I cradled the phone and wrote down the address before it could slip my mind. I said, “The phone’s in the name of an A. H. Wallens. He a friend of yours?” Kenan shook his head. “I think the A stands for Albert. That’s what Callander called his partner.” I read off the address I’d written down. “Six-ninety-two Fifty-first Street.”
“Sunset Park,” Kenan said.
“Sunset Park. Two, three blocks from the laundromat.”
“That’s the tiebreaker,” Kenan said. “Let’s go.”
IT was a frame house, and even in the moonlight you could see that it had been neglected. The clapboard badly needed painting and the shrubbery was overgrown. A half-flight of steps in front led up to a screened-in porch that sagged perceptibly in its middle. A driveway, concrete patched here and there with blacktop, ran along the right-hand side of the house to a two-car detached garage. There was a side door about halfway back, and a third door at the rear of the house.
We had all come in the Buick, which was parked around the corner on Seventh Avenue. We all had handguns. I must have registered surprise when Kenan handed a revolver to TJ, because he looked at me and said, “If he comes he carries. I say he’s a stand-up guy, let him come. You know how this works, TJ? Just point and shoot, like a Jap camera.”
The overhead garage door was locked, the lock solid. There was a narrow wooden door alongside it, and it too was locked. My credit card wouldn’t slip the bolt. I was trying to figure out the quietest way to break a pane of glass when Peter handed me a flashlight, and for a second I thought he wanted me to smack the glass with it, and I couldn’t think why. Then it dawned on me, and I pressed the business end of the flashlight up against the window and switched it on. The Honda Civic was right there, and I recognized the plate number. On the other side, harder to see even when I angled the flashlight, was a dark van. The plate was not where we could see it and the color was impossible to determine in that light, but that was really as much as we had to see. We were in the right place.
Lights were on throughout the house. There were signs that the house was a one-family dwelling—a single doorbell at the side door, a single mailbox alongside the door to the porch—and they could be anywhere inside it. We worked our way around the house. In back, I interlaced my fingers and gave Kenan a boost. He caught hold of the windowsill and inched his head above it, hung there for a moment, then dropped to the ground.
“The kitchen,” he whispered. “The blond’s in there counting money. He’s opening each stack and counting the bills, writing numbers on a sheet of paper. Waste of time. It’s a done deal, why’s he care how much he’s got?”
“And the other one?”
“Didn’t see him.”
We repeated the procedure at other windows, tried the side door as we passed it. It was locked, but a child could have kicked it in. The door in back, leading to the kitchen, hadn’t looked much more formidable.
But I didn’t want to crash in until I knew where they both were.
In front, Peter risked drawing attention from someone passing by and used the blade of a pocketknife to snick back the bolt of the porch door. The door leading from the porch into the front of the house was equipped with a sturdier lock, but it also had a large window which could be broken for quick access. He didn’t break it, but looked through it and established that Albert wasn’t in the living room.
He came back to report this, and I decided that Albert was either upstairs or out having a beer. I was trying to figure out a way for us to take Callander silently and then figure out Phase Two later on, when TJ got my attention with a fingersnap. I looked, and he was crouched at a basement window.
I went over, stooped, and looked in. He had the flashlight and played it around the interior of a large basement room. There was a large sink in one corner, with a washer and dryer next to it. A workbench stood in the opposite corner, flanked by a couple of power tools. There was a pegboard on the wall above the workbench, with dozens of tools hanging on it.
In the foreground was a Ping-Pong table, its net sagging. One of the suitcases was on the table, open, empty. Albert Wallens, still wearing the clothes he’d worn to the cemetery, was sitting at the Ping-Pong table on a ladderback chair. He might have been counting the money in the suitcase except that there wasn’t any money in the suitcase and it was a curious activity to conduct in the dark. But for TJ’s flashlight, there was no light in the basement.
I couldn’t see it, but I could tell there was a length of piano wire wrapped around Albert’s neck, and it was very likely the same piece of wire that had been used to perform a mastectomy upon Pam Cassidy, and perhaps upon Leila Alvarez as well. In the present instance it had not been as surgically precise, having encountered bone and cartilage instead of the unresisting flesh it had met before. Still, it had done its work. Albert’s head had swelled grotesquely, as blood had been able to flow in but not out again. His face was a moon face turned the color of a bruise, and his eyes were bulging out of their sockets. I had seen a garrote victim before so I knew right away what I was looking at, but nothing really prepares you for it. It was as awful a sight as I had ever seen in my life.
But it did lower the odds.
* * *
KENAN had another look through the kitchen window and couldn’t see a gun anywhere. I had a feeling Callander had put it away. He hadn’t brandished a gun in any of the abductions, had used it in the cemetery only to back up
the knife at Lucia’s throat, and had rejected it in favor of the garrote when he dissolved his partnership with Albert.
The logistical problem lay in the time it took to get from any of the doors to where Callander was counting his money. If you went in the back or side door, you had to rush up half a flight of stairs to the kitchen. If you went in in front, from the porch, you had to go all the way to the rear of the house.
Kenan suggested we go in quietly through the front. There’d be no creaking stairs that way, and the front door was the farthest from where he was sitting; as engrossed as he was in his counting, he might not hear the glass break.
“Tape it,” Peter said. “It breaks but it doesn’t fall on the floor. Lot less noise.”
“Things you learn bein’ a junkie,” Kenan said.
But we didn’t have any tape, and any stores in the neighborhood that would carry it had long since closed. TJ pointed out that there was sure to be suitable tape on the workbench or hanging above it, but we’d have had to break a window to get to it, so that limited its usefulness. Peter made another trip to the porch and reported that the floor in the living room was carpeted. We looked at each other and shrugged. “What the hell,” somebody said.
I boosted TJ up, and he watched through the kitchen window while Peter broke the glass in the front door. We couldn’t hear it from where we stood, and apparently Callander couldn’t hear it, either. We all went around to the front and in the door, stepping carefully over the broken glass, waiting, listening, then moving slowly and quietly through the still house.
I was in the lead when we got to the kitchen door, with Kenan right at my side. We both had guns in our hands. Raymond Callander was seated so that we were seeing him in profile. He had a stack of bills in one hand, a pencil in the other. Lethal weapons in the hands of a good accountant, I understand, but a lot less intimidating than guns or knives.
I don’t know how long I waited. Probably no more than fifteen or twenty seconds, if that, but it seemed longer. I waited until something changed in the set of his shoulders, showing that an awareness of our presence had somehow reached him.
I said, “Police. Don’t move.”
He didn’t move, didn’t even turn his eyes toward the sound of my voice. He just sat there as one phase of his life ended and another began. Then he did turn to look at me, and his expression showed neither fear nor anger, just profound disappointment.
“You said a week,” he said. “You promised.”
THE money all seemed to be there. We filled one suitcase.
The other was in the basement, and nobody much wanted to go get it. “I’d say for TJ to go,” Kenan said, “but I know how he got in the cemetery, so I guess it’d spook him too much to go down there with a dead body.”
“You just sayin’ that so I’ll go. Tryin’ to psyche me out.”
“Yeah,” Kenan said. “I figured you’d say something like that.”
TJ rolled his eyes, then went for the suitcase. He came back with it and said, “Man, it stinks pretty powerful down there. Dead people always smell that bad? I ever kill somebody, remind me to do it from a distance.”
It was curious. We worked around Callander, treating him as if he weren’t there, and he made such treatment easier than it might have been by staying put and keeping his mouth shut. He looked smaller sitting there, and weak and ineffectual. I knew him to be none of those things, but his blank passivity gave that impression.
“All packed up,” Kenan said, fastening the hasps of the second suitcase. “Can go right back to Yuri.”
Peter said, “All Yuri wanted was to get his kid back.”
“Well, tonight’s his lucky night. He gets the money, too.”
“Said he didn’t care about the money,” Peter said dreamily. “The money didn’t matter.”
“Petey, are you saying something without saying it?”
“He don’t know we came here.”
“No.”
“Just a thought.”
“No.”
“Whole lot of money, babe. And you been takin’ a bath lately. That hash deal’s gonna go down the tubes, isn’t it?”
“So?”
“God gives you a chance to get even, you don’t want to spit in His eye.”
“Awww, Petey,” Kenan said. “Don’t you remember what the old man told us?”
“He told us all kinds of shit. When did we ever listen?”
“He said never to steal unless you can steal a million dollars, Petey. Remember?”
“Well, now’s our chance.”
Kenan shook his head. “No. Wrong. That’s eight hundred thousand, and a quarter of a mil is counterfeit and another hundred and thirty thousand is mine to start with. So what’s that leave? Four-something. Four-twenty? Something like that.”
“Which gets you even, babe. Four hundred this asshole took off of you, plus ten you gave Matt, plus expenses, comes to what? Four-twenty? Goddamn close to it.”
“I don’t want to get even.”
“Huh?”
He stared hard at his brother. “I don’t want to get even,” he said. “I paid blood money for Francey and you want me to steal blood money from Yuri. Man, you got that fucking junkie mind, steal his wallet and help him look for it.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“I mean for Christ’s sake, Petey—”
“No, you’re right. You’re absolutely right.”
Callander said, “You paid me with counterfeit money?”
“You simple shit,” Kenan said, “I was beginning to forget you were here. What are you, afraid you’ll get picked up trying to spend it? I got news for you. You ain’t gonna spend it.”
“You’re the Arab. The husband.”
“So?”
“I was just wondering.”
I said, “Ray, where’s the money you got from Mr. Khoury? The four hundred thousand.”
“We divided it.”
“And what happened to it?”
“I don’t know what Albert did with his half. I know it’s not in the house.”
“And your half?”
“Safe-deposit box. Brooklyn First Mercantile, New Utrecht and Fort Hamilton Parkway. I’ll go there in the morning on my way out of town.”
Kenan said, “You will, huh?”
“I can’t decide whether to take the Honda or the van,” he went on.
“He’s kind of spaced, isn’t he? Matt, I think he’s telling the truth about the dough. The half in the bank we can forget about. Albert’s half, I don’t know, we could turn the house upside down but I don’t think we’re gonna find it, do you?”
“No.”
“He probably buried it in the yard. Or in the fucking cemetery or someplace. Fuck it. I’m not supposed to have that money. I knew that all along. Let’s do what we gotta do and get outta here.”
I said, “You have a choice to make, Kenan.”
“How’s that?”
“I can take him in. There’s a lot of hard evidence against him now. He’s got his dead partner in the basement, and the van in the garage is going to be full of fibers and blood traces and God knows what else. Pam Cassidy can ID him as the man who maimed her. Other evidence will tie him to Leila Alvarez and Marie Gotteskind. He ought to be looking at three life sentences, plus an extra twenty or thirty years tacked on as a bonus.”
“Can you guarantee he’ll do life?”
“No,” I said. “Nobody can guarantee anything when it comes to the criminal justice system. My best guess is that he’ll wind up at the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane at Matteawan, and that he’ll never leave the place alive. But anything could happen. You know that. I can’t see him skating, but I’ve said that about other people and they never did a day.”
He thought it over. “Going back to our deal,” he said. “Our deal wasn’t about you taking him in.”
“I know. That’s why I’m saying it’s your choice. But if you make the other choice I have to walk first.”
“You don’t want to be here for it.”
“No.”
“ ’Cause you don’t approve?”
“I don’t approve or disapprove.”
“But it’s not the kind of thing you would ever do.”
“No,” I said, “that’s not it at all. Because I have done it, I’ve appointed myself executioner. It’s not a role I’d want to make a habit of.”
“No.”
“And there’s no reason why I should in this case. I could turn him over to Brooklyn Homicide and sleep fine.”
He thought about it. “I don’t think I could,” he said.
“That’s why I said it has to be your decision.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I just made it. I have to take care of it myself.”
“Then I guess I’ll be going.”
“Yeah, you and everybody else,” he said. “Here’s what we’ll do. It’s a shame we didn’t bring two cars. Matt, you and TJ and Petey’ll take the money to Yuri.”
“Some of it’s yours. Do you want to take out the money you lent him?”
“Separate it out at his place, will you? I don’t want to wind up with any of the counterfeit.”
“It’s all in the packages with the Chase wrappers,” Peter said.
“Yeah, except it all got mixed around when this dickhead here counted it, so check it out at Yuri’s, okay? And then you’ll pick me up. Figure what? Twenty minutes to Yuri’s and twenty minutes back, twenty minutes there, figure an hour. You’ll come back here and pick me up on the corner an hour and fifteen minutes from now.”
“All right.”
He grabbed a bag. “C’mon,” he said. “We’ll take these out to the car. Matt, watch him, huh?”
They left, and TJ and I stood looking down at Raymond Callander. We both had guns, but either of us could have guarded him with a flyswatter at this point. He seemed barely present.
I looked at him and remembered our conversation in the cemetery, that minute or two when something human had been talking. I wanted to talk to him again and see what would come out this time.
I said, “Were you just going to leave Albert there?”
“Albert?” He had to think about it. “No,” he said at length. “I was going to tidy up before I left.”
“What would you do with him?”
“Cut him up. Wrap him. There’s plenty of Hefty bags in the cupboard.”
“And then what? Deliver him to somebody in the trunk of the car?”
“Oh,” he said, remembering. “No, that was for the Arab’s benefit. But
it’s easy. You spread them around, put them in dumpsters, trash cans. No one ever notices. Put them in with restaurant garbage and they just pass as meat scraps.”
“You’ve done this before.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “There were more women then you know about.” He looked at TJ. “One black one I remember. She was just about your color.” He heaved a sigh. “I’m tired,” he said.
“It won’t be long.”
“You’re going to leave me with him,” he said, “and he’s going to kill me. That Arab.”
Phoenician, I thought.
“You and I know each other,” he said. “I know you lied to me, I know you broke your promise, that was what you had to do. But you and I had a conversation. How can you just let him kill me?”
Whining, querulous. It was impossible not to think of Eichmann in the dock in Israel. How could we do this to him?
And I thought, too, of a question I had asked him in the graveyard, and I fed his own remarkable answer back to him.
“You got in the truck,” I said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Once you got in the truck,” I said, “you’re just body parts.”
WE picked up Kenan as arranged at a quarter to three in the morning in front of a credit jeweler on Eighth Avenue, just around the corner from Albert Wallens’s house. He saw me behind the wheel and asked where his brother was. I said we’d dropped him off a few minutes ago at the house on Colonial Road. He was going to pick up the Toyota, but changed his mind and said he’d go straight to sleep.
“Yeah? Me, I’m so wired you’d have to hit me over the head with a mallet to put me out. No, stay there, Matt. You drive.” He walked around the car, looked in back at TJ, sprawled across the rear seat like a rag doll. “Past his bedtime,” he said. “That flight bag looks familiar, but I hope it’s not full of counterfeit money this time.”
“It’s your hundred and thirty thousand. We did our best. I don’t think there’s any schlock mixed in.”
Walk Among the Tombstones: A Matthew Scudder Crime Novel Page 29
