by Thomas Perry
"Thank you very much for doing this. I've been tied up for most of the day processing the crime scene in the Tosca murder and the one up the hill. If we could just tie the bodies to one or two of these guys—"
"I'm afraid that's not going to happen," she said. "The killer is long gone. He got out before the FBI arrived."
"How did he do that?"
"How? Probably he came on foot, avoiding the roads, and killed one of the guards along the crest so he'd be able to leave the same way."
"And where would that put him now?"
"Believe me, if I find out, you'll be the first one I call."
16
SCHAEFFER AWOKE IN the filtered sunshine that had invaded his room. For a second he thought he was in Bath, and that he and Meg had been sleeping in the bedroom of his house in the center of town with the wall of glass bricks high above his bed, rather than the darker bedroom in her family manor. But the sun was only streaming through a narrow space in a set of hotel curtains. Then he remembered where he was and felt so disappointed that he could hardly bear it.
It was two o'clock. He had been deeply asleep since around five-thirty A.M. He stared at the ceiling and felt grateful to the people on the hotel staff who had spared him the irritating knocks on the door and the reminders that checkout time was noon. He moved his legs tentatively, and felt pain and stiffness in his knees and hips. His feet were sore in some complex way. The many small bones seemed to have been subjected to strain that was separate from the surface damage to the ball and heel from running so many miles over rough ground. As he moved his torso a little to sit up, he learned that the news from his back and arms was not good either.
He considered flopping back down on the bed, but he had slept so long that he was sure the inactivity had contributed to the stiffness. He also sensed that he didn't want to waste the effort it had taken to sit up the first time.
He walked to the shower and ran the water to heat it up, and then stood under the strong stream for a few minutes. He moved his arms, then swung them, and finally raised them over his head and stretched. With a bit of trepidation he bent over to touch his toes, stretching his tight muscles under the hot water. After fifteen minutes of attention to the various strained regions of his body, he began to feel better.
Every stitch or kink or abrasion brought back to him the motion that had caused it. Both of his hands had a soreness across the palm, where the nylon cord from his poncho had been attached to the homemade handle. He had gripped the handles hard, keeping the loop as tight as he could around the sentry's neck. It had been a very long time since he had strangled a man, and the muscles had gone soft. He had gone soft.
He was over fifty years old. If, by some miracle, the life he had led in the United States had not been interrupted—had not been ended by his client's betrayal and attempts to kill him—he would still have retired by now. He wouldn't have spent last night on a mountain in Arizona strangling and knifing people. It would have been impossible for anybody to stay in the killing trade for that long without being killed. The only old hit men were people like Little Norman in Las Vegas, making the rounds each day to check his sources and be sure nothing had come in off the desert to disturb the tranquil atmosphere of the casinos. Norman wasn't a killer anymore. He was a weather man. Each day he would reassure the dozen or so powerful old capos in town that the weather in Vegas was still just fine.
When Schaeffer was very young, Eddie Mastrewski had warned him to make himself strong. "Now is the time to train yourself. Today you can make yourself the winner of whatever happens thirty years from now. If you die in that fight, it's because you didn't work hard enough today." Eddie had been strong. He was a Pennsylvania Polack from the coal country. He always corrected that. "I'm a Ukrainian." When he had taken the boy on a visit to his hometown in Pennsylvania, everybody for fifty miles around seemed to be built like a pile of rocks. Whichever godforsaken place in the Balkans their parents came from, they must have had to fight their way out because there weren't any weaklings. There were only people who had been injured or worked themselves into old age.
Eddie had drilled him in all of the basic techniques of depriving an enemy of his breath and heartbeat. He had also taught him the rest of the trade—how to read the signs in a neighborhood to tell whether the job was going to be a simple walk-in or a risky, drawn-out battle for the victim's life. What had happened last night was that he had fallen back on Eddie's most important lesson—that everything that went on was only a series of steps to his inevitable victory.
Eddie never permitted the idea of failure to enter his consciousness. "We're the wolf, they're the deer. Are they going to eat us? No. It might take a while to get them, but the universe isn't going to change so they win."
He was still the wolf. He had gone to get Frank Tosca, and so Tosca was dead. But his exhaustion today was disturbing. He wasn't the same as he had been. Time had gone by and he hadn't noticed, but it had still gone by.
He wanted to rest and recover, but it was time to get out of Phoenix. He packed his small suitcase and turned on his laptop computer. He made a plane reservation from Tucson to Houston in the name Charles Ackerman and a hotel reservation for the next two nights at a hotel he knew near the Astrodome.
As he passed the front desk, he left his checkout card and key in front of a clerk who was on the telephone and went outside. He got in his rental car and drove to a bank not far down the street in Scottsdale. He rented a safe-deposit box and paid three years' rent in advance. He opened the box in a small windowless room and put in the pistol he had taken from the dead sentry and the extra magazine and the knife he had used to kill Tosca.
The route to Tucson was flat, straight, and easy to drive. He passed a prison crew in orange jumpsuits working on a weedy patch along the highway under the eyes of a guard with a lever-action .30–30 rifle like a movie cowboy would have used. It reminded him of something else Eddie had told him. "One thing we have to do is stay out of jail. A lot of the guys we deal with spend half their lives getting in or getting out. It's something between a religious retreat and a family reunion. They've got old friends, cousins, and in-laws in there. And half of the rest of the place is people who want to suck up to them, including the guards. If you go in, there will be people who knew somebody you killed. There will be people who want you to kill somebody in there for them, and others who want you to kill somebody when you get out. There will be guys so crazy they want to know what makes you so tough so you have to kill them to show them."
The speed limit was sixty-five, so he went sixty-five, going faster only in the stretches where the rest of the cars did and a slower car would have stood out. He never stood out. He had always dressed neatly and conservatively, and since he had been in England he had been forced to replace his clothes gradually, so he had the wardrobe of a man of Meg's social level. He could stand close inspection without raising suspicion, but he had perfected his pose of the taciturn American husband. He had good manners and a smile, so there was little scrutiny. People paid attention to the beautiful and lively Lady Meg Holroyd, but less to her husband. It was simply a new version of the way he carried himself in the United States. He was a master at being the one the eye passed over in a crowd.
He arrived at the Tucson airport two hours early, returned his rental car, and rode the shuttle to the terminal. He bought a newspaper and sat in the middle of a crowded waiting area. He pretended to read the paper, but devoted most of his attention to the people around him and the people walking past on the concourse.
There, as soon as he looked, was the short, stocky shape of Mickey Agnoli walking along in a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of tan slacks, his shoes a pair of topsiders with no socks, looking as calm as though he had stepped off a yacht into the Tucson terminal. There seemed to be nobody with him.
As soon as Agnoli had passed and gone on along the concourse, Schaeffer got up, folded his newspaper and stuck it under his arm, and followed at a distance. Agnoli walked on the righ
t side of the concourse so Schaeffer stayed on the left side, moving against the flow of people but a few paces inward so he wouldn't meet anyone head-on.
He had seen Agnoli from a distance on the ranch last night and had studied him for a moment before turning away to avoid him. He had looked very happy and prosperous, standing just outside the conference room. Agnoli had been a Strongiolo soldier in Miami since he was about nineteen, but over the years he had grown up a little. He had saved the money his crew picked up on their regular business of stealing luggage from airport baggage claims and selling fake tickets to cruises, and he bought parking lots. Ten years ago he had already been the parking king of Miami.
Schaeffer had met him on one of the worst nights of Agnoli's life. Agnoli's brother Jimmy had been found in a Dumpster behind one of their parking lots. Mickey had sent word up the ranks in the Strongiolo family that he wanted revenge. The response was a torn scrap of paper with a telephone number on it. He called the number, and a week later he met Schaeffer in a small Italian restaurant near the ocean.
They sat in a booth at the back of the dining room. Agnoli was a broad, short man, and he nearly took up the whole side of the booth that faced the wall. Schaeffer could see he'd been crying. Agnoli said, "Thank you for coming to see me. I've heard you're a busy man and don't like to spend a lot of time talking."
"I heard about your loss. I'm not in a hurry. If you want to talk, I'll listen."
Agnoli was surprised. "I didn't think you'd be ... I don't know. So human."
Schaeffer's face showed nothing.
Agnoli's eyes widened. "I'm sorry. I should have said you're a decent guy and then shut up."
"I'm not a decent guy. A decent guy wouldn't be much use to you."
"No, I didn't ask you here to insult you. Even if I feel like committing suicide, this isn't the way I wanted to do it. I want to hire you."
"You already have. Mr. Strongiolo sent me a retainer, or I wouldn't be here. Tell me who I'm going to see."
"Three weeks ago a Cuban named Montoya came to my office and said he represented a syndicate of investors who wanted to buy a fifty-one percent share of the parking business. I said, 'How much?' and he said, 'Twenty grand ought to be enough,' and I said, 'I've got six lots, and each of them is worth ten times that. Maybe you have my company mixed up with another one.'"
"What did he say?"
"He said he knew all that. He said I was just resisting because I didn't know who he represented. He works for Hektor Cruz."
"Do you know who Hektor Cruz is?" Schaeffer asked.
"He's in the drug business. There are lots of people in Miami in the drug business." He took a deep breath and let it out. "I said, 'I've heard of Mr. Cruz. Please give him my regrets. My partners and I aren't interested in selling out.' And just so there wasn't any misunderstanding I said, 'One of those partners is Victor Strongiolo, and the others are close associates of ours.' It was true. Mr. S. gets a quarter cut of my action. You know how things work."
"I do."
"I made it clear who I was, and who my silent partners were. I mean, this guy might just not know who he was talking to. It could be an honest mistake. And I was polite. There was no reason to rub his face in it. I even stood up and held out my hand to shake. He stood too, but he didn't take it. He just gave a little wave and said, 'I'll be talking to you very soon.'"
Schaeffer could see Agnoli had come to the hard part because his eyes had started to water. "The next day we found my brother Jimmy dead. He was shot nine times and dropped in the Dumpster."
"How do you want this done?"
"I want to keep it simple. You get Hektor Cruz."
"Just Cruz?"
"Cruz is not easy. These guys are never alone. But once he's gone, the rest will be disorganized, scared, indecisive. We'll erase them over a period of a few days."
"What does this pay?"
"Two hundred thousand."
"Don't start your war until I tell you Cruz is dead."
"You have my word."
He stood up. "I'll talk to you after it's done."
"Wait," Agnoli said. "Don't you want half up front?"
He smiled for the first time. "No need. Nobody forgets to pay me."
He had located Cruz by finding a newspaper photograph of him and then waiting outside Montoya's office until he appeared. He followed him home, then watched him from a distance for two nights. He was a short man with wavy black hair and big brown eyes who wore light-colored tailored tropical suits and traveled with two bodyguards who looked a lot like him. They spent each night moving from one club to another in a black Lincoln limousine, dancing and drinking and picking up women. The women might stick with them for hours, or just ride with them to the next club, or come out with them to the parking lot, kiss them good-bye, and then go back inside. But Cruz was never alone.
On the third night he saw his chance. When the driver left the car for a few minutes while he waited outside a club, Schaeffer got into the back seat. He broke Cruz's driver's neck, then took his place in the driver's seat. When Cruz came out of the club with his two men, Schaeffer waited until they were a few feet away, then shot all three. It looked to the parking attendants and the confused line of customers as though an unseen sniper must have done the killing, and he was just returning fire. Because he was in the driver's seat of Cruz's car, he must be on Cruz's side. When he got out to drag Cruz's body into the back seat and drove off, people thought he was saving Cruz.
He drove the car only six blocks to the back of a closed restaurant, where he parked the car and hoisted the body into the Dumpster. Then he walked one more block to the residential street where he had left his rental car, got in, and drove off.
The Agnoli he followed now in the Tucson airport was twenty years older and a happier man. He was a little pudgy, but he looked good. Agnoli's step had some spring to it as he walked down the concourse. Near the end he turned into a men's room.
It was remote, at the far end where there were only a few gates, and the flights were mostly international ones that left late in the day. When Schaeffer stepped into the men's room, he saw that it was empty, except for Agnoli at the urinal. Agnoli finished and stepped to the sink and washed his hands. As he reached for a paper towel to dry them he looked up into the mirror, and their eyes locked. Agnoli's eyes went wide and he began to shake.
"I guess you remember me."
Agnoli stood still, with the towel in his hands.
"Give me your cell phone."
Agnoli reached into his pocket and handed it to him. "Are you here to kill me?"
"I hope not. You were at the ranch. How did you get away?"
Agnoli looked as though he were having trouble translating a phrase in a foreign language. After a pause, he said, "I hid. Two of the catering trucks were still there. I went and hid in the back of one of them, behind a bunch of big plastic food containers and cases of empty liquor bottles. I went behind them and then set a few others in front of me. I heard the cops come by and look in the back, and then somebody rolled the door down and locked it. I sat there for hours. Then I heard the engine start, and we began to move. Then the truck stopped, and somebody opened the door and unloaded some of the stuff on a dolly. When they pushed the dolly away, I got out. I was at a loading dock behind a restaurant in Phoenix. I knew they'd never hire a caterer for a meet like that if he wasn't a friend of ours, so I went to the back door. They set me up with a ride so I could get home."
"Congratulations. I doubt that many others got out."
"What do you want from me?"
"Information. If you tell me the truth, we'll both go away and forget we saw each other." He paused. "You know my word is good."
"It is to me. You did better than you promised. I remember when you put that son of a bitch Hektor Cruz in the Dumpster and killed two of his men. I owe you something for that extra touch. My family owes you. That was worth more than money to my poor mother."
"I need to know where I stand. When Frank T
osca asked everybody to join in and find me, what did they say?"
Agnoli sighed. "I want you to know I had no part in this. I run one little crew—all middle-aged fat guys like me. The rest of the world tolerates us because we've always been good earners. We're not greedy. We like a little wine, maybe have a woman we don't eat breakfast with now and then. I don't get a vote on anything at a sit-down, and if I did, I wouldn't use it to try to take over the world—about which I don't give a shit. You know I'd never vote to kill you. That stuff about you was courtesy of Frank Tosca."
"I know. What did the old men decide?"
Agnoli took two deep breaths and held on to the sink to steady himself. "They all said they'd do it."
Schaeffer had known that much. He nodded. He had tested Agnoli, and Agnoli had told him the truth. He patted Agnoli's shoulder. "It must have been hard to say that to me. Thank you."
"Hard? If I hadn't just gone, my pants would be wet."
"Have you heard what happened to Tosca?"
"I just heard it on the phone. A friend of mine said it was on television in Miami. The news people didn't know who that was."
"It doesn't matter now," Schaeffer said.
"No, it sure doesn't."
"Tell me where I stand now. The old men might have said yes to a request from Tosca when he was alive because they didn't want to be on his bad side if he took over the Balacontano family. Now that he's dead, what are they likely to do?"
"Jesus," Agnoli said. "Jesus."
"Don't be afraid. It's my last question. Tell me the truth and I'm gone."
Agnoli took some more deep breaths, and a drop of sweat curled down from his temple to his chin. "I'm sorry."
"What does that mean?"
"I called home to check on my guys. My underboss said they'd already gotten a call. The cops let Victor Strongiolo see his lawyer. He told him to pass the word down to us that the old men want you dead."
"Even with no Frank Tosca to thank them?"
