Chapter 22
“I’ll wait up.”
“No,” Mitch told her, “go on to bed.”
“You won’t be long.”
“I may be a while.” He was in the Lexus talking to her on the no-hands cellular. It was like she was a mid-air spirit.
“No matter, I’ll wait up. I’ll listen to something. One of those Dashiell Hammetts you got me.”
“I thought you’d already heard those.”
“Why are you still in the car?”
“I’m just sitting here.”
“I don’t like tonight,” she said.
“Got the jeebies?” One of her resurrected words. She had others such as nifty and hunky-dory.
“Some,” she said vaguely, and then, more pointedly: “I felt around in your bottom drawer.”
“Oh?”
“You took the Beretta. You should have taken the Glock. And you didn’t take a spare clip. Why did you take the Beretta?” Rapid firing at him.
“No particular reason. Just in case.”
“Nine to five should be enough. I want you home nights.”
“I usually am.”
“This is the second night out of four that you’ve been out. We should find you a nice, safe nine-to-fiver. Even better, how about a sleep-til-nooner?”
“Sure.”
“Sex and sloth. Doesn’t that appeal to you?”
“I have to make a living Maddie.”
“Same old same old. When should I expect you?”
“Go to sleep.”
“Can’t. I’m wired. You should have taken a spare clip. You should have taken the Glock. Where are you?”
“New Rochelle.”
“Hurley called a while ago.”
“What did he say?”
“He’ll be back in town tomorrow.”
Mitch had spoken to Hurley on the phone around dinnertime. He’d told him about Peaches, the Kalali earrings and all, and Hurley had agreed with him on which crew and which fence was involved. Hurley had made him promise to put himself on hold, to wait, not make a move until he got back. Hurley had been adamant about that, so much so he’d drawn that promise out of Mitch three times during the course of their phone conversation.
For naught. Mitch couldn’t possibly wait, knew he couldn’t, gave it a halfhearted try and was still trying when he changed into some jeans and sneakers, and strapped on the holster rig for the Beretta next to his bare skin so the weapon would be out of sight beneath a lightweight chambray shirt. “Where did you tell Hurley I was?”
“Out. Just out. What else could I tell him? I didn’t know where you were and now all I know is New Rochelle, which you’ve got to admit isn’t very specific. Are you hungry?”
“No.” She’d made fresh gaspacho for dinner and had unintentionally inundated it with cayenne. “I had two helpings,” he fibbed. They’d gone down the disposal.
“Did you now?” she said skeptically.
“I could have gone for three.”
“Still, anytime you’re out adventuring, you ought to carry along a snack. So you don’t get low blood sugar. Low blood sugar could be a fatal handicap.”
Fatal, he thought, indicated where her mind was. “You have to give some lessons tomorrow, don’t you?”
“One. I did have two but Georgie Watson had to cancel.”
“Which is he?”
“The three-card monte kid who works on that cardboard box outside Winston’s. He showed me how he does it. It’s just a way of lying with your hands. Know the difference between lying and fibbing?”
“Yeah, but what?”
“Mercy.”
“I would have said consideration.”
“Same thing, sort of. Do you ever lie to me with your hands?”
“Never.”
“I love you, come on home.”
“I will in a while.”
“Whatever it is you’re doing it’s not worth it.”
“Not to you maybe.”
“Worth was the wrong word,” she said a bit apologetically. “What I meant to say was it’s not essential.”
No comment from Mitch.
“Seriously, have you given any thought lately to not doing what you do?”
“And becoming a shopkeeper?”
“No, I agree you’re not the shopkeeping sort. We could travel. We could go lots of lovely places and you could describe them to me. You know, like you did when we went to Florence.”
“Think so?”
“You weren’t reading from a guidebook when we were in Florence, were you?”
“You asked me that at the time and I believe I told you I wasn’t.”
“I know, but sometimes, not often, but sometimes when I ask you the same thing twice you give me different answers.”
“Can’t put anything over on you.”
“Except yourself.”
Mitch tried to imagine what that would be like, just traveling around, going anywhere first-class with first-class her. Maybe he’d do it if he had the money, that much.
“You ought to see what I have on,” she said.
“Nothing?”
“Uh uh. A little silk something and four-inch heels. A little silk something is more effective than nothing. Especially with four-inch heels, wouldn’t you say?”
Effective, he thought.
“It wouldn’t take you long to get home. I could be doing sensational things to you only a half hour from now.”
“Stop worrying.”
“I’m not. I know you can take care of yourself, no matter what.”
“Keep thinking that.”
“I’ll try. You’re on the Kalali case, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“I wish you were just out playing poker. I’d even settle for out playing around,” she said and clicked off without a goodbye because, as usual, when it came to them, she disliked the word.
Mitch was parked off the corner of Paine Avenue where it intersected with Lyncroft. Ralph Lentini’s house was diagonally across the way. There were no streetlights; however Mitch was able to see the house well enough.
Two stories topped by a shorter third and a wood-shingled roof that looked as though wind, with the help of rot, had made off with more than a few. Around the base of the structure scraggly, slighted rhododendrons were expressing their discontent, and along the property lines on each side were wild-looking twelve-foot-high boxwood hedges. On the right was a double-width concrete driveway.
Mitch had been parked there for nearly an hour and nothing about the house had changed. On the first floor there was still only one paltry light on, which Mitch guessed was a hall light, and there was still the variegated flickering of a television screen reflected upon a wall of the second-floor front room that Mitch believed was most likely a bedroom.
He’d decided not to make a move until there was a change, something that would tell him more definitely what the situation was. He had to contend with his impatience, told it to hang on, that this wasn’t ordinary, wasteful wait, the difference being it had a high degree of anticipation in it, as well as imminent reward.
He punched in the CD player. Of the eight-disc load the most compatible with the moment was a rendition of composer Carl Maria von Weber’s romantic concerto Konzertstück for piano and orchestra. Mitch was well-acquainted with the piece and its four movements: a lady’s longing for her absent love, her fears for his safety, the excitement of his impending return and the passion of reunion.
A car went by, and, five minutes later, another, then a huffing, overdoing, middle-aged jogger and a woman walking a brace of pugs to all their pissing places.
Mitch fast-forwarded the Weber to the last movement. Wait was getting to him. He felt to see that he had his all-purpose knife, and his tiny waterproof Mag Lite. He made sure his sneaker laces were tied. He checked that he had a round in the firing chamber of the Beretta.
He took the Beretta off safety, snugged it back into its holster. It felt reassuring.
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br /> He got out of the car. It was good to stand. He walked to the corner and down Paine at a strolling pace, hands in the back jean pockets. There were no sidewalks. He crossed over and after a short ways was directly in front of Lentini’s house. From that vantage the television was reflecting on the ceiling in that upper room. Maybe Ralph was up there asleep with the television on. Maybe he’d gone out and left it on, Mitch thought. There were various maybes.
He went up the drive. The grass at the rear of the house was high, dry and gone to seed. There was a swimming pool enclosed by a five-foot-high steel wire fence and a shed that Mitch surmised contained the pool heater, filter and maintenance equipment. The pool looked like a rectangular swamp. Its surface was coated with green scum. Algae upon algae. The smell of organic decay reached out beyond its boundaries.
Mitch surveyed the back of the house. Ground floor left to right: two-car garage, rear entrance, cellar door, window, window, two bay windows, glass-enclosed porch. Second floor right to left: balcony above the porch, window, window, six more windows, balcony over the garage.
He was looking at the house for a way in, as would a swift. He was a swift. A stealer. Out to steal from the stealers. Wasn’t this the reason he enjoyed what he did, moments such as now? Wasn’t this why he was reluctant to give it up, this more fitting and fulfilling payback for the lady with the automatic up her sable sleeve? His secret heart fed on it, was eating it up now at a hundred and twenty a minute.
He tried the rear door, the windows, the cellar door and the door to the porch. He didn’t expect it to be that easy but sometimes people were careless and forgetful.
Not Ralph, though.
How about the second-story windows? People rarely locked their second-story windows. As though that much height was protective. Considering Ralph’s profession he probably had his double-bolted and nailed shut, Mitch thought. Then again, maybe not. The only way to find out was to go up and try them. There was a rain gutter that would give him access. He’d be able to sidle along on it once he got up. There was a wisteria vine gone crazy at the corner of the garage. It would be an easy climb for a second-story man. He was a second-story man.
He’d chosen his first grip and made his first foot placement on the vine when the garage door started opening. An elongated rectangle of light struck the concrete turnaround section of the drive. It became wider, brighter as the electric door opener performed its noisy function.
Ralph started the Pontiac. As he backed it out, its headlights raked the foliage of the wisteria at the corner of the garage.
Mitch remained perfectly still. Ralph shifted out of reverse, reached up to the sun visor and pressed the garage door’s remote-control switch.
The door commenced its descent.
Ralph took it for granted, didn’t wait for the door to be entirely closed before he got under way down the drive.
Mitch realized the chance. He dove for it, rolled in under the descending door, just made it.
He lay there on the garage floor for a moment. The boast he’d heard over the years from so many swifts was true, he thought. There wasn’t a house, old or new, that couldn’t somehow be gotten into.
The first part of the house Mitch entered was a narrow utility area. Determined to be thorough and systematic, he reached down into the top-load clothes washer and felt around in the clothes dryer. Nothing. Nor in a dirty laundry bag was there anything but offensive socks and underwear and such. Across from the washer and dryer was an upright freezer. It contained numerous wrapped, labeled and frozen veal and pork roasts and an assortment of the cheapest sort of frozen complete dinners. Mitch examined a few of the roasts. They were all about equal size and felt about the same.
Possibly a certain two or three of them were layers of meat around a stuffing of jewels. Was that too much cleverness to expect? Mitch chose at random a couple of the frozen roasts, took them into the adjacent kitchen and placed them in the microwave on high.
He swiftly searched in the kitchen, the obvious places: cabinets, refrigerator, canisters, and the not so obvious, such as down in the belly of the waste disposal unit.
In the adjoining room, which was meant to serve as a dining room, he was made to realize what he was up against.
Ralph’s cumulate of swag …
Swag upon swag in front of swag beneath swag. The only way to get from room to room was to stay within the narrow aisles that cut through it.
It would be impossible for Mitch to search the many hiding places it presented. How could he determine which of the fifty or more television sets in sight contained the Kalali jewels in place of electronic guts? Which among the legion of vases and lamps and statues should he suspect?
Considerably disheartened he proceeded up the main stairs to the second floor. There was less of an amassment of swag up there but still far too much. Only what was evidently Ralph’s bedroom, the room in which earlier Mitch had seen television reflections, was reasonably furnished. Two cartons of VCR porno tapes at the foot of the bed. Precarious stacks of the same on top of two side-by-side giant-screen television sets. Could Ralph’s concentration handle two at a time? Under the bed only a pair of wayward panties, another pair shoved between the mattress and box spring. In the top dresser drawer about twenty wristwatches in a neat row, good gold ones, well-known makes, several with diamond bezels and numerals. On the bare floor of the next room a waist-high pile of fur coats with their labels and monograms cut out.
Mitch went up a short flight of lesser stairs to what evidently had once been servants’ quarters. Small rooms, low ceilings, one long-abandoned bath. Empty rooms except one, which contained a haphazard heap of luggage. An assortment of overnight bags, suitcases, valises, satchels. No street vendor rip-offs. These were the real expensive things. Vuitton, Hermés, Morabito, Bottega Veneta, Mark Cross and the like. Ralph’s swifts had, week after week, brought swag in them and he’d just thrown them in this room.
The many burglaries they represented, Mitch thought, the amount of jewelry and other precious things they had helped carry away. He happened to look down. There, practically at his feet, was a blue Fendi satchel stamped with the initials RK.
Roudabeth Kalali.
Mitch took up the satchel. Its emptiness taunted him. What had been brought in it was most likely still somewhere in this house, hidden among the overwhelming stolen. He hated the house. Ralph and it had beaten him.
A wipe of light, headlights.
Ralph had returned.
Mitch could hear the grind of the garage door, the car pulling in. What should he do? Try for the first floor and a door out? Go down a flight and out one of the windows? Now he heard Ralph in the main part of the house, Ralph and someone, their voices. They came up to the second floor and down the hall and into Ralph’s bedroom.
Ralph and a woman.
They were directly below.
Why, Mitch wondered, should he be overhearing them so clearly?
He spotted the register inset in the hardwood floor. Such registers were commonplace in older houses. Made of cast iron with a grille-like arrangement of adjustable louvers, their purpose was to allow heated air to rise from one level to another. An unadvertised convenience was they allowed a person in the upper room to view what might be taking place in the room below.
Mitch kneeled to the register. He saw it was located above Ralph’s unmade bed. By getting down closer to it he widened and improved his vantage.
They were undressing.
Ralph quickly, the woman just as much so. She had a face that appeared twice as old as her body, and considerably harder. Not a genuine blonde by any means. Her lower hair was dark and plentiful. Every sound she and Ralph made seemed to rise amplified: the unzipping, the slipping down and out of, the tumbling discard of shoes. It was apparent to Mitch that Ralph was anxious to get to it and the woman was anxious to get it done.
“You didn’t happen to find a barrette, did you?” she asked.
“A what?”
“
A barrette. You know, to hold my hair in place. I think I lost it here last time.”
“I ain’t seen nothing like that.”
“It was gold.”
“I would have noticed.”
“A nice one.”
An amused grunt from Ralph. “Next you’ll be telling me it was eighteen K.”
“Maybe it was,” she arched.
“You want I should put on a couple of helpers?”
“Whatever puffs your panties.”
Ralph inserted a porno film into each of the two VCRs at the foot of the bed.
The audio preceded the picture by several seconds, long enough for some moaning and a few yeses. Ralph turned off the sound. He got settled on the bed, adjusted a pillow, laced his fingers and placed his hands behind his head.
Ready to receive.
From Mitch’s point of view Ralph’s flaccid penis looked like a butchered chicken neck lying in a nest of steel wool. In another moment it was obscured by the woman’s head, which immediately started pistoning.
Ralph’s eyes began to glaze.
Mitch stopped watching, kneeled up, ignored the register. Now was a good time to leave, he thought. Any incidental noise he might make on his way out, such as a creak on the steps or whatever, wouldn’t be heard. No use staying here while some passé suburban hooker serviced a fat fence. He might as well forget tonight, go on home empty-handed.
Another, less pragmatic part of him insisted on having its say. It told him not yet, told him there was still a chance that he might overhear or see something that would aid his cause. This woman wasn’t about to stay all night. Ralph would be alone later. Maybe then, inadvertently or otherwise, he’d give away the hiding place. Stay there, Mitch, keep an eye on him.
Mitch returned his attention to the register and what was happening below.
The woman was still at it. And doing a lot of obligatory humming along with it to fake enjoyment.
Ralph’s eyes were shifting from porno to porno.
The woman stopped abruptly. She got up and lighted a cigarette. As though she had no intention of continuing, had gone on strike.
“What’re you doing?” Ralph asked, perturbed.
“Nothing.”
“Why’d you stop? I was right there, for Christ’s sake. Didn’t you know I was right there?”
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