The Price of Malice Read online

  He’d been married once, long ago, and had completely messed it up. An ex-New Yorker from a troubled family, briefly a NYPD cop, also a former combat sniper, he’d amassed enough psychological baggage to propel most people straight to suicide. But he’d held off, perhaps out of perverseness, as he claimed, or from a stubborn need to simply defy the odds. Whatever the motivation, he was still around, and looked like he might be enjoying the best time of his life.

  Besides, right now, he was doing what he loved most: hunting, sitting in his car in the village of Bellows Falls, by the curb, waiting for the next name on his list to appear.

  This happened three minutes later. An older car with a pizza sign magnetized to its roof went whipping by on its mission with a skinny, worn-out man at the wheel.

  Kunkle pulled in behind him with surprising dexterity, given his one-handedness, passed him, and then cut him off, forcing him to either stop or become a lawn ornament.

  He swung out of his unmarked vehicle, marched back to the delivery car, and thrust his face through the driver’s open window, smiling widely at the terrified, sweat-covered face of one Terry Stein.

  “Hi, Terry,” he said. “How’s tricks?”

  The other man gaped at him. “Kunkle? You almost killed me. What the hell was that?”

  “I want to talk. Shove over.”

  “What?” Stein stared from Willy to the pizza box beside him. “I have a delivery.”

  Willy opened the door. “Hold it in your lap. Move over.”

  “You can’t do this. I’ll lose my job if I’m late.”

  Willy shoved his face so close, it was barely an inch from Stein’s, making the latter cringe. “MOVE,” he shouted, forcing the man to obey.

  Scrambling awkwardly, Stein tried to maneuver the large, hot box, as well as slide his butt over the console of the small car, muttering, “I didn’t do nuthin’. This is wrong.”

  Willy slid behind the wheel and slammed the flimsy door, barely noticing the stink and heat of the car’s interior. Terry had been known to use the vehicle as much to live in as for transportation, and was no advertisement for personal hygiene. In a phrase, he was one of “Willy’s people,” as Joe and many others referred to them—overlooked members of the occasionally working poor, given to life at the edges and to whatever opportunities arose, many of them illegal.

  “You used to live on Manor Court,” Willy stated.

  Terry stared at him. “Maybe,” he said tentatively, adding, “that was a while ago.”

  “What did you do with the key?”

  The other man was trying to keep the pizza off his lap and not burn his hands. His employer was too cheap to buy insulated delivery bags. “I kept it on me.”

  Willy glanced out the window, sucked on his upper lip a moment, rubbed the side of his nose with his index, and tried again, his voice tightly under control.

  “Not then, you moron. What did you do with it afterward?”

  “After I left? Gave it to the next guy.”

  Willy reached out suddenly, grabbed the box with his large hand, and jammed it between the windshield and the dashboard, crumpling it in two and releasing an odorous cloud. He quelled Stein’s predictable outburst with, “Focus, Terry. Listen to what I’m saying here.”

  It was a bluff, of course. Willy had no idea if it had been Terry who’d circulated an extra copy of Liz Babbitt’s apartment key. He didn’t even know if a duplication had occurred. That had just been a guess, if an educated one. But after having spent some time researching the theory—and interviewing others in the same manner—Willy had become comfortable thinking Terry Stein might supply him with what he needed to know.

  He grabbed Terry’s shirtfront and yanked him around to where the back of his head almost jammed against the dashboard.

  “Terry,” he said quietly, “who did you give the key to?”

  It worked. Stein blinked up at him a couple of times, swallowed hard, and said reluctantly, “Some guy. He paid me for a copy—two months’ rent.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. He just said it wouldn’t matter till I was out of the apartment. I didn’t believe him, course, so I put an extra padlock on for the rest of my time there.”

  “And?” Willy released his grip.

  Terry straightened and smoothed the front of his T-shirt. “And nuthin’, man. I never saw him again, nobody ever fucked with my stuff, and I got the money. It was a good deal.”

  “You ever read the papers?” Willy asked him.

  “Sometimes.”

  “That murder in Bratt?”

  Terry’s mouth opened slightly. “Yeah?” he said hesitantly.

  “Your old apartment,” Willy stated.

  Terry was already shaking his head. “I had nuthin’ to do with that. Nuthin’.”

  “You read who the dead man was?”

  “No.”

  “Who did you give the key to?”

  The pizza man shrugged. “I didn’t know him. Funny last name.”

  “Castine?” Willy asked.

  “Maybe.”

  Willy pulled a cleaned-up postmortem portrait from his pocket and showed it to Stein in the streetlight.

  “That him?”

  Terry nodded, grimacing. “Jesus—yup.”

  “How’d you meet?”

  The man lifted a shoulder. “You know—around town.”

  Willy poked him hard in the ribs, making him gasp. “And you sell him your front door key ’cause, what the hell, you want everything you own ripped off.”

  Stein licked his lips.

  Willy leaned into him, making him cringe. “You are fucking with me,” he said slowly and carefully. “I don’t like that.”

  Terry caved. “So I knew him.”

  “How?”

  “I sold him some dope; we shared a few drinks. You know, we did stuff, now and then.”

  Vague as that sounded, Willy knew it to represent an entire lifestyle of random, day-to-day interactions for a good many people. The Terry Steins of this world often functioned with the accuracy of bumper cars, never knowing where they were headed or who they might meet at any moment—including a one-armed cop during a pizza delivery.

  “So, why did he want the key?” Willy asked him. “Even you would’ve asked that.”

  “He said he wanted to get laid.”

  “In your apartment, when you were at work or wherever,” Willy suggested.

  “Yeah.”

  “Who with?” Willy asked.

  Terry made a face. “I don’t know. Some broad.”

  Willy took hold of his hot, sweaty hand and bent one of his fingers back, making Terry flop around, trying to ease the pain.

  “Oh, fuck. That hurts, man. Shit. Stop. You can’t do that. It isn’t legal.”

  “LEGAL?” Willy yelled in his ear. “You handed over an apartment key to a man who then got murdered there. You have any idea how deep the shit is around you?”

  “I didn’t know,” Terry howled.

  “Tell me what you do know. NOW.” Willy let go of him.

  Stein sat piteously holding his hand, rubbing his finger. “You coulda broke it.”

  “I will break it, if you don’t talk. Who was Castine seeing?”

  “A married broad,” Terry admitted. “Small place, lots of kids. They had to be quiet about it.”

  “You’re not gonna make me ask, are you?”

  Terry sighed. “Karen Putnam. Her hubby was in the can then. I don’t know about now. Wayne and her had a thing.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “West Bratt Mobile Park,” Terry said without hesitation.

  Willy smiled. “Suddenly, you’re the goddamn Answer Man.”

  Terry merely nodded, still pouting.

  “Then answer me this,” Willy pursued. “Why your apartment and not his own?”

  “He said she wouldn’t go there—too much of a dump.”

  “They couldn’t just rent a room?”

  Terry lifted both ski
nny shoulders. “I don’t know—maybe this turned him on.”

  Willy thought a moment. “Tell me more about Wayne.”

  Terry was sullen. “What about him?”

  “He like anything besides married women?”

  Terry stopped staring at his finger and looked at Willy. “What’s that mean?”

  “Boys? Girls? What else?”

  Stein wrinkled his nose. “That’s gross, man. I don’t know nuthin’ about that.”

  “You ever see him with Putnam?”

  “I walked in on ’em once, by mistake.”

  Willy laughed. “You little pervert. This had to be after you stopped living there, unless you just lied to me about the padlock.”

  Terry’s face reddened.

  “How long did you wait around in the bushes, waiting to quote-unquote walk in on them?”

  Terry laughed guiltily. “About an hour,” he conceded.

  He then stared at Willy intently. “But I didn’t know nuthin’ about anything else, and I wouldn’t’ve helped him with that.”

  “Maybe,” Willy told him. “Maybe not.”

  He reached for the door handle and swung his legs out, still speaking. “I know something, though. I know that you will not be leaving your place or your job or going anywhere on vacation without letting me know first, right?”

  Terry nodded emphatically. “Right.”

  Willy slammed the door and poked his head in through the open window. “And I know you’ll be calling me if you got any more to tell me about this.”

  “Right.” Terry wiped his damp face with his open hand and caught sight of the crushed pizza box.

  He groaned. “I am so fucked. I’m probably fired already.”

  Willy reached into his pocket, threw a twenty-dollar bill onto the driver’s seat, and said with a smile, “Keep the change.”

  Terry’s eyes were wide. “What about the customer? He’ll be pissed.”

  “I am the customer, stupid,” Willy explained.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lyn stood aside from the other pedestrians and consulted the map in her hands, trying to orient herself. She’d caught a glimpse of the Thomas Hill Standpipe—Bangor’s picturesque, almost two-million-gallon municipal water tank, overlooking most of downtown from high on a hill—and had twisted the map accordingly, finally deciphering Hammond from Main from Central Streets. Entering the city by car earlier had resulted in total confusion, what with a flurry of one-way streets and up to ten bridges spanning both the Kenduskeag and the Penobscot waterways—a third of which she’d seen up close—and she was hoping for better luck on foot.

  It was a good plan. Fifteen minutes later, she entered an older building—three-storied, brick-clad, and reminiscent of some of Brattleboro’s bastions—aside from the refreshing, wall-to-wall air-conditioning—and paused in the lobby to read a glassed-in display case listing all of the offices overhead. She found what she’d been hunting since her conversation with Harry Martin, and hit the Up button of the old-fashioned elevator, marveling at how easy it had been to locate Richard Brandhorst—and wondering if that meant she’d merely found the wrong man.

  Her doubts grew when she stepped onto the mosaic-tiled third floor and found herself staring into an eight-foot-square antique mirror facing the elevator.

  She hesitated, looking around. There was a choice of offices, up and down the hall, each carefully hand-labeled in black paint on its glass door entrance. She felt like she’d stepped onto a 1930s movie set.

  One of the doors advertised “The Brandhorst Group.”

  Lyn stuck her map into her purse, squared her shoulders, and turned the brass knob.

  She found herself in a reception room with several comfortable chairs, a coffee table with some neatly arranged business magazines, and a young woman typing on a computer behind a desk. There was a blank wooden door directly behind her.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  Lyn smiled brightly. “Yes. I’d like to see Mr. Brandhorst.”

  Frowning, the woman checked a book lying open beside the computer. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No. I’m sorry,” Lyn countered cheerily. “I’m in town sort of by accident, and I was told by a mutual friend that if I didn’t see Dick when I was here, I’d better have a good excuse.” She laughed and leaned forward confidentially. “I guess he comes highly recommended.”

  The receptionist showed no reaction aside from a thin smile. “And your friend’s name?”

  Lyn pulled out what she hoped would be her trump card—to Brandhorst if not this woman. “Harry Martin, from Gloucester.”

  Her hostess rose and crossed to the unlabeled door. “And yours?”

  “Lyn Silva—sister of José Silva.”

  She hesitated. Lyn was unsure if the names meant something to her, or if she was merely getting them both straight in her head.

  “I’ll be right back,” was all she said, suggesting, “Why don’t you have a seat?”

  Lyn didn’t bother. This would work or it wouldn’t. She stayed standing in the middle of the room, trying not to anticipate what might come next.

  The door opened a minute later and the young woman reappeared, carefully closing it behind her.

  “Mr. Brandhorst will see you in just a few minutes, Ms. Silva. He’s wrapping something up right now, but it won’t be long. Would you like some coffee in the meantime?”

  Lyn turned her down, and the woman went back to her typing. There followed several minutes of silence, punctuated only by the staccato of the plastic keyboard, during which Lyn imagined what Brandhorst was really doing beyond that door.

  The buzzer by the receptionist’s hand startled them both. The woman rose once more, without lifting the phone, and posed by the door, issuing the inevitable, “Mr. Brandhorst will see you now.”

  Lyn smiled at all this Alice-in-Wonderland banality surrounding her real reason for being here, and stepped uncertainly but boldly across the threshold.

  Through her bartender training, among other places, Lyn had become a practiced observer of human nature. Pragmatically, it helped identify when someone was either about to fall over or get in a fight; more broadly, she used it to judge people’s characters when time was short.

  Dick Brandhorst’s body language told her she had some hard work ahead. Though standing, he stayed behind his desk as she entered, gestured reservedly to a guest chair with two fingers of one hand, and barely managed a smile as he greeted her.

  “Have a seat.”

  Had he been a dentist, she would have left; instead, she immediately knew she’d found the right man. She sat.

  He did not. “What can I do for you?” he asked without preamble.

  Not thinking, she came out with it directly, hoping a business angle might allow them more room to talk freely.

  “I was wondering how much money my brother still owed you before he died,” she said.

  Brandhorst didn’t respond. He stayed where he was, as if transfixed. She had to imagine that he was considering her motives—was she a cop? A crazed family member about to pull a gun? An even more crazed family member offering to pay off the remaining debt? The fine print under the company name on the front door had advertised “Financial Planning, Investment Advice, and Portfolio Management,” which had seemed at once awkward and redundant, as when someone talks to excess in order to cover something up.

  “Your brother being”—he paused for effect, swelling her suspicion—“José Silva, according to my secretary.”

  Lyn smiled thinly. “Look, I know this is a little weird—my marching in here and laying this out. But I wanted to be totally straight from the start. I’ll tell you anything you want to know about me, or my family, or anything else, for that matter. I’m just trying to find out what really happened. I am not here to jam you up or get you in trouble.”

  At last, he reached back, found the chair behind him, and sat down, carefully crossing his legs. His eyes remained as watchful as before—a snake�
�s on a mongoose, perhaps, or worse.

  “Ms. Silva,” he began. “What makes you think I know anything about this?”

  She nodded, having expected the posture. This was going to be a cross between chess and a negotiation, with Brandhorst hoping to extract more than he gave, while pretending to know nothing at all.

  Except that she wasn’t going to play it that way.

  “Because I know that you have a lot of irons in the fire and that some of them aren’t legal. But that’s what I’m saying: I don’t care. My brother was a gambler. That’s his fault. And collecting money from people like him is a service you provide. As far as I know, that contract was being honored, wasn’t it?”

  “Go on.”

  “So, the rest of the family didn’t know this was going on. We just thought they were a couple of lobstermen doing what they do. Then a storm hit, they disappeared, and we moved on, thinking they’d been lost at sea. But they weren’t, were they?”

  He merely frowned and shook his head vaguely.

  “The boat was found near the Canadian border, just a few weeks ago,” she resumed, unsure of her headway. “Stored in a boathouse, all identifiers painted over.”

  “Does sound like a mystery,” Brandhorst said blandly, but the legs became uncrossed and the pen he’d picked up idly froze in his hand.

  “Where’s the boat now?” he asked.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Lyn told him, struck by the question. “The mystery is whether they were killed or not. I’ll tell you something else you already know: In order to pay you, they were smuggling goods into the U.S. from Canada. That’s a Homeland Security problem, meaning federal agents and U.S. attorneys and closed inquests and everything else. All that shit can land on you if you want it to, since we already know you’re a link in this chain, but from my position, that’s entirely your choice. I’m not here for that.”

  He scowled. “Hold it. Are you threatening me? I thought you wanted help.”

  “I do,” she insisted. “But I want you to know I’m serious.”

  He kept on with the outrage. “That’s a funny way of showing it. Help me out or I’ll call the cops—especially when I have no clue what you’re talking about.”