A Walk Among the Tombstones

by Lawrence Block

Page 44

 

  Still, I didnt feel like celebrating any more than anybody else did. Like any game that ended in a tie, this one left an aftertaste of missed opportunities. TJ thought he should have stowed away in the back of the Honda, or found some way to follow the car back to where it lived. Peter had had a couple of chances to drop Callander with a rifle shot, times when there would have been no danger to me or to the girl. And I could think of a dozen ways we could have made a try for the money. Wed done what we set out to do, but there should have been a way to do more.

  "I want to call Yuri," Kenan said. "Kid was a mess, she could barely walk. I think she lost more than her fingers. "

  "Im afraid youre probably right. "

  "They must have really done a number on her. " He jabbed at the buttons on the phone. "I dont like to think about that because then I start thinking of Francey, and-" He broke off to say, "Uh, hello, is Yuri there? Im sorry. I got the wrong number, Im really sorry to disturb you. "

  He broke the connection and sighed. "Hispanic woman, sounded like I woke her out of a sound sleep. God, I hate when that happens. "

  I said, "Wrong numbers. "

  "Yeah, I dont know which is worse, to give or to receive. I feel like such an asshole disturbing somebody like that. "

  "You had a couple of wrong numbers the day your wife was kidnapped. "

  "Yeah, right. Like an omen, except that they didnt seem particularly ominous at the time. Just a nuisance. "

  "Yuri had a couple of wrong numbers this morning, too. "

  "So?" He frowned, then nodded. "Them, you think? Calling to make sure if somebody was home? I suppose, but so what?"

  "Would you use a pay phone?" They looked at me, lost. "Say you were going to make a call that would just play as a wrong number. You werent going to say anything and nobody would take any notice of the call. Would you bother to drive half a dozen blocks and spend a quarter in a pay phone? Or would you use your own phone?"

  "I suppose Id use my own, but-"

  "So would I," I said. I grabbed my notebook, looking for the sheet of paper Jimmy Hong had given me, the list of calls to the Khoury house. He had copied out all the calls starting at midnight, even though I had only needed the ones from the time of the initial ransom demand. Id had the slip earlier that day, Id looked for the laundromat phone number with the intention of calling TJ there, but where the hell had I put it?

  I found it, unfolded it. "Here we are," I said. "Two calls, both under a minute. One at nine-forty-four in the morning, the other at two-thirty in the afternoon. Calling phone is 243-7436. "

  "Man," Kenan said, "I just remember there were a couple of wrong numbers. I dont know what time they came in. "

  "But do you recognize the number?"

  "Read it again. " He shook his head. "Doesnt sound familiar. Why dont we call it, see what we get?"

  He reached for the phone. I covered his hand with mine. "Wait," I said. "Lets not give them any warning. "

  "Warning of what?"

  "That we know where they are. "

  "Do we? All we gots a number. "

  TJ said, "Kongs might be home now. Want me to see?"

  I shook my head. "I think I can manage this one by myself. " I took the phone, dialed Information. When the operator came on I said, "Policeman requiring directory assistance. My name is Police Officer Alton Simak, my shield number is 2491-1907. What I have is a telephone number and what I need is the name and address that goes with it. Yes, thats right. 243-7436. Yes. Thank you. "

  I cradled the phone and wrote down the address before it could slip my mind. I said, "The phones in the name of an A. H. Wallens. He a friend of yours?" Kenan shook his head. "I think the A stands for Albert. Thats what Callander called his partner. " I read off the address Id written down. "Six-ninety-two Fifty-first Street. "

  "Sunset Park," Kenan said.

  "Sunset Park. Two, three blocks from the laundromat. "

  "Thats the tiebreaker," Kenan said. "Lets go. "

  IT was a frame house, and even in the moonlight you could see that it had been neglected. The clapboard badly needed painting and the shrubbery was overgrown. A half-flight of steps in front led up to a screened-in porch that sagged perceptibly in its middle. A driveway, concrete patched here and there with blacktop, ran along the right-hand side of the house to a two-car detached garage. There was a side door about halfway back, and a third door at the rear of the house.

  We had all come in the Buick, which was parked around the corner on Seventh Avenue. We all had handguns. I must have registered surprise when Kenan handed a revolver to TJ, because he looked at me and said, "If he comes he carries. I say hes a stand-up guy, let him come. You know how this works, TJ? Just point and shoot, like a Jap camera. "

  The overhead garage door was locked, the lock solid. There was a narrow wooden door alongside it, and it too was locked. My credit card wouldnt slip the bolt. I was trying to figure out the quietest way to break a pane of glass when Peter handed me a flashlight, and for a second I thought he wanted me to smack the glass with it, and I couldnt think why. Then it dawned on me, and I pressed the business end of the flashlight up against the window and switched it on. The Honda Civic was right there, and I recognized the plate number. On the other side, harder to see even when I angled the flashlight, was a dark van. The plate was not where we could see it and the color was impossible to determine in that light, but that was really as much as we had to see. We were in the right place.

  Lights were on throughout the house. There were signs that the house was a one-family dwelling- a single doorbell at the side door, a single mailbox alongside the door to the porch- and they could be anywhere inside it. We worked our way around the house. In back, I interlaced my fingers and gave Kenan a boost. He caught hold of the windowsill and inched his head above it, hung there for a moment, then dropped to the ground.

  "The kitchen," he whispered. "The blonds in there counting money. Hes opening each stack and counting the bills, writing numbers on a sheet of paper. Waste of time. Its a done deal, whys he care how much hes got?"

  "And the other one?"

  "Didnt see him. "

  We repeated the procedure at other windows, tried the side door as we passed it. It was locked, but a child could have kicked it in. The door in back, leading to the kitchen, hadnt looked much more formidable.

  But I didnt want to crash in until I knew where they both were.

  In front, Peter risked drawing attention from someone passing by and used the blade of a pocketknife to snick back the bolt of the porch door. The door leading from the porch into the front of the house was equipped with a sturdier lock, but it also had a large window which could be broken for quick access. He didnt break it, but looked through it and established that Albert wasnt in the living room.

  He came back to report this, and I decided that Albert was either upstairs or out having a beer. I was trying to figure out a way for us to take Callander silently and then figure out Phase Two later on, when TJ got my attention with a fingersnap. I looked, and he was crouched at a basement window.

  I went over, stooped, and looked in. He had the flashlight and played it around the interior of a large basement room. There was a large sink in one corner, with a washer and dryer next to it. A workbench stood in the opposite corner, flanked by a couple of power tools. There was a pegboard on the wall above the workbench, with dozens of tools hanging on it.

  In the foreground was a Ping-Pong table, its net sagging. One of the suitcases was on the table, open, empty. Albert Wallens, still wearing the clothes hed worn to the cemetery, was sitting at the Ping-Pong table on a ladderback chair. He might have been counting the money in the suitcase except that there wasnt any money in the suitcase and it was a curious activity to conduct in the dark. But for TJs flashlight, there was no light in the basement.

  I couldnt see it, but I could tell there was a length of piano wire wrapped around Alberts neck, and it was very likely the same piec
e of wire that had been used to perform a mastectomy upon Pam Cassidy, and perhaps upon Leila Alvarez as well. In the present instance it had not been as surgically precise, having encountered bone and cartilage instead of the unresisting flesh it had met before. Still, it had done its work. Alberts head had swelled grotesquely, as blood had been able to flow in but not out again. His face was a moon face turned the color of a bruise, and his eyes were bulging out of their sockets. I had seen a garrote victim before so I knew right away what I was looking at, but nothing really prepares you for it. It was as awful a sight as I had ever seen in my life.

  But it did lower the odds.

  * * *

  KENAN had another look through the kitchen window and couldnt see a gun anywhere. I had a feeling Callander had put it away. He hadnt brandished a gun in any of the abductions, had used it in the cemetery only to back up the knife at Lucias throat, and had rejected it in favor of the garrote when he dissolved his partnership with Albert.

  The logistical problem lay in the time it took to get from any of the doors to where Callander was counting his money. If you went in the back or side door, you had to rush up half a flight of stairs to the kitchen. If you went in in front, from the porch, you had to go all the way to the rear of the house.

  Kenan suggested we go in quietly through the front. Thered be no creaking stairs that way, and the front door was the farthest from where he was sitting; as engrossed as he was in his counting, he might not hear the glass break.

  "Tape it," Peter said. "It breaks but it doesnt fall on the floor. Lot less noise. "

  "Things you learn bein a junkie," Kenan said.

  But we didnt have any tape, and any stores in the neighborhood that would carry it had long since closed. TJ pointed out that there was sure to be suitable tape on the workbench or hanging above it, but wed have had to break a window to get to it, so that limited its usefulness. Peter made another trip to the porch and reported that the floor in the living room was carpeted. We looked at each other and shrugged. "What the hell," somebody said.

  I boosted TJ up, and he watched through the kitchen window while Peter broke the glass in the front door. We couldnt hear it from where we stood, and apparently Callander couldnt hear it, either. We all went around to the front and in the door, stepping carefully over the broken glass, waiting, listening, then moving slowly and quietly through the still house.

  I was in the lead when we got to the kitchen door, with Kenan right at my side. We both had guns in our hands. Raymond Callander was seated so that we were seeing him in profile. He had a stack of bills in one hand, a pencil in the other. Lethal weapons in the hands of a good accountant, I understand, but a lot less intimidating than guns or knives.

  I dont know how long I waited. Probably no more than fifteen or twenty seconds, if that, but it seemed longer. I waited until something changed in the set of his shoulders, showing that an awareness of our presence had somehow reached him.

  I said, "Police. Dont move. "

  He didnt move, didnt even turn his eyes toward the sound of my voice. He just sat there as one phase of his life ended and another began. Then he did turn to look at me, and his expression showed neither fear nor anger, just profound disappointment.