In this case, Mario could do nothing, for there would be too many witnesses. He would simply put his foot down on the pedal and roar away to escape being arrested.
But before she could muster the strength to realize her thought, the lights changed. The Lincoln Navigator rolled forward.
‘Not far now, Kea. I’m beginning to enjoy our little ride. I was doubtful at first because my sister has the habit of causing too much trouble for my liking. I must admit, I’ve become a little rusty. But we did well, didn’t we? At least we shook off the cops.’
Mario laughed and glanced at Kea. She forced herself to smile.
‘Our world has certain rules,’ he said, suddenly serious again. ‘They call us lawless, but that word doesn’t hit the spot. We disregard the police and the courts, that’s true. But we have our own laws. Every gang has its own rules that have to be obeyed at all times. Lucia and I don’t belong to a gang, if you thought that – and believe me.’
‘Why do you tell me all that?’
‘Because you are now one of us.’
Mario sounded surprised at his own words, as if Kea had asked something quite normal.
‘But I’m not a criminal,’ she stuttered.
‘The police will probably think otherwise.’ He countered.‘ I can’t tell you how you would prove that you were never part of a kidnapping, Kea, you have the most beautiful eyes, but no prosecuting judge will accept that such eyes cannot lie.’
He laughed about his own observation.
Kea, however, was shocked by the prediction he had uttered.
The fatal truth was, it would probably prove to be true. There was no guarantee that she would not finish up in a prison if she gave herself up. Her freedom was at best uncertain. The courts might not even believe her that Lucia had taken her prisoner and intended to torture her,
Kea saw a brightly lit gas station ahead of her. Attached to it was a car wash and a small shop.
She had assumed that Mario simply wanted to refuel. Instead, he drove to the small open area beside the car wash and killed the lights and engine.
Kea looked at him with an unspoken question.
‘We’ve arrived. This is the place where we are going to meet Lucia again.’ He said.
20
Half an hour earlier, Lucia had dumped her green Chevrolet. Now she drove an old Buick she had broken into in a quiet side road in Staten Island. The model, as old as the flood, possessed no modern safety locks.
Although Lucia had little confidence in the abilities of the cops, she was sure by now they had the details of the Chevy although she had felt safe in it. But she could not risk watching the world from behind bars or to catch a bullet from a cop’s gun.
If she was no longer around, who would come to the rescue of Adrian?
She cruised through the quiet streets of Staten Island. Lucia imagined she possessed a sixth sense for police traps. Nothing pointed to the danger of New York’s finest waiting for her in Bay Street.
Despite that feeling she stopped at a safe distance from the gas station, although patience was not one of her greatest virtues. In the darkness, the Mobile Station was an island of light.
Right now a Toyota van had halted by the pumps. Its driver was a fat Chinese who paid his bill and disappeared in a northerly direction. Lucia looked around the area. The were no cars to be cleaned at the car wash. Nothing but yawning emptiness. Could she dare to park the Buick there? No, not a good idea.
If some sharp-eyed cop should drive by and check the license plate, she was done for. Almost certainly, the theft had already been discovered and reported.
That was the reason why Lucia parked half a block further up Bay Street and approached the gas station on foot. Just like someone from the neighborhood with a sudden longing for sweets or a soda.
The thought awakened old memories.
Not much had altered since Lucia had been here the last time. It still smelled of petrol, spilled motor oil and the rubbish from overfilled trash cans. The advertisement board had changed. The automatic door had finally been renewed after failing to function with monotonous regularity.
Lucia touched one of her knives as she entered the mini-shop. She could not see a single customer between the shelves of potato chips or sweets, the fridge with soft drinks and beer. There was still the small bar with its stool, where she had often met with her brother. Later on with his friends, too.
Old Alvarez stood behind his counter and the cash register as if to guard it. He had been an old man for some time already, but it seemed as if he had changed little. Lucia thought he might still be standing there in ten years time. There were some people she thought would never die.
She was not one of them.
Alvarez looked up from the sports pages of his newspaper. His moon face stretched into a grin and showed his three remaining teeth. It seemed he had recognized Lucia.
He bent forward and the dirty white shirt tightened over his enormous belly.
‘Greetings, darling. Run away from one of your foster parents?’
Lucia returned his grin with relief. She slid her knife back into the sleeve of her jacket.
‘Still the same old charmer. I’m not that young anymore and only the cops wait for me, if they should ever catch me.’
Alvarez blinked at her with a sign of friendliness.
‘Chaos, your name is Lucia. That’s how we know and love you … a coke?’
‘A good idea. With plenty of ice, please.’
The old man nodded and reached for his ice pick to loosen a large portion of frozen water on his workbench, swept it into a tall glass, which he filled with the dark liquid.
Lucia took a long swig.
‘Hmm! Still as good as a long time ago.’
‘Have you come back for the old times? Or just passing by?’
She smiled
‘You’re as nosy as ever.’
Alvarez shrugged.
‘I’m an old man, If I can’t cause some excitement, I love to hear of the adventures of my customers.’
Lucia sniffed.
‘Most of your customers know little excitement, except maybe a flat tire on the way to work.’
He laughed.
‘True enough. But I was thinking of special customers --- like you and your brother.’
‘Were you here the day Mario was arrested?’
The owner of the filling station suddenly seemed uncomfortable in his skin.
‘Of course I was here. I’m always here. And I had not the slightest inkling that my hired help was an FBI agent working undercover.’
Lucia waved carelessly. It mattered not at this point whether Alavarez told the truth or not. She knew how the federal authorities worked. The FBI would have put him under such pressure that he would have had no option but to cooperate.
If not, his gas station license was in danger of being withdrawn.
She flashed a smile at him.
‘Don’t worry, Alvarez. I’m not here today to cut your throat. The past is forgotten. Besides, my brother has long been freed. He managed to convince the shrinks, he was not quite right in the head. And later on he acted the good boy, and they opened the gates of the looney bin for him.’
Alvarez seemed immensely relieved.
‘Oh good! Then everything is hunky-dory. I was always glad when Mario and his pals brought a little life in the joint. I didn’t understand any of their technical babble, but it was a good time.’
Lucia sipped her Cola.
‘I know that. It was the reason why they picked your place for a meeting tonight. I’m expecting my brother any minute.’
‘Perfect timing,’ the old crook confided. ‘The cops looked in about three quarters of an hour ago to check that everything was okay. Like they do every evening. If nothing unusual has happened, they won’t pay another visit for at least three hours.’
Lucia found it reassuring that the police routine had not changed in all the long years. It relieved some of her own uneasiness.
A s
oft hiss told of the automatic doors opening.
Mario and the German bitch stepped into the mini market.
While Lucia’s brother donned a broad grin, Kea looked like a candidate on her way to the electric chair.
She was as pale as sour milk and could not meet Lucia’s eyes.
Understandable from her point of view. After all, Lucia had uttered the most dreadful threats, just to get her to talk.
Lucia could imagine why the German had not exactly looked forward to meeting her again.
‘Alvarez, old house,’ Mario greeted the old man jovially. ‘Fix a couple of cokes, please. My friend is in need refreshments. And a couple of donuts wouldn’t exactly be amiss.’
‘If it’s no more than this …’
The old man quickly busied himself with the order. He looked pleased over the unexpected visit.
‘Sit down!’ Lucia told Kea in a far from friendly tone – who followed the order like a little child.
Meanwhile, the killer girl addressed Mario. ‘Let’s not grow roots here. The cops shouldn’t come around again for a few hours. But the fewer people notice us, the better.’
‘Take it easy, sister dear. A short rest has never done any harm. Who should trouble us within a few minutes? And I bet, the surveillance camera still doesn’t work. What do you say, Alvarez?’
The owner of the gas station smiled.
‘It would probably function, if it were not a fake.’
‘Did you hear that?’ Mario pinched his sister’s cheek with a smile.
‘Better not to take any chances!’ She hissed. ‘Let’s drink up and eat the damned donuts before we take a ride.’
‘First we had better work out where to we are going to disappear,’ Mario reminded her. ‘I suppose the old factory is far too hot for us, or?’
‘You can bet on that,’ Lucia grunted. ‘When I drove past it, the cops where thick as fleas around it. You could hardly see the walls for uniforms.’
She paused while she regarded Kea somberly. Then she continued. ‘We’ve got to find a place where the screams of your latest playgirl can’t be heard.’
‘Come on, stop it!’ Mario tried to calm her. ‘Kea has been as good as gold since we hightailed it from the cops. She had plenty of chances to make her getaway without trying to.’
‘You only want to play her knight in shining armor to get her on her back,’ Lucia accused him. Although she knew her brother better, she was not going soft on him in front of Alvarez.
She had worked too hard to spoil the image she had created.
‘There’s a hunting lodge about seventy miles upstate from New York, I know of,’ Mario remembered.
‘There we could …’
He had not finished the sentence when two men stormed in through the emergency exit. Brutal face, shaven head, leather jackets and dark jeans, leather gloves. Both held .375 Magnums in their fists.
One of them had a long scar on his left cheek, obviously from a knife. Lucia sat with her back to them, which proved unfortunate for her. Scar face immediately pressed the barrel of the gun against her neck.
‘If you only breathe, you’re dead!’ He hissed, The bastard seemed to know exactly what he was looking for. His left hand found her jacket and ripped it from her upper body.
The throwing knives that had been hidden in the sleeves cluttered to the floor. He grunted and brought the butt of the gun down on her head. Not hard enough to knock her out, though.
‘That for our friends you butchered, bitch!’
Pain filled Lucia’s head.
‘Your old Barns’ men!’ She groaned, Out of the corner of her eyes she saw that her brother was about to come to her aid. Her eyes flashed a warning look at him. The second gunmen held his weapon directed at Mario while his free hand felt for a gun.
‘He’s clean, Greg.’ He told scar face.
Greg nodded.
‘The boss said we only need the Jerry.’
Then he turned and shot Alvarez.
The impact of the bullet threw the old man backwards against the wall. He groaned once and slowly sank to the floors. A red stain of his blood spread rapidly over his grimy shirt.
Nobody watched Kea at this precise moment.
She reached for the ice pick Alvarez had left lying on the counter.
And then she rammed it with all her strength into the neck of scarface.
None of those present had counted on such a surprising attack.
Not even Kea herself.
Greg screamed as if he was being skinned alive. The barrel of his gun moved from Lucia to Kea. The Killer girl did not hesitate for a moment. She moved forward like a cat and ripped the gun from his weakening hand.
In the meantime, the second gunman, who had been frozen for the length of a heartbeat, had recovered his composure and started to turn his own weapon on Kea. But to do that, he had to leave Mario unguarded for a moment as he stepped towards Kea.
And Mario was even quicker. In one brief moment he swept up one of the throwing knives from where they had fallen and rammed it into the body of the gunman. As he stumbled to one side, Lucia pulled the trigger that ended his inglorious career.
In the course of seconds, the tiny shop had turned into a slaughterhouse. Alvarez and the two gunmen were either dead or mortally wounded. Pools of blood spread on the dirty floor.
A cry of terror sounded from the door.
No one had noticed a woman customer had entered. She turned and sprinted towards her car like a high ranking athlete.
Lucia lifted the gun she had recovered but before she could pull the trigger, Mario stayed her arm.
‘Enough! Leave it. We don’t want anymore witnesses, even dead ones. We have to disappear ASAP.'
He turned to Kea. ‘We’re in debt to you for saving our lives.’
‘You can stick your tongue down her throat, or any other place, later!’ Lucia hissed. She had to admit that for a few moments she had been totally defenseless. And that was an admission she hated to make to herself.
‘Let’s move it! Hurry!’ Mario ordered. He took Kea’s hand, reached for the gun the dead killer had dropped and raced through the emergence exit. Lucia had no choice but to follow the two of them.
Apparently, her brother had stolen an SUV. In any case, he climbed behind the wheel of a Lincoln Navigator. Kea and Lucia hardly managed to be seated before the vehicle raced from the scene.
21
Borges and Jablonski received the report of the shooting at the gas station almost immediately. By the time they reached the location, the area around Bay Street had not yet completely been sealed of. Only Police and Highway patrol were present to support the FBI.
‘It’s unbelievable.’ Borges ranted. ‘We can’t leave Lucia Lezzi for five minutes before she massacres someone else.’
That information at least was clear. There were two corpses and one seriously injured man, neither one of them Kea Kuhn or one of the Lezzi siblings.
The descriptions simply did not fit.
‘The cops can deal with the shooting.’ Borges decided. ‘At least until we know if it is a case for the FBI at all. We have to concentrate on Lucia.’
The present investigation had gone far beyond a routine inquiry. And that had little to do with her long ago affair with Mario Lezzi.
Borges simply could not accept that she was being fooled by the whole mess. Least of all by a criminal of her own gender.
The FBI agent had sought the comfort of the passenger seat of the service vehicle. She balanced a tablet on her lap. With the help of a tracking program they could follow the route of the fleeing car.
Jablonski steered the Ford Crown Victoria according to Borges' directions.
‘Wonderful!’ She raved. ‘The yokels from Highway Patrol have actually got around to erect a checkpoint. While the criminals are already twelve miles north from here and have long passed any check. Just keep me from reaching for the short wave set! I can’t guarantee that I won’t blow a fuse.’
Exactly at that moment, they received a message – albeit from FBI Field Command rather than from Highway Patrol Command.
The special agent in charge inquired whether Borges and Jablonski needed reinforcements.
‘Not at this moment, sir.’ Borges declined the offer. ‘We can’t afford to scare the subjects into thinking they are being followed. The escape car is heading north through sparsely populated areas. Any larger number of cars using the same route might arouse their suspicions.’
‘Whatever your think, Agent Borges. But if anything should go wrong again, you’ll be made personally accountable.’
‘Nothing will go wrong, sir,’ she assured the caller and disconnected.
For a few minutes everything was quiet inside the car.
Finally, Jablonski said: ‘You’re taking a damned chance.’
‘If I need your opinion, I’ll ask you. Have you got nothing better to do than drive and pick your nose?’
Jablonski grinned. He had a thick hide. And it was an advantage, if Borges had one of her tempers such as now. She had no illusions about her own shortcomings.
‘Lucia is as dangerous as a forest fire,’ she continued a little calmer. ‘I hope you noticed there were several dead persons at the gas station.’
‘And we don’t know all the circumstances. We had no time to view the scene of crime, Belissima.’
‘I’ve told you more than once not to call me that.’
‘Right. I’m only doing it now to rile you.’
‘Estúpido idiota,’ Borges countered without being able to hide a grin. Jablonski had somehow managed to better her sour mood.
‘We won’t lose them,’ he promised. ‘We’re far enough behind them not to raise any suspicions. But I can step on the gas, if necessary.’
Borges nodded and glanced at her tablet.
‘They’re heading towards Albany. The devil only knows what they’re up to now.’
‘Lucia Lezzi is on the run. I don’t believe she massacres a few people and then leaves a witness alive. It was a woman who reported the incident, wasn’t it? If I were running from the law, I wouldn’t want to create a lot of excitement.’
‘You can’t apply normal rules of behavior here, Chuck. Lezzi acts and starts to think afterwards. On first sight, she appears sweet and harmless. But as soon as she holds a knife or gun in her hand, she changes completely.’
Killer Girls Page 9
