The Wizard of Death

by Forrest, Richard;

  There was silence from the apartment interior, and then the door opened a crack. The young woman’s opaque eyes looked through the slim opening. “I don’t know where Junior is. Please leave me alone.”

  “Junior will be dead in hours unless you let us help,” Lyon said softly.

  “He can take care of himself.”

  “Hear me out, Mrs. Haney. May I call you Loyce?”

  “I suppose.”

  Lyon pushed on the door in a slow but persistent movement until it swung backward, and they stepped into the small apartment. Loyce Haney had changed into a blouse and skirt. The baby, still in the playpen, now wore a blue knit suit. He seemed puzzled by the whole affair. Past the kitchen area they could see into the bedroom. There was an open suitcase on the bed.

  “What about Junior?” Loyce asked, and then seeing their gaze toward the suitcase quickly said, “If Junior’s in trouble again, I’m leaving. I told him that if he did anything again, I would.”

  “He called you?”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  Lyon reached for her hand. Puzzled, she put it in his and he led her toward the couch, where they sat down together. Lyon turned toward her and spoke in a gentle voice. “You must trust me, Loyce.”

  “I—I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I think I do, and therefore it’s terribly important that you listen carefully.”

  “All right.” Her voice was low, almost plaintive.

  “Junior’s involved in something with people he can’t control. They paid him a good deal of money before the fact, twenty-five hundred, five thousand, and they promised him more.”

  She nodded.

  “As soon as we left here earlier, you called Junior and told him of our visit. He left the station, sold his bike for a ridiculous amount of money, and has gone somewhere. Somewhere nearby and called you, told you to pack, that someone would come for you and take you to him, and then the three of you would go off. But it won’t work that way. You must know that; they won’t let him leave. They won’t let you go with him. They are going to kill him, Loyce. I promise you that. He’s been in contact with them, and they will not allow him to live.”

  She took her hand from Lyon’s and pressed it against her cheek as her eyes stared into his. “Junior’s not a bad guy, he really isn’t.”

  “He’s in well over his head this time. Tell us where he is.”

  “He … he called me.”

  “I know he did. From where?”

  “I’m to meet him. He said a friend will give him money.”

  “Where?” Lyon asked softly.

  “In—in a bar. Al’s Place in Cyprus.”

  Lyon looked quickly toward Rocco, who was standing by the door. “About a ten-minute ride from here. We had better take her with us this time.”

  Al’s Place was scrunched between two small factories. Its front windows were almost gray with grime, and the neon beer signs cast strange patterns through the dirty glass. Rocco parked the car down the street, away from the sight lines from the bar’s interior.

  Loyce Haney, holding her baby, huddled in the rear seat as Lyon turned toward her. “Do you have a snapshot of Junior?”

  She pulled a small red wallet from her purse and handed it to Lyon. He unsnapped the clasp and flipped through the acetate photo covers until he came to one of a man astride a motorcycle. He held it up and she nodded.

  “Let’s go,” Rocco said after glancing at the snapshot.

  In the bar’s dim interior two old men huddled over short beers and stared blankly at the game show on the wall television set. The bartender looked at the newcomers expectantly and took his elbows off the bar. As their eyes adjusted to the dim light, they could see a small back room with high-backed booths.

  Junior Haney sat in the last booth and faced the door. His bottle of beer lay on its side and slowly rocked back and forth on the uneven table, dribbling small gushes of foam across the booth. As they walked toward him, his hands gripped the edge of the table, and he looked at them with blank eyes.

  As Rocco strode ahead and put his hand on his shoulder, Junior slipped sideways until his head thunked against the wall. This movement revealed the knife hilt protruding from his abdomen.

  “Rainbow,” Junior mumbled as blood frothed from his mouth.

  5

  “He’s dead,” Rocco said as he slipped the service revolver from its holster, sprang toward the rear doors and disappeared outside.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” The bartender stood at the entrance to the back room, glaring at Lyon.

  “Who or what is Rainbow?” Lyon snapped.

  “What in hell you talking about? What’s with the guy in the booth?”

  “Who was back here? A few minutes ago, who was back here with him?”

  “He looks sick or something.”

  “Answer my question, damn it!”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see nobody. Sometimes guys come in the back door.”

  Rocco came through the front door, still holding the revolver. “The streets and alleys are deserted. We must have missed him by minutes.” He went behind the bar and began to dial the phone rapidly. “I’m calling the locals.”

  “Hey, that phone is private,” the bartender said.

  “You didn’t see anyone with that man in the booth?”

  “I told the other guy, no. Hey, this guy is dead.”

  “Yes,” Lyon replied. “He’s dead.” He walked from the bar and down the street toward the cruiser. Loyce Haney looked up at him with wide eyes.

  “Too late?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry.”

  In the subdued senate chamber with its semicircle of mahogany desks, Senator Norton, from a district along the shore, was giving an interminable speech about the need for protection of the state’s few remaining lobster beds. For the first time, Bea Wentworth found herself impatient with an ecological problem. She didn’t really give a damn; she was too worried. Possessing one distinct advantage over the other thirty-five state senators, she reached up to her ear and turned off the hearing aid.

  A few minutes earlier they had taken the first vote on her gun-legislation rider: ten for, nineteen against, four voting present and three absent. The speaking senator’s voice had faded to an indistinct hum, a true blessing, and she tried to concentrate on a list of votes for the gun bill that might allow a solution for carrying it.

  She found it difficult even to concentrate on her own bill. Her palms were perspiring; her heartbeat had increased. She knew she was suffering from anxiety. How did national leaders, some who seemed to exist under the daily threat of assassination, continue to function with any degree of efficiency? She was safe here—the sergeant-at-arms at the door, state police throughout the building, her own private cop by the grace of Rocco Herbert. She had nothing to worry about; she must put fear aside.

  The hand on her shoulder made her start and almost fall from the seat.

  A folded note was discreetly placed beside her arm.

  IN THE HALL. WHEN YOU’RE FREE. LYON.

  Bea slipped from her desk, crossed the carpeting of the sedate senate chamber and went into the baroque corridor. Lyon was leaning against a marble pillar midway down the hall. She walked toward him with a smile, waving at the young Murphysville police officer who was flirting with the coffee-wagon girl.

  Lyon kissed Bea and held her hand as the police officer moved to her side. The three of them stood as a triumvirate at the balustrade under the dome.

  “Lyon, this is Patrolman Jamie Martin. Rocco has asked him to accompany me.”

  “How are you?” Lyon asked and shook the young officer’s hand. Oh, Lord, he thought. His wife protected by an adolescent with six weeks’ experience. If anything happened, they’d be lucky if he didn’t shoot himself in the foot—that is, if Rocco had let him have bullets for his gun.

  “Fine, sir. I want you to know that I’m looking after Mrs. Wentworth real good.”

  �
�That’s fine,” Lyon said. “But I’d like to talk to my wife. Shouldn’t you be looking for killers or something?”

  The officer looked embarrassed and stepped back. “Of course.” He walked a few feet away and began to peer suspiciously around the marble hallway.

  “Somehow Jamie Martin doesn’t give me a real sense of security,” Bea said.

  “I suppose it’s the best Rocco could do. How many men can you yank off traffic duty?”

  “Did you have any luck? This not knowing is driving me up a wall.”

  “We found him.”

  “Oh, Lyon, that’s great. Who is he?”

  “A fellow named Junior Haney, like the computer indicated. Just a young hood.”

  “Why me? What did he say?”

  “Well, he didn’t exactly say very much.”

  “I can’t tell you how much better I feel. Do you have enough for Rocco to arrest him?”

  “We’ve traced a rental van to him and a borrowed trail bike. Rocco’s making a cast of the trail bike tires now; at first glance they seem to resemble the tire prints found behind the church.”

  “Then it definitely is him?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he won’t say anything?”

  Lyon took his wife’s arm. “He said something. Let’s get a cup of coffee.”

  “WHO THE HELL IS RAINBOW? WHAT IS RAINBOW?” Bea spilled coffee as she leaned across the small cafeteria table.

  “We don’t know.”

  “His wife must know something.”

  “They’ve been interrogating her for hours. She doesn’t seem to know anything more than the fact that her husband came into money. Junior spent a great deal of time away from home, either at his motorcycle club, or just out and about. We’ve also found out that he took time off from work the day of the murder.”

  “Then he was obviously hired by this Rainbow.”

  “Yes. Will you have sugar, Officer Martin?”

  “Right.”

  “Oh, Lord. Here comes you know who,” Bea said.

  They all turned to see Senator Mackay approaching their table with a wide smile. He gave a perfunctory wave to Lyon and sat in a chair close to Bea.

  “They told me you’d be here, Senator Wentworth.”

  “I have enemies everywhere.”

  “There’s still time for us to get together before the convention.”

  “A rather close but reliable source informs me that your feelings can be summed up by ‘That broad’s got to go.’”

  “A figure of speech, Senator. Many diverse political animals have learned to cooperate.”

  Bea leaned forward and spoke in a low and intense voice. “Ted, I enjoy politics, but if I were defeated tomorrow, my life would not come to an end. And if it meant my defeat, I would not vote for you or encourage others to vote for you. We need men of vision, not opportunists.”

  Ted Mackay stood and smiled fixedly down at Bea. “Senator Wentworth, you’re going to regret that.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Take it as you will.”

  Ted Mackay strode from the small cafeteria, his body turning from side to side as he waved at other diners.

  Lyon stood at the kitchen window and looked toward the rear of the house, where a police officer, a rifle cradled in his arms, walked slowly back and forth along the patio. He shook his head sadly.

  “What’s the matter?” Bea asked from the cutting board next to the stove.

  “It’s a hell of a way to live—guards at the door, a pistol in the desk.”

  “I feel better with them out there.”

  “I suppose.” He kept to himself the knowledge that Rocco could maintain the guards for only another seven days, that already he was under pressure from the board of selectmen over the cost. One of the members of the board, who discounted any conspiratorial theories of assassination, insisted that it was all a waste of time. Lyon knew that Rocco had squeezed the additional week only by threatening to resign.

  “You know, Lyon,” Bea said as she pointed a cucumber at him, “when this whole thing started, Rocco talked of our making a list of enemies.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  “There’s one man in this state who would head both our lists, one man who stood to gain the most if Llewyn and I were both dead.”

  “Ted Mackay.”

  “He’s ambitious enough, ruthlessly so … although I can’t conceive of Ted’s pulling the trigger.”

  “Junior was paid to pull the trigger.”

  “It amounts to the same thing.”

  “It might in your mind, but not in others’. Removal from the deed seems to salve certain consciences.”

  Her knife cut vehemently across the cucumber as pieces fell rapidly into the salad bowl. “If it’s not Ted, we’d have to assume that Junior was one of those outsiders, like most assassins. One of those skewed, unhappy, screwed-up people …”

  “He didn’t put a knife into his own stomach.”

  Bea looked at the knife she was holding. “I guess you’re right.” Absently, she began to toss the salad. “I forgot the tomatoes.” She crossed to the sink with a tomato in each hand, gave Lyon a playful poke in the side with her elbow, and began to run water over the vegetables.

  Rocco Herbert’s daughter, Remley, had brought the tomatoes over yesterday, and Lyon wondered how it was that Rocco always had the earliest tomatoes of the season.

  A hole surrounded by a spidery web of cracked glass appeared in the top pane of the window over the sink. Bea turned toward Lyon with a look of bewilderment.

  He stepped toward her. His movements in the still air seemed slow, tenuous, as if a dozen years elapsed while he traversed the five steps across the kitchen floor.

  A second hole appeared in the lower left quadrant of the window. A buzzing whir tore through the lower portion of his shirt sleeve. The kitchen clock on the far wall shattered as plaster dust spun through the room.

  Lyon lunged the final step, grasped Bea around the waist and, as they fell, twisted so that his body covered hers.

  A third shot pierced the window and ricocheted off the molding. He felt Bea squirm beneath him as he tried to count. “One thousand.” The distant sounds of the rifle shots echoed from the surrounding hills. It must have taken him a second to fling himself at Bea and fall to the floor, a total of two seconds. He tried to remember: muzzle velocity and the decrease of velocity over hundred-meter intervals. Two seconds, high muzzle velocity from a powerful rifle. He estimated speed at impact at 2,000 feet per second, perhaps a 3,200- or 3,500-feet-per-second muzzle velocity.

  The rifleman would be across the river in the cliffs along the far bank.

  Firing began from the patio outside the window. Jamie Martin was returning the shots.

  Lyon ran for the door and rushed out to the patio, where the young officer was kneeling by the parapet, firing across the river.

  “No, Jamie!” Lyon yelled.

  “I saw a muzzle flash, Mr. Wentworth.”

  “Stop it!” Lyon reached over and pulled the rifle from the officer’s grasp. “He could be anywhere over there. You want to kill some Boy Scouts?”

  “I saw a flash.”

  “The secret, Mr. Wentworth, is to let the shadow of the vermouth bottle fall across the gin.” Danny Nemo gently stirred the martini pitcher at the small bar in the corner of Dawkins’s Castle’s living room.

  “They look too good to pass up, Danny. Belay the sherry.” Lyon swiveled on the bar stool to look toward the fireplace, where Bea was talking animatedly with Wilkie Dawkins. Rocco Herbert left the group and crossed to Lyon.

  “When is this joker supposed to show up?”

  “Senator Mackay told me when I phoned that he’d be here by seven,” Danny Nemo replied.

  “It’s five past now.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be here shortly.” With a professional twist, Danny poured cocktails from the glass pitcher. As if sensing the completion of the bartending, Wilkie Dawkins and Bea came
toward the bar.

  “Superb as usual,” Wilkie said as he sipped his drink.

  “I keep in practice, Captain.”

  “How long till your leave, Danny?” Wilkie asked.

  “Another ten days, sir.”

  “Leave?” Lyon asked.

  “Right,” Wilkie replied. “Fifty weeks a year Danny is my legs, bartender and secretary. Two weeks a year he goes gambling and blows a year’s salary on the tables. Last year Monte Carlo, this year Vegas.”

  “That’s a leave for an ex-tennis player army non-com, Mr. Wentworth,” Danny said.

  “Do you ever win?” Bea asked.

  “Anything I win the broads seem to get.”

  “I usually wire him the return fare,” Wilkie said.

  “Are you sure Mackay is coming?”

  “He damn well better,” Dawkins replied. “I’m still his biggest contributor, and I carry a little weight on the state committee.”

  “I appreciate your help,” Lyon said.

  “It’s not really help. I want this whole matter cleared up. No accusations or innuendoes.”

  “We haven’t made any accusations.”

  “Someone shot at you today and you want to talk to Ted—I call that an innuendo.”

  “He wasn’t very cooperative when I called him; that’s why I came to you.”

  “I think there’s some sort of radical group involved here that has nothing to do with Ted.” Danny Nemo refilled their glasses as Wilkie pushed his wheelchair back from the group. “A hard-core dozen is all they’d need. Good Lord, how many did Castro have when he started? Hitler? Mao had six in his group during the early twenties.”

  “I hardly think that whoever’s behind this can be classified in that category,” Bea said.

  “Why not? So this group is at the far right of the spectrum instead of the far left. I’ve often suspected that the spectrum was circular anyway.”

  As the argument continued, Lyon tapped Rocco on the shoulder and motioned him to a corner of the living room. “What’s the report on the tire prints?”

  “Positive. The front tire of the trail bike Junior borrowed is a positive match with the cast we made at the church by the green.”