Shotgun Lullaby

by Steve Ulfelder

  We towed the body into a massive room with skylights and angled toward a pair of four-by-eight-foot doors set in the floor. Pundo took a ring at one end of one door, indicated I should do the same at the other end.

  Given its size and the fact it was sheet steel, the door opened with ease that surprised me. Must have some sort of counterweight system. It also had a detent that let it stay open when we let go of our rings.

  I looked down. At nothing. No light, anyway. The pit below might be twelve feet deep or a hundred and twenty.

  Its smell just about knocked me over.

  Pundo didn’t let on that he noticed the stench. He came around to my side. He took an arm. I took a leg.

  “On three,” he said.

  We tossed the body. Pundo closed the huge door on his own, then dry-wiped his hands like he’d just taken the kitchen trash to the garage. I took a quick inventory, realized I felt the same way. Didn’t much like myself for it. But then, today’s list of things I didn’t like myself for was a long one.

  “You’ve done this before,” I said. “With all the other nightclub owners, I guess.”

  Pundo ignored the nightclub crack. “Sure, I’ve been here. How do you think he knew about the place?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I told him is how. FBI ever opens that door, twenty agents’ll make their careers.”

  We hustled out the mill’s smashed front door and took in the scene.

  Randall had deputized himself. He’d made the two-shot pistol disappear and had done what he could—not much, but more than nothing—with Boxer’s blood. Now he stood at the Biletnikov SUV, which he’d pulled to the base of the steps. Haley sat in its backseat, bottle-feeding Emma. Next to that vehicle sat a green Subaru Forester. It didn’t strike me as much of a gangster ride, but it had to be Pundo’s—Randall had found it while we’d done body disposal.

  Sophie stood away from Randall, away from the cars, away from everybody. She stood by herself. Hugging her sides, even on a warm late afternoon, even in a cheer sweater. Her legs still shook.

  She stared up at me.

  Before today, Sophie’d seen a lot. More than any thirteen-year-old should see.

  But she’d never seen a man she loved lay a pistol to the head of a baby.

  Could I ever get her back?

  Pundo was saying something, looking at me funny.

  I said, “Huh?”

  “You think she’ll come back with me?”

  “Who?”

  “The nanny. Haley.”

  “Why do you want her to?”

  “I’m not letting Emma out of my sight. Not after today, not for a good long time. I’ll take her myself if I have to, but it’s better for everybody if the nanny comes along.”

  “Emma and Rinn,” I said. “They’re what you wanted.”

  “They’re all I wanted. Since the first time Rinn came in the club. She does something. She’s got something. She’s … she’s worth the shame. You know?”

  “But you’re letting her stay with Peter. You’re letting the world believe your kid is his.”

  “If that’s what Rinn wants.” He shrugged.

  I said nothing.

  We stood there, side by side.

  With the sun low behind the mill, fun-house shadows stretched nearly across the parking lot.

  “Your daughter,” I said. “Emma. If I’d seen any other way.”

  “I should kill you for that.”

  “The way Emma is to you?” I said. “Sophie’s that way to me.”

  “I get it. And you didn’t make the first wrong move. They did, when they snatched her.”

  I nodded. “Teddy and Boxer.”

  “Who’s Boxer?”

  I’d forgotten that wasn’t his name. It didn’t matter much now.

  “Never mind,” I said.

  Pundo said, “You know what I ought to be madder about? But can’t get worked up about?”

  I knew what he was going to say. His son. I’d guillotined him, then left him to burn.

  “My club,” Pundo said. “Specifically, my record collection. I was due to have a fire wall and better sprinklers installed next month.”

  Holy shit.

  Charlie Pundo didn’t know his son was dead.

  That was fine.

  Better than fine. It was likely the reason Boxer was dead and I wasn’t.

  But you never know.

  Losing a son like Fat Teddy Pundo wasn’t like losing most sons.

  Maybe Charlie didn’t know because he didn’t want to know.

  He was staring at me. When he spoke, he sounded tired. “Don’t deny you torched the place, Sax. Don’t try for clever. You’re half-clever, which is the worst. You’re like a guy who’s almost a good chess player. But only almost. You burned my club because you thought I burned your garage.”

  I said nothing. Keep thinking that way, Charlie.

  He said, “You know who burned your fucking garage?”

  I said nothing.

  “The Andrade kid, the sad sack you crippled, then hired ’cause you felt guilty. I believe you AA types call it making amends.”

  Andrade.

  Black, red, black.

  “The sad sack’s been coming around the Hi Hat damn near every night,” Pundo said. “He got wind you and I were beefing, and I guess he was smart enough to hope the enemy of his enemy would be his friend.”

  Of course.

  Pundo was right: I was half-clever. On a good day.

  “Every night,” he was saying. “Bending Teddy’s ear, talking big about making you pay, about hitting you where you live. From me he wanted a pat on the head, or a cookie, or some damn thing. Teddy finally told him to beat it.” Another half laugh. “How’d those amends work out for you?”

  Down below, Randall clapped his hands twice and made a can-we-get-on-with-it gesture.

  Pundo and I walked down the steps. “Haley will come with you,” I said. “She’ll do whatever’s best for the baby. You can bet on it. You’re in luck there.”

  I was right. Pundo and I tag-teamed Haley. At first, she didn’t want to believe he was Emma’s father. Once we convinced her—once Pundo convinced her how much he cared for the kid—she took diaper bag and baby seat and switched over to the Subaru without hesitation. She had tunnel-vision love for Emma.

  I strapped the baby seat in Pundo’s car, following Haley’s instructions. When she declared it secure, she looked at me and said, without any change of expression, “You are an awful man.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You act like you’re helpful. You act like Mister Troubleshooter. But you are awful.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  And stepped back and closed the door.

  Randall wondered out loud what to do with Teddy’s Mercedes. It was sure to grab the eyeballs of any cop who cruised this road. Pundo made a thirty-second phone call. When he clicked off, he said the SUV’d be gone in ten minutes and on a boat for Cape Town tomorrow.

  Club owner. Jazz fan.

  Then it was time to split up. The vibe was weird. It was as if summer camp was ending and we were all piling in with our folks to ride home—but something terrible had happened at camp, something nobody wanted to talk about.

  “Well,” Randall said.

  “Well,” Pundo said.

  Nobody looked anybody in the eye.

  When Randall dropped me at my F-250, both of us assumed Sophie would ride with me.

  She didn’t.

  Wouldn’t.

  Instead, she took shotgun in the Biletnikov BMW, which Randall would drive back. Folded her arms, stared through the windshield.

  Hell.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Once we hit the pike eastbound, Randall buzzed me.

  I said, “She okay?”

  He knew who I meant. “She’s out like a light. Before she crashed, I quizzed her on the snatch. The poor cheerleading coach was in over her head. She had fifteen dads, most of whom she’d met only once or twice, swooping in for
their girls. Boxer glided up behind a bouquet of roses and elbow-walked Sophie right out of the Civic Center.”

  “Just like that.”

  “Just like that. At least the coach won’t call in an Amber Alert.” Pause. “Imagine the day Sophie had.”

  “Jesus.”

  Randall said, “What state secrets did you and Charlie Pundo pass back and forth up on those steps?”

  “For starters, he doesn’t know about Fat Teddy.”

  “What about Fat Teddy?”

  Whoa.

  I realized how little Randall knew of the day. Organized it all in my head, told him a two-minute version.

  When I finished, he was quiet. We sat, each with a phone to our ear but saying nothing, all the way from exit 7 to exit 8.

  “Wow,” he finally said. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Cut the shit, my friend. Are you okay?”

  I thought it through. I took my time.

  “I’m okay with Teddy,” I said. “Or as okay as I deserve to be. As to the way I used Emma? I don’t know. Can you … do you think … what would you have done?”

  “Like virtually everybody else on the planet, I would have washed my hands of Gus Biletnikov and Company a long time ago. So I wouldn’t have found myself in your situation or anything like it. And I don’t mean that as a criticism.”

  “I picked up some dirt from Boxer, too,” I said.

  “The late and unlamented. What dirt?”

  “You won’t like it.”

  “Oh?”

  “The shotgun the cops found in Crump’s truck isn’t the one used at Almost Home. Or on Gus. And that makes sense. Lima’s been real closemouthed about that gun. Now I know why: it was one of those things the cops hold back to shake out the liars and the phony confessors.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Boxer said there were two shotguns. Identical. He planted one on Crump so the cops’d think everything was wrapped up tight. But Boxer got screwed, accidentally or on purpose. He did Almost Home and Gus, so he had to know what the gun looked like. But when it came time to make the plant, he brought a dud.”

  Randall said nothing. I could feel the concentration as he worked through it.

  “A matched set,” I said.

  “Holy shit,” he said.

  At the exact same time, we said, “Spurnings. Strikings.”

  “Peter,” Randall said. “Brad.”

  “Brad my ass,” I said. “He’s a couch-bound pothead. It’s Peter and Rinn we need to look at again.”

  * * *

  Charlene packed a heavy slap. I got instant whiplash, and my busted nose began to bleed.

  We were in her kitchen. Her sister leaned on the stove, smoking a generic white cigarette and just about purring at the fight. Like I said, I hate the sister and she hates me.

  Jessie was on the great-room sofa, staring at her phone but soaking in everything. Family court must have released her. I wanted to hear about that. It didn’t look like I’d get a chance, though. Not now.

  Sophie had woken up when Randall exited the pike, had called home to say we’d be there in ten minutes.

  And here we were.

  “And you didn’t call the cops? How dare you!” Charlene said to me. Then she turned on Randall. “And you! You’re the smart one. How did you allow this to happen, Randall Swale?”

  Charlene had been in a good mood when we entered, likely because Jessie was home. But as soon as Sophie saw her, the kid gave in to the tears she’d hidden from me—the tears reserved for Mom.

  Even to me, the story of Sophie’s last few hours sounded bad as I told it. And I left out a fair amount.

  I shook my head, chasing away the whiplash. Jessie was looking at me from the corner of her eye. I spoke to her. “Glad you got sprung.”

  “Don’t make nice with her!” Charlene said. “In fact, don’t ever talk to my girls again. Just get out.”

  I stepped close so I could speak quietly, without feeling like the sister was taking notes. But Charlene flinched, stepped back, deadened her eyes, crossed her arms. “Get out of my house!”

  “Please don’t chase him away,” Sophie said. “He was only—”

  Charlene whirled. “Shut up!”

  Sophie popped an inch straight up. Even the sister flinched. Charlene swept to Sophie, who’d started crying hard again.

  Charlene: her back to me, arms wrapping her daughter. “He’s not a good man, honey. Sometimes he tries, but he screws everything up. Shush now, honey. He’s not a good man.”

  I backed from the room. I left through the front. I closed the door as quietly as I could.

  Had the truck in reverse when Jessie followed me out and trotted down the concrete stairs to the driveway. Was she here to gloat? To pile on?

  She stood at my window. I rolled it down.

  She stared at the road. Gulped once or twice, clenched her jaw. Whatever she wanted to say, she was having a hard time with it.

  I waited.

  Finally, she said, “He doesn’t.”

  “Doesn’t what? Who doesn’t?”

  “Roy. He doesn’t use. He never has. Wouldn’t even drink a beer, wouldn’t smoke a cig.”

  My chest went big.

  “It was always a big point of honor with him,” she said. “It was why … a big reason, anyway … we broke up. It was like living with the Hardy Boys. I couldn’t take it.”

  “Well, hell,” I said. “Thanks. For telling me.”

  “He always said he had two strikes against him in that department.”

  I thought that through. “Me, of course. What was the other one?”

  “He said you were both strikes. That you counted double.”

  Then Jessie Bollinger made a tiny corkscrew smile and light-footed up the steps.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  I headed for Sherborn in full dark. It was a lucky break that Randall was still trying to calm Charlene—I wanted a crack at Rinn before he could swoop in to protect her.

  Peter? Sure, I wanted a shot at him, too. But mostly at Rinn. She was the spurner, the striker. I had her pegged as the brains behind this second shotgun. I also had questions about how she fit in with the Pundos. Even with Boxer and Fat Teddy gone, I owed it to Gus to nail down every last detail, every last player.

  She wasn’t there, dammit. I read the guesthouse’s nobody-home vibe at a glance, spare-keyed my way in anyway to confirm, then walked up the slope to the main house.

  Peter answered the door. Took his time, but finally answered. Looked at me over his reading glasses, holding a thick magazine with a wristwatch on its cover.

  You never know what’s going to set you off.

  The magazine did it.

  Images bombarded me …

  A pistol laid alongside Emma’s pale skin.

  Gut-shot Gus with bangs across his eyes.

  Sophie’s cheek deformed by Boxer’s favorite handgun.

  Teddy Pundo speed-hopping backward toward plateglass …

  … And Peter Biletnikov was sitting at home reading a magazine about wristwatches?

  “Where’s your baby, Biletnikov?” I said, my jaw so tight I could barely speak.

  He said nothing.

  I slapped the magazine from his hand.

  That didn’t feel like enough, so I slapped his face. Hard, half-ashamed even as I did it, unable to stop myself. The slap spun his reading glasses to the floor. “Where’s Emma? Doesn’t look like you’re beating the bushes to find her. Doesn’t look like you’ve called the National Guard.”

  “The baby’s with Haley,” he said, looking truly puzzled.

  “Yeah, but where? And why?” I stepped into the hall, forcing him backward.

  “That is not your business,” Peter said. “Is it?”

  “It’s as much mine as it is yours. I’m as much Emma’s daddy as you are.”

  For the first time I’d seen, the Russian red drained from Biletnikov’s cheeks. He backed three steps into his great room a
nd plopped to a hassock, hitting it mostly by luck.

  I let him stew.

  He sat there a good long while. Elbows on thighs, face hidden in hands. “Rinn told you,” he finally said. “A secret like that … I knew it would come out.”

  “It’s worse than you think,” I said. “Gus wasn’t the father either.”

  That popped his face from his hands. “Of course he was.”

  I squatted to set my face level with his. “No. And deep down, I think you knew it. There’s an ugly suspicion in an ugly corner of your ugly brain. So you tell me. Say the ugly suspicion.”

  He said nothing.

  Was I savoring this?

  Yeah.

  Did I like myself for savoring it?

  No.

  Biletnikov was dripping silent tears now, refusing to meet my gaze like a dog that’d peed on the rug.

  Still haunch-squatting, I reached for his chin with my left hand. I squeezed the chin, but only a little. I turned his face to mine. “Say it. Say it out loud.”

  “Puh-Puh-Pundo.”

  I nodded. May have smiled some, too. I let go his chin and rose, ignoring the pops from both knees.

  “He was so…” Biletnikov said. “He exuded this … I took her there. To his club. I introduced them, dammit. Dear God, the look on her face when he joined us at the table, when he invited us to the after-party. The pair of them could have gone at it then and there.”

  Peter Biletnikov began to really cry then.

  I let him.

  What else was I supposed to do?

  The wristwatch magazine had tripped something lousy in me. I’d decided to destroy him. To strip him naked.

  And I had.

  And it didn’t feel good at all.

  It felt awful.

  I gave him maybe three minutes to blubber. Then I said, “Pull yourself together.”

  Blubber blubber.

  “Tell me about the shotguns.”

  He used his shirt to wipe his face. “What about them?”

  “A matched set, right? Made by some crazy little Czech?”

  “How did you know this?”

  I ignored that. “Why the crazy Czech? I know Rinn was jerking you around, making you buy everything in pairs. But why not just get a couple of nice Benellis or Purdeys?”

  “The best of everything.” He had the thousand-yard stare now, looking at nothing, speaking in a hollow voice. “That was our watchword. My watchword. I heard about the Czech from hunting friends. The guns cost a hundred thousand apiece, and getting them here cost another quarter of that.”