Choke

by Stuart Woods

  “Well, that does seem to cast a slightly different light on his relationship with Clare, doesn’t it?”

  “Pater said the reason she gave him such a hard time in the divorce was he admitted he liked guys. She apparently didn’t take it well.”

  “She wouldn’t, would she?”

  “You think she was so mad she would knock him off?”

  “Maybe. I’m still more inclined to think he was involved somehow, and she knocked him off to keep us from connecting them.”

  Daryl polished off his apple pie. “So where does that leave us?”

  “Our two palookas left a nine o’clock call; I left one for eight. Let’s get some sleep and see where they lead us tomorrow.”

  “Suits me,” Daryl said. “I’m bushed.”

  They each took a double bed and were immediately asleep.

  54

  Clare Carras had just finished dressing when the doorbell rang. She opened the door to her bedroom and walked down the hall to the front door. A young man, rather handsome, dressed in a good Italian suit, stood at the door. He smiled.

  “Mrs. Carras?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Parma. I was a business associate of your husband, kind of. I just heard about his… passing, and I happened to be in town, and I wanted to pay my respects.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She had never heard of anybody named Parma, but he was very good-looking and quite charming.

  “Can I come in a minute? I’d like to use your phone, if it’s okay.”

  “Sure,” she said, unlatching the screen door. He was rather attractive, and it had been a while. She led him down the hall, past a phone on a small table. “Come upstairs,” she said. “It’s more comfortable.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “comfortable is good.”

  She reached the top of the stairs and turned, smiling, to show him to a sofa. She had not yet completed her turn and didn’t see the backhand coming. There was a loud noise as he struck her below the right ear, and she spilled backward into the room, her thin cotton dress riding up over her thighs. She scrambled backward, trying to get to her feet, but he caught her with his open right hand, and she fell again.

  He came and stood over her, smiling. “Nice legs,” he said. He reached down, grabbed the front of her dress, hauled her to her feet, then sent her reeling toward a sofa.

  She struck the sofa with some force, making it slide backward.

  He walked toward her, then took hold of the coffee table between them and, with a quick motion, sent it flying across the room. A vase of flowers on the table smashed against a wall.

  She held her hands out in front of her. “What do you want?” she asked, and her voice was nearly uncontrollable. Then she looked toward the door and, as frightened as she already was, she saw a man who frightened her even more. “Who is he?” she asked.

  “Oh, this is my associate, Mr. Bones. He got that name because he likes breaking them. He tells me it’s something about the sound they make.”

  “Please tell me what you want,” she said.

  Parma dragged the other sofa toward her, then sat down, facing her. He reached into an inside pocket and retrieved a small kitchen knife. He removed a paper sleeve, revealing a blade only about two inches long. “I bought it this morning,” he said, “just for you.” He ran his thumb along the blade. “Razor sharp.”

  “What do you want?” she pleaded.

  “It’s like this, lady. I’m going to ask you some questions about your husband and his money, and if I don’t get answers that please me a lot, I’m going to start using this cute little knife on your very pretty face.” He threw the knife at the floor between them, and it stuck in the wide planking. “Then I’m going to fuck you in several places, maybe some you’re not used to, but you’ll get to like it. Then Mr. Bones here is going to fuck you, and he’s not nearly as nice about it as I am. After that, when I’ve finished using the little knife on you, no man is ever going to want to fuck you again, and I don’t think you would like that, because I think you like being fucked a lot. Am I right about that?”

  “What do you want?” she asked again.

  “Am I right about that?” he screamed.

  “Yes,” she said, trying to control her voice and think.

  “Yes, what?”

  “I like being fucked.”

  “Good; I think we’re starting to understand each other. Now, let’s get started with the questions. Your husband’s name used to be Marinello, or sometimes Marin. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  “No,” she said weakly.

  He stood up and unzipped his fly. “I’m going to let you take it out for me,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “He told me that used to be his name.”

  “That’s better,” Parma said. “Your husband, back when his name was Marin, took some money from some people, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he told me he did.” She had to draw this out as long as possible, until she could regain control of herself.

  “Did he tell you how much?”

  “Not exactly. He only hinted that there was a lot.” She sat up, got her feet under her.

  “Well, let me mention a figure. Twenty-seven million dollars. Does that have a familiar ring?”

  “More,” she said. “He had more than that when he died.”

  “Boy, that’s good news,” he said. “The people I work for are going to like that. Where is the money?”

  “It’s… invested,” she said, shifting her weight to the front of the sofa cushion.

  “Invested where? In what?”

  “I’ll get the papers,” she said, rising and starting toward the small desk a few paces away. She managed to take three steps before he reacted and started for her.

  She got the drawer open and whipped around, pointing the automatic at his head.

  He stopped moving, realizing he had made a big mistake. He backed up a step. “Now, listen, lady; that’s going to hurt more than it’s going to help. Give it to me.” He held out a hand. “Unlike me, it’s not even cocked.”

  Quickly, she worked the action and got off a round at his head. It caught him in the throat, and he staggered backward, wide-eyed.

  Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the big man coming at her. She whipped around, assumed a firing stance, and put two rounds into his chest, knocking him off his feet. When she was sure he couldn’t get at her, she turned her attention once more to Parma, who was still standing, clutching at his throat with both hands, vainly trying to stem the spurting blood, which had soaked the front of his suit and was gathering in a large pool at his feet. She took a step toward him, the pistol held out at arm’s length.

  He tried to speak but couldn’t. Instead, he shook his head, spraying blood around him.

  She lowered the pistol and put a round into his crotch. He staggered backward, knocked over a table, and fell facedown, twitching.

  Then, before she could relax, another man appeared in the living room door. Clare spun and fired two rounds in his direction. He dove to the floor, his hands held out in front of him.

  “Clare! Don’t! It’s Tommy Sculley!”

  The younger cop appeared behind Tommy, aiming a pistol at her. “Drop it, Mrs. Carras! Drop it right now, or I’ll fire!”

  Clare dropped the pistol and fainted.

  Tommy laid her on a sofa and slapped her cheeks lightly. “Daryl, get me some water. Oh, and you can call for an ambulance and a crime scene team.”

  Daryl brought the water. “No need for an ambulance; they’re both dead.”

  “Too bad,” Tommy said. “I would have liked to talk to them. Better call the ME.”

  Daryl went to the phone and started making calls.

  Tommy gave Clare Carras some water, then took the glass, set it down, grabbed her under her armpits, and sat her up straight on the sofa. He wanted to ask his questions before she had had time to recover her composure.

  “All right, Clare, listen to me. I want
to know exactly what happened, and I want to know before anybody else arrives. It’s going to be a madhouse around here in a couple of minutes, and if I’m going to help you, I’m going to need to know it all right now.”

  She picked up the water and drank some more of it, then put a hand to her swollen face. “Could I have some ice in a cloth, please?”

  Tommy had underestimated her coolness. “Daryl, ice!” he said. “Tell me what happened, Clare.”

  “It was all so strange,” she said, breathing deeply. “A man-the younger one-appeared at my door and said he was a friend of Harry’s.” She accepted the bundle of ice from Daryl and applied it to her face.

  “Go on, and be quick about it,” Tommy said.

  “He asked to use the phone, and I let him in.”

  “There’s a phone downstairs. How’d he get up here?”

  “I was going to have him use the downstairs phone, but he forced me up here and started hitting me. Then the other one showed up. I hadn’t seen him at the door.”

  “Why was he hitting you? What did he want?”

  “He said he wanted money, and he pulled out a knife-there.” She pointed.

  Tommy turned and looked at the small knife, still stuck in the floor. “Go on.”

  “He said he was going to do awful things to me if I didn’t give him what he wanted. He said the other one liked to break bones. He said they would kill me.”

  “Go on.”

  “I remember running toward the desk, where the gun was. He was moving after me, and I think I shot him.”

  “From the sound of it, you shot him, then shot the other one twice, then shot the first one again. Why did you choose to shoot him in the groin?”

  “I don’t know, it all happened so fast. I’m not sure where I shot or when.”

  “Where’d you get the gun? It wasn’t in the house when we searched it.”

  “From a local pawnshop; the receipt’s in the desk drawer.”

  “Did either one of them mention the name Marinello or Marin?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’ve never heard either of those names.”

  “Then why do you think these men were here?”

  “They said they wanted money. They must have read something in the papers about Harry, heard he was rich.”

  Tommy got up in disgust and went to the kitchen, ran himself a glass of water. She was too good for him, this one. She was going to stick to that story, and nobody but he was going to question it, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  And, he remembered, he was going to have an awful lot of explaining to do, himself, about how he had allowed this to happen.

  55

  Chaos now ensued. The medical examiner arrived, followed closely by a crime scene team, followed closely by the chief of police. At some point, Clare Carras made a phone call, and shortly an attorney arrived and closeted himself with his client in her bedroom.

  “Gee,” Daryl said, “I wonder what they’re doing in there.”

  “Shut up, Daryl,” the chief said. He pulled the two detectives into the kitchen. “All right,” he said to Tommy, “let’s have it, all of it, and in the greatest possible detail.”

  Tommy began with the phone call from Rita and led the chief, step by step, to that morning in the beachfront hotel.

  “Wait a minute,” the chief said. “Am I to understand that you took a free hotel room?”

  “Chief, there’s a lot more important stuff here than hotel rooms,” Tommy said.

  “When we’re finished here, you call the hotel manager and have the room charged to your credit card, then you can put in for expenses, and I’ll decide how much you’re entitled to.”

  “All right, Chief, I’ll do that,” Tommy replied. “Now can I go on with what happened?”

  “Please do.”

  “So this morning we got into the hotel restaurant half an hour before the two palookas. We waited for them to finish breakfast, then we followed them. They stopped around the corner at that big hardware store; the younger guy went in for maybe five minutes, then came out and they drove here to Dey Street. We parked halfway down the block and watched them. The young guy knocked on the door while the big one waited out by the sidewalk. As soon as she let the young guy in, the big one followed.”

  “And that’s when you moved, right?” the chief asked.

  “No, sir; we waited another, I don’t know, half a minute, a minute; I wasn’t timing it. Then we heard this crash from the house, which I now think was the coffee table hitting the wall, and we started running. I didn’t wait to ring the bell. Then, just as we got inside the house, the shooting started. There was one shot, which I think was the young guy getting it in the throat, followed a second later by two quick ones, which I think took out the big guy, followed another second later by the fourth shot, which I think the younger guy took in the crotch.”

  “Why do you think it happened like that? You couldn’t see anything, could you?”

  “No, sir, but it makes sense that way. I got to the top of the stairs just after the crotch shot, and she spun around and fired two at me.”

  “At you?”

  “I don’t blame her for that, Chief; she must have thought there were more of them. Anyway, I yelled at her, and Daryl yelled at her to drop it, and she dropped it. Then she kind of just keeled over. She came to after not very long and asked for some ice for her face. I think you saw she was pretty banged up. Then I questioned her. She gave me her account of what happened, but I think there was more said before the shooting started than she let on. I want to question her again.”

  “If she didn’t give it to you then, why do you think she’ll give it to you now, after she’s seen an attorney?”

  Tommy shrugged. “I don’t know, I just want to talk to her again. I think she knows exactly who these people were and what they wanted.”

  “Don’t you already know that?”

  “Yes, sir, but I want to make sure she realizes the spot she’s in. If I can bring that home to her, then she might make a mistake and give us something to go on.”

  “Yeah, well, lots of luck on that; she hasn’t given you a goddamned thing so far.”

  Tommy felt himself blushing. “Nevertheless, Chief.”

  “Okay, if the lawyer will let her talk to you-and I wouldn’t, if I were in his shoes-then you can talk to her. But if he says you can’t, you can’t. Is that perfectly clear?”

  “Perfectly, Chief.”

  The chief suddenly looked very vulnerable. “We don’t have shootings of mob thugs in this town, and since we can’t absolutely prove who they were, we’re going to play dumb on this one. The lady was attacked in her home by two strange men, and she managed to shoot both of them. That’s what I’m saying to the papers, and you’d better not give any reporter anything else, even off the record, clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “By the way, just how the hell do you think she managed to bring both of them down? Frankly, I don’t think I would have done as well in the circumstances.”

  “That’s one of the things I’d like to ask her, just for my own information, Chief.”

  The lawyer appeared at the top of the stairs. “Do you have any more questions for Mrs. Carras?” he asked the chief.

  “I certainly do,” Tommy said.

  “Then come out by the pool; I’m not bringing her up here to view any more of this carnage.”

  Tommy, Daryl, and the chief trooped down the stairs and out to the pool. Clare Carras was sitting, perfectly composed, at a table, and they all drew up chairs.

  “Mrs. Carras,” Tommy began, “there are just one or two more things.”

  “I’ll help if I can,” Clare replied coolly.

  “What, exactly, did the younger man say when he came to the door? Quote him, if you can.”

  She frowned. “He said something like, ‘Mrs. Carras, my name is… Palma,’ or Parma, something like that, ‘and I knew your husband. I want to express my condolences.’ I thanked him,
and he asked to use the phone.”

  “Then what happened-as much detail as you can remember, please.”

  “I started down the hall, and I was about to show him the phone in the hall when he began pushing me up the stairs.”

  “Ma’am, why do you think he would push you up the stairs? Had he ever been in the house before?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Harry never mentioned anybody by that name.”

  “Then why would he want to go upstairs?”

  The lawyer broke in. “Really, Detective, how could she possibly know that?”

  “All right, all right. What happened next?”

  “When we were upstairs he hit me-twice, I think-and knocked me down. Then he threw me on a sofa and pulled out this little knife. It looked new, you know? It still had the little paper wrapper on the blade. He threw the knife at the floor and said that if I didn’t… give him some money-I think that’s what he said-he and the other man would rape me, and the other man would break my bones. He said the other man was called Mr. Bones, because he liked the sound bones make when they break. That frightened me greatly, of course.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I said I would get some money, and I started toward the desk.”

  “He let you get up?”

  “I pretended that I was trying to be helpful. I reached the desk and got the pistol and pointed it at him. He held out his hand and said give it to him, and he started toward me, and I think I shot him twice.”

  “Where did you learn to use a gun?” Tommy asked.

  “Harry taught me,” she said.

  “The gun is a nine-millimeter automatic. Was there a shell already in the chamber? Was the hammer back?”

  She rubbed her forehead with a hand. Her face was starting to discolor now. “I… I’m not sure; I don’t remember.”

  “Did the man mention the name Marinello or Marin?”

  “I told you before, I’ve never heard either of those names before.”

  “You shot the big man twice, right in the middle of the chest, tight grouping,” Tommy said. “That means you know how to shoot and where to shoot. Why did you shoot the younger man in the crotch?”