Keeping an eye on the stairs, I got both hands back on my Colt, ready to swing the weapon toward the door. Didn’t have to wait long. The door flew open like a special effect in a slasher flick. Rachel instantly stormed in, head on a swivel, face consumed with rage, and ranting in full castrating-Valkyrie mode.
“WHERE IS SHE? WHERE IS THAT BITCH? I’LL KILL HER!”
Providing a little bass-line to her aria was the beep-beep-beep announcing that the alarm would be sounding off soon unless someone punched in the stop-code. I viewed that as a second-tier priority.
“Any particular bitch, Rachel?” I tried to keep my voice calm, but the flight-or-fight juice pumping through me turned it into a bark.
She pivoted and ran toward me with her fists flailing.
“That shiksa bitch lawyer with the big tits that you were going to spend all weekend fucking in my bed while your baby and I cooled our heels in a Vegas hotel room waiting for you to show up—which you were never going to do, of course.” As the beep-beep-beeps relentlessly continued, she landed a punch about as hard as a nana’s spank on my left forearm; had to hurt her more than it did me. “Lucky I had a three-hour flight delay, so I spotted her arriving with someone—the pimp you’re using, I suppose. I spent the night following them all over Alexandria, so don’t tell me she’s not here.”
Another swing. I snap-blocked it, scraping my left forearm along my right on its way to collision with her arm. That gave my forearm enough extra speed and force to smart plenty when it parried her swing. She howled about what a brutal bastard bully I was as she grabbed her right arm in a convincing show of agony.
“You hit me!” Couldn’t help admiring the indignation she put into that.
“Blocking doesn’t count. Now shut the hell up.”
The alarm ran out of patience. A full-throated ululation started ripping through the neighborhood. I’m not sure what Rachel said from that point. I couldn’t really hold up my end of the conversation anymore. The glow at the bottom of the stairs disappeared. Company coming for sure.
Shifting the Colt to my left hand, I grabbed a fistful of dress and skin around Rachel’s left hip and yanked her roughly to the floor. Our landline started ringing, presumably because the security company was calling to see if the alarm was real or accidental. I parked my right leg over both of Rachel’s thighs to cut down on the kicking and thrashing. At the same time I planted my right hand on her face. It seemed like the most efficient way to communicate under the circumstances.
My eyes caught a glimpse of bulk and motion on the stairs. Halkani dove down the last four steps onto the living room floor and then rolled toward the dining room. Left-handed and fighting Rache’s squirming, I had the sense to hold my fire. He’d rolled out of sight before I could get a bead on him. Hitting a moving target is one thing. Hitting a target you can’t see anymore is a different matter.
A second later I spotted about three quarters of him pop out in a squat maybe fifteen feet away, swinging an Uzi toward me. I’d need at least six-tenths of a second to aim the Colt properly. I knew I didn’t have it.
At that instant a voice screamed from near the front door.
“You’re dead, you sonofabitch!”
Without an ounce of wasted motion but after an instant’s indecision, Halkani stopped swinging the Uzi toward me and swiveled it in the direction of the voice instead. A six-shot burst erupted, followed instantaneously by an agonized scream. With the same stone cold efficiency the Uzi started swerving back in my direction. In one more second Halkani would hemstitch me like a butchered pig.
I’d needed six-tenths of a second and I’d gotten nine-tenths. I fired. Even in the mediocre light I thought I saw Halkani’s deep black eyes widen in utter astonishment. The mangled Uzi clattered to the floor. He buried a bloody right hand shredded like tenderized round steak under his left forearm.
Sonofabitch. I shot the gun out of his hands! By accident, but I actually shot the gun out of his hands!
House alarm still shrieking. More noise from the door. Quick glance from the corner of my right eye. Jakubek on her knees now, checking Dany Nesselrode. Nesselrode who, armed with nothing more lethal than a mobile phone, had just spent his life to buy me one critical, unforgiving fraction of a second. A fraction that had saved my life. And Rachel’s. And our child’s. An act of supreme atonement for thinking he could use a bastard and then having the bastard use him.
No time right now for deep thoughts about that. Halkani knelt there with a kind of bored expression visible even through the pain radiating from his face. Yeah, yeah, call the cops, get me to the hospital. Then we’ll see. I had no trouble sensing the pain radiating from his body as he tugged his right hand free and began to raise both arms above his head.
I shifted the Colt to my right hand. Leaving nothing to chance. I aimed the weapon just the way Sergeant Rutledge had taught me to in basic. I shot Hakani through the forehead. Not quite between the eyes, but close enough for government work. A heartbeat later I raised the gun up and to the right and fired into the molding on the wall side of the stairway.
Jakubek straightened up from her examination of Nesselrode. She looked at Halkani’s lifeless body, then at the gouge in our molding, then at me.
“Warning shot?”
“Yep.”
“Good one.”
Chapter Fifty-eight
Cynthia Jakubek
Cops don’t necessarily give calls from security companies top priority, so I called nine-one-one to hurry things along. Gunfire and two corpses got us to “Dispatching” in a hurry. Davidovich was tied up with whatshername, his wife, who looked like a candidate for an economy carton of Valium. Couldn’t blame her. To tell the truth, I could’ve used a bourbon-and-sweet myself—hold the sweet.
A squad car reached us in three minutes flat. The first thing the well-trained cops did was make sure no one still breathing needed medical attention. Then one of them radioed in with whatever the code is for, “This is a huge deal.” Not long after that the Davidovichs’ first floor looked like the stateroom scene from A Night at the Opera: two detectives, two EMTs, two evidence specialists, and a crime-scene photographer. Looking around me I saw enough overtime to bump up Alexandria’s property tax levy.
I told the detective who questioned me the absolute truth. Up to a point. Little vague about the Eros Rising scam, skipped the falling-out-among-thieves thing with Nesselrode, outlined the unpleasantness at St. Ben’s, Rand’s murder, and Nesselrode convincing me that if I didn’t get him down here Davidovich would be next. Left out the envelope in Willy’s Sable. Then we got to the end game.
“I heard the machine gun burst that killed Nesselrode. Then three handgun shots. One, followed by a pause of two or three seconds, then two more, one right after the other, just bang-bang, like that.”
“So you’re saying, what? A warning shot and then two shots in self-defense?”
“I’m just a lawyer, but that’s the way I’d put it together.”
“You’re sure about the sequence? Bang…bang-bang?”
“Yes, I’d swear to it.”
“You might get a chance to do that.”
“At your service.”
Not quite two hours after my call, they’d finally cleared everything out. Now I was really in the market for something alcoholic. At that point I’d have settled for Mogen David in a washed-out jam jar. Unfortunately, Davidovich et ux. were in the middle of a flesh-of-my-flesh-bone-of-my-bone thing. I sucked it up and headed out to the porch to give them as much privacy as you can have at a brightly lit crime scene that has attracted gawkers from every house on the block.
The last thing I saw before my exit was wifey on her knees, face in her hands, sobbing. Even on the porch, I couldn’t help overhearing their dialogue.
“I almost killed us. All of us. I flew into a mindless, jealous rage just because I saw her at the airp
ort, and I almost ruined everything.”
“That’s about the size of it, babe. Four alarm fuck-up, for sure.”
“Is that you’re idea of consoling me?”
“No, that’s my idea of chewing you out. You know, Rache, next time you could just make a phone call. ‘Judas Macabeus Davidovich, what’s the deal between you and the hot lawyer from Pittsburgh? ’Cause you got some ’splainin’ to do.’ Something along those lines.”
“You’re right. You’re right, you’re right, you’re right. I don’t know why I do these things. I guess it’s because I don’t think I deserve you, and I can’t believe you really love me.”
“That’s too high a bar, babe. No one could possibly deserve me. You can’t beat yourself up over that.”
“You’re making fun of me to punish me by humiliating me, aren’t you? Go ahead, I suppose I deserve it.”
“Stand up, Rache.”
“Remember, you never hit anyone you sleep with! Even me! That’s what you said! Plus, I’m pregnant. Don’t forget that!”
“I’m not going to hit you, Rache. The next time we’re at your parents’ I might suggest that your mom go old-school on you—but I won’t do it.”
“No, no, absolutely not! Mom hits way too hard!”
I think that was supposed to be a joke.
“Come here, babe…Look, I don’t blame you for the jealous suspicion. She’s not as beautiful as you are, but she’s a dish for sure. And showing up at Reagan National coming into town at the same time you were there about to head out of town was a damn funny coincidence. So, suspicion, sure. But let’s work on dialing back the psycho-bitch-from-Hell number. You know, count to ten or something first. And another thing: the next time you decide to hit someone, don’t lead with your right.”
Sobbing, muffled by what I assumed was a hug and mingled with laughter that sounded close to manic. With a little lust mixed in, triggered by the smell of cordite on Davidovich’s hands? Not sure about that part. Interesting thought, though.
The next words I heard were the guy’s, more tender than I would have imagined possible.
“My love for you is unconditional, Rache. I love you. Period. Can’t help it. I just do. You don’t have to worry about earning it or deserving it. It’s just the way it is. What I can’t understand with my head I have to understand with my heart.”
More sobs after that, naturally, this time the cascading tears kind that sound like they’re going to go on forever. On balance, I guess I’m glad I overheard it. Close question, but that’s where I come down.
The Fourth Friday in August
Chapter Fifty-nine
Cynthia Jakubek
So it’s four months later. High summer. Sean and Abbey are within sight of their wedding date. Willy can talk in a reasonably normal tone of voice and has a hundred thousand on the ground floor of Project Woodshed. Shear Genius has a new counsel for distributor litigation. Clarence Washington’s case is set for jury trial, and I intend to win it. I’ve hired a receptionist/secretary and moved out of the house I grew up in and into an apartment downtown. Phil has told me he’ll become Catholic if I want him to. Or Wiccan. Theologically, he’s pretty flexible.
Pitt MCM, believe it or not, has decided to go forward with the exchange program after all. In-cred-ible. Sign-off by the heirs, group hug, and the Rand murder has actually bumped up attendance from ghoulish curiosity-seekers. Transoxana will insure Eros Rising during the exchange. Davidovich has come to town to kick the tires and check the lug-nuts and do other routine loss prevention stuff.
Six of us—Sean, Abbey, Davidovich, Willy, Amber, and yours truly—are on our way to Sean’s club for lunch. Willy is telling Davidovich what a great deal the Woodshed thing is, trying to talk him into dropping the insurance racket and buying a Woodshed franchise.
“Abbey came up with a great hook,” he’s saying. “Greatest hook for a retail start-up I’ve ever seen.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, of course. Then at the end of the block, we turn up Fulton Avenue—and there it is, on a twenty-something dude who looks like he’s taking Friday afternoon off. Black line-drawing of a Woodshed Street Wagon inside a stylized actual woodshed with peaked roof and rough-hewn sides and smoke coming out of its chimney. “WOODSHED” appears in simple print across the façade, just below the roof. A slogan snakes cross the bottom: “Fine Sandwiches and Wraps on the Go With Real Smoked Woodchip Flavor!”® in the lower right-hand corner identifies the images and slogans as Woodshed trademarks.
Fine, I guess, but it won’t make anyone forget “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.”
Then the guy passes us and we get a look at Abbey’s hook, on the tee-shirt’s back. The street wagon drawing frames lettering that takes up most of the space:
“MY GIRLFRIEND TOOK ME TO
THE WOODSHED TODAY—
AND I REALLY DESERVED IT.”
OoooKayy. Fifty Shades of Black and White. Or something. I’ll never understand marketing. Good thing lawyers aren’t allowed to do it. Except, you know, when we are. Is this a great country or what?
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Collar Robber: A Crime Story Featuring Jay Davidovich and Cynthia Jakubek Page 24
