3 Great Thrillers

by Churton, Alex; Churton, Toby; Locke, John; Lustbader, Eric van; van Lustbader, Eric

  I called Victor. “She’s ready to talk,” I said. I handed the phone to Monica, and Callie and I climbed out of the van and closed the doors behind us.

  “Did you see the look on her face when you handed her the phone?” Callie said.

  I nodded. It was a look I couldn’t easily describe: a mixture of shock, confusion, hope, fear. This whole experience had been a first for me.

  “You think she’ll try to lock us out?” Callie said.

  “I doubt it. She knows she can’t get to the front seat faster than we can open the door.”

  Callie nodded. We watched the poor soul holding the phone to her good ear, straining to understand the clipped, metallic voice at the other end of the line. I knew the feeling.

  “How are you coming with the body double?”

  “The one for you?” I asked. “I’m still working on it.”

  Callie laughed. “I’ll bet you are.”

  “Not easy finding a nice, sweet librarian looks like you.”

  “Librarian, huh?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Your last ‘librarian’ was Fifi the French whore. Had a tattoo on her pussy that said, ‘Read My Lips!’”

  I smiled at the thought. “Fifi’s right, but I don’t remember her calling herself ‘the French whore.’”

  Callie frowned. “It’s a librarian expression. But she wasn’t the first hooker librarian with a crotch tat. Do you even remember the name of that other one?”

  I did. Constance would have been a perfect body double for Callie … except for the crotch tat that said, “Is it hot in here or is it just me?”

  “I think I deserve more credit,” I said. “It’s not easy finding a body double for you. Not to mention the detailed inspections I have to make, you being so fussy about tattoos and such.”

  “Yeah, well I agree that when it comes to hookers, you put everything you have into your work.”

  Inside the van, tucked against the far corner, Monica had pulled her knees up to her chest. Tears streaked her cheeks, and her mouth formed words I couldn’t hear. She seemed to listen for a while and then she started crying softly.

  “What do you think he’s saying to her?” Callie said.

  I had no idea and hated myself for caring.

  “This next body double,” Callie said. “Does she have a tattoo?”

  “Jenine? I don’t know yet.”

  “But you’re itching to find out.”

  “My devotion to detail is legendary,” I said. “Timeless.”

  “So is the clap,” Callie said.

  Monica looked up at me through the window and nodded, and I opened the door. I heard her thank Victor and wondered what that meant. She handed the phone back to me. I put it to my ear.

  “Creed,” I said.

  “You know … what … to do,” Victor said.

  7

  I did know what to do, but I was curious about a couple of things. I asked Monica if she knew Victor.

  “I know of him,” she said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Through my husband.”

  I nodded. So Victor was killing her to punish the husband. At least that made some sense. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, though. Questions lead to answers, and answers lead to doubt, and doubt will ruin a good contract killer. I looked at Callie. She was about to explode, she wanted to know so badly.

  “Tell me about Victor,” I said.

  “I can’t. If I tell you, you’ll kill me.”

  Callie and I exchanged a look. Callie couldn’t hold it back any longer; she had to speak. “This Victor guy, you’re saying he told you we’d let you go if you kept quiet about your conversation with him?”

  Monica looked confused. “Is this a trick question?”

  Callie looked at me in disbelief. “What a twisted fuck.”

  “Hey, watch it,” I said. “You’re talking about our employer.”

  We all sat there looking at each other for a minute. I could have forced it out of her, but I didn’t want to torture her. I could have threatened her into telling me, but that would require giving her false hope, and that didn’t feel right to me somehow. I decided to let the motive slide.

  “Okay, Monica,” I said. “You didn’t tell us anything about your conversation with Victor or about your connection to him, so you did well. I won’t ask you again. But tell me this: why is his voice so weird?”

  “He’s a quadriplegic.”

  I nodded. “Still,” I said, “it’s eerier than that. There’s more to it.”

  Monica was loosening up now, convinced she was about to be released. She had stopped crying, and her voice was steadier. She seemed encouraged. “It’s probably because he’s so young,” she said, “and a midget.”

  Callie and I looked at each other. I said, “Midget?”

  Monica gasped. “Little person,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”

  Callie asked, “Young? How young?”

  Monica looked at me before speaking. “I don’t know,” she said. “Early twenties?”

  “Your husband must have done something terrible to make Victor this angry,” I said.

  She nodded. “He saved Victor’s life,” she said.

  8

  I gently lowered Monica’s head back to the floor and held it there. I stroked her hair a couple of times to help calm her. And she was calm … until she caught sight of the syringe in my free hand. At that point, her eyes grew wide with terror. She started thrashing around in the van. Then she lost control of her bladder. Too frightened to care, she peed explosively. I heard it strain against her clothing, burbling hot against her crotch, down her thigh. Because of our close proximity, she managed to drench my pants leg in the process. I looked over at Callie, exasperated.

  “Believe me, Donovan,” she said, “that can only improve your ‘coastal casual’ look.”

  I frowned and loosened my grip ever so slightly—but just enough—and this time Monica’s scream was loud and piercing. Of course, it had no effect out there in the middle of nowhere. I got her back under control, parted her hair, and pricked the side of her scalp with the tip of the syringe. A few minutes later, I slid open the side door and pushed Monica out. Her body tumbled into a thicket and skidded to a stop. She staggered to her feet and managed to walk a few shaky steps before falling down to stay.

  Callie put the van in gear and steered it carefully through the underbrush and back onto the highway. She kept to the speed limit, drove south, and put the crime scene behind us.

  “A real fighter, that one,” I said, making my way to the front passenger seat. “She impressed me just now, the way she got to her feet.”

  Callie nodded.

  The van’s tires thrummed rhythmically over the patchy road tar. We passed a golf course on the right and an ambitious condo development on the left, which appeared to be unfinished and abandoned. The few residential community entrances we passed were camouflaged by foliage so dense and overgrown, even in February, I had to wonder what sort of people would pay these astronomical prices to live a half mile from the beach, among the spiders and mosquitoes, without benefit of an ocean view.

  “She had gorgeous hair,” I said.

  “Very stylish,” Callie agreed. “And classy.” She paused a minute before asking, “How long you think before someone finds her?”

  “This close to the plantation? Probably two days.”

  “You think they’ll notice the needle mark on the scalp?”

  “What are we, CSI? I doubt the ME will notice it.”

  “Because?”

  “I put it in one of her head wounds.”

  Callie thought about that and said, “She must have hit the wall head first when you threw her in the van.”

  “That’d be my guess,” I said.

  We rode in silence awhile, content to watch the scenery unfold. We were on A1A, south of Amelia Island, where the two-lane road cuts a straight swath through the undeveloped scrub a
nd marsh for fifteen miles. There was a primal element to this stretch of land that seemed to discourage the rampant commercialization running almost nonstop from Jacksonville to South Beach. A couple miles in, we passed three crosses and a crude, homemade sign that proclaimed “Jesus Died For Your Sins!”

  “Monica seemed nice,” Callie said. “A little snooty, but that could be the money. Or the age difference. Still, I liked her. She had great manners.”

  I laughed. “Manners?”

  “She had a premonition about the van,” Callie said. “But she didn’t want to offend me, so she came anyway.”

  I tried the sound of it in my mouth. “She was killed because of her good manners.”

  “I liked her,” Callie repeated.

  “I liked her, too,” I said, “until she peed on me!”

  I placed two bundles of cash in Callie’s lap. She picked one up, felt the weight in her hand.

  “I like this even better,” she said.

  We dropped the van off behind an abandoned barn a couple miles beyond the ferry boat landing. We removed the explosives from the wheel well in Callie’s rental car and positioned them throughout the van.

  “How much you have to pay for this thing?” Callie asked.

  “Four grand,” I said. “Not me, though. Victor.” Right on cue, my phone rang.

  “Is it …fin … ished?” Victor asked.

  “Just a sec,” I said. I climbed in the passenger seat, and Callie drove us a quarter mile before putting the rental car in park.

  “Are we far enough away?” I asked.

  “If we go too far,” she said, “we’ll miss the fun part.”

  She got out of the car and dialed a number on her phone and the van exploded in the distance. Callie remained out of the car until she felt the wind from the explosion wash lightly over her face.

  “You’re insane,” I said to Callie.

  “It’s done,” I said to Victor.

  Victor said, “Good. I … have … two more … jobs … for you.”

  “Already?” I retrieved a small notebook and pen from my duffel and wrote down the information. The names, ages, occupations, and addresses were so different, it seemed as though they’d been plucked out of thin air. I asked Victor, “Do you even know these people?”

  “All … part … of a … master … plan,” he said. I covered the mouthpiece and said to Callie, “I take back what I said before, about you being insane.” Then I said to Victor, “Are there many more?”

  “Many,” Victor said in his weird, metallic voice. “Real … ly … Mr.

  … Creed … evil is … every … where … and … must … be pun… ished.”

  9

  “I must see the Picasso,” Kathleen said.

  “Then you shall,” I said.

  “And the maître d’,” she said. “They have one, right?”

  “They do indeed.”

  “Is he stuffy? I hope he’s insufferably stuffy!”

  “He will be if I don’t tip him,” I said. We were in the Seagram Building on East Fifty-Second, in the lobby of the Four Seasons restaurant.

  She touched my arm. “Donovan, this is really sweet of you, but we don’t have to eat here. I don’t want you to spend this much on me. Let’s just have a drink, see the painting and maybe the marble pool. We can share a pizza at Angelo’s afterward.”

  “Relax,” I said. “I’m rich.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  The Four Seasons is famous, timeless, and the only restaurant in New York designated as a landmark.

  “Do you mean really, you’re rich,” she said, “or that you’re really rich?”

  “I’m rich enough to buy you whatever you’d like to have tonight.”

  She laughed. “In that case, I’ll have the Picasso!”

  Did I mention I liked this lady?

  I gave my name to the maître d’ and led Kathleen to the corridor where the Picasso tapestry had hung since the restaurant opened back in 1959. The twenty-two-foot-high Picasso was in fact the center square of a stage curtain that had been designed for the 1920 Paris production of The Three Cornered Hat. When the theater owner ran out of money, he cut the Picasso portion from the curtain and sold it. Now, with the economy in distress, Kathleen had heard the tapestry was about to be auctioned for an estimated eight million dollars. This might be her only chance to see it.

  “Oh my God!” she said, her voice suddenly turning husky. “I love it!”

  “Compared to his other work, the colors are muted,” I said. “But yeah, it’s pretty magnificent.”

  “Tell me about it,” she said. “Impress me.”

  “It’s a distemper on linen,” I said.

  “Distemper? Like the disease a dog gets?”

  “Exactly like that.”

  She gave me a look. “Bullshit!”

  “Well, it’s spelled the same way. Actually, it refers to using gum or glue as a binding element.”

  She made a snoring sound. “Boring,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, “forget that part. Here’s what you want to know: Picasso laid the canvas on the floor and painted it with a brush attached to a broom handle. He used a toothbrush for the detailed work.”

  Kathleen clapped her hands together. “More!” she said.

  “It took three weeks to paint.”

  She looked at me expectantly.

  “He wore carpet slippers so he wouldn’t smudge the paint.”

  I struggled to remember what else I’d read about the thing. I shrugged. “That’s all I’ve got,” I said.

  Kathleen smiled and nudged up against me. “You did well,” she said.

  We had a drink at the bar. Among the small crowd waiting for tables, Kathleen spotted Woody Allen, Barbara Streisand, and Billy Joel. I said, “See those two guys by the palm frond? That’s Millard Fillmore and Jackie Gleason!”

  She sniffed. “At least the famous New Yorkers I’m lying about are still alive.”

  A number of seasonal trees surrounded the white marble pool in the main dining room, and the head waiter sat us beneath one of them. Spun-metal curtains hung in rows against the walls, undulating softly as the air flow from the vents teased them.

  “This is fantastic,” she said, looking around the room. “Everything is so elegant, especially the breathing curtains!”

  “Especially those,” I said.

  I tossed back a shot of bourbon and watched Kathleen sip her pomegranate martini. The waiter had brought us drinks and given us time to study the menus. Now he returned, ready to take our order.

  “Of course I’ve never been here before,” Kathleen said, “so you’ll have to order for me.”

  I nodded. “We’ll start with the crispy shrimp,” I said.

  “Oops. No shellfish,” Kathleen said.

  “Sorry,” I said. “How about the foie gras?”

  “Goose liver pate?” she said. “Ugh!”

  “Peppered quail?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Meat product.”

  “Perhaps you should just pick something,” I said. She may have detected some annoyance in my voice.

  Kathleen burst into a hearty laugh. “I’m just messing with you, Donny. I’d love some crispy shrimp.”

  The waiter and I exchanged a glance.

  “She might very possibly be insane,” I said, and Kathleen laughed some more.

  Then she told the waiter, “Watch out for this one. He’s very grumpy in restaurants.”

  The waiter left to place our order.

  “Donny?” I said. I huffed a bit, and she placed her hand on mine.

  “Okay, I won’t call you Donny,” she said. “But if we’re going to start seeing each other, I’m going to want a pet name for you.”

  We looked at each other, and I rotated my palm so I could hold her hand. She cocked her head slightly and raised an eyebrow.

  I said, “I have to admit there’s something special about you … Pablo!”

  “Oh,
God,” she said and laughed some more. “Okay then, no nicknames!”

  I tried to remember the last time Janet and I shared a laugh.

  “Something about me,” Kathleen repeated. Her eyes hinted amusement. She winked at me and sipped her cocktail. “Mmm,” she said. She touched the napkin to her mouth. You could add up all her looks and mannerisms and never total gorgeous, but you’d get to adorable pretty quick, and that was enough for me. Hell, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Ask me.”

  “Ask you what?”

  “Something’s bothering you. I can see it in your eyes.”

  She twitched her mouth to one side and held it there, a sort of half-frown. “I don’t want to ruin the moment,” she said.

  “The moment will survive.”

  “Okay then, brace yourself.”

  I took my hand away from hers and grabbed both sides of the table and pretended to hold on tight. “Let ’er rip!” I said.

  She took a deep breath. “Last night at Starbucks, you told me about Janet and Ken dating. You were worried about his temper, what he might do to her if they decide to get married.”

  I kept quiet.

  “Do you still love her?” she asked.

  “No. But I don’t want my daughter’s mother to marry a wife beater.” She made a face, and I said, “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you.”

  Kathleen was wearing the same cloth coat she’d worn the night before. She’d been cold and hadn’t wanted to surrender it to the coat check girl downstairs. But now she stood and removed it and folded it over the back of her chair, revealing a white blouse, a tan faux suede skirt, and a wide brown belt with two gold buckles. She wore very little makeup, or maybe it hadn’t been freshened up in a while, since she’d come straight from work. It didn’t seem to make her uncomfortable the way most women would be. She sat back down and surprised me by taking my hand in hers and kissing it.