[2010] The Violet Hour

by Daniel Judson

  Cal spotted an ashtray on the beside table, stepped to it. He picked it up—it was a heavy, ornate thing, made of thick, amber-colored glass—and placed it on the bed next to Lebell, angling it so his friend could get to it with a minimum of effort. It was obvious that even the smallest movement caused Lebell tremendous pain.

  “Thanks, man,” Lebell said.

  He took a long drag, let the smoke out. It lingered between them briefly, then trailed upward in ghostly, shifting ribbons.

  “Since when do you smoke?” Cal asked.

  “It’s been a while. Cigarettes make good aspirin. I read that in a book once.”

  Cal thought of the morphine under the floorboard in his closet, considered offering to get it but held off.

  “So,” Lebell said, “I’m curious. How exactly did you get out of protective custody?”

  Cal was taken aback a little. “How do you know about that?”

  “Angel knows the chief of police. When I was able to, I asked her to have him send a cop to watch the garage. He said he’d arrange it, and then he called back and said you were already under guard. You and two women.”

  Cal nodded. “Heather and her sister,” he offered.

  Lebell smiled. “Building yourself quite the harem there, Cal. Sheikh Rakowski. It has a nice ring to it.”

  “Why did you try to send a cop to watch the garage?”

  “Just in case in the person who came after me decided to come after you. Which she has, it looks like.”

  “She?”

  “Yeah. Women, you know. Can’t live with them.”

  Cal glanced at the bloodied bandages again. “How did you know she’s after me?”

  “She called the garage, didn’t she?”

  “You know about that?”

  “Like I said, Angel knows the chief. She’s done a lot of charity work for them over the years.”

  “This is her place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She lives here all alone?”

  “Her husband died a few years ago.”

  “And how do you know her?”

  “She’s not one of mine,” Lebell said, “if that’s what you’re asking. She used to ... go around with my father. After my mother died.”

  “What do you mean, ‘go around’?”

  “Let’s just say she’s come a long way from the West Side. She was a kid, she was poor, there were only one or two ways for someone like her to make money. Do the math.”

  Cal immediately understood. If he hadn’t gone to Shelter Island the night before, hadn’t seen what he’d seen and heard what he’d heard, it might have taken him a bit longer.

  “Everyone’s got a past, Cal. That’s hers. She’s done well for herself since, and that’s what matters, don’t you think?”

  Before Cal could say anything to that, or even think about it, Lebell said, “Listen, I need to ask you some things, okay? Things we couldn’t ask the chief.”

  It was then that Cal remembered his reason for having come here. “I need you to tell me something first,” he said.

  Lebell nodded. “Okay.”

  “I need you to tell me how you got Heather’s phone number. Because I don’t remember giving it to you, and it was supposed to be secret.”

  By Lebell’s reaction it was obvious this wasn’t at all what he had been expecting to be asked. He seemed relieved, even smiled briefly. “I found it in your wallet one night, on a slip of paper,” he said.

  “What were you doing in my wallet?”

  “It was a Friday night. We were out, and it was your turn to buy a round. You were off talking to some woman, so I called over to you, told you to pony up. Your jacket was on the stool next to me, and your wallet was inside. You told me to grab the money out of it.”

  Cal actually remembered that night. It was a week, maybe two, after Heather’s arrival. He remembered the lack of interest he’d felt for the girl he was talking to. Sitting with her, half-listening to her, he couldn’t stop thinking of Heather back at his place, alone.

  A small amount of anger pulled him from that memory.

  “And you just happened to memorize her number?” he said.

  “A moment of weakness.” Lebell waited, then said, simply, “She’s hot.”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “She won’t always be.” He shrugged. “Like I said, it was a moment of weakness. I’m sorry, bro.”

  Cal said nothing. The trace of anger—foolish anger, a blind reaction of the male ego—was leaving him.

  “Anyway,” Lebell said, “it was a good thing I did since you weren’t at the garage. Even if you were, that line wasn’t safe anymore, according to the chief.”

  Call nodded. If he had gotten rid of that phone like Heather had told him to ...

  “What do you need to know?” he asked.

  “The chief said an FBI agent named Tierno talked to you. What did he tell you?”

  “That your name used to be Militich, and that before that it was Militovich. That you used to dispose of dead bodies for a man named Cleary, who you testified against and sent to prison for hiring someone to kill your father.”

  “What else?”

  “That you ditched the Witness Protection Program and came out here.” Cal paused. “Is that true?”

  “Yeah. Well, most of it is, anyway.”

  “Which part isn’t?”

  “Cleary didn’t hire anyone to kill my father.”

  Cal needed a moment. “I don’t understand. Tierno said someone confessed to it.”

  Because of the cut along his stomach, Lebell could only breathe shallowly. Talking had left him winded, and he paused to catch his breath.

  “I only ever disposed of bodies,” he said finally. “I want you to know that. I didn’t have anything to do with killing. I drew the line there, and I got out before it became time for me to cross it.”

  It seemed to matter to Lebell that Cal understood this. It didn’t, however, ease Cal’s confusion.

  “I’m not sure I’m following. If Cleary didn’t kill your father, then why’d you say he did?”

  “Because that’s what I was told to say.”

  “By who?”

  “A man named Janssen.” Lebell watched Cal’s reaction. “Did Tierno by any chance mention that name?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think he would.”

  “I’m still not following,” Cal said. He heard impatience in his voice.

  “Maybe you should sit down, Cal.”

  There was a chair in the corner—an antique, like everything else in this place. Cal pulled it close to the bed. Sitting down, he leaned close and waited.

  Lebell’s cigarette was done. He removed and lit another.

  “Do you know what a fixer is?” he said.

  Cal shook his head.

  “He brings people together. People who need certain things done but can’t get their hands dirty, and people who don’t mind getting their hands dirty as long as the money is right. He’s a buffer for both parties.”

  “This Janssen guy’s a fixer?”

  “He’s the fixer. He does work for everyone from big corporations to organized crime to government officials. With officials it’s usually in exchange for some kind of favor or special treatment. As far as everyone else goes, as long as they can afford him, he’ll take care of what they need. He started out as an international lawyer but realized soon enough that he could make a killing by killing, if that’s what the job required. The person who tried to kill me works for him.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I made it a point once to find out everything I could about him. Word was he had this woman that he found somewhere. No one’s sure where. He took her in, spent years building her up, training her. Now she’s his own private assassin. No one has ever seen her—well, no one who lived to talk about it.”

  “Except for you.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded, took another drag from his cigarette. “It turns out she was
all done up in this disguise. A wig and all that. I was too drunk to notice when I sat down next to her. Or maybe I did but just didn’t care.”

  “So why is this Janssen guy after you?”

  “A few years ago he convinced me to testify against Cleary.”

  “Wait you just said Cleary didn’t kill your father.”

  “He didn’t. Cleary and my father were like brothers. Cleary was like an uncle to me. But Janssen was ... very convincing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have to understand, I wanted out. Out of that life, the city, that whole ... family thing. It was ... rotten, but it was all I ever knew—my father and my uncle and men just like them, these were the people I grow up around. Janssen said that if I testified, I’d get a new life, not to mention immunity for everything I’d done. A fresh start, you know.”

  “How could Janssen offer you immunity?”

  “He couldn’t—but the man who had hired him could.”

  It took Cal a moment.

  “Tierno?”

  Lebell nodded. “There was a guy who was in prison already, for life. He had agreed to confess that he had been hired by Cleary. If he didn’t, his family would have been killed. That’s how Janssen works. He finds your weakest spot and fucks with it. All I had to do was testify that I saw this guy murder my father and I’d be free. It didn’t really matter to me that the man I had called Uncle Donny my whole life went to prison for something he had nothing to do with. He had killed so many people—not just killed but tortured. I mean, sick shit. Anyway, he had made it clear after my father died that he wanted me to do start doing more. ‘Gonna have to start pulling your weight’, he kept saying. He wanted to promote me to killer. There was no way I was going to do that. No way.”

  “But why would Tierno hire a guy like Janssen? I mean, he’s the fucking FBI. It doesn’t get more powerful than that, right? My father used to live in fear of them.”

  “Tierno had made a career out of rounding up the Westies, was determined to get the last of them. He’d become obsessed with my uncle, got close to nailing him a few times, but the guy always slipped away—and slipped him the finger as he did. It became a whole thing between the two of them.” He paused, caught his breath, then said, “Listen, Cal, I’ve known a lot of corrupt men in my life. Half of them, at least, carried some kind of badge or another.”

  “Why did you ditch on the Witness Protection Program?”

  “I started to feel like a sitting duck. I kept catching myself looking over my shoulder everywhere I went, jumping at shadows. At my own shadow. It’s no way to live, man, let me tell you. I started going nuts—I mean crazy, you know, Howard Hughes crazy.”

  “You were protected, though. What were you afraid of?”

  “A man like Janssen—a man with resources and list of powerful clients—has a long reach.”

  “But you testified the way he wanted they you to. Why would he come after you?”

  “My father told me something a long time ago,” Lebell said. ‘“Don’t enter into any deal without first knowing a way out of it.’”

  Cal waited for him to elaborate.

  “I had two face-to-face meetings with Janssen. I managed to record one of them, the second one, where he’s coaching me to commit per jury.”

  “How?”

  “My buddy Pearson wasn’t only good at making false IDs. He was a whiz at surveillance, at the tech stuff. He was one of those natural mechanical geniuses, kind of like you.”

  Cal hesitated, then said, “Did the chief tell you? About what happened to him?”

  Lebell nodded. “Yeah. It’s hard to think about, the things they probably did to him to get him to talk. It’s hard to think of my friend being put through that because of me. That’s why I had Angel call the chief.”

  “Is that why Janssen’s trying to kill you? Because you made recordings?”

  “No. He doesn’t even know about them. Neither does Tierno. I tried to tell that fucking bitch of his, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  “If he doesn’t know, then why did he come after you?”

  “Janssen is retiring. The word was he was going around tying up certain ... loose ends. People who know too much, people who have crossed him. I didn’t know if I was on his hit list or not, but I didn’t really want to sit around and find out the hard way, you know. The funny thing is, it might actually have been my ditching that put me on his list, made him think of me as a threat. But like I said, I couldn’t just sit there, jumping at my own shadow.”

  Cal thought about that, nodding. Lebell took a few more drags on his cigarette.

  “So what do we do now?” Cal said eventually.

  “The chief said Tierno and a detective named Messing interviewed you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know him at all? The detective, I mean.”

  “Kind of.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He had been assigned to my brother’s case.”

  Lebell, of course, knew the story. As much as he guarded his own past, he was still interested in Cal’s.

  “Do you think maybe he’ll help us?” Lebell said.

  “How?”

  “If I can prove to him that Tierno is in on this, maybe he’ll agree to do something for us.”

  “How are you going to do that? The tapes?”

  “No, they only incriminate Janssen. My guess is Janssen got my new identification from Pearson and then passed it on to Tierno. The chief said Messing reported that Tierno was at my apartment within about a half hour.”

  “So?”

  “Tierno lives and works in the city, Cal. His unit is in Manhattan. He just happened to be out here, a half hour from my apartment, the night after Janssen tried to kill me.”

  Cal said nothing.

  “According to the chief, he got a call from Tierno two weeks ago—the day, in fact, after Pearson was killed. Tierno asked the chief if he would mind keeping an eye out for a fugitive. He gave the chief all my names, which is why they ran my prints so fast. When the name Militich was kicked out, Messing called Tierno.”

  “How did Tierno know you were out here?”

  “I told Pearson where I was going. I didn’t tell him why, thank God.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I came out here because Angel was out here. She helped me find my apartment, tipped me off to Carver, that his garage might be a good place for me to find off-the-books work. If I had told Pearson that, Janssen would have found me a whole lot sooner.”

  Cal thought about that. It reminded him, of course, of the woman he needed to protect—not that he needed to be reminded of her.

  “What could Messing do to help?”

  “Assuming he’s not in on it, it would be safe to meet with him. He could get a message back to Janssen through Tierno, let Janssen know that I have evidence and that it’ll be made public if anything were to happen to me.”

  “What will that do?”

  “Give Janssen a reason to back off, for the time being, anyway. Long enough, I hope, for me to get on my feet again and get the hell out of here. I can’t really travel far the way I am.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that the people I leave behind are safe. Do you understand?”

  Cal nodded.

  “If your detective friend tells Janssen that I’m leaving town and that no one knows where I went or how to get in touch with me, he’ll have no reason to come after Angel or you or Heather or anyone. He’ll have every reason, in fact, to just let me live. As long as I’m alive, he has nothing to worry about.”

  “Do you think Messing will do that?”

  “Like I said, if he isn’t in on it, and if I can get him to believe me, yeah. If he is in on it, he’ll still pass the message along. Either way, it should buy me the time I need.”

  Cal considered all that. He looked again at Lebell’s wounds.

  “So what exactly do we do?”
r />   “Do you know how to get in touch with Messing?”

  “Yeah.” Cal reached into his pocket and pulled out the detective’s business card.

  “I need you to set up a meeting with him.”

  “For when?”

  “As soon as possible. Will you do that?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “We’re going to have to take some precautions first.”

  “What kind of precautions?”

  Lebell took a final drag on his cigarette. He had smoked it down to the filter. Stubbing it out in the ornate ashtray, he said, “You need to know that Janssen is a monster, Cal. He’s the fucking Antichrist. I need to know you understand that going in.”

  Cal nodded. “I do.”

  “So you’ll help me.”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “Good. Because I don’t want what I have to tell you next to be mistaken for me manipulating you. I’m not saying it to scare you into helping, I’m just stating it because it’s a fact you need to know and it’ll help you understand everything that’s at stake here.”

  “Okay. Yeah. What is it?”

  “One local cop sitting outside of a motel room won’t stop Janssen. It won’t stop that bitch who works for him, either. Not for long, anyway. We need to make our move, and we need to make it now. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Cal quickly entered Heather’s new number into her old phone. He had stepped outside the gatehouse, was standing on the white stone driveway; Angelica had come back, and the fewer specifics she knew, Lebell had told them, the better for her.

  Not a lot of time, Cal said to Heather, so please listen. He needed her and Amanda to get out of there, to go somewhere else, and he couldn’t know where. Certain precautions, I’ll explain later. They’d have to go out the bathroom window, just like he had, and because of Heather’s condition—pregnant, wrist in a cast—Amanda should go through first and then help her sister down. After that, they should get to the train station and call a cab from the pay phone there—that cabbie friend of hers, and make sure the driver doesn’t keep a record of where he takes them. Jesus, Cal. He ignored that, told her once she got to the train station to text him so he knew she made it that far, and then call him once she got to the safe place. If he didn’t answer, she shouldn’t leave a message; he’d call back as soon as he could. Wait for his call, don’t call him again.