Gil Mason/Gunwood USA Box Set

by Gordon Carroll

  Today she wore blue. A skirt so mini it almost wasn’t at all, coupled with a billowy short-sleeved shirt one shade from invisible; a pink bra that glowed an intoxicating shade of purple beneath the sheer blue, and matching panties that she kept hidden — most of the time — by keeping her shapely legs crossed at the knees.

  People stared — men, women — everyone. But at least the pure sensuality of the outfit allowed her to pretend they were staring because of her beauty, because of the raw sexuality that radiated from her like heat shimmer. Anything — any reason in the world — other than the truth — other than because she was a freak. A sideshow attraction; step right up and see the little lady — the midget — the dwarf — the little person — the mutant — the freak!

  She pushed the thoughts away, forcing herself to concentrate on what the detective was saying. He was good at making eye contact, but every so often his eyes slipped — and that was okay — it was as it should be — part of her plan. And strangely she found she didn’t mind—that she liked his attention. Yes, she was using him, as she used all men, but still, he was… nice. A little goofy looking, and those thick glasses and combed over hair had to go. His nose was sort of big, but it seemed almost noble in a way. He was obviously smart, maybe a genius, like that Columbo guy from the old days, or Shawn Spencer from that Psych show on TV. He had a strange way of suddenly staring off into space as though his mind had gone blank, but it would only last for a second or two and then he would be back with her and usually say something really smart or insightful. He’d picked up on her connection with Barney Marko instantly.

  “Anyway,” said Sammy as she zoned back into him, “the two new obituaries are in no way inconsequential. Unfortunately I’m afraid they solidify the rationalization of your fears.”

  She squinted her eyes at him. “Come again?”

  He laughed. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget to speak English. What I meant to say is that this isn’t just in your head. There is a real danger here. And I think Barney Marko might be behind it.”

  That sent a chill through her. If Barney wanted her dead, she was dead. And no cop — not even a brainiac detective — could save her. Her only chance was to run and she didn’t hold much hope even in that. Barney’s empire had long arms and three and a half million dollars wouldn’t be near enough to hide her.

  Still, he said he thought Barney might be behind it. That meant it wasn’t for sure, and she had to be sure. Because once she started running she would have to use the money. And once she started using the money Barney might find out, and if he hadn’t known already she would be signing her own death warrant. So this was no time for haste. She had to play it cool. She had to be sure. And the best way for that, the safest way, was to let the detective do his work.

  “If Barney wants me dead,” said Cinnamon, tears welling in her eyes, “then there’s nothing anyone can do for me.”

  “No,” said Sammy, “no-no, not at all. Believe me, there are ways to stop him, ways to stop anyone. There’s the witness protection program, they can set you up with a new identity, a new life. You can be protected.”

  “Look at me,” she said, and this time the tears were real. “You think you could hide me?” She ran her hands from her head down to her knees. “Me? Look around you. See how everyone stares? Everyone! I’m a freak, Detective. A freak. Maybe you could hide someone, somewhere from Barney Marko, but you could never hide me. He would find me, and there’s nothing anyone can do about that.”

  He reached out a finger and touched a tear as it slid along her cheek. She saw his jaw clench. “No one’s going to hurt you. No one. I said I thought Barney might be behind this, but maybe I’m wrong. And even if I’m not, he’s still just a man; and a criminal at that. With the right evidence he can be arrested.”

  Cinnamon shook her head. “Even from Jail, Barney could have me killed with a snap of his fingers.” She snapped hers for emphasis.

  “Worse things can happen than jail,” said Sammy. “Like I said, he’s still just a man, and any man can die.”

  She saw his want, his need, the way he stared at her. She had to be careful here, men were funny animals when it came to this stage of the game. If she pushed it further here, took him to her bed, it would go one of two ways. Either he would fall helplessly in love with her, or he would be satisfied with the conquest and be done with her. Those were the only two possibilities. But Cinnamon had found it impossible over the years to accurately predict on which side a man would fall. Guys she had been certain would do anything for her had sometimes turned spiteful and mean almost immediately after having her. Others, men who seemed utterly cruel and impossible to persuade had sometimes melted like butter in her hands afterward and would slit their own wrists for her. There was just no way to be sure. Men — in this venue anyway — were too unpredictable.

  He gripped her fingers, held both small hands in his, looked into her eyes. “You are not a freak. You are the most incredible woman I have ever known. You are beautiful. You are good.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “I’m a stripper, a midget stripper. That’s all I am.” She turned her head, nodded toward the people around them. “Look at them staring.”

  Sammy turned on them, eyes blazing. “What are you looking at?” he screamed. He stood up, looking almost silly to Cinnamon in his rumpled suit coat and slacks, with his glasses falling down the bridge of his nose. He didn’t look imposing at all. He spun around and around staring down everyone until they turned away or walked along. Cinnamon thought they must think him crazy. But she liked it, and she liked him for it.

  It helped her decide.

  She caught his hand and pulled him to her; stepped up on her chair so she stood only a little shorter than him. His face was splotched in red and shined with sweat. His lips were dry and a sticky string of spit clung from his lower lip to his upper lip.

  She kissed him; hard and with passion.

  She’d made up her mind.

  32

  Enrico Da Vinci

  * * *

  Obstacles

  * * *

  Enrico watched, through the scope of his rifle. He saw them together, saw the man get up and rage at those around him. Watched as Cinnamon stood on the chair and kissed him. Enrico’s finger curled around the trigger, caressed its grooved metal curve, felt the density of its structure. His nostrils breathed in the faint smell of gun solvent and he imagined that it was tainted with a hint of cinnamon.

  In his mind he stood before her, in exactly the same space the detective now occupied; feeling the imprint of her lips on his. Tasting her breath. The warmth of their bodies mingling.

  His art cried out to be expressed. A lover’s touch, and then the buck of the recoil. The brush let loose, paint flowing like blood — the chisel finding its groove, releasing the vein of marble from its flesh of stone — the clay yielding to the potter’s hands, shaping a vessel for good. The display would be worthy of her, it would be like her in its magnificence. She would see his worthiness, the purity of his art. That his blood sang true; that he descended from the seed of Leonardo himself. The painting he would make of the detective’s brain and bone and blood across the patio, to stain the cement and bricks, to splatter across the legs and faces of patrons and staff alike would convince her that she was indeed meant to be his.

  But he did not pull the trigger. Instead he continued to watch as the two left the little grotto and drove away. Enrico scanned to both sides and found what he had feared to the west. Two men, dressed in casual summer attire, sitting in a white two door Saturn with rental plates. They were hired muscle, about as subtle as gorillas in a glass factory. They pulled out and followed the detective’s blue Impala who in turn followed Cinnamon’s Mustang.

  Mob bosses were so predictable. He’d expected something like this. An e-mail from Mr. Marko had been waiting on his computer when he awoke this morning, requesting information on how long it would take before he completed the job.
Of course the fool had no knowledge of just how busy Enrico had been. He knew nothing of the art he had left in his wake. He liked to think of the dead as his own experiment in still life paintings. Marko had sent Enrico to kill Cinnamon — only her. The others had been his own doing; his sacrifice to the god who was art itself. He had placed them on the alter before her, praying they would be pleasing in her sight. But the best was yet to come.

  He didn’t expect her to understand yet, because the picture was not complete, the symphony’s final bars not yet penned, the last act of the play unwritten. But soon, oh so very soon. It would all come together in a final crescendo that would bring down the curtain to her wondrous applause.

  Then she would understand. She would know that he had done it all for her. That he was truly worthy of her love.

  Either that — or he would kill her.

  For he was F. Murray Abraham’s Salieri to Tom Hulce’s Amadeus. If God would not favor him with his object d’art, then no one would ever be favored with or by her again. He would risk Hell itself to obtain her, and would accept nothing from a God who would deny her to him.

  He laid the rifle on the bed, allowing his fingers a last caress before strapping it inside its case and then setting it aside. He turned on his computer, watching as the cameras sprang to life in HD. Like everything he obtained, they were the best money could buy. The live video fed directly from his hotel room miles and miles away to this hotel room he had rented hastily after following Cinnamon to the bakery. The hotel was two blocks away but offered a clear line of sight to the patio. Cinnamon’s room was empty, but it wouldn’t be for long.

  As for the detective…well…he was no longer human to Enrico…no longer a person…simply material for Enrico’s artistic expression.

  He was a dead man.

  There was no doubt in his mind what would happen next or even why. She would bring the detective back to her room and lay with him. She didn’t love him. She was using him. She used all men, just as she should. None of them were good enough for her. They were playthings — tools — a means to a goal. He had studied her long and well. He knew her as only a master painter can know a master’s painting. He had sifted into her mind, into her soul. He had felt her pain, her joy, her grief. Only he understood her and so only he could own her.

  It didn’t take long, less than half an hour and Cinnamon and the detective entered her room. He waited until they were fully engaged before shutting down the computer and packing the few things he had brought to the room and taking everything back to his car. He didn’t need to watch any longer, everything would be recorded anyway. For now it was enough to know they wouldn’t accidentally get in the way of what he meant to do. He wanted Cinnamon far from harm’s way and when killing was being done at close range there was always the danger that things wouldn’t go exactly as planned. He dressed in shorts, a tee shirt with a short-sleeved unbuttoned shirt over it, Nike running shoes and a Rockies baseball cap. He quickly applied a fake go-tee and a scar that ran from his left jaw up to his left eyebrow; nothing horrendous or gross, just enough to draw attention. A pair of cheap sunglasses completed his disguise.

  The car he had stolen the night before. He’d found plates to a similar car in an apartment complex a few miles away and switched them with the stolen car’s plates, so that if a cop were to run his plates it would come back to the same make, year and color as his stolen car. Only it wouldn’t show as a steal because it was highly unlikely the owner of the car with the switched plates would notice and report the switching, at least for a while. Who pays attention to their own license plates?

  Enrico parked two blocks away from his hotel. He slipped a silenced Beretta nine millimeter into the back waistband of his shorts and walked toward the hotel. He spotted the rented Saturn in short order and approached on the passenger side. Both windows were down but the car sat running, probably for the AC. The heat blazed at ninety-eight degrees outside which made it even hotter in the car with the windshield’s refraction of the sunlight. Being hired muscle had its disadvantages. Those disadvantages were about to be multiplied to the nth degree, thought Enrico as he came alongside the car.

  Slipping the gun from his waistband, his hand hidden beneath the unbuttoned covering shirt, he watched the side view mirror, seeing the two men were talking, both looking toward the hotel and not at him. He continued on, his pace unwavering, watching with his head pointed straight ahead, the sunglasses hiding the eyes that watched the two men in the mirror. As he came even with the rear window he slid the gun from under his shirt and in one smooth motion put the muzzle of the suppressor a hair’s breadth from the passenger’s right temple. He fired twice, blood spraying out at him and dappling his shirt and face. The man’s neck snapped to the side and forward, partially blocking Enrico’s view of the driver. He moved a step to the front and saw the big man pulling a black pistol out from the crack between the seats. Enrico shot three times fast and saw three holes open up in the man’s chest. But then the man fired and the sound of the un-silenced gun in the late morning air sounded massive. The bullet hit the window support next to Enrico’s face and spanged off in a downward direction to ricochet off the sidewalk with a high whine. Chips of cement spattered into Enrico’s ankles and calves making him think for a second that he had been hit by the errant round. He fired three more times, the suppressor still muting the shots as they tore into the man’s throat, face and forehead.

  Immediately Enrico turned and continued on the same way he had been walking, acting as if nothing had happened. People were starting to stick their heads out of windows, and peering from open doors and around corners. Several cars had slowed and people walking had stopped, their necks swiveling this way and that as though they could smell danger. Enrico stopped for a second too, mimicking the others actions so he would blend with them, become one of them. He shrugged and continued on his way, his ankles and calves stinging. He thought he felt blood trickling from small cuts and tiny punctures but knew this was not the time to look. Art was sometimes painful.

  Once he rounded the corner he stepped up his gait marginally — still just a walk — but at a quicker pace. He knew the easiest way to draw attention to oneself was to run. Even so, even with all his experience and knowledge, it was hard. The mind screamed to get as far away as possible, that distance equated to safety; but the mind had to be disciplined, the body brought under control.

  By the time he made it to his car he heard sirens approaching. He ignored them, quickly wiped the blood off his face. He pulled out in the opposite direction of the shooting and drove out of the city of Gunwood to the top floor of an underground parking garage in Greenwood Village where he parked, wiped the vehicle clean of his fingerprints, gathered his makeup kit, ditched the disguise and blood dappled shirt into the backseat, and locked the doors. From the trunk he removed a long strip of cloth and a vodka bottle.

  The top floor was open to the sunlight and almost deserted. Only a few cars dotted the large expanse and most of them were dust coated, evidence that they had been here awhile. Enrico quickly scanned the expanse; no one in sight.

  He soaked the cloth in vodka, took a quick swig, tossed the rest of the bottle in the trunk, rung the cloth dry of most of the alcohol, then tucked a good sized portion of the strip into the gas tank, leaving a long tail that flowed all the way around the back of the car to the other side.

  Enrico touched flame to the cloth and watched as it burned slowly toward the gas tank. From experience he knew he had about ten minutes before the tank would blow. And by then he would be out of the garage and back to his own rental a block away.

  His ankles and calves still stung but he saw no real damage, just a few dots and dashes of blood as though he’d walked into a cluster of thorns or been feasted on by a hungry clot of mosquitoes.

  As his car came into sight he heard the WHOOSH-BOOM! of the explosion. He saw the fireball rise up over the concrete structure into the clear blue sky, followed by the tinkle of sprinkling metal
and glass.

  Beautiful.

  Now to take care of Mr. Marko, and then…then the detective.

  33

  Sammy rothstein

  * * *

  Puzzles

  * * *

  Sammy examined the bullet holes in the side of the front seat passenger’s face; two to the temple, about a half-inch spread, both shots up close, which allowed the gases to expand inside the wounds, puffing them out and tearing the flesh. There would have been blowback so the suspect carried blood and other DNA evidence on his person. A big help if they could find him. The driver had gotten off a shot at least. Not that it did him much good. He’d taken heavy damage from not so heavy ammunition. Six hits from .9 mil slugs, three to the chest, all fatal, and one each to the throat, cheek and forehead.

  Looked like a professional hit; right outside of Cinnamon’s hotel and while he was in bed with her. Coincidence? He shook his head. No way. These guys were both packing and had rap sheets that sized them up to be Chicago mob boys. That meant Barney Marko. It also meant they were watching Cinnamon. So who took them out, and why?

  Did Cinnamon have a guardian angel?

  The car was a rental so it wasn’t likely to be much help. He had guys out canvassing, hoping for witnesses. None had come forward yet, which struck him as surprising. Broad daylight, people out walking, getting lunch, driving by, looking out their work windows. Someone had to see something.