Cold Shot to the Heart

by Wallace Stroby

  “Guys like you?”

  “Me? Never. I used to read them, though.”

  “So Letteri cut a deal?”

  “Who knows? Tino probably thought so, paranoid as he is. Maybe he knew for sure, maybe he didn’t.”

  “If Letteri was working with the Feds on that case, why would they leave him out there hanging? Why not stash him somewhere safe?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was just thinking about it, or they were trying to turn him. Maybe it was all bullshit. But knowing Tino, he wouldn’t want to take the chance. It’s like they say, ‘When in doubt, have no doubt.’ ”

  She looked out at the beach, the waves crashing in, playing it out in her mind.

  “He couldn’t do it outright,” she said.

  “It’s his son-in-law. This way, the daughter might suspect—she’d have to, with half a brain—but she doesn’t know for sure. Plus it gets Tino off the hook for taking out a made guy without approval. It’s all that old Sicilian bullshit. Never changes. Smile in your face, stab you in the back.”

  “Stimmer’s dead. Someone left him in the trunk of his car.”

  “Up here in Jersey?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Why?”

  “Someone kills your son-in-law, you gotta respond, right? Would look bad if he didn’t. Besides, if this Stimmer pulled the trigger on Tino’s say-so, he’s a liability. There’s only one way to make sure he keeps his mouth shut. That’s the way Tino works. He’s a snake. Always has been.”

  “That’s what has me concerned.”

  “What?”

  “What are the chances whoever took out Stimmer might be after me as well?”

  “For what reason?”

  “As an example. Or he’s looking for the money we took from the game.”

  He thought about that for a moment, shook his head. “Tino would want to limit his exposure on this. The son-in-law goes, then the man who pulled the trigger goes, too. Case closed. But having someone chase around after the cash, bringing more attention? Doesn’t make sense. Tino’s already solved all his problems. Why complicate things?”

  “Maybe he thinks Stimmer told the rest of us what his deal was.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He shook his head again. “Like I said, makes no sense. If the man who did Stimmer is looking for you, he’s got his own agenda. I don’t think Tino would be happy with that.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “If you want, I can ask around a little, on the quiet. Make a couple calls.”

  “I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

  “Like I said, I still know a few people. Give me a couple days, let me see what I find out.”

  “Thanks, Jimmy. I appreciate it.”

  “Well, you know what they say about us.”

  “What’s that?”

  “An Italian outgrows his clothes, but he never outgrows his friends.”

  She put a hand on his forearm, squeezed, felt the bone beneath.

  “You should go away for a while,” he said. “Let this play out, one way or another.”

  “I’ve thought about that.”

  “You should do it. If one of Tino’s people is running around off the leash, causing problems, sooner or later it’ll come to a head. Go somewhere safe, wait for the smoke to clear.”

  She nodded, stood. “Thanks for your counsel.”

  “Help me up.”

  He rose slowly from the chair. She put a hand under his elbow to guide him, braced the walker as he shifted his weight to it.

  “It’s almost dinnertime,” he said. “I’d invite you to stay, but I don’t think you’d like it much. The salisbury steak here isn’t bad, believe it or not. But when they try to do Italian, forget about it. Ragu and Cheez Whiz on macaroni left over from the war.”

  They made their way toward the door, the janitor still in there mopping. Jimmy took her arm. “Hold on a second.”

  She looked at him.

  “Take my advice on this if nothing else,” he said. “Get some money together. Enough to last you for a while. Go somewhere far away, somewhere warm. Wait for this to blow over.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “This time I don’t think it will.”

  * * *

  On the way back to the city, she tried Hector. The line buzzed six times, then went to voice mail. Fifteen minutes later, she tried again. When the voice mail picked up, she said, “Me. Call back as soon as you can.”

  She lowered the phone, thought about what Jimmy Peaches had told her. The whole thing a setup, Tino Conte behind it, and she and Chance had walked right into it, played their parts. It made her angry at Stimmer, at herself. Wayne would have been more careful, done some digging on his own before he committed. Keep an eye out for trouble coming, he used to say, then move around it.

  Too late for that, she thought. She tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. You’re in the middle of it now. And the only way out is through.

  TWENTY-TWO

  By noon the next day, Hector hadn’t called back. She paced the apartment, tried his number again. When it went to voice mail, she ended the call.

  The cat watched her from the futon, sensing her agitation. She went into the kitchen, opened a can of food for it, spooned it into the plastic bowl. The sound of the electric can opener usually brought the cat running, but this time it stayed where it was. I know how you feel, Crissa thought. I don’t think I could eat either.

  She’d stored the .38 and the box of shells above a panel in the kitchen’s drop ceiling. Now she stood on a chair and took the gun out, fit the panel back in place. She got a package of thick brown rubber bands from the desk, wrapped four of them around the .38’s mother-of-pearl grips. They would steady the gun in her hand, keep it from slipping, prevent fingerprints as well.

  She turned the gun over, felt its weight. She had never fired a weapon at anyone in her life, hoped to never have to. Guns were their own craziness, like drugs. Another distraction from the real work, from the calm and careful planning that set things in motion and made them pay off. They were a necessary tool, a threat, but to be caught with one meant even more trouble. She never carried one except when working, and then got rid of it as soon as the work was done.

  The .38 was different. It wasn’t a tool. It was insurance.

  At three in the afternoon, she tried him once more, hung up when it went to voice mail. There was nothing to do now except wait until night.

  * * *

  She cruised by the house twice. No lights inside. Hector’s brown Nova, his latest restoration project, was parked halfway up the block. It was crooked, front wheels angled to the curb, as if it had been left in a hurry.

  She parked a block away, tried his phone one last time. No answer.

  She got out and walked back to the house, her right hand on the gun in her pocket. Spanish television noise blared from the house next door. On the porch, she pressed the doorbell, heard it buzz inside. She rang twice more, then went around back.

  The yard was small. As she neared the door, a motion sensor light kicked on bright. She went up the wooden back steps, stood on her toes, reached and loosened the bulb with gloved fingers. The yard went dark again.

  She looked through the kitchen window into darkness, listened. After a moment, she brought out the penlight and leather lockpick wallet. She thumbed the light on, held it in her teeth, took a pressure wrench and pick from their sleeves.

  She worked the dead bolt first. She slid a wrench into the keyhole, twisted it to keep tension, then used the pick to rake the inside of the cylinder. When she felt the pins slip, she turned the wrench farther. The lock clicked open.

  The knob was easier. When she was done, she shut the penlight off, opened the door, felt it catch against a chain. She stopped to listen again, hoping Hector wasn’t inside with a gun, waiting to see who came through his back door. All she could hear was th
e tick of a clock in another room.

  She put the pick set away, took out a small spool of heavy-gauge wire. Straightening a foot-length of it, she bent the end into a hook. She fed the wire through the gap in the door, feeling for the chain. She caught it on the second try, eased the door toward her to put slack in the links. When she pushed the wire toward the center of the door, the chain unlatched and fell free.

  Drawing the .38, she moved inside, edged the door shut behind her. She raised the penlight in a reverse grip, thumbed the button.

  The kitchen was small and neat, dishes stacked to dry on a counter, children’s artwork on the refrigerator door. Snapshots there as well. Hector with Luisa and the kids. Hector and his brother Pablo in tuxedos, arms around each other, grinning fiercely at the camera. Hector in a wifebeater and sunglasses, arms crossed, leaning against the hood of the Nova.

  She went through the dark house, fanning the penlight in front of her. In the living room, a couch, chairs, and a wide-screen TV. To the right, a staircase leading up.

  Above her, floorboards squeaked.

  She switched the penlight off. Another creak. Footsteps, but faint, someone trying to be quiet. She backed away from the stairs, raised the .38. She could feel her heart thumping, the blood in her ears.

  Another noise above. Then someone on the stairs, coming down into darkness.

  She steadied the .38 in her right hand, gripped the penlight with her left, wrists crossed, thumb on the button. Her finger tightened on the trigger. No time to cock it. To fire, she’d have to take the long double-action pull, hope she was quick enough.

  Steps creaking. Midway now, a darker shape there in the shadows. Facing her.

  She was squeezing the penlight button when a beam of light came from the stairs, shining fully into her face, blinding her. Her penlight clicked on, the beam reaching out, illuminating the form there, and she squeezed the trigger on the .38, the hammer coming back, the light showing her the man on the steps, the gun in his hand, and then the man was saying, “Whoah, whoah, hold on, hold on…” and she saw his face, eased the pressure on the trigger.

  He lowered his gun, let the light drop away from her face.

  “Hey, Red,” Chance said. “Thought it might be you.”

  * * *

  They were upstairs in a bedroom, the room torn apart, clothes on the floor. The mattress had been upended, a bureau turned on its side, drawers pulled out. Chance had drawn all the blinds, put a lamp on the floor, and switched it on. It threw their shadows big against the wall.

  “I thought you were in Cleveland,” she said.

  “I lied.” He sat on the edge of the box spring, put the gun down beside him. He wore a black army field jacket, a dark sweater, and black gloves. “I guess I’m getting a little paranoid. Can you blame me?”

  “How’d you get in?”

  “Side window. You?”

  “Back door.” She looked around the room. “You do this?”

  “Way I found it. I only got here about a half hour ago. Kids’ room is the same way. Shit dumped everywhere. Somebody looking for something.”

  She put the .38 back in her jacket pocket. “Why are you here?”

  “My guy Sladden got a call from our friend Stimmer. Or at least from someone using his cell phone. They asked for me. Thing is, when you do the math, Stimmer was already dead when the call was made.”

  “Then whoever killed him got his cell phone.”

  “And all the numbers in it. Sladden called me. He wasn’t happy. He doesn’t like surprises. He tried Hector a few times, yesterday and today. No answer. So I started to get worried, came up here tonight.”

  “You couldn’t have been far.”

  “Wilmington. It’s not Cleveland, but hey.”

  She knelt by the closet. Floorboards had been pried up. A battered black strongbox lay open and empty in the hole.

  “Maybe they found what they were looking for,” she said. She thought about the twenty thousand she’d given Hector, wondered if this was where he’d hidden it.

  “Hector mixed up in anything else that might blow back on him?”

  She shook her head. “He’s straight. Just a go-between these days. That’s all.”

  “That’s hardly straight.”

  “You don’t have to worry about Hector.”

  “Then who do I have to worry about?”

  She looked at him.

  “Nothing personal,” he said, “but this thing’s going farther south every day. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I don’t know. He’s your guy.”

  She shook her head in irritation. “You look through the rest of the house?”

  “Yeah. Same thing. Someone took their time, didn’t care about the mess they left.”

  She looked around the room, thinking it all through, felt his eyes on her. “His car’s down the block,” she said. “I’ll take a look.”

  He got up, put the gun away. “I’ll go with you.”

  She went first, downstairs and out the back door. They met up in the street, walked along it until they got to the Nova. She came up on the driver’s side, shone the penlight in. The front seat was empty except for a folded newspaper. Nothing in the back. She tried the door. Locked.

  “Back here,” Chance said.

  She came around, shone the light on the trunk.

  “On the bumper,” he said.

  She guided the beam along the chrome, saw it then. Two fat blood drops, dark and dry, on the shiny metal.

  Her stomach tightened. She clicked the penlight off.

  “We have to look,” he said.

  “I know.” She took out the pick set.

  He turned his back, shielded her as she chose a pick and wrench. She worked by the light of the streetlamp, fit the wrench in, raked the cylinder, heard it click. The trunk lid rose slightly.

  She put the pick set away, looked at the trunk, not wanting to open it.

  “This is no good, being out here like this,” he said. “Go on.”

  With the penlight in one hand, she lifted the trunk lid with the other, let the spring take it. A coppery smell drifted up, mixed with the scent of excrement. She thumbed the light on, played the beam inside.

  There was a tarp there, splotched with paint and deep rust-colored stains. She picked up a corner of it, saw a pair of Timberlands.

  Go ahead and look, she thought. Get it over with.

  She pulled the canvas back. Hector lay on his left side, facing her. He was shirtless, his arms tied behind him. His eyes were half open, his face swollen. There was a deep cut across his throat, crusted with dried blood.

  “Ah, Jesus,” Chance said behind her.

  She couldn’t look away. There were other cuts on his chest and arms, long and deep. His pants legs were soaked through with blood.

  Nausea welled inside her. She let the tarp drop back.

  “We need to get out of here,” Chance said.

  She clicked the light off. He reached around her and shut the trunk.

  * * *

  He was staying in a motel near the airport. She followed him in her car. Up in the room, he locked the door, closed the curtains.

  “We can’t leave him there like that,” she said.

  He put his gun on the desk, took off his gloves and jacket.

  “Nothing we can do for him now,” he said. “You call the police, that starts a murder investigation. Maybe some nosy neighbor saw one of us going in there. Might be we’ve got a couple days grace period before they find him. Let’s use it.”

  “He’s got children. A wife. He deserves better than being left to rot in a car trunk.”

  “We have to look out for ourselves. He’d understand.”

  He crossed to the sink, ran water, palmed it into his face. He dried off with a hand towel, looked at her.

  “But I guess you’ll do what you want anyway,” he said. “Regardless of what I say.”

  “That’s righ
t.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s just one thing after another, isn’t it? This whole deal was fucked from the start.”

  “There’s more.” She told him about Jimmy Peaches, what he’d said.

  “Great.” He got up, started to pace. “It starts off as simple work, and now we’re in the middle of a bunch of guido shit.”

  “Nothing for it. We are where we are.”

  “He’s right. The best thing for both of us is to get as far away as possible.”

  “I have a life here,” she said. “For the first time in years. I have a place I can go back to, call home. I’m not giving that up, and I’m not letting someone run me off it without a fight.”

  “Stimmer and Hector weren’t amateurs. Whoever did this got the drop on both of them. Pretty easily, too. I don’t see the sense in waiting around for him to take a crack at us.”

  “Do what you think is right,” she said, “but I feel like I’ve been running my whole life, one way or another. I’m tired of it.”

  He leaned against the sink and crossed his arms, watching her.

  “Anyway, I’ve got this thing down in Texas,” she said. “With Wayne. I need to be in a position to handle that. I can’t do it on the run.”

  “I know.”

  “There’s no reason for you to stick around, though. You’ve got no ties here, nothing to protect.”

  “That’s right.”

  “If I were you, I’d bail. Go to Cleveland, or wherever it is you were heading. If I need to reach you, I’ll call Sladden.”

  He shook his head. “That route’s gone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I walk away, I walk away. From you, from this whole mess. For safety’s sake. I need to protect Sladden, too. We’ve all got a lot to lose.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m sorry, Red.”

  “You’re doing the right thing.”

  She opened the door and looked out into the parking lot. A plane droned low and massive overhead, landing lights flashing.

  “It was good while it lasted,” he said. “We made a good team.”