‘We should have never taken his money in the first place,’ Sinnott said. ‘And we should have never given Gillis ours.’
‘Fuck Gillis,’ Cross said, deflecting Sinnott’s implied accusation. ‘He got what he deserved.’
‘Maybe so. But he may get the last laugh yet. Jesus, Perry, why did they have to find his body so goddamn soon?’
‘Now or later, what’s the difference? They still have to ID it. And even then, what’s that to us? The asshole died of natural causes.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘Chill out. You sound like Andy. We’ve got enough to worry about without worrying about fucking Gillis.’
‘Andy?’
‘You think you’re a nervous wreck? I’ve been trying to talk him down off the ledge ever since you sent that email around about Gillis’s body being found. He’s convinced that guy he had the car accident with is going to do like Ben said and report it to the cops. What was his name? Roddick?’
‘Reddick. Joseph Reddick,’ Sinnott said.
‘I told him, so what if Reddick goes to the cops? They’ll take the report and forget about it. If they had some reason to believe Gillis was murdered, they might give a shit about some guy driving like an idiot near the spot where his body turned up. But Gillis wasn’t murdered.’
‘Not technically, no,’ Sinnott said. ‘But he died during the commission of a crime. A crime that we committed.’
‘And do the cops know that, Will?’
‘No. I mean, I don’t think they do.’
‘They don’t. There’s no way they could. Gillis’s body was clean, we didn’t leave a fucking mark on it. Even if the police knew the body was his – which they apparently don’t, at least not yet – they’d have no reason to suspect foul play.’
It was true. Aside from binding his hands and gagging him with duct tape, Sinnott and his friends had never subjected Rainey to any physical abuse that he could remember.
‘There’s nothing for them to think but that Gillis was just some poor schmuck off his meds who wandered down into the river and died,’ Cross said. ‘God knows, Andy could’ve picked a less conspicuous place to dump him, but he also could’ve chosen worse. We’re in the clear, Will. Believe me.’
Sinnott wanted to believe him. Oh, how he wanted to believe him. But Cross had established long ago that he was the last person in the world to trust in matters of risk assessment.
‘What does Ben say about it?’ Sinnott asked, but before Cross could answer, they heard something crash to the floor out in the hall.
Cross jumped to his feet, muttering, ‘Goddamnit,’ thinking Iris had finally taken her temper tantrum too far. But when he got to the door and peered out, there was nobody there. The only sign that someone had been was a shattered crystal flower vase, uprooted from its perch on a side table, spilling water and Dendrobium orchids across the hardwood floor.
‘Iris?’
Without his noticing, he realized now, she had grown abruptly silent. He went to the bedroom, found it empty. No clothes in the closet, no travel bags on the bed. He checked the rest of the condo. As near as he could tell, Iris was gone, along with anything that might have proven she’d once spent substantial time there.
Cross returned to the den, Sinnott watching him for clues, and flopped back into his original seat on the divan. He grabbed the TV remote, turned the game on again, and said, ‘Whatever.’
Iris hadn’t been standing outside the door of the den for long, but she’d been there just long enough to overhear more of Perry’s conversation with Will than either would have ever wanted to share. She’d gone to the den intending to leave Perry with a proper goodbye, only to flee his condo instead like a rabbit from a pack of hounds.
They’d murdered Gillis Rainey.
At least, that’s what it had sounded like to her. Or was she just reading something into their exchange that hadn’t really been there?
Will: He died during the commission of a crime. A crime that we committed.
Perry: Gillis’s body was clean. We didn’t leave a mark on it.
And Perry had gone on to say something about Andy Baumhower ‘dumping’ a body. What else could any of it mean but that the three of them – and in all likelihood, Ben Clarke, as well – had murdered this man Gillis Rainey? The same Gillis Rainey, no doubt, Perry had been cursing to hell for months now as a liar and a thief?
Iris was driving away from Perry’s condo, her foot heavy on the gas to put as much distance between herself and Cross as possible, when a sudden lurch of nausea forced her to pull the car over to the side of a freeway on-ramp. She got her door open just in time to avoid vomiting all over the leather seats of her Audi TT. A truck flying up the ramp barely missed shearing her door off and taking her head along with it, but she didn’t care. Right now, she had to wonder if she didn’t deserve to die, being such a fool as to fall in love with a piece of work like Perry Cross.
She had known he was narcissistic; he had proven that almost daily. And of course he could be cruel. Anyone as driven to succeed as Perry would have to be cruel, on some level. But capable of murder? She would never have imagined it. There should have been signs of such a terrible potential that, try as she might now, she couldn’t recall ever seeing.
Still, there was no denying what she’d heard. This man Rainey was dead, and Perry and his friends had murdered him. As revenge, Iris could only imagine, for refusing to pay them the $100,000 Perry claimed he owed them. One hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money by any reckoning, but it shouldn’t have been enough to drive men like these to such extremes. That it had could only mean that one or more of them was in some kind of serious financial trouble. Trouble that had to start with Perry. That was the only reasonable explanation for both Rainey’s murder and Perry’s forging her signature on a seventy-five hundred dollar check.
Tooling down the 405 freeway aimlessly, windows down to keep cool air blowing in her face, Iris went from shock to terror in less than a heartbeat. What if Perry and Will knew how much she’d overheard? She had tried to slip out of the condo without making a sound, but in her rush to back down the hallway, she’d knocked a vase full of flowers off a table on to the floor, where it exploded with what felt to her ears like a thundering crash. Surely, one of the two men in the playroom had heard the vase shatter and, finding her gone, put two and two together. What would they do now? If they were capable of killing Rainey, why would they not be just as capable of killing her to keep her quiet about it?
She thought about going to the police, but she didn’t entertain the idea for long. Thinking through the story she would have to tell, she realized how little there was to it. They would ask a million questions she had no answers to, along with one she did: Had Perry or Will actually used the word ‘murder’? No. Neither man had. Upon hearing this admission, the police would then wonder if she hadn’t simply misunderstood what she’d heard, or leapt to a wild conclusion unsupported by any facts. They would treat her like a crazy woman.
No. She couldn’t go to the police. But she couldn’t go home, either. Not until she knew, one way or the other, if what she suspected about Perry and his friends was true.
She drove through the night and contemplated her next move. Hours away from the realization that her wallet, and every piece of ID she owned, was still back in Perry’s condo where she’d left it.
THIRTEEN
Like Iris Mitchell, Andy Baumhower was afraid to go home.
He was also equally reluctant to talk to the police, though not for fear they would think he was crazy. He was afraid they would think he was guilty of murder, which, of course, he was. That and kidnapping, and now – thanks to Ben Clarke – attempted blackmail.
Clarke had found him this afternoon at the Woodland Hills offices of Baumhower’s limo service company, Prime Rides, Inc., and told him about his visit to Joseph Reddick’s home the day before. He’d made the confession like it wasn’t a confession at all, just a status report he was doing Baumhower
a favor by passing on.
Baumhower was stunned beyond all belief. The big oaf actually thought what he’d done was something to be proud of.
‘You stupid bastard,’ Baumhower had told him, barely able to exhale enough to speak. ‘Here we are accusing Perry of being out of his fucking mind, when it’s really you who’s certifiably insane.’
‘You better watch your mouth, little man,’ Clarke said.
‘What the fuck were you thinking? Reddick will go to the cops now for sure!’
‘Yeah? Then why aren’t they here talking to you instead of me? He’s had plenty of time to go to the cops if that’s what he’s gonna do, and he hasn’t. I’ve been out to his place and his wife’s a couple times already today and there ain’t a whiff of the police anywhere. Reddick’s a problem solved, Andy, because I fucking solved it.’
Baumhower wanted to call Cross immediately, but Clarke threatened to shove the phone up his ass if he dared try. ‘Don’t worry about Perry. I’m having dinner with him tonight, I’ll tell him then myself.’
‘And what the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime, Ben?’
‘Nothing. Behave normally. Keep your eyes open for the cops, and if they contact you, remain calm. Reddick can’t prove a fucking thing, Andy, and if he goes to the police, he won’t live long enough to even try.’
Baumhower blinked at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you think I mean? I told the man what I’d do if he opened his mouth and I wasn’t fucking around.’
‘Ben, for God’s sake—’
‘God ain’t got nothing to do with this. We’re all up to our necks in shit, man, and I for one ain’t going down without a fight.’
He wasn’t just talking; Baumhower could see that. He had always worried that Clarke’s barbaric tendencies would go too far someday, and it seemed that day had finally arrived. The man was prepared to kill three people, including a child, to spare himself a prison term, and he seemed to have no qualms about admitting it. If Baumhower had ever doubted before that the three friends to whose fortunes he had bound his own would someday lead to his total and complete destruction, he was no longer so misguided.
Now, in the wake of Clarke’s visit, Baumhower sat in his office like a figure chiseled in ice, so paralyzed by fear the mere thought of leaving his chair made his stomach turn. He picked up the phone twice to call Perry, despite all of Clarke’s warnings, only to put it down again, unable to imagine what Cross could possibly say or do to change anything. Baumhower could only hope that Clarke’s foolish gambit had, by some miracle, actually worked. His memory of Joseph Reddick was that of a man who would be difficult to rattle, somebody whose natural response to being threatened would not be fear but fury, but Clarke said he had a wife and child to consider, and that could make all the difference. Maybe, if Baumhower and his friends were lucky, Reddick cherished his family too much to risk doing anything that might result in their deaths at Clarke’s hand.
Maybe.
As the hours passed, and no calls or visits came from the police, Baumhower’s anxiety level slowly fell away. Reddick never left his thoughts for long but Baumhower became less and less convinced that the world would come crashing down upon his head any minute. He eventually left his office and, following Clarke’s advice, went about his business as normally as possible, an occasional glance over his shoulder the only outward sign of his diminishing paranoia. At the end of the day, dusk filling the sky black, he arrived at his ranch-style home in Chatsworth wary but unafraid, concerned for his safety only enough to check the street outside for police cars before pulling his Benz first into the drive and then the garage.
The garage door was almost fully closed behind him, the garage itself growing oddly dim, when he realized the overhead light was out. The door banged shut and he was plunged into total darkness. He hit the remote to open the door again but nothing happened; he could hear the sound of the opener’s motor running above his head but that was all. In a panic now, Baumhower threw open his car door, not intending to get out, but merely to bring the Benz’s interior lights to life . . .
. . . and had what felt like the hard, metallic nose of a gun pressed into the back of his skull, just above his left ear.
‘Make a sound and you’re dead. Any sound at all,’ Reddick said.
Baumhower knew it was Joe Reddick even before he spied his silhouette out of the corner of his eye, standing in the dark garage right beside him. His voice had the same ragged edge to it Baumhower had noticed six days ago out in Atwater Village, only tonight, it sounded a thousand times more sinister.
‘Please . . .’
‘That’s a sound. Shut your face or I kill you right here. Nod if you understand me.’
Baumhower nodded, fighting the urge to faint.
‘Slowly: Kill the engine, then get out of the car and into the house. Now,’ Reddick said.
Baumhower did as he was told, keeping his hands out to his sides to demonstrate how determined he was to cooperate. Reddick used the gun at the back of his head as a prod to steer him over to the door leading into the house, the one that was normally closed and locked but was standing open now. The idea that Reddick had already been inside his home, undeterred by the security system that should have detected his presence, added a whole new dimension to Baumhower’s fear and sense of violation. Who- or whatever Reddick was, he clearly had talents the average family man did not possess.
Reddick pushed Baumhower through his own home, beyond the kitchen off the garage, down the hall and into the spare bedroom Baumhower used as an office. The whole house was dark but Reddick was unfazed; he had obviously already staked the place out and knew the lay of the land. Terrified now, Baumhower was unable to hold his tongue any longer. ‘Please listen to me. If you’re here because of what happened to your wife and son—’
Reddick smashed the heel of his gun off the side of his head, knocking him to his knees. Baumhower brought a hand up, feeling for blood, and the tears he’d managed to hold off up to now filled his eyes.
‘You wanna talk? That’s good,’ Reddick said. He reached across Baumhower’s desk to turn on a small reading lamp, cutting the darkness only enough to cast them both in shadow. ‘Start talking.’
Baumhower blinked up at him, still on his knees, and got his first good look at Reddick’s gun and the right hand that was holding it. He was wearing surgical gloves, more evidence yet that he hadn’t come here just to talk.
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Start with a name for the asshole who broke into my home yesterday and go from there.’
‘I don’t—’
‘I’ve got no particular interest in torturing you, Mr Baumhower, but if you lie to me – just once – I promise you you’ll regret it.’
‘Ben Clarke,’ Baumhower said.
‘And who the hell is Ben Clarke to you?’
It took Baumhower a few seconds to decide how best to describe Clarke. ‘My business partner.’
‘OK. Now you can tell me why you sent him out to threaten the lives of my wife and son with a goddamn K-Bar knife.’
‘I didn’t send him out to do anything! I swear to God, I didn’t even know what he’d done until this morning!’
Reddick took a step forward, nudged the snout of his handgun into the side of Baumhower’s nose, hard.
‘It’s the truth!’ Baumhower cried, his eyes screwed tightly shut.
Reddick slowly backed off, eased himself into the chair sitting in front of Baumhower’s desk. ‘What’s this all about? Why’s it so goddamn important to you and Clarke that I not tell the police about our accident?’
Baumhower was slow to answer, nearly as terrified to speak as he was to hold his tongue.
‘We were afraid,’ he said finally.
‘Afraid of what?’
Again, Baumhower hesitated. ‘We didn’t want them to know I was there.’
‘Who? There where?’
‘The police. Near the river. We thought .
. .’ He saw a vein in Reddick’s neck pulse, went on before the man could get up out of the chair and strike him again. ‘We thought if they found out about the accident, they’d know I was the one who . . . who . . .’ He couldn’t get the rest out.
‘I’m running out of patience, Andy,’ Reddick said, and if his words hadn’t conveyed this message, the edge to his voice, and the crushing weight of his gaze, would have.
‘They’d know I was the one who dumped Rainey’s body,’ Baumhower said, all in one breath, before he could lose the nerve.
Reddick fell silent, considering Baumhower’s answer. It made perfect sense, of course; a white panel van, leaping from a river access road on to the street in the dead of night, precipitating a collision Baumhower had at first attempted to ignore, then begged Reddick not to report.
‘Who was Rainey?’ Reddick asked.
‘Please. I can’t tell you any more. It was an accident. Nobody intended to kill anybody!’
Reddick rose to his feet. ‘One more time. Who was Rainey?’
‘Gillis Rainey. A friend of Perry’s who owed us money. He called himself a financial advisor but all he was was a con-man. A fucking liar and a thief!’
‘Hold it. Perry? Who the hell is Perry?’
Baumhower didn’t answer, cursing his own stupidity. He was needlessly giving Reddick more information than he was demanding to know.
Reddick sat back down in the chair, rolled it on its casters over to Baumhower until he was close enough to hold the gun an inch from his head.
‘OK. We’re gonna start over, from the beginning,’ he said. ‘And this time, you aren’t gonna leave out the slightest detail.’
Baumhower told Reddick everything, no longer giving a damn whether he was saying too much or not. Reddick asked few questions, and those only for clarification’s sake, content to let his hostage do all the talking. His expression had grown ever darker as the enormity of the bumbling criminal conspiracy he’d stumbled into became clear to him. By the time Baumhower was done, insisting he’d said all there was to say, Reddick resembled nothing as much as a hanging judge about to pronounce sentence. He’d known coming in that Baumhower and the big man who’d terrorized his family the day before were bad guys, deserving of his contempt if not an ounce of his mercy, but he hadn’t counted on discovering they were only two parts of a larger and more menacing whole. The knowledge raised the danger they represented to an entirely different level.
Assume Nothing Page 9
