Saratoga Payback Page 14

  “Hey,” said Charlie, “do you have to say this stuff in front of me? I’d prefer you talked behind my back.”

  Artemis also talked about the difficulties of having a riding school. “I hate surrounding myself with dull and unimaginative horses. A horse with any gumption would pitch one of these children to the other side of the barn, but that wouldn’t further the professional career I’ve been forced to choose for myself. Perhaps I should buy lottery tickets, but until I win my millions, I have to entertain these slowpokes—the horses, not the children.”

  “Do you take care of them by yourself?” asked Janey.

  “That’s another bother. I’ve had to hire hands: men and women with every virtue except reliability. They never seem to stay long. I no sooner train one than he or she leaves for parts unknown.”

  “How many do you have?” asked Charlie.

  “Two men at the moment. Fortunately, one I’ve known for many years.” She turned to Janey. “The other is brand-new and I hold out hopes for him. He’s energetic, efficient and doesn’t chat. But you must bring your daughter to the stable. Riding’s so good for a girl’s posture. I’d be glad to give her free lessons, just because of how Charlie helped me years ago.”

  They talked about when Emma got out of school each day and when she might be free. “She loves riding,” said Janey, “but we haven’t found the right place for her.”

  Charlie enjoyed dinners like this. They were a notch above being dull. No tension, no fighting. He liked to think they were the sort of dinners most people had, which gave him, falsely he knew, a sense of community.

  Janey had made an apple pie for dessert. She was just cutting it when there was a knock at the door. Charlie answered. Their visitor was Lieutenant Hutchins. Charlie winced. He assumed he was going to be yelled at and he didn’t want to be yelled at in front of Artemis. But Hutchins seemed calm, even subdued, as if he’d been taking tranquilizers. He wore a blue suit, not a uniform, but uniform-like.

  “Can I talk to you alone, Charlie? It’s important.”

  After Hutch turned down an offer of apple pie, coffee or a glass of wine, Charlie took him into the TV room. He was ill at ease and wouldn’t sit down.

  “I wanted to say something about these killings. I thought you should know.”

  If Charlie had been surprised by the lieutenant’s mood, he was even more surprised by his offer to share information.

  “I’d be glad to help any way I can.”

  “It’s not your help I want,” said Hutchins, with a touch of his old manner. “Just listen to what I’ve got to say.”

  Hutchins described their hunt for the killer. Two people in Parlucci’s building had seen a dark-haired man entering shortly before Parlucci was killed, while a third person had seen the man, or someone like him, hurrying down the back steps and across the yard. Then two people had seen a dark-haired man near the bus station around the time of Milo’s murder. Both agreed he was relatively young—between twenty and thirty-five, depending on which one you talked to—and all agreed he was dressed in black. And he was in good shape, or at least he was thin and moved quickly. They couldn’t say anything about his face.

  Then phone calls to local motels had turned up a man who seemed to match the vague description. He’d been staying at the Tea Kettle Motel for the previous ten days. It was up on Route 9, on the way to Glens Falls. Hutchins and a sheriff’s investigator had taken eight men in four unmarked cars, but the man was gone. In fact, he’d probably left hurriedly in the past ten minutes. A saucepan with a little soup on the stove was still hot. A chair had been overturned. The man had registered under the name of Tad Browning and had given a home address in Rochester. His car was a tan Toyota Corolla with New York plates. Browning had told the owner, Gene McCarthy, that he was in the area because of a divorce case and was hiding out to avoid being served further papers. Hutchins guessed that McCarthy had told him about the call from the police, that Browning had paid the clerk to notify him if anyone called. Hutchins told McCarthy that Browning was the primary suspect in three murder cases. He also warned him that if he had protected Browning, he’d be charged as an accessory.

  “The nosy fuck nearly shit his pants.” Hutchins found this very funny and Charlie managed a smile.

  “But the most troubling business,” the lieutenant continued, “or almost, were these little cardboard things McCarthy found in a bag in the dumpster about a week later. He and his wife were closing up the motel to go south for the winter. It was a plastic Walmart bag and McCarthy recalled that Browning had had a Walmart bag. So McCarthy dragged it out. He’d only had a couple of customers since Browning had fled, so the dumpster was pretty empty. Inside the bag were little figures cut out of a shoe box and colored with different-colored pens. So he called us.

  “Each figure was about six inches tall and stuck into a little piece of wood so they’d stand up. I first thought they were like voodoo dolls, but that was wrong.

  “They were meant to resemble specific people—six men and a woman. The guy had gone to a lot of trouble with them. One had a red X across his throat and a smaller X across his mouth. It was meant to be Mickey. I mean, it even looked like Mickey. Two of the others also had Xs across their throats, one had two little Xs over his ears, and one had an X across his nose. Those were meant to be Parlucci and the Milo guy. The other four had no Xs, like he still meant to get to them but hadn’t done it yet. One of them was a little overweight, like you are, Charlie. And he had a round face like yours. He even wore a little plaid hat, a little porkpie hat. It was you, Charlie. This guy means to kill you.”

  Charlie’s shock swept through him like ice water. None of it seemed credible. “Me? Why’d he want to kill me?”

  “That’s the big question, Charlie, but there’s no doubt he plans to do it. And the problem is we don’t know where he’s gone. He could still be around here or he could be in Nebraska, but we’ll catch him eventually, I expect.”

  “You expect!”

  “You know how it is, Charlie. Nothing’s certain. We can’t put a guard outside your house, but we’ll have patrol cars cruising up and down your street. You can trust me on that. Maybe you could hire a bodyguard. It could come off your taxes.”

  Charlie felt less than reassured. “So if these cardboard figures weren’t the most disturbing thing, what was?”

  Hutchins glanced around the room, avoiding Charlie’s eyes. In the past, Hutchins’s primary emotions had been anger and indignation; now he showed hesitation, even fear. “I found these jars in the closet of Browning’s room, canning jars. Each was filled with alcohol. One had Mickey’s tongue floating in it like some kind of pink fish. In another was Parlucci’s nose. The third had a pair of ears. They looked like those white mushrooms. Let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty.”

  Again Charlie felt a rush of fear. Then he said: “Can I have my pistol license back?”

  Hutch shook his head. “Chief Novak says it’d set a bad precedent. I mean, if everybody demanded a pistol license, think of the trouble we’d be in. Downtown would become like the O.K. Corral.”

  “It’s my life.” This guy’s still an asshole, thought Charlie.

  “And we’ll take care of it for you. You can trust us on that.” But Hutchins was still avoiding Charlie’s eyes.

  “Thanks, Lieutenant. I’ll make sure you get a front-row seat at my funeral. And never mind the flowers. Just send twenty bucks to the retarded cops’ fund.”

  “You don’t have to talk like that, Charlie. I’m trying to do my best here.”

  Charlie gave himself a moment to settle down. “Do you have any idea why Mickey was murdered?”

  “Novak says he has a few ideas, but I think he’s totally in the dark. So, well, it’s a mystery.”

  “Great,” said Charlie. “That’s just great. What about the other figures, did you recognize them?”

  “The
other heavyset guy had a colorful vest. It might be Campbell. Some sheriff’s deputies are going to talk to him.”

  “And the woman, could she have been Janey?”

  “I doubt it. Is there any reason it might be Janey?”

  “How the hell would I know? If the man wants to kill me, he might also want to kill my wife.”

  “We’ve been thinking it might be your friend Artemis, but we’re not sure yet. The woman’s wearing a little skirt, like a ballerina.”

  “Good grief, I’ve got to tell her!”

  “Let us handle that. Sheriff’s investigators will talk to them in the morning.”

  “But she’s right in the other room!”

  “We’re the professionals, Charlie. Stay out of it.”

  Charlie didn’t like that and thought of a few insulting remarks. But he hoped to keep Hutchins talking. “What about fingerprints? There must have been prints.”

  “A few smudges. He’d cleaned up pretty good. In the trash were a bunch of those thin latex gloves that food servers wear. I bet he wore them even when he slept. But the crime scene guys think they’ll find something. They’ve already turned up a few hairs. It takes time.”

  “Maybe I don’t have time.”

  After Hutchins left, Charlie returned to the dining room. A slice of apple pie was on his plate, but he didn’t feel hungry anymore.

  Both Janey and Artemis were staring at him with question mark expressions. “What was that all about?” asked Janey. “You’re pale.”

  Charlie touched his face as if he could feel his pallor, feel his fear. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.” His face felt clammy.

  Eleven

  Charlie fretted through the night about being unable to get his pistol license reinstated. The next day, Saturday, he stayed around the house. Even raking the leaves seemed dangerous. He felt frail and this surprised him. This wasn’t the first time a threat had been made against his life, but he thought how he couldn’t run fast anymore and he couldn’t hear as well and his muscles were flabby. He told himself he’d go to the Y and start lifting weights on Sunday; that is, if he lived that long.

  Janey watched him uncertainly. She’d stopped asking what was wrong, but she wouldn’t let him get too far from sight. In the afternoon, he watched football on the upstairs TV. He kept the sound off and turned the chair so his back wasn’t to the door. No way was he going to make Wild Bill Hickok’s mistake.

  “Don’t you want me to turn up the sound?” asked Janey.

  “It’s not important. They always say the same thing.”

  Janey focused on something on the floor by Charlie’s chair. “What’s that doing here?” She picked up the carving knife: part of her two-piece Wüsthof carving set that had been a wedding present from her former husband thirty years earlier.

  “I was going to cut myself some cheese,” said Charlie.

  —

  The first thing Monday morning, Charlie drove down to a gun shop near the Albany airport and bought a Benelli M4 Super 90: a 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun with an 18.5-inch barrel and a regular stock. It held five rounds and a sixth in the chamber. It could fire as fast as Charlie could pull the trigger. To buy it, all he needed was the money—no permit, no registration, no license. It was as simple as buying a birthday cake.

  The salesman had gray skin, a constant smile and was thin enough to slip through a picket fence. “Home defense system?” he asked.

  Charlie nodded.

  He then drove to another gun shop two miles away and bought a factory collapsible buttstock and a pistol grip. It was illegal to sell the Benelli with these attached, but there was no law against buying them separately. To change stocks took about a minute. But Charlie wasn’t done.

  He continued along Central Avenue to Schenectady, getting caught up in stop-and-go traffic that made him impatient, as if the murderer with the knife would try to leap into his car. A silly idea, he thought, but he kept the doors locked. It was a bright fall morning with leaves blowing across the highway.

  Charlie went to a third gun shop where he’d done business for the past twenty years after helping the owner, Larry Wisniewski, with a divorce. Charlie had phoned him earlier and Wisniewski was waiting behind the counter. He was a middle-aged, average-sized man with Coke-bottle glasses and a blue and somewhat greasy Patriots cap that he never seemed to take off.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Charlie.” On the glass case was a 14.5-inch barrel. “It’s illegal for a civilian to use this.”

  “I can deal with it. Can you put it on? I’ll look the other way.”

  “You ask a lot, Charlie.” His worried expression deepened the nickel slot between his eyebrows.

  “Who’ll know? Anyway, I need the favor.”

  Wisniewski looked down at the box with the Benelli. Charlie could almost hear the heated conversation rattling between his ears.

  “It will take a few minutes. Watch the shop, will you?”

  Wisniewski disappeared behind a purple velvet curtain with the short barrel in one hand and the box with the Benelli in the other. Charlie heard him bumping around and the scrape of a chair being moved.

  “Can you get a magazine extension with those?” called Charlie.

  Wisniewski stuck his head around the curtain. “With one of these shorties, it’d only add one more round. It’s also illegal. Have you thought this over, Charlie?”

  “All night long.” He’d always found something exhilarating about buying a gun. It was almost sexual. He disapproved of the feeling, but he also liked it. “Let me have the extension. One more round’s one more round, right?”

  Wisniewski took off his cap, looked inside it, and then put it back on his head. “Can’t be done, Charlie. First of all, I’d have to order one, which would take time. Second, it could cost me my license. Shit, if you can’t take care of your business with six rounds, you might as well quit right now.”

  In his disappointment, Charlie wanted to ask Wisniewski where he could get a bagful of grenades, but the foolishness of the thought embarrassed him. He was struck by how fast he could change from a rational human being to a fanatic eager for explosives. He shrugged and nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

  Wisniewski watched him and then said, “I got something else you’ll want.” He again disappeared into the back. Time passed. Charlie pondered the dangerous seesawing of his emotions. Wisniewski returned ten minutes later carrying the Benelli in one hand and a black Boyt Harness hard case in the other. “You’ll need this. You can’t just carry it around in a plastic bag. I put the long barrel inside. And there’s something else you’ll need.” From the glass case, he removed a Beretta shotgun cleaning kit with a cleaning-rod handle, aluminum rods, a three-piece bronze brush, cotton patches, lubricant oil and a few other odds and ends. “Now get out of here. You can pay me another time as long as it’s soon.” The crease between his eyebrows deepened.

  Charlie hefted the hard case. He figured he could drive back and forth over it with his Golf and it would hardly scratch. He put the case on the counter. “Can you give me four boxes of two-and-three-quarter-inch shells?”

  “Jesus, Charlie.” Wisniewski dug out the shells and slid the boxes across the counter. “I’ll throw a bag in for free as long as you get outta here.” He went into the other room and returned shortly with a small black backpack. “This is a Boyt Tactical backpack. It’ll hold your stuff. Now beat it.”

  Charlie put the shells and cleaning kit into the backpack, and then opened the hard case and set the shotgun into its foam bed as gently as he might set a baby in a cradle. Closing the case, he took comfort in the decisive snapping sounds of its latches. “Give my greetings to the wife.”

  —

  Charlie then drove to a rod-and-gun club north of Troy that had an outdoor range. He’d been there years before with his cousin Jack, but he wasn’
t a member. He’d never been a hunter and saw his reluctance to prowl through the woods as caused by a hopeless streak of sentimentality: He was fond of animals. The idea of shooting grouse, pheasants, ducks, geese, turkeys, rabbits and deer was disagreeable to him. Little creatures with big families. If he was starving, he might reconsider, but otherwise, what was the point? No, the only creatures he’d shot had been human beings, and once a pit bull.

  But these feelings embarrassed him. Every fall during deer hunting season, part of him, a small part, felt he should be out there too. He’d put on heavy, high-top boots, clomp around the house and sigh. Only Janey and Victor knew about Charlie’s sentimental streak and it was rarely mentioned. Not that Charlie hid the fact that he didn’t hunt, but if anyone asked he’d say, “Not recently.” In fact, his previous hunting experience had been popping a squirrel with a slingshot when he was ten. It fell to the ground twisting and writhing and then lay still. He’d been surprised to hit it, and he never tried again.

  Charlie drove east on Route 2 toward Cropseyville. The countryside was mostly trees and farmland, but small subdivisions were creeping out from Troy. The gun club was down a dead-end gravel road and he parked by the clubhouse, a long one-story building. Four pickups were parked outside. Charlie walked to the door, wondering what little story he’d make up.

  Fifteen minutes later he was out at the rifle range taking the shotgun out of its case. He stood under a long, roofed structure without walls. Five targets were placed at different intervals to about seventy-five yards up a slight incline. The target backers were made of railroad ties and straw, with a red post on either side.

  Six men had been in the clubhouse; four were playing cards. Charlie explained he was a former cop and he wanted to try out a new shotgun. He gave them the names of five men he knew who used to belong to the club. All turned out to be dead. Charlie was so stunned by this fact that the man in charge waved him toward the door, calling out, “Go on, go on. Do your best!”

  The act of sliding the shells into the magazine gave him a slightly carnal buzz. Curbing his annoyance, he inserted the sixth shell in the chamber and took his position at the barrier. He raised the Benelli, tucked it against his shoulder, peered along the sight at the twenty-five-yard target and fired. The sound was more of a crack than an explosion. Actually, it seemed like one longish sound, because the six shots took about six seconds. The spent cases darted away like speedy finches. The recoil wasn’t as soft as he was told it would be, but he could deal with it. Only two of his shots had hit the target, and neither in the center. His feelings at this point were high adrenaline and fear, not focused fear, but a fear, it seemed, of everything encircling his life, as if fear were the air he breathed.