by Archer Mayor
“So our cash went through a nuke plant?” Tina asked skeptically.
“No. A roofing business. That was Johnny’s point. The plant was tapping labor and resources like nobody’s business. Which meant that outfits around the edges were looking for capital to take advantage. It was real smart.”
Tina carefully scratched her forehead with one perfect fingernail. “Right. So Johnny Lucas got into bed with BB … What’s his last name?”
“Barrett.”
“BB Barrett. Okay. Where’s Hank fit in?”
“He was BB’s right-hand man,” Walter explained. “But not as broad-minded as BB.”
Tina tilted her head back to look at the ceiling. “Jesus Christ. So Johnny reverted to old habits and took care of the problem.”
“Which was fine,” Walter followed up, “till Hank’s body was discovered in concrete a couple of weeks ago. That’s what got BB fired up—he’d been told by Johnny that Hank had just conveniently dumped his family and taken off to ‘find himself,’ or something.”
Tina stared at him. “Concrete? Really?”
Walter lifted one shoulder haplessly, as if apologizing. “I know, right? Still, it worked. The deal was done, Johnny moved into the number two spot after a while—so nothing would look too suspicious—and everybody was off to the races. Johnny had a new life, and your dad another way to launder cash.”
Tina studied his hopeful expression glumly. When she spoke, her voice was hard. “I put you in charge. This is our third meeting, Walter. The first time, you broke the news and gave me the bare bones about Barrett—which, by the way, was a real CliffsNotes version of what you said just now. The second time, you told me Barrett had been found dead, and made it sound like our problems were over. But if I got it right this time, you’re telling me that Johnny Lucas whacked BB Barrett à la Al Capone, and has now taken off, with every hayseed cop who knows how to tie his shoes hot on his trail. Am I getting this right?”
“Except for the whacking part, yeah,” was the mumbled reply.
“What?” she asked loudly.
“Except for the whacking part,” he repeated. “Johnny didn’t kill Barrett.”
“Why not? That’s his style.”
“Maybe, miss. But BB was killed before Johnny could get to him.”
Walter stopped abruptly, realizing what he’d just let slip.
It was too late. Tina slid forward in her seat. “Walter,” she said slowly, her tone menacing, making him think of her father—dead these many years. “Did I in any way, shape, or form ever tell you to have BB Barrett killed?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then why, unless it was under your direction, was Johnny even contemplating ‘getting to him’—to quote you exactly?”
Walter sat with his hands between his knees, wondering how he’d ended up in such a mess, so many years after he thought he’d left this life behind him.
“Use your words, Walter,” Tina coaxed him, her voice suspiciously gentle.
“I told him to take care of it,” Walter said quietly.
“And—given Johnny’s background—how did you think he’d interpret that?”
Walter looked at her sadly. “They used to be friends, BB and him. I didn’t mean what you think.”
She matched his emotion, not one to bemoan spilled milk. “It’s not what I would have thought that matters, though, is it?”
“No, ma’am. I messed up.”
She stood up, prompting him to clumsily do the same. She took his elbow and steered him toward the door. “I messed up, too. You’ve been a loyal friend for a long time—to my father, and to me. I should have given you more direction. I didn’t give it enough attention.”
They paused on the threshold and she placed her hand on his shoulder. “I will now. Use whatever resources to do what you need to do. Go where you need to go. Clean this up.” She leaned forward slightly, so their eyes were inches apart. “I mean it, Walter. Do you understand? Make it go away. No muss, no fuss, and no interest by the police. This mosquito must disappear.”
Walter nodded once. “It will, Miss Panik. I promise.”
* * *
Walter crossed the peastone drive to where he’d parked under a tree near the courtyard’s gate. Tina Panik’s house was only about ten years old, but built to look like some downscale appendage to Versailles. Back at the office downtown, rumor had it that the ambition had been to rip off Marie Antoinette’s pseudo farmhouse, where she’d pretended to be a happy peasant shortly before they’d lopped off her head.
It was a dangerous comparison, as Walter was well placed to know. He’d witnessed Jack Panik’s ascendancy, and was therefore appreciative of the daughter’s inherited ruthlessness. She had become a poster child of respectability lately—complete with this mansion in the Hamptons and a season’s pass at the New York City Ballet—but she was no dingbat queen, soft and suffering from self-delusion. Born to the business, she was a chip off the old block, and Walter could attest to the fate of those who’d sold her short in the past.
And now, he’d just lied to her face.
He got into his car and aimed it out into the street, but only to drive a quarter mile before pulling over to consider his options.
He was in a pickle. In the vernacular of politicians, he hadn’t been entirely forthcoming with the facts, which meant that if he stumbled from here on, and Tina caught wind of it, all his decades of currying favor, keeping his head down, and building a fat nest egg would be for naught. Tina Panik didn’t have screwups killed—that dated back to her father. But Walter had seen her reduce people’s prospects to the level of an unskilled migrant worker.
He rolled down the window and killed the engine, letting the salty breeze drift in from the beach, one block over.
When that call came in from BB Barrett, demanding to know why he’d been lied to about Hank Mitchell’s fate, Walter hadn’t hesitated to contact his pal Pauli—or Johnny, as he’d been known a lot longer.
That had been a mistake. Lucas had heard about the body at the nuke plant, but he’d had no idea about BB’s reaction. He hadn’t thought about BB Barrett in years. Walter’s phone call had come like an electric jolt and—sadly, only in retrospect—set a screw loose in the man, apparently.
Walter stared straight ahead sourly. Damn. After that, it had been like a snowball rolling downhill, getting bigger and bigger. Barrett turned up dead, Lucas denied having anything to do with it, and Walter—despite what he’d just told his irate boss—didn’t believe a word of it. As a result, now worried and scrambling—Walter had sent a team north to set up cameras at Lucas’s place and tap his phone. And here was the icing on the cake: Those cameras had now captured some mysterious intruders creeping around and stealing stuff.
Walter had warned Johnny—even sending him a copy of the footage. What choice did he have? He had to make sure Lucas hadn’t been keeping anything that might blow up in their faces. Instead, the police showed up, and Johnny evaporated.
Goddamned disaster. Walter’s only break was that he’d had the cameras taken down almost as fast as he’d ordered them up.
Frustration making him antsy, Walter left his car and walked down a sandy alleyway to where the view opened up to a distant panorama of Fire Island.
Walter hated the ocean, hated Long Island, hated the rich and their attraction to glitzy crap, and—as he glanced down at his wing tips—hated getting sand in his shoes.
“Shit,” he swore.
He knew what was getting to him. A company man from puberty, he’d always done what he was told, never asked questions, toed the party line, and had been handsomely rewarded.
Now he was dangling over the edge, between an impatient boss standing on his fingers and some country cops raising their heads like dogs on a scent. Not to mention having to find an old triggerman on the lam and being haunted by a couple of black-clad Ninjas whose origins and intentions were anyone’s guess.
And it was all his to sort out. If he didn’t placat
e the employer who didn’t want to know, locate the paranoid who didn’t want to listen, and identify the comic book couple and their reasons for being, his only remaining decision was going to be whether to accept the blindfold when he was placed before a firing squad, or not.
Assuming his ending was that neat.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Joe stepped into the dry cleaners, making an old-fashioned tiny metal bell above the door jangle. The air inside smelled faintly of sunbaked cotton, although he knew from what he’d read that, far in the back, there were toxic chemicals at work.
But they were nowhere in evidence. Instead, there was a cheerful woman at the cash register, straight ahead, and another woman—tall, razor-thin, dark-haired, and ghostly silent—operating an ironing press off to one side, located behind a different counter.
“Hey, Joe,” said the cheerful one. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Not getting your clothes dirty anymore?”
Joe nodded to the thin one, who ignored him, and approached the speaker. “Hi, Holly. They’re getting dirty, all right. I just stopped caring, I guess. I probably ought to bring in a few jackets, now that you mention it.”
“Always happy to oblige,” Holly said, eyeing his empty hands. “If it’s not laundry, how can we help you?”
Joe partially shifted toward the other woman as he answered, “Actually, I’m here to have a chat with Patrice Celli, if she’s amenable.”
The thin woman looked up, a partially pressed shirt suspended in midmotion. “Me? Why?”
“I’m looking into a bit of history,” Joe said cheerfully. “Dating back almost forty years. That be okay with you?”
Holly spoke up quickly, knowing her colleague’s natural reticence. “It’s okay, Patty. Joe’s a regular—or used to be. And take your time—we’ve got a light load today.” She laughed and turned back to Joe in explanation. “The yuppies have brought back pure cotton shirts, but do they like us to press ’em and throw in a little starch? No, they do not.” She winked and added, “Whaddya gonna do? Wrinkles are in.”
Joe faced Celli fully and gestured toward the front door. “It’s a nice day, and I noticed a bench outside. How would that be?”
She nodded without speaking or changing expression, making Joe wonder just how long the conversation might last. He’d met women who reminded him of Patty—shy to the point of muteness, silenced by abuse, loss, heartbreak, or all three and more.
He ushered her outside and led the way to the spot he’d referenced, which was set back from the business’s driveway, and thus somewhat isolated and quiet. Nevertheless, it faced the road, and allowed for a view of continually passing traffic. Joe imagined that it was probably the store’s designated smoking perch.
“Have a seat,” he offered.
She settled down stiffly. She was quite beautiful in her way, reminiscent of a Dorothea Lange photograph—lean and weathered, with intense, thoughtful, somewhat soul-dead eyes.
He sat beside her and asked, “I heard Holly refer to you as Patty. Is that what you prefer?”
“Patrice,” she said quietly but clearly.
“Patrice it is, then,” he said, grateful for any sound at all. “The reason I’m bugging you is because of a job I think you had a very long time ago—according to what I heard.”
She remained silent.
“Did you once work for Ridgeline Roofing?” he kept going.
After a pause, she murmured, “Yes.”
“In what capacity?”
Her gaze had been fixed on the traffic, and it didn’t move when she asked, “Why?”
“You’re not in any trouble, Patrice. I promise. I’m just trying to put together the pieces of an old puzzle. Did you hear that BB Barrett had died?”
This time, she did look at him—her eyes an almost liquid brown. “I had nothing to do with that.”
The words were flat and without inflection, but the nature of her reaction surprised him. He responded in an equally level tone. “I know that, Patrice. But you asked why I wanted to know about your past employment. That’s the reason.”
“Who told you about me?”
“There are a few Ridgeline graduates still living in town,” he answered indirectly. “It was one of them.”
In fact, it had been Lacey Stringer, whom Sammie had revisited with some follow-up questions, one of which had been whether Ridgeline had ever had a bookkeeper.
Despite Joe’s vagueness, Celli didn’t press him for more. She simply nodded once and resumed her appreciation of the scenery.
“What was your job with them?” Joe asked.
“I did the books.”
“For how long?”
“From ’67 to ’71.”
“You worked directly with Barrett?”
“There wasn’t anybody else.”
“There was Hank Mitchell.”
Again, the single nod. “Right.”
“Was he a problem? Bad to work with?”
She frowned as she took him in again. “Hank? No. Is that what they told you?”
“Not at all. I was just trying to read between the lines when you said there was no one beyond Barrett.”
“Hank wasn’t in the office much.”
“What kind of guy was he?”
He expected something noncommittal, given her responses so far, but she surprised him by saying, “He was a good man—nice to work with, friendly, considerate. He always asked how I was doing, and if he didn’t like the answer, he’d stop to find out more. Not like BB at all.”
“Describe BB.”
Like a rusty hinge in need of a few swings, Patrice Celli began loosening up, perhaps encouraged by Joe’s tone or style, or perhaps simply because someone was asking something involving her. “He was decent enough. More like a typical boss—acted like you weren’t in the room. He was the one with the big dreams. Hank was the nuts-and-bolts man.”
“But they got along?”
“Mostly, especially in the early days.”
“What happened then?”
“What do they say? Either money or sex.”
He gave her an appraising glance, startled by her unexpected frankness. “And this one?”
“Money.”
“Okay. Tell me about the money.”
“There wasn’t much at the start. We were just a small outfit, the two guys and me, and I was straight out of high school, wide-eyed and mostly innocent. Like I said, BB was full of plans, and for a while, it looked like he was right. Hank would go out and place the bids, BB would put together the deals for the workers, subcontractors, and materials, and we began making money. It wasn’t as fast as BB wanted, but it was steady.”
She lapsed into silence, seemingly lost in her thoughts, where Joe imagined she spent most of her time.
“And then?” he prompted.
Her face resumed its former mask. “Johnny Lucas,” she said without inflection.
“I heard about him,” Joe said, trying to sound vaguely chatty. “What was his story?”
“The man from nowhere,” she said slowly.
“How did he first show up?”
“Just did. One day, he walked in with BB, all smiles, and he never went away. I did, though, pretty soon, and Hank did, too—forever.”
“But Hank left before you, is that right?”
She nodded. “It took a few months for Johnny to do his razzle-dazzle.”
Joe shifted in his seat, facing her more directly, struck by her contempt. “Patrice, you probably know by now that both Hank and BB were murdered.”
“I do. That’s why I’m talking to you. As soon as I read about the buried body at the nuclear plant, I wondered if it might be him.”
“And you think Lucas played a part in that?”
“Yes. I don’t know anything about BB dying. I lost touch with all of them a lifetime ago. But when I heard he’d been shot, I figured it was connected to what happened to Hank.”
Joe urged her on. “Okay. And what was that? I’m asking about what
you know, of course, although I don’t mind hearing what you suspect, too.”
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” she cautioned him. “I can’t tell you Johnny Lucas killed Hank—or that anybody did. As far as I knew, Hank just disappeared. That’s what we all thought—that Hank and Sharon weren’t getting along, and that he finally lit out. But I’d seen Lucas at work, and I knew it wasn’t that simple.”
“What was he doing?”
“Conniving,” she said simply. “Almost as soon as he showed up, I saw him figuring out who was who and what made them tick. He tried to get me into bed. Lots of luck there. He was so sleazy. That’s what made him the exact opposite of Hank, and why Hank ended up in his sights.”
“In what way?”
“If you ask me, he started the whole thing between Hank and Sharon. I don’t know what was happening there before Johnny, but from then on? Suspicions began flying. BB was knee-deep in it, too, of course. He had a soft spot for Sharon, anyhow, so it was in his best interest to fan the flames. But Johnny was the one who got it going—rumors of girlfriends, stories about fights at home. Wasn’t long before Hank had to leave home.”
She finally faced Joe directly, her eyes intense. “Hank would come to me—a teenage girl—to get me to understand that he loved his wife and kids. I didn’t need convincing, but nobody else cared. All those other jerks—Stringer, Carlo, the rest—they all thought it was funny. Johnny had an office pool going, on who was the most likely girlfriend Hank had on the side. It was disgusting.”
“And then Hank was gone,” Joe prompted her after she fell silent.
“Yup,” she said. “Just like that. That’s when BB really moved in on Sharon, not that it worked. I’ll give her that much. After Hank disappeared, that was it for her—as far as I know. It’s not like we kept in touch. I barely knew the lady. I heard a lot later that she’d done well financially, so maybe BB did the right thing by her there.”
“Speaking of finances,” Joe picked up. “You, being the bookkeeper, must’ve had an idea of what they were like.”
