The Last Man to Die (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)
Page 22
“Lydia wanted the bones cremated, then,” I said.
“Right. She didn’t want any of the evidence left around, even if it was her own husband. Even if cremation was a custom, she found it hard to accept. The problem was the funeral home she used.”
I nodded. “They didn’t cremate them.”
“No. They faked the record, but we served a search warrant. Max was still there. Kelso told them to hold off the cremation—the bones were his hold on Lydia.”
“God help us,” I said. “Well, maybe Julius can find a place for him now, next to Lydia.”
“In the Goodfather plot?”
“Somewhere,” I breathed. “It’s better than a sandbar island.”
Mancuso dipped his head in acknowledgment. “I just wish we could lay hands on Noto. He was a big part of all this.”
“A sort of silent partner,” I agreed. “And they played out a little charade when Kelso took me to Tommy’s place. We went and saw Hoffman because nobody figured he knew anything, but he did. From somewhere out of the haze he lived in he dredged up the names of the men on Max’s list. But they still didn’t figure I’d be a danger until I turned up Idola Marsh. They didn’t realize she knew anything. Apparently, Lydia never told anybody that Idola had been with Max right before he left for the coast. For all they knew, she was just a name, the secretary at Max’s office. They didn’t know she was still alive. But once I talked to her she had to go.”
I was thinking of Tommy Noto in his wheelchair. He was beyond the reach of the law, but he was still mortal, just like the rest of us. It was small comfort.
“You think Kelso put a signal sender on your car before it was blown up?” the detective asked.
“That’s my guess. That way he could stay out of sight and then slip up and put the bomb under the trunk.”
“A little luck and he would’ve gotten you.”
My stomach was feeling queasy all of a sudden. I just wanted to sleep. Maybe, I thought, life would look better after some rest.
“Can you drop me at my place?” I asked.
Mancuso nodded. “Yeah.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “You look like shit. You still thinking about Max?”
“And the people he killed.”
“Right. It’s a bitch thinking of him making those poor bastards write out good-bye notes and call their families with bullshit stories. Well, it happened a long time ago. And, if it makes any difference, they weren’t any great loss.”
“I wasn’t thinking about them,” I said.
“Oh?”
I knew then it wouldn’t do any good to hold it back, that I was going to have to say it, anyway.
I closed my eyes. Max the reformer. Max the puritan. Max the man with the anger against the world …
“I just keep thinking about something Lydia said on the tape. I thought it was strange at the time. She said Idola told her that Max had accused Idola of causing Herb’s death.”
“Right.”
“It was Max’s car that blew up. Herb Junior told me that sometimes Max loaned his car to Herb and Idola for their jaunts. But it was clear to everybody that Max didn’t really approve.”
“But why would he accuse Idola?”
I took a deep breath. “What if there was so much guilt he had to lay it off on somebody else?”
A look of horror came over Mancuso’s face.
“You don’t think Max …?”
“Killed Herb? No. But he seems to have felt guilt about Herb’s dying. Maybe it was just survivor guilt. Maybe it was guilt for having been mad at Herb over Herb’s affair with Idola. But I keep remembering what Herb Junior told me: that Max was on the phone talking to a reporter when the bomb went off. He said the secretary would have been shredded if she’d been there, because her desk was next to the window. I asked him then if she could have had anything to do with it but he denied it and I believe it. No, I think Herb was on his way to pick up Idola, using Max’s car again.”
“But if you’re not saying Max planted the bomb …”
“What I’m wondering—and there’ll never be any way to know—is whether Max found the bomb and went inside to call the newspapers. It would’ve made a good story. In the meantime, Herb went out and got into the vehicle and the bomb went off. Could Max have stopped him? Was there a half-second’s delay while Max watched, phone in hand? Was there even something deep inside Max saying, ‘Let the adulterer take the consequences’? Maybe the guilt is what sent him over the edge.”
“But didn’t some small-time gangster get killed over it?”
“Yeah. But we don’t know Angelo Marconi’s killing was related; that was just popular supposition. Or maybe Silvano, the boss, thought Marconi really had done it and had him executed.”
“Well, there’s no way we’ll ever know.” Mancuso sighed. “Like you say, they’re all dead now.”
I saw my corner ahead and reached to unfasten my seat belt, but my muscles didn’t want to obey.
“You’re shaking,” Mancuso said. “You all right, man?”
“I’ll be okay,” I said. But I didn’t know if I would or not, because I was thinking about Max and how close I’d come, years ago.
Max the hero, one of the last casualties of the war. The last man to die …
He dropped me and I got out.
“So what’s the deal with the girl?” he asked.
“Last I saw she was holding hands with Sam,” I told him.
“Figures.” He pulled away and I hauled myself slowly up the steps to the empty apartment, stripped off my clothes, and fell onto the bed.
It was sometime minutes or hours later that I heard a movement in the room, next to me, but I was too tired to reach for the gun. The bed trembled slightly and then I felt flesh against mine.
I was dreaming. Katherine was back and everything was the way it was before. I was dreaming and I was too fatigued to fight the dream.
Lips brushed my neck and I shivered.
A voice whispered in my ear.
“She called me. She told me you needed me. I called you and called you but all I ever got was your machine, so I hung up. I took the first plane from Cancún and I came back.”
Katherine reached her arm out and looped it over me. I didn’t know if it was real or not, but it didn’t really matter. I put my hand on hers and slept.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1992 by Malcolm K. Shuman
Cover design by Michel Vrana
ISBN: 978-1-4976-5004-6
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