’m not exactly sure.”

  “You know what you did tonight, Sonny?”

  “No.”

  “You wanted to be nice to the wife. You wanted to surprise her. You know a guy who works in the kitchen out there. You come to the back door and told him to make you two dinners to go. He did.”

  “Right, Mr. Cassandro.”

  “That it was on the house is nobody’s business but yours and mine, right? And you didn’t see nobody but your friend, right?”

  “Absolutely, Mr. Cassandro.”

  “Marco,” Paulo Cassandro said. “Get them to make up a takeout. Antipasto, some veal, some pasta, some fish, spumoni, the works, a couple bottles of wine. And then take Sonny here home.”

  “Yes, Mr. Cassandro.”

  Paulo Cassandro extended his hand.

  “I would say that it was nice to see you, Sonny, but we didn’t, right? Keep up the good work. It’s appreciated.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Cassandro.”

  “You see anybody here by that name, Marco?”

  “I don’t,” Marco D’Angelo said.

  “Sorry,” Sonny said.

  “Ah, get out of here. Enjoy your dinner,” Paulo Cassandro said.

  Impulsively, when he reached the Media Inn, at the intersection of the Baltimore Pike and Providence Road, Matt continued straight on into Media, instead of turning left onto Providence Road toward the home in Wallingford in which he had grown up.Except for a lantern-style fixture by the front door, there were no lights on in the brick Colonial house at 320 Wilson Avenue; Mr. Gerald North Atchison, restaurateur and almost certain conspirator in a double murder, was apparently out for the evening.

  There was time for Matt to consider, as he slowly approached and rolled past the house, that driving by wasn’t the smartest thing he had done lately.

  What if he had been home? So what? What did I expect to find?

  He pressed harder on the Porsche’s accelerator and dropped his hand to the gearshift.

  To hell with it. I’ll go home, and hope I can look—what did Wohl say Amy said? A condition of “grief shock”?—sufficiently grief-shocked to convince my mother that I am not the sonofabitch I have proven myself to be.

  Jesus! What if Amanda calls the apartment and Milham’s girlfriend answers the phone? Amanda will decide that I am letting some other kind female soul console me in my grief shock! And be justifiably pissed. Worse than pissed, hurt. I’ll have to call her.

  And that’s not so bad. She said not to call her. But this gives me an excuse. Jesus, I’m glad I thought about that!

  There was a sudden light in the rear of the house at 320 Wilson, growing in intensity. Matt looked over his shoulder—it was difficult in the small interior of the Porsche—and saw that the left door of the double garage was going up.

  He pulled quickly to the curb, stopped, and turned his lights off. A moment later, a Cadillac Coupe de Ville backed out of the driveway onto the street, turned its tail toward Matt, and drove off in the other direction.

  With his lights still off, Matt made a U-turn, swore when his front wheel bounced over the curb he could not see, then set off in pursuit.

  Why the hell am I doing this?

  Because I think I’m Sherlock Holmes? Or because I really don’t want to go home and have Mother comfort me in my grief shock?

  Or maybe, just maybe, because I’m a cop, and I’m after that bastard?

  Not without difficulty—the traffic on the Baltimore Pike through Clifton Heights and Lansdowne toward Philadelphia was heavy, and there were a number of stoplights, two of which left him stopped as the Cadillac went ahead—he kept Atchison in sight.

  Atchison drove to the Yock’s Diner at Fifty-seventh and Chestnut, just inside the city limits. Matt drove past the parking lot, saw Atchison get out of his car and walk toward the diner, and then circled the block and entered the parking lot.

  Atchison knew him, of course, so he couldn’t go in the diner. He walked toward the diner, deciding he would try to look in the windows. He passed a car and idly looked inside. There was a radio mounted below the dash, and when he looked closer, he could see the after-market light mounted on the headliner. An unmarked car.

  The occupants of which will see me stalking around out here, rush out, blow whistles, shine flashlights, and accuse me of auto burglary.

  There was a three-foot-wide area between the parked unmarked car and the diner itself, planted with some sort of hardy perennial bushes which were thick and had thorns. He scratched both legs painfully, and a grandfather of a thorn ripped a three-inch slash in his jacket.

  He found a footing and hoisted himself up to look in the window.

  There will be a maiden lady at this table, two maiden ladies, who will see the face in the window, scream, and cause whoever’s in the unmarked car to rush to protect society.

  The table was unoccupied. Matt twisted his head—clinging to the stainless-steel panels of the diner wall made this difficult—and looked right and then left.

  Mr. Gerald North Atchison was sitting at a banquette, alone, studying the menu.

  Jesus, why not? What did I expect? People have to eat. Going to a diner is what hungry people do.

  He dropped off the wall and turned to fight his way back through the jungle.

  You are a goddamn fool, Matthew Payne. The price of your Sherlock Holmes foolishness is your ripped jacket. Be grateful that the guys in the unmarked car didn’t see you.

  But, Jesus, why did he come all the way here? He could have eaten a hell of a lot closer to his house than this—the Media Inn, for example.

  He stood motionless for a second, then turned back to the diner and climbed up again.

  Mr. Gerald North Atchison, smiling, was giving his order to a waitress whose hair was piled on top of her head.

  What are you doing here, you sonofabitch?

  He looked around the diner again.

  Frankie Foley was sitting at the diner’s counter, the remnants of his meal pushed aside, drinking a cup of coffee, holding the cup in both hands.

  “You want to climb down from there, sir, and tell us what you’re doing?”

  Matt quickly looked over his shoulder. Too quickly. His right foot slipped and he fell backward onto one of the larger perennial thornbushes.

  “Shit!” Matt said.

  “Jesus!” o
ne of the detectives said, his tone indicating that the strange behavior of civilians still amazed him.

  “I’m a Three Six Nine,” Matt said.

  Both detectives, if that’s what they were, entered the thornbush jungle far enough to put their hands on Matt’s arm and shoulders and push him up out of the thornbush.

  “I’m Detective Payne, of Special Operations,” Matt said. “Let me get out of here, and I’ll show you my identification.”

  The two eyed him warily as he reached into his jacket for his identification.

  The larger of the two took the leather folder, examined it and Matt critically, and finally handed it back.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

  “Right now, I need some help,” Matt said.

  “It sure looks like you do,” the second of them said.

  “There’s a man in there named Gerald North Atchison,” Matt said. “You hear about the double homicide at the Inferno?”

  “I heard about it,” the larger one said.

  “It was his wife and partner who were killed,” Matt said. “And there is another man in there, Frankie Foley, who we think is involved.”

  “I thought you said you was Special Operations,” the larger detective said. “Isn’t that Homicide’s business?”

  “I’m working the job,” Matt said. “I followed Atchison here from his house. I think he’s here to meet Foley. That would put a lot of things together.”

  “What kind of help?” the larger one asked.

  “I can’t go in there. They both know my face.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” Matt said, aware of how stupid that made him sound. “See if they talk together. Anything. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they’re both here together.”

  “If they’ve got enough brains to pour piss out of a boot,” the larger one said, “they’d transact their business out here in the parking lot, where nobody would see them.”

  It was a valid comment, and Matt could think of no reply to make.

  “Harry,” the smaller one said, “I could drink another cup of coffee.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” Matt said.

  “If you need some help, why don’t you get on the radio?” the larger one said.

  “I’m driving my own car.”

  “Where are these guys?”

  “Atchison, five eight or nine, a hundred ninety pounds, forty-something, in a suit, is in the second banquette from the kitchen door. Foley, twenty-five, six one, maybe two hundred pounds, is in a two-tone sports coat, third or fourth seat from the far end of the counter.”

  “We’ll have a look,” the larger one said. “I’m Harry Cronin, Payne, South Detectives. This is Bob Chesley.”

  Chesley waved a hand in greeting; Cronin offered his hand.

  “You tore the shit out of your jacket, I guess you know,” he said, then signaled for Chesley to go into the diner ahead of him.

  A minute after that, Cronin followed Chesley into the diner. Matt walked away from the diner, stationing himself behind the second line of cars in the parking lot.

  Five minutes later, he saw Foley come out of the diner. Matt ducked behind a car and watched Foley through the windows. Foley went to a battered, somewhat gaudily repainted Oldsmobile two-door and got in. The door closed, and a moment later the interior lights went on.

  Matt couldn’t see what he was doing at first, but then Foley tapped a stack of money on the dashboard. The door opened wider, and he could see an envelope flutter to the ground. The door closed, the engine cranked, the lights came on, and Foley drove out of the parking lot.

  “That one,” Detective Cronin reported as he approached Matt, “went into the crapper carrying a package. A heavy package. He came out a minute or two later without it. Then the fat guy went in the crapper, and when he came out, he had the package.”

  Matt ran over and retrieved the envelope. It was blank, but Matt remembered a lecture at the Police Academy—and it had been a question on the detective’s exam—where the technique of lifting fingerprints from paper using nihydrous oxide had been discussed. An envelope with Foley’s and Atchison’s prints on it would be valuable.

  “I’d love to know what’s in that package,” Matt said when he went back to where Cronin waited.

  “It was heavy and tied with string,” Cronin said. “It could be a gun. Guns. More than one.”

  “Shit,” Matt said.

  “Guns don’t help?”

  “In the last couple of days, I’ve had several lectures about not giving defense attorneys an edge,” Matt said. “I’m afraid we’d get into an unlawful search-and-seizure, and lose the guns as evidence.”

  “If they are guns,” Cronin said. “That’s just a maybe.”

  “Shit,” Matt said.

  “I could bump into the fat guy, and maybe the package would fall to the ground and rip open…”

  “And maybe it wouldn’t.”

  “You call it, Payne.”

  “I think I had better be very careful,” Matt said.

  “Whatever. Anything else?”

  “I’m going to follow him. I don’t suppose you could tag along?”

  “I don’t know. I’d have to check in.”

  “Fuck it,” Matt thought aloud. “I started this myself, I’ll do it myself. Anyway, he might catch on if two cars followed him.”

  “You know that he hasn’t caught on to you already?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  They waited in silence for another ten minutes.

  “If you saw a gun barrel or something sticking out of a ripped package, that would be sufficient cause for you to ask for a permit, right?” asked Matt.

  “Absolutely. A wrapped-up gun is a concealed weapon.”

  “He’s got a permit to carry concealed, but you could get the serial numbers.”

  “I’ll go bump the sonofabitch,” Cronin said.

  Five minutes after that, Gerald North Atchison came out the Yock’s Diner. Detective Cronin stepped from between two parked cars and bumped into him, hard enough to make Atchison stagger. But he didn’t drop the package, and he held on to it firmly while Cronin profusely apologized for not watching where he was going, and tried to straighten Atchison’s clothing.

  Detective Cronin, still apologizing, went into the diner. Atchison watched him, then turned and walked quickly to his car. Matt trotted to his Porsche and followed him out of the parking lot.

  Atchison drove back toward Media. Just making the light, he turned left on Providence Road. The line of traffic was such that Matt could not run the stoplight. He fumed impatiently until it finally gave him a green left-turn signal, and then took out after Atchison’s Cadillac.

  It was nowhere in sight. There weren’t even any red taillights glowing in the distance.

  Matt put his foot to the floor. When he passed the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Brewster Cortland Payne II, he was going seventy-five miles an hour. There were lights on in the kitchen, and he had a mental picture of his mother and father at the kitchen table.

  Just beyond the bridge over the railroad tracks near the Wallingford Station, he was able to pick out the peculiar taillight assembly of a Cadillac. He gradually closed the distance between them.

  Atchison drove into and through Chester, to the river, then through a run-down area of former shipyards and no-longer-functioning oil refineries, weaving slowly between enormous potholes and junk strewn on the roadway.

  Matt turned off his headlights, which kept, he felt, Atchison from noticing that he was being followed but which also denied him a clear view of the road. He struck several potholes hard enough to worry about blowing a tire, and making a trip to enrich the alignment technicians at the Porsche dealership a certainty.

  And then he ran over something metallic, which lodged itself somewhere under the Porsche, set up a terrifying howl of torn metal, and gave off a shower of sparks.

  He slammed on the brakes, wondering if he
had done so because he was afraid Atchison would hear the screeching or see the sparks, or because it hurt to consider what damage was being done to the Porsche.

  He jumped out, looking in frustration at Atchison’s disappearing Cadillac. And then the brake lights came on and the Cadillac stopped.

  Christ, he saw me!

  What do I do now?

  There was a sudden light as the Cadillac’s door opened. Atchison got out, looked around, seemed fascinated with the Porsche, and then slammed the car door shut.

  It took Matt’s eyes some time to adjust to the now pitch darkness, but when they did he saw Atchison—nothing more than a silhouette—walking away from the car.

  He ran after him. When he got close he saw that they were next to the river, and that Atchison was on a pier extending into it.

  He saw Atchison make a move like a basketball player. A shadow of something arced up into the sky, fell, and in a moment, Matt could faintly hear a splash.

  Atchison now walked quickly back to the Cadillac, fired it up, and started to turn around. As the headlights swept the area, Matt dropped to the ground. His hands touched something wet and sticky. He put his fingers to his nose. It smelled as foul as it felt.

  Atchison’s Cadillac rolled past him. It stopped at the Porsche. Atchison got half out of the car, looked around, then got all the way out. It looked for a moment as if he was going to try the door, but then he stumbled over something.

  Then he got back in the car and drove rapidly away.

  Matt got to his feet, rubbed his hands against his jacket to cleanse them of whatever the hell it was on his hands—the jacket was ruined anyway—and walked back to his car.

  He saw what Atchison had stumbled over. A curved automobile bumper.

  That which caused that unholy screech and the shower of sparks. With a little bit of luck, Atchison will think that’s why the Porsche is here, and not that I ran over the goddamn thing when I was tailing him.

  The Cadillac’s taillights were no longer visible.

  What the hell, he’s probably going home anyway.

  Matt opened the car door with two fingers, got the keys from the ignition, then opened the hood and took out the jack. It took him fifteen minutes to dislodge the bumper from the car’s underpinnings.