Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) Page 8

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Frank had put on his most disarming face, even telling Neil to stay in the basement lobby near the restrooms so staffers wouldn’t associate the two of them. All for naught. He’d walked down the untidy subterranean hallway housing the museum offices, introduced himself to the curator in a golly-gee manner—using a bogus name, of course—and gone on and on about how “blown away” he’d been by the exhibition, and especially the originality of the Vietnam photos. He’d told how his dad had been killed there, devastating the family; how, as a result, Nam had become a pivotal event in Frank’s life; and how this show had therefore struck him to the core.

  Could she—maybe—share with him how it had come about? Who the photographer was? Who’d been responsible for bringing his work to the gallery?

  Nothing. Not a damn thing. Sandy Corcoran—according to her name tag—had sat at her desk, a smiling lapdog, and told him that while she was delighted to hear of his moving experience, there was no way in hell she was giving him one single iota.

  At least, that’s how he’d interpreted her.

  She’d offered to take his contact information, to pass it along to the relevant people. He’d demurred, of course, but he’d still felt a modicum of gratitude. After all, she’d just implied that she held the keys to the kingdom.

  And now, eight hours later, he and Neil were about to get those keys handed over—or take them outright—thanks to a “people finder” page on the Internet.

  They were seventeen miles north of Burlington, in the uninspiring commuter town of Milton, watching Corcoran’s home on a dead end dirt road within earshot of a spillway gushing from a small concrete dam containing Lake Arrowhead.

  Neil, as usual, was unhappy. “Crank the heat up, Frank. Freezin’ my butt off here.”

  Frank reached out to the control, but didn’t actually adjust it. He was comfortable, and knew that Neil’s complaint was largely psychological. Despite the amount of surveillance their job entailed, Neil had never cottoned to it. He preferred to keep busy, which meant he’d be happier soon.

  Frank brought up the binoculars and scanned the front of the house again. Frank wasn’t pleased, either. In the best of worlds, if you wanted to move on someone, as he and Neil were planning tonight, you did several days of prep work. You established a household’s habits and patterns, you got to know the inhabitants and their schedules. You let your comfort level dictate the mission—not the client’s impatience.

  But the senator believed otherwise, and Frank, despite his inborn independence, could recognize when he was up against it. Not only were he and Neil being highly compensated for this job—to where Frank’s retirement plans had been advanced by a decade—but it had been made perfectly clear that, were they to fail, the senator had other people as close as his speed dial whose assignment it would be to make that retirement immediate and permanent. And considering how the man had treated them at their meetings—and apparently his pathetic butler all the time—he was not big on human kindness.

  So, the job was on for tonight, with no more preparation than a quick reconnaissance of the home and its surroundings, which they’d conducted two hours ago.

  There, at least, they thought they might be in luck. Sandy Corcoran appeared to live only with an older woman and a cat, from what they’d seen through a few unobstructed windows. There were no dogs, no alarms, virtually no traffic along the dirt road, and enough cover supplied by the surrounding trees and brush to hide Frank’s rental car. The constantly rushing water from the river downstream of the dam was good for muffling noise, and as a final bonus, the Corcoran household—as was often true in rural environments—didn’t seem to be compulsive about using curtains or blinds.

  He and Neil had constructed a rough floor plan from their observations, as they’d done in prior home invasions. Ideally, they analyzed entrances and exits, pathways and obstructions, locations of light switches, how doors swung open and whether they had locks, and number and proximity of phones.

  In this case, there were gaps. Given his druthers, Frank would have waited for the house to be empty, gone inside, mapped it with precision, arranged a way to quietly enter once it was occupied, and maybe even placed a few tiny remote cameras for later monitoring. This time, they had sections of their layout that were completely blank—either the lights had been out in a room, or a single curtain had in fact been drawn, denying them visual access.

  All such snags acknowledged, their combined experience and level of expertise gave them enough confidence to proceed.

  Frank saw a sudden variance in the lighting seeping out from the house. He raised the glasses again and said, “TV got turned off. Time to rock ’n’ roll.”

  They donned throat mics and earphones for covert communications, watch caps that could be pulled down to form face masks, and gloves for warmth and anonymity, and left their vehicle, heading off in different directions, according to plan.

  As he closed on the building, Frank saw a shadow cross the nearest window and recognized Sandy Corcoran reaching for one of the living room lamps. As the light died, he traveled the length of the building at a slow pace, between the building and the river beyond, matching her progress as he saw it through a succession of windows. He was close enough that he could actually see her speaking with the older woman as she presumably wished her good night.

  “Bedroom light just went on for the old lady,” Neil’s whispered voice announced over Frank’s earphones.

  “Roger that,” he replied. “I’m with Sandy, heading for the back bedroom.”

  “Let’s hope they aren’t big bedtime readers,” Neil said.

  It was a pertinent remark, given that they’d decided to wait in their respective spots for a half hour after lights out before making a move. One reward they’d earned from their earlier surveillance was that the house had only the single TV set. At least there would be no hours of Jimmy, David, or Conan to contend with.

  “Grandma just pulled a curtain,” Neil announced. “I got no eyes.”

  “Roger,” Frank acknowledged, positioning himself outside Sandy’s window. She was not inclined toward the same precautions as Granny, given the lack of neighbors, which allowed him to watch her walk back and forth across the bedroom, entering and exiting the bathroom, disrobing in stages as she prepared for bed.

  He’d layered up for the weather, as had Neil on the other side, and found himself now comfortably perched on a nearby log, with a full view of the room’s interior, admiring a relatively attractive older woman as she slowly revealed herself.

  It was not sexual satisfaction that he derived from this. His sex life was acceptably active and varied, and he entertained no particularly unusual fantasies. The pleasure that he was experiencing now was purely acquisitive. He watched Sandy Corcoran for the style and color of her underwear, for the presence of a particular mole or the shape and size of her nipples. He drew conclusions about her diet and exercise regime based on her muscle tone and the tautness of her stomach. Frank Niles was an archivist, as he saw it—a collector of facts and memories. His job went beyond the killings and mayhem it occasionally required, making him a traveler of sorts through other people’s lives—absorbing, cataloging, often admiring. It was a fringe benefit that somehow supplied him with an aesthetic balance to the nature of his work.

  He doubted that Neil shared any of this with him. Neil was more basic in his needs—a sturdy associate, and one he curiously enjoyed working with, unlike the occasional stringer like Tommy Bajek, whom they’d lost beyond retrieving in the hoarder’s house. But Frank was not so foolish as to share his pastimes and insights with Neil. “Keep it simple” was one of his philosophies—people should know what you chose to tell them, and nothing more.

  So, like the contented member of an exclusive audience, Frank studied Sandy’s preparations for bed until she pulled the covers up to her chin, reached out, and killed the last light.

  “Is Grandma making Zs over there?” he asked through his throat
mic.

  “I guess so. It’s dark.”

  “I got lucky,” he admitted. “Sandy opened her window a crack.”

  “Gotta love those fresh-air freaks,” Neil responded.

  “Okay,” Frank concluded. “Get comfortable. Thirty-minute countdown.”

  Neil had once complained that this was when they earned the big bucks, sitting still in utter silence for sometimes hours at a stretch, in the cold or the wet or in considerable discomfort, waiting for the right time to move—in this instance, until the two women inside had fallen thoroughly asleep.

  All that considered, this was looking like a cakewalk.

  * * *

  “Welcome to glorious Port Richmond, gentlemen,” Elizabeth McLarney announced as she drove her unmarked green Ford Explorer off the interstate, onto Aramingo Avenue, and under a railroad overpass at East Lehigh. “Once home to shipyards, coal dumps—and nowadays, teen gangs, the Polish Mafia, and a dash of Irish hoodlums to spice things up.”

  Phil took over. “The Mafia, we call the Kielbasa Posse,” he said. “Out the right window is the east side—upwardly mobile, getting gentrified, complete with photo-op cute streets, hipsters, and parks with kids playing ball.”

  “And out the left window”—Elizabeth played along—“is the west side—heavy on rentals, abandoned buildings, shooting galleries, and gang fights. Bipolar Town is what I call it.”

  “Of course,” Phil explained, “It’s not that simple. At night, the whole area can get dicey, especially when the summer heat kicks in. The parks become staging areas for scumbags looking for trouble. Old-time residents are making inroads—neighborhood patrols and what have you—and I think the place is looking better. Campbell Square used to be nicknamed ‘Needle Park.’ It’s improving, but it still has a ways to go.” He cocked an eye at Joe. “Bet you don’t have much of that up in Vermont, huh?”

  “Not in the quantities you have to deal with,” Joe agreed.

  He and Les took in the buildings to both sides, a blur of glued-together two-story row houses interspersed with block-house commercial structures, all of it crisscrossed overhead with a visual spaghetti bowl of taut electrical lines, making Joe feel as if they’d just been trapped under a screened lid, like bugs in a box. The first floors of dozens of the narrower buildings advertised an assortment of minuscule restaurants, markets, and stores, many having hard-to-pronounce—mostly Polish—names, and with a smattering of everything from Asian to Irish.

  Partway along, Elizabeth took a left into Port Richmond’s western half, and then a right a couple of streets down. Here, the street was narrow, closed in, and far from quaint—house after beleaguered house, scarred and stained and sometimes boarded up, crammed together and festooned with the predictable mushrooming of weather-beaten TV dishes. Where a porch had been worked into the building’s plan, an occasional bundled-up figure sat, sometimes smoking, staring out at the desolation. Joe had seen worse—in Chicago, Newark, and New York, to name three—but none of that made this neighborhood upbeat by comparison.

  “Here we go,” Elizabeth said cheerily, parking by the curb. “Home sweet home to the late Tomasz Bajek. Everybody out.”

  The four of them stepped into the trash-strewn street and looked around. Each was aware of people watching from nearby—a stoop, a parked car, or behind half-drawn blinds. The neighborhood buzz that cops were on the street was like a small electrical impulse.

  McLarney crossed the cracked sidewalk, bounded up the three steps of one of the row houses, tried the door, hoping for the best, and successfully walked inside, the rest of her entourage following.

  In the claustrophobic entryway, she pounded on the nearest door.

  An older woman appeared after three minutes, the view of her face transected by the security chain she’d left in place. “What?”

  McLarney showed her badge. “Police. We need to get into Tommy Bajek’s place.”

  “Be my guest. I’m not his mother.”

  “Which one’s his?”

  “Upstairs. To the right. But he’s not here.”

  “And he’s not gonna be. He’s dead.”

  The woman frowned, said, “Shit,” and closed the door with a bang.

  “Oops,” Lester said.

  Elizabeth smiled at him. “She’s already forgotten we were here.”

  They headed up the dark, narrow, evil-smelling stairs, stepping lightly out of habit, their eyes on the shadows.

  Joe recognized the faint traces of what had once been a family home, before the building was transformed into a cramped multi-dwelling. Old architectural details had been painted over or crudely remodeled. He could see where prior doorways had been Sheetrocked, if not taped and floated, in an effort to divide the house evenly, and he saw water pipes and wiring supplying bathrooms and outlets that—a hundred years earlier—hadn’t existed.

  It all made him wonder if anyone from the city’s building codes enforcement branch had the slightest idea of the place’s current function.

  At the door to the right of the landing, Phil gently tried the knob, which caused the door to swing open before them. Instinctively, all four flattened against the wall, their hands on their guns.

  “Police,” Phil called into the apartment. “Comin’ in.”

  He eased the door wider with his toe, staying where he was. Opposite him, Elizabeth extracted a small flashlight, shone it into the darkness, and quickly bobbed her head into the opening to check for any threats.

  “Looks clear,” she said softly.

  That observation applied to people only, for the cramped, stinking, lightless near-hovel they entered was far from clear otherwise. As they spread out and opened filthy curtains or attempted to roll up petrified blinds—having found the lights inoperative—they discovered a messy, one-room den. Or, as Phil put it, “What a shit hole.”

  Joe agreed privately, although, having been to Ben Kendall’s, he was jaded. Still, almost everything that could have been placed on a shelf or a counter, in a closet or a fridge had been deposited in a heap on the floor—including the remains of discarded meals stretching back into history.

  As a result, the place was alive with insects scurrying away from the intruding light.

  “Wow,” Lester admired, studying his shoes and socks for invaders. “It’s a whole ecosystem.”

  “It’s also been tossed,” Joe said.

  “I agree,” echoed Elizabeth. “Look at the dresser.”

  “The dresser,” Joe went on, “the mattress, the closet, the cabinets over the stove, even the freezer. All open and emptied.”

  “Someone connected to the Kendall B and E?” Lester asked no one in particular.

  “Dropped by after his death?” Phil joined in. “Maybe.”

  “It would make sense,” Elizabeth said. “You said they didn’t try digging him out of that booby trap. Next best thing would be to come here afterwards and erase any and all trace of his connection to them.”

  She extracted her cell phone and hit the speed dial. “I’ll get the crime scene folks to sort things out, and have ’em grill Ms. Hospitality downstairs, along with whoever else lives in the building, not that I’m holding my breath.”

  As she was talking on the phone, Joe and Lester convened with Phil.

  “How familiar was the PPD with Mr. Bajek?” Joe asked.

  “From what I read,” Phil replied, “he was a Kowalski. You ever see Combat!—that old TV show?”

  “Sure,” Joe admitted while Lester looked blankly at them. “Had Vic Morrow as the sergeant. Never smiled.”

  Phil laughed. “Right. Whenever they had a new guy join the squad, he’d be the one who bought it. We used to laugh ’cause his name was always Johnson or Kowalski. It became a thing, you know? ‘A real Kowalski.’” Phil then looked at them seriously for a moment. “Neither of you is Polish, are you?” he asked.

  Joe shook his head before inferring, “So Bajek was a perpetual number two man?”

  “Yeah, and usually the guy left h
olding the bag. I checked him out when you first brought him up—before you got here—and it looks like he was the doofus we were left with, more times than not. Not too bright, but maybe good in a pinch. We had him for fights, store robberies, vandalisms, stuff like that.”

  “Smart enough to hold a bat,” Joe suggested. “But too dumb to run away?”

  Elizabeth had ended her phone call. “You talking about Tommy?”

  “Yeah.” Phil smiled like a proud father.

  “We go after his family and past associates now?” Joe asked.

  Elizabeth sighed and checked her watch. “That’s the drill. Let’s hope we get luckier than here.”

  * * *

  Frank enjoyed entering people’s bedrooms when they were asleep. It didn’t really matter if they were male or female, although the females were an added attraction. And it wasn’t as if he did it all that frequently. But the pure pleasure of it hit him every time, akin to reversing the standard nightmare—instead of fearing what might come bumping in the middle of the night, he became that something.

  Sandy Corcoran’s window slid open without a sound, and he’d stepped inside like a passing shadow on the wall. Now he settled on the bed beside her sleeping form, simultaneously placing his gloved hand across her slightly gaping mouth.

  She awoke with a full body spasm, her limbs trapped under the covers, her eyes as round as marbles.

  His face masked, he leaned in close and spoke softly. “Sandy, Sandy. I’m not here to hurt you. Stop moving. Just lie there and breathe through your nose.”

  Her breaths came in gasps, understandably, so he let her situation sink in for a few seconds before adding, “Good. Now, listen carefully. I have an associate with … Who is that? Your mother? Anyhow, she’s fine and you’ll be fine, if you cooperate. Will you do that? Either nod or shake your head, although I wouldn’t recommend the latter.”

  Her eyes above his gloved hand were watching him with astonishment.

  She nodded.