The Last Whisper in the Dark: A Novel

by Piccirilli, Tom

  I checked the window again and spotted nothing. “So you’re just liberated and progressive?”

  “My mother would have called it something else, but sure, why not?”

  “I’d say with your sex appeal you’ll be rolling in dough in no time.”

  “That’s generous.”

  Maybe it was, under the circumstances. Everything was relative. Darla glanced toward the front window. She was polite enough not to ask what I was looking for.

  She leaned in again and I caught a deep breath of her heady, feminine aroma. She wore no perfume.

  She said, “I thought I’d start here. My husband used to stop by this place a lot, usually on weekends, where he’d drink himself sick, and spend his paycheck on crank and other women.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Considering he had you waiting at home.”

  Her smile saddened. “Because I intimidated him in bed. I’m not certain why. He was handsome and rugged and very, very good. And I loved him and wanted to make him happy. I would have done anything for him. He knew that. We were terrific together in the beginning. But he felt some kind of pressure, and he became resentful, and eventually he drifted. Got into meth for a while. He’d rather pay a stranger for what I was giving him for free. He couldn’t handle the intimacy, I suppose. We were a week shy of our second anniversary when he got into rehab. While he was getting clean we lost the house, so when he was released there was nothing waiting for him except me. That’s when we called it quits.”

  Once you had no home, giving up everything else had to be easy.

  “Of course he always denied that he was indulging himself,” Darla continued. “Even when I followed him here and caught him in the parking lot with a woman in his lap, the two of them hitting the pipe, he told me it wasn’t what it looked like.”

  “Men caught with their pants down and illicit drugs in their system make rotten liars.”

  “This I’ve learned, Terrier.” Talking about her husband had put a glimmer of pain in her dark eyes. “Do they call you Terry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind if I do?”

  “No, it’s what they call me.”

  She finished her drink and I ordered her another. “In any case,” she said, “I’m not sure this new endeavor is going to work out. Nobody’s approached me all night. Not even you.”

  “You’re too attractive for this place. You unnerve the average mook. You’d fit better">“No,” I saidplas at the bar in an upscale hotel, if you’re really going to pursue that line. Traveling businessmen have an expense account. Their wives aren’t around the corner, they’re all back in Wisconsin.”

  “Thanks for the advice. You know your lowlifes. Are you a pimp?”

  “No, I’m a thief.”

  It didn’t surprise her. Maybe she understood what having a light step really meant. “Are you a good thief?”

  “Just having you ask has wounded my pride.”

  The giggle floated from her. “I retract the question. Your secret is safe with me.”

  “It’s no secret. Everyone knows we Rands are thieves.”

  “The whole family?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doesn’t being a famous thief interfere with the need to be a slyboots?”

  Some words were naturally funny. Slyboots was one of them. I chuckled. “It has on occasion.”

  I was hungry for her. Her warm sexuality stirred me. I shifted in my seat.

  “Now you have time to pursue all your other dreams,” I said.

  “All I ever dreamed about was having a happy home.” She let out a breath that she’d held inside for months, years. “I suppose that sounds silly.”

  “Not to me it doesn’t. Didn’t you have any aspirations before him?”

  “My aspiration was him. Or someone like him.”

  “Come on. Modeling and acting?”

  She smiled a genuine smile. “Am I so predictable?”

  “You’re a beautiful lady. Beautiful people get paid a lot of money to show off their beauty on stages all over the world.”

  We sat quietly for a while. The mooks muttered and sighed and drank and walked in and walked out. Every time the door opened I glanced up.

  “You look like you want to make a break for it,” she said. “I just can’t tell if you want to rush off with me or run away from me.”

  I could see my expression reflected in her eyes. A little angry, spooked, a touch worried and a lot horny, hopeful but in need of action.

  Darla pressed three fingers to my wrist. “Hey, it’s all right. I’m in no rush. I’m enjoying just sitting here with you.”

  She opened her purse and handed me a business card.

  “You’ve had cards made up?” I asked. “This might be a little aggressive. If you advertise, it’s tough to argue in court you weren’t soliciting.”

  “Read it first, wiseass.”

  I read it. A Great Yarn. For all your knitting and literary needs.

  There was an address in Port Jackson. I knew the street but couldn’t picture the shop.

  “A yarn shop and bookstore?”

  “You’d be surprised at how much crossover there is.”

  I shrugged. “I suppose I would be. I didn’t">“Is it?”tp realize there was any crossover between knitting and reading.”

  “And I live in the apartment above. Stop in if you’re ever looking for a book. Or if you take up crocheting. Or—”

  She left it like that. She wasn’t a bad girl, not as bad as me, but bad enough. I liked the idea of finally finding someone as out on the rim as I was. She’d lost her only love too, maybe because it was her fault, maybe not. She actually had better judgment and discretion than I did. She could be anyone, and so could I. I thought I should take her up on the offer nowww.idpf.org/20

  , but she did the dance of foreplay, and I had to dance along. There was time. I backed a step away and left the bartender a good but not excessive tip and kept watching her, the connection strong between us, the current still running. The rest of the mooks looked on in their average jealousy and mediocre bitterness. I made the door and got in my car and drove in circles for a while searching the rearview for the crew, and when I was certain nobody was behind me I whipped it home.

  My eyes flashed open. They stung from sweat. The room was full of figures, including the old lady Collie had beaten to death. Her lips crawled with criticism or confession. There was no blood on her face. She hadn’t had time to bleed. My brother had broken her neck with two blows. The pink tint of her hair flared briefly as the first hint of dawn fell across my bed. The room emptied.

  JFK lay across my legs panting and looking worried. I must’ve been talking in my sleep again. He put his nose down between his front paws and tried to get back to sleep. I slid my feet free from him and checked the clock. It glowed 5:15. No matter when I hit the sack I couldn’t sleep for more than three or four hours at a clip.

  I took a shower, dressed, and walked the house. I checked on the family, room by room.

  My mother slept soundly in the center of the bed, one arm flung out reaching for my father, except he wasn’t there. I sometimes woke to find her seated on the edge of my mattress, staring at me. It was a weird habit that I’d picked up from her.

  I crouched and put a hand in her auburn hair. My mother remained a beautiful woman even at an age when beautiful women were called handsome. Her lips and chin had softened a bit more but she was still lovely, with a natural smile that always made me feel better. I had a strong urge to talk to her, but there were so many things I couldn’t say out loud that it was safer not to try.

  It was the fourth time this week my father had crept out. The car was still in the driveway. Either he was prowling on foot or he had a drop vehicle stowed nearby. I’d looked for one but hadn’t been able to find it. in a bikini and high heels. at the Q

  Last night I’d waited out on the darkened front veranda to talk with him but he must’ve spotted me and slipped around back. In the morning he
feigned normalcy so well that I couldn’t bring myself to brace him about where he’d been.

  He was a quiet man who’d only fallen into being a thief because it was the legacy handed down to him. Generations of larceny were in his blood. He could no more fight against it than I could.

  My father had never been comfortable as a criminal. He was a good burglar but wasn’t capable of pulling off a polished grift. He couldn’t steal from someone who was looking him in the eye. He only stole to bring home cash to the family, and so far as I knew he never spent a dime on himself except for the stupid figurines he collected. He didn’t live large, had no flash, preferred to be the humble and reposed man that he was by nature.

  When I was twelve my father sent me up the drainpipe to a house that was supposed to be empty. It wasn’t. While I was hanging halfway out a third-floor window a seventy-five-year-old lady picked up a lamp and swatted me into free fall. A rib snapped and pierced through my side. My old man pulled the bone shard through by hand. My thirty-foot fall was pretty much the end of my father’s career as a crook. Having my blood on his hands forced him out of the game.

  I wondered if he was back on the streets, sneaking through old ladies’ apartments and snatching up Toby mugs, piano babies, and ceramic monks eating bowls of rice.

  Old Shep slept the sleep of a baby. He cooed and sighed. He made tiny fists and sometimes bawled. His beard and hair had been recently trimmed. His face was clean and pink. He smelled of baby powder. His colostomy bag was empty. Gramp hadn’t strung together more than a five-word sentence in the past two months, but I knew he was still in there somewhere.

  I heard my sister cry out.

  Dale was having another nightmare. I eased inside her room. Her breath came in quick rasps and she groaned as if trying desperately to speak. If I didn’t know what was happening I would’ve thought she was having a seizure.

  She spoke a word that might’ve been a curse or a threat. With her brow furrowed, a spatter of sweat on her lip caught the sunlight.

  I said her name and then said it a little louder.

  “Airedale.”

  She sat up and let out a sob. Her eyes were wide and focused through me. Her wet hair hung across her face in stringy, jagged clumps. I knew what she was seeing. I knew what she was doing.

  “It’s all right, Dale, I’m here. Everything’s okay.”

  I murmured more gentle sounds. They didn’t help. She swung her legs over the far side of the mattress and sat there, facing away from me, more than half asleep, waiting. I waited too. After a while she started to lie down again, dangling awkwardly half in and out of bed. I got her squared away and pulled the blankets up to her chin. I rocked her for a few minutes and she let out another sob. Finally her breathing slowed and deepened.

  “Get the fuck away from me, Terry.”

  I almost listened. I almost left her. But I didn’t want to. And I always did what I wanted.

  I’d been watching her closely. Sometimes she was sleepy or giggly or on the verge of hyper. I suspected some kind of herbal or chemical fortification">“Is it?”tp. She had thrown herself into her high school theater arts, taking on more roles in plays and even starring in a couple of TV commercials for local businesses. I could see her slipping in and out of identities. Ma called her My little Bette Davis.

  Dale spent an incredible amount of time texting and locking herself in her room to toy with her computer. Her laptop was encrypted. I knew how to break into a lot of places, but not that.

  I snatched her phone and went through it name by name. There were a dozen entries only by initials. She’d been making calls to somebody named ROG. I figured it was a kid named Roger. I tried the number and it went straight to an automated voice mail. I asked my parents about Roger and got blank looks.

  I searched her bathroom. I went through her medicine cabinet. Then I caught a glance at my face in the mirror. I looked heavy, rounded with jowls, like I’d gained twenty-five pounds. I checked the glass and found it was bowed out from the top. I gripped the edges of the cabinet and hefted. It came loose in my hands.

  Behind it, sitting in a small niche in the wall, was a bottle of tiny white pills. No Rx label. I shook the bottle twice. Maybe antianxiety meds, antidepressants, or sedatives. Or maybe something harder. Whatever they were, they weren’t helping her much.

  I started to leave and Dale threw the covers off and called from her bed.

  “You’re always here,” she said with a note of accusation.

  “I was looking in on you.”

  “The way Ma does.” She sat up. “I hate that. I hate it.”

  “You were crying in your sleep. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m okay. I’m always okay.”

  “Except when you’re not.”

  “Can I bum a cigarette?”

  I shook a butt halfway out of the pack and held it out to her. She propped it between her lips and I lit it for her. She pulled an empty Coke can from under her bed and tapped ash into it. She was sixteen and had probably been smoking for years, but it still felt a little wrong. Smoke curled toward me.

  I cracked the window an inch and sat beside her. She tapped ash into the can. “I have a play this weekend.”

  “Am I going?”

  “You and Mom have to. I need you there.”

  “Okay, then. What’s the play?”

  “You’ve never heard of it.”

  “I might’ve heard of it.”

  “You’ve never heard of it, Terry. It’s French.”

  “It’s in French?”

  “No, it’s French. It was written by a French guy.”

  There was no point in arguing that I knew what a fucking French guy was.

  We were quiet. I listened to her sucking at the filter, taking a deep breath, easing it out again, the hot smoke hanging harshly off her chin for a second before dissipating.

  “What pills are you taking, Dale?”

  She turned and glared at me. “You’ve been creeping my room?”

  “Is it?”tp">“Does that really surprise you?”

  She took a last drag and stuffed the butt into the can, then threw the can at me. I caught it in my left hand. She let out an exasperated grunt. “It shouldn’t. I always knew there can never be any privacy in this family, but yes, it still does. Of course it does. I didn’t expect my brother to pull my medicine cabinet off the wall.”

  “I’m trying to protect you.”

  “That’s not your job. Besides, you can’t anyway. You worry about yourself, and I’ll take care of myself.”

  “Dale—”

  The Rands weren’t heisters. We’d never bulled over a jewelry shop or hit a bank. There was never any reason to put together a crew or look for a getaway driver. I knew a lot of people in the bent life, but for the most part they all belonged to a certain strata. Burglars, swindlers, grifters, pickpockets, card cheats, midnight tiptoers. I was going to need a little help tracking down Chub’s new friends.

  Wes Zek owned a nice house right off the Great South Bay. A canal ran behind his patio deck and a twenty-eight-foot sailboat was berthed at a private dock. The last time I’d been here the boat had been in shit shape with frayed loose lines, splintered rails, and a worn deck. But he’d put some muscle into it recently, or hired somebody local to fix it up, and it looked well maintained. I could see life preservers stacked on the deck. He’d been taking it out.

  Wes had upgraded his security system but still didn’t have it tied in with the local police. Looked like it went to a security firm, though, one probably owned by Danny Thompson, the local syndicate boss Wes worked for.

  Danny was another former friend of mine. When his father, Big Dan, hadn’t turned over the keys to the kingdom as quick as Danny had been hoping, he became a hateful, piddling prick. After Big Dan died Danny started running the mob into the ground. We’d butted heads a couple times since then.

  I’d heard that Danny had begun taxing crews, which was a bad move for every
one. It meant he wanted an ear on every major job. Too many people in the know just made for a stronger RICO case later on down the line. It was the kind of thing Big Dan would never have become involved in, but Danny was hurting for loose cash and making a double-handed grab this many times before to be Q for whatever he could. He wasn’t only desperate for respect and status, he was greedy, and he wasn’t even smart with his moneygrubbing. He didn’t realize yet how much trouble he could bring down on himself.

  I knocked on Wes’s front door and rang the bell. I gave it a twenty count and tried again. For a sneak thief, I was showing an incredible amount of self-control. Then I walked around to the back door, pulled out my tools, circumvented the system, and crept Wes’s place. Like most wiseguys who used a bar, restaurant, gambling joint, or strip club as cover, Wes’s business hours were at night and he tended to sleep during the day.

  I stepped into his bedroom and found him snoring beside a luscious slip of a girl who couldn’t have been any older than twenty. She was naked and awake, sitting up smoking a joint and watching me through tangled hair. A vapid little smile tilted Wes’s lips in his sleep. The strain of working for Danny Thompson had been taking its toll on him. He had ulcers. He had anxiety issues. But for now he had the unlined face of a baby in a crib who had just guzzled the perfect amount of mother’s milk.

  The girl eyed me. She had a sweet heart-shaped face and high cheekbones. Her trim body was headline stripper material. I couldn’t stop staring. She was holding smoke in her lungs and finally let it out in a thin stream that broke over her breasts and moved like a cumulus cloud across her flat, tanned belly. She kept watching me. I expected some shouting and screaming and waving of hands about the face, but she just tugged the sheet up over her breasts and kept staring. I got the feeling that if I backtracked out of there she might never mention it to Wes at all.