The Last Whisper in the Dark: A Novel

by Piccirilli, Tom

  “And you could">“No,” I saidplas have saved him a great deal of suffering.”

  “Yes.”

  George shook his handsome head. “And when the time comes, it’s more humane to put him down than to let him endure such agony.”

  “I see that now.”

  “Good. You can stay here with him until he’s awake enough to walk out on his own.”

  Two days later I filled in the hole under the apple tree while JFK sat beside me, thumping his tail against the frosty morning earth.

  We were about a hundred yards away from my uncle Grey’s unmarked grave in the woods, a man I had loved, admired, and eventually been forced to kill.

  JFK made that throat-clearing sound again and I turnon/xhtml+xml;

  I’d been watching my former best friend Chub Wright’s garage almost every night for two months, keeping an eye on him as he met with various crews and helped them plan their getaway routes. Chub sold souped-up muscle cars and offered information on radar traps, state trooper activity, police routes, the best way out of town, and potential hole-up spots.

  Chub had conferred with three different strings since I’d started eyeing the garage. I didn’t recognize any of them. All of them paid him off the way he required. A certain amount of cash before the boost and a small percentage of the total take after the heat died down. So far, one of the crews had returned to give him his cut. Nobody in the bent life would rip him off. Chub had a name for himself and still threw weight, partly because he knew the right people but mostly because he’d run with my family for so many years.

  There was no reason at all why he should continue to take these kinds of risks. He had a legitimate business making good money. I knew all about his aboveboard finances. I’d crept his office and found both sets of books. They were both way in the black.

  My dreams were getting worse. In them, Kimmy begged me to watch over her husband. I woke with her taste on my lips. I woke with Chub’s blood on my hands. I showered for hours and still imagined I saw them red.

  I checked the time. It was nudging past ten. The garage remained dark. Chub was at home with his wife and daughter, watching television or snacking on chips or making love to Kimmy. The freezing wind shaved my throat.

  Chub showed up at ten-fifteen. His luck would eventually play out. It had to happen. He’d keep pushing the odds until one of the crews turned on him or the cops pulled a sting operation. There was no place for him to go except into the bin or the grave.

  I watched him park and head inside, flip on the lights in the bays, and step into his this many times before to be Q office. I thought about crossing the lot, saying hello, and trying to shake his hand. I’d made the attempt before but it had ended badly.

  I sat back and lit a cigarette and smoked in the dark staring through the windows of the garage.

  Headlights flashed across the lot. I threw down the butt and edged back into shadow.

  This latest crew was a tight-knit four-guy unit. The wheelman drove a blue-black GTO with extra muscle under the hood. They carried a lot of hardware. They dressed the same, in black clothing with black jackets, black shoes, wearing black wool hats, with hair dyed the same shade of black. It was something crews sometimes did during heists to confuse witnesses and keep the onlookers from getting a good description. I’d never heard of a string doing it before a job. It proved they were keeping Chub on the outside. They didn’t entirely trust him. That might be natural wariness on their part or they might seriously be leery of him. It made me a little nervous.

  They talked quietly in clipped, terse voices. Three of them went inside with Chub while the fourth kept a lookout, patrolling the area.

  He never stopped moving, never ducked back inside for a few minutes to warm up. The frigid temperature didn’t seem to bother him. He wove an impressive pattern all around the junkers and restored classic cars Chub kept on the lot. He glanced through windshields and checked backseats. He doubled back along his own path. He kept his hands close to his sides, a compact .32 hidden against his right leg. I knew how to use the dark but still had trouble keeping ahead of him as we worked our way around. Twice he came within arm’s length. If I wasn’t a burglar with a practiced step he would’ve nabbed me for certain.

  They were a sharp and professional crew, but I didn’t like all the iron. Even the driver packed. So far as I knew, drivers never carried weapons. Their sole function was to stay steely and wait for their string to finish the heist and then get everyone out of there. All a gun did was add five years to the bill if you got caught at the scene. A driver needed horsepower, not firepower.

  The fourth guy and I continued to play tag. The others were inside with Chub for half an hour. He would have a well-planned escape route already mapped out, along with contingencies. They’d run the route at least a half-dozen times before pulling the holdup to grind off any edges and make sure it went smooth as ice.

  Chub stepped outside and led the others to a dark green ’69 Mustang fastback pulled into the corner by the far fence. It was parked beside a second option, a 1970 Challenger. Both muscle cars were unseen from the street, hidden by a number of wrecks. The vehicles would be clean, one hundred percent legal with all the correct paperwork. It was one of the reasons why the strings came to Chub. He never dealt with hot items. The cops had no reason to keep an eye on him because everything in his garage was legit.

  The driver checked under the hood of the Mustang and seemed impressed with what he found. The breeze carried their voices to me. They talked engine torque, shift points, speed climbs, and maximum acceleration. They slid in and out of the two-door car with the tight rear bench. It seemed an odd choice for four guys pulling a job. I thought they would have gone for the roomier Dodge. But even that seemed strange to me. I figured you’d want a four-door so everyone could have his own entrance and exit point. But I wasn’t a heist man.

  The fourth guy kept his .32 in his hand. Chub didn’t appear worried. I knew he would be. He didn’t like guns any more than I">“Is it?”tp did. He had a wrench in his back pocket. He could cave in somebody’s head with it. He kept his body half turned so that the fourth guy was always in front of him. The driver chuckled about something and stuck out his hand to shake. Chub only grinned and nodded. He was being smart. He wasn’t going to compromise his hands.

  The crew climbed into the Mustang. The car they came in was probably stolen and Chub would have it driven off his lot by an associate for a small cash fee.

  The driver couldn’t help but goose the Mustang’s engine a couple of times before he threw it into drive. But when he got it into the street he drove the speed limit.

  When they hit their first turn I hopped in my car and followed.

  On the grift it was occasionally important to tail a mark. I gave the crew a significant lead and kept changing lanes. We headed west toward the city. There was still traffic on the Long Island Expressway. There was always traffic on the LIE. I’d forgotten that during the years I hid out in big sky country. When I got back to New York it took a little getting used to. Eating exhaust again, bumper to bumper no matter what time of day you hit the road.

  The driver took the Wantagh Parkway exit and then played around on some side streets and access roads.

  I did everything right but the driver still lost me. It was slippery and perfectly done. He was there one second and gone the next. He shook me easily. I didn’t even think he knew he was being followed. He just pulled the intermittent maneuver to drop a tail in case he ever picked one up. Some guys were just paranoid enough.

  If they were on to me I’d know it soon. They wouldn’t run. They’d either brace me hard to find out who I was or they’d try to turn the tables and follow me home.

  I stood on the gas and got back onto the parkway, heading south. The LIE would have more traffic, but I burned toward Sunrise Highway. There were more exit ramps that bled into strip malls and suburban neighborhoods. It would be easier to spot anyone on my ass and I’d have a better chance
of giving them the slip.

  Traffic eased up. I didn’t spot the driver in my rearview, but I doubled back and figure-eighted myself into minor whiplash. I decided not to head home.

  Instead I cruised over to the Elbow Room. It’s where Collie went before doing what he did, and it’s where he returned to relax after he’d finished. He’d been drawn down into what my family called the underneath. It was that place of panic and despair that made you do stupid things when you were breaking the law. It’s what made a punk knocking over a liquor store take hostages and start icing innocent folks.

  But I still thought there had to be a reason for Collie to have lost it. When I’d visited him on death row he kept telling me there wasn’t. He explained that I’d have to learn to live with that fact, but I wasn’t doing a very good job of it so far.

  The Elbow Room was where I went to ask the questions that had no answer. It’s where I went to think of my brother and to forget about my brother. It’s where I went when I needed to take a breath and line up the next move.

  I pulled into the lot, parked, and waited five minutes. The crew didn’t drive past. I felt more secure that the driver had shaken me without even realizing I was there. It made me wonder what he could do when he really put his mind to it.

  I got out and stepped in">“No,” I saidplasto the bar. It was the lowest dive around. It had gotten even worse since the last time I’d had a drink here months ago.

  Desperate men sat in the back corners muttering about their worst mistakes. A few halfhearted games of pool were being shot. The whores worked the losers a little more brazenly than was usual. They didn’t bother with subtlety. It was all out front.

  The jukebox pounded out a heavy bass riff. It was something designed to kick college girl strippers into high gear, except this wasn’t a strip club. I didn’t know what the music was supposed to do for the rest of us. The drunk mooks eyed the hookers, the burnt lady barflies, and each other. Everybody seemed to want to throw themselves on the floor. Men wanted to beat their wives, children, and bosses. They wanted to sink their teeth into one another’s throats. They wanted to blow up their mortgage service centers. They wanted to shit on the White House lawn. Getting laid by roadhouse chicks couldn’t ease that kind of pain. Everyone knew it. Nobody was plying much trade. The whores needed affection nearly as much as cash. The whole placed vibed tension and brittleness.

  The speakers beat at my back. I glanced at the register. I always checked the register, wherever I went. It was instinct.

  The room was forties film-noir dim and smoky. I didn’t want to walk around looking for a booth so I split for the corner of the bar, the darkest spot in the entire room.

  I didn’t see her sitting beside me until my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Then it seemed bright as noon and I realized most of the mooks were looking this way. I’d sat in a holy place of honor.

  She waited there on her stool just out of arm’s reach, drawing as much attention as if she posed in a spotlight. Every other man in the room looked on mournfully. They stared, none of them canny enough to use the bar mirror to watch her. Their murmurs underscored the music like backup singers coming in on the chorus. Compared to the waxy-lipped women cadging drinks and sneaking bills off the bar top she looked like paradise in three-inch pumps.

  She was next-door cute, sultry with smoky amused eyes. Her black hair was out of style, cut into a modified shoulder-length shag. I liked it. So did the rest of them. We were sentimental for days gone by. It told us that she went her own way. When you got down to it, that’s what we all wanted to get our hands on. A woman who stood apart, especially since we couldn’t stand apart from each other.

  She was a little younger than the rest of the ladies, maybe ten years older than me. All the curves were still in the right places, her chin just starting to soften a bit. Full heart-shaped lips, a bobbed nose, dimples that only appeared when she gave a slight smirk, which she did from time to time at nobody and nothing in particular. Like the rest of us, she had her own inner monologue going. Hers made her happy. Maybe she was laughing at us.

  She signaled the bartender and bought her own drink. A gin and tonic. This wasn’t the kind of place for a gin and tonic but somehow she made it so. She wore a nicely fitted black dress, bare-armed despite the chill weather. Was she showing off or had she been dumped here like some of the other ladies? A trucker boyfriend passing through, a husband who’d walked out in the middle of an argument, a pissed-off boyfriend making a point?

  I fought to keep from gawking. When the bartender got to me I ordered a Jack and Coke and tried to keep my eyes aimed at the front of the bar. No one had followed me in. I had parked directly outside the front windowf="kindle:flow

  It’s what we all want to hear. It’s what we all want to believe despite the truth. I took a breath. Then I took a sip, determined not to be lured into this kind of a trap. I gave it a good five count of resistance, then buckled. I was lonely. My heart contained hairline fractures.

  “What makes you think so?” I asked.

  “You walk with a light step. You square your shoulders when you sit. The rest … well, just take a look.” She told me to look so I looked. “Every one of them is slumped over. Glowering at nothing, chewing their lips.”

  “These are rough times.”

  “Even in good times they do it,” she said. “That’s who they are. They plod. They’re going to plod out to their cars to get their knobs polished. They’re going to plod home, throw up in their toilets, and make their wives clean up the bathroom floor.”

  It was true but it wasn’t the greater truth. “Is this the part where you say, ‘Just like my father’?”

  “No, it’s not that part.” She grinned again. It seemed an odd time to smile. “I never knew the man. But, sure, most likely he’s a plodder too, why not?”

  “You intimidate them,” I told her. “They’re not this forlorn and full of self-loathing when someone as beautiful as you isn’t in the room.”

  “I bring it out in them?”

  “It seeps out on its own because of you. Plus, they think you’re a prostitute.”

  “How do you know I’m not?”

  “Your eyes.”

  “Did you just say my eyes?”

  “I just said your eyes,” I admitted.

  “I’m not sure if that’s sweet or ludicrous.”

  “Let’s keep things friendly and call it sweet.”

  She finished her gin and tonic. She didn’t smile. I’d stuck an ice pick through the spleen of the conversation. You have to be careful when you call a woman beautiful and your motives aren’t clear.

  “You’re here for a reason,” she said, “but it’s not to get drunk or

  laid.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “You’re too … ">“No,” I saidplasalert for that.”

  I smiled at her. It wasn’t a charming smile. It was a convict’s smile. I’d never been in prison but I lived the same life, on the same edge. It was my brother’s smile.

  “Christ,” she said. “What is it? Your eyes practically went black. You tightened up like you stuck your tongue in an outlet.”

  “Now you’re flirting with me.”

  She held her right arm out for me to see. “It was electrical. Look, the hair on my arm is standing up.”

  She was telling the truth. I finished my drink and ordered another. She swiveled the stool toward me and I turned to meet her. She openly appraised me, her gaze roving my face, down the length of my body and back up again. She tilted her head when she checked out my white patch. She pursed her lips, dipped her chin. “I like it. The premature gray adds something to you.”

  “Yeah. Age.”

  “More than that. And not ‘character,’ exactly, that’s just a tired term they use to express something, they’re not even sure what. Not character, no. Resolve.”

  “Who are you, lady?” I asked.

  “My name’s Darla,” she said.

  I smiled again,
this time with less sharpness. “Come on. Nobody’s name is Darla. And nobody uses it as a, ah, stage name either.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I know something about using a fake name.”

  The corners of her mouth hitched. “And why’s that?”

  “I spent five years using one.”

  “And what was it?” she asked. “Your assumed name. Nick Steel? Mickey ‘the Torpedo’ Morelli? Johann Kremholtz?”

  I told her the truth. “I have trouble remembering.”

  “Well, if you had been named Darla, you wouldn’t. And if you knew anything about stage names you’d know it was a damn good one.” She leaned in again as if to kiss me, and then drew away as if fearing I might take her up on it. “How about your real name?”

  “Terrier Rand.”

  “Terrier? Because of your tenacity?”

  “Because everyone in my family is named after dogs.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You people sound like a fun group.”

  “Not so much anymore.”

  I reached for my drink and stared at her over the rim of the glass. She stared back at me. She was right about one thing, there was something electrical happening.

  “You want to split?” she asked.

  Darla hadn’t mentioned cash yet. Even in the Elbow Room a working girl would try to get paid up front first. Darla just kept watching me with her amused gaze. It fired me up and gave me the chills at the same time. I wondered if I’d been wrong about her. I was cynical as hell and had maybe jumped to the wrong conclusion. A provocative woman could make you a moron.

  She read me easily and let out a smooth, honest laugh. “I don’t charge everyone, you know. I am allowed to give a in a bikini and high heels. at the Qway some free samples in order to build up clientele.”

  “The Elbow Room isn’t your kind of corner.”

  “I don’t have a corner yet. I’m not sure I want one. I’m still sorting out my potential opportunities. The current economy cost me a home and a marriage, which was falling apart anyway because my husband was an alcoholic and a meth addict. I’m thirty-five years old with an above-average sex drive and a retail job that pays a buck over minimum wage. I’m being murdered by credit debt and bank loans. So I thought I’d look into making a bit of filthy lucre on the side.”