damned thing works wet.” He looked down at his waterlogged watch. “We’ve got maybe ten more minutes.”
“ We don’t have shit. You’re staying here.”
“We outgun him, don’t we?” There was that we again.
“Maybe not and neither of us is in any kind of shape to go toe to toe with him. He’s warm, dry, and gigantic. Plus, given the strain he’s been under for over a month, he’s probably about ready to explode.”
“Then you need me and I’m helping whether you want me to or not.”
I was in no position to argue and I needed to get out of the cold. “Okay.”
“How are you going to deal with him if, like you say, he’s ready to blow?”
“In his way, I think he’s expecting me. But it really doesn’t matter, does it? We’re here and I’m going after him. Cover me until I get around the side of the house, then take care of the boat. Do whatever you have to do to it, but just make sure he can’t use it to make a run.”
As I worked my way to the side door, back against the clapboards, ducking below the windows, I tried figuring out a play that would get me inside the house without Jimmy knowing about it. Who was I kidding? Even if I wasn’t soaked, frostbitten, and shoeless and hadn’t consumed a third of a bottle of scotch or had a fight or been punched in the face, I don’t think I could have figured out a reasonable plan. I wasn’t a goddamned cat burglar, so I did the only thing that made any sense at all: I knocked. I put my arms in the air high above my head, my old. 38 in my hand, butt end out, and waited. I didn’t have to wait long.
Jimmy Palumbo almost smiled at me when he answered the door. He grabbed my. 38 and tossed it into the darkness and drifting snow behind me. He had a big, nasty-looking revolver in his hand and it was pointed right at my belly.
“Come on inside,” was all he said as he backed up into the house. “Close the door behind you.”
As cold and scared as I was, I did as he said without hesitation. I guess I didn’t care so much about getting killed as long as I could be warm when it happened.
“There’s a comforter on the couch over there.” He pointed with the gun. I went to the couch and had the comforter wrapped around my shoulders and the rest of me in a flash. “Sit,” he said. I sat.
The interior of the place looked as I imagined it would, like a well-decorated house that had been rented out to a couple of irresponsible frat boys. Dirty floors, dirty dishes, half-empty food containers, a big TV. Except for the lack of used needles and cotton balls, it kind of reminded me of Nathan Martyr’s place.
“No way to sell a house,” I said, my teeth still chattering. “The place is a mess.”
He ignored that, walking over to the front window and pushing the curtain aside with the muzzle of the revolver. “Fucking weather. I should have been long gone by now.” Jimmy let the curtain fall back into place.
“Probably wouldn’t’ve mattered.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I thought you might figure out it was me eventually, but not so soon.”
“You killed Tierney?”
“Hey, that’s on you, Moe.” Didn’t I know it? “You led me straight to him and paid me for the honor. He was perfect. Fucking crazy as a bedbug. He didn’t even put up too much of a fight. Who wasn’t gonna believe he did it?”
“Me.”
“Who else?” he asked.
“No one.”
Jimmy gloated. “See what I mean?”
“So you did find the altar room when you searched the house. You went back to Martyr’s house that night and planted those pictures of Sashi, her panties, the bones.”
“How’d you figure it out?” He was curious too.
“A lot of little things,” I said, happy he was willing to keep talking. More talk, less bullets. “I couldn’t accept that Tierney had it in him to plot and plan and carry out such a complicated scheme. People kept telling me I was nuts and I almost started believing them too. I noticed she was wearing different underclothes in the pictures on the altar than the ones she was wearing when she was taken. Tierney just wasn’t the type to shop for little girl’s panties. Then I realized that Tierney had blackened out the eyes in every photo and painting in his house, but not the ones you planted. I just couldn’t let it go. Then, tonight, I saw an old video of Sashi’s art shows and there you were, standing guard over her.”
“Shit!”
“It still all might have worked too if I hadn’t seen that video. That was just dumb luck.”
“Bad luck for me.”
“You vandalized my car, but why? It didn’t fit. That was another one of the things that really got in the way of me believing Tierney did it. Why didn’t you just split after you got the initial fifty grand?”
“Look, it was like my lucky day when you walked into the museum and hired me. Until then, I was thinking that it was only a matter of time till the cops came knocking at my door. It would’ve looked pretty bad if I cut and run before they showed up. They’d know I was guilty, and I’d be fucked. But you saved my ass. You brought me close to things, close enough so’s I could find a patsy and get away free and clear. No looking behind me, no waiting for a knock at my door. Besides, fifty grand wasn’t enough for me to make any kind of new start. I thought the Bluntstones were worth millions. I mean, I used to work Sashi’s shows and see people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars at a clip on her stuff. How was I supposed to know her parents pissed all the money away and were broker than me?”
“But why fuck up my car and leave the bear?”
“It was a win-win for me. If it worked to scare you off, then great. If not, you’d keep paying me and keep me in the loop until I found the patsy. It worked, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, but it ends here, Jimmy. There’s a Suffolk Police boat waiting for you at Santapogue Point and they’ve got the roads out of here blocked off. That’s why I’m wet and frozen. I had to swim across the channel to get here without the cops noticing. Believe it or not, I’m trying to save your worthless fucking life.”
Oops! That was a mistake. We were pals up till then.
“Fuck you! You don’t know about me, about who I am,” he shouted, tightening the grip on the big revolver, a grip that, until a few seconds ago, had been steadily relaxing. “Well, if I gotta go, I ain’t going alone.”
“Calm down, Jimmy. You still have a bargaining chip.”
He sneered. “You? Get out. Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Not me. The cops don’t give a shit about me. But you know something the cops want to know. That’s your play.”
“Yeah, and what do I know?”
“Where Sashi is buried.”
He seemed not to understand. “Huh?”
“They’ll make a deal if you can tell them where Sashi is buried.”
Again, he stared at me as if I was speaking a foreign language, but that’s where the discussion came to an end. Things happened, everything happened, and, it seemed, all at once. There was a thump at the side door, then loud scratching, howling too, and not from the wind. A dog. The dog I’d heard on the phone the last time I’d spoken to Jimmy. Paul was shouting at someone in the backyard, “Go! Run! Faster! Run! That’s it, run! Faster! Run!” Jimmy’s face went from blank to panic to fury. Then a few beats later, the boat’s engines revved loudly and it sounded as if it was pulling away from the dock. Palumbo’s phone rang and we both startled. It rang and rang and rang.
I said, “Answer it.”
Jimmy was frozen, his attention and guts being tugged in a hundred different directions. He reached for the phone. It stopped ringing. Flashing red and blue lights strobed through the front window. The dog was howling louder now and scratching more fiercely. The boat crashed into something, groaning as it broke apart. Jimmy pointed the gun at my head.
“James Palumbo, this is the Suffolk County Police Department…”
Jimmy turned. I had no chance in a fight with him, but I did have a chance to get the gun out of his hand. I grabbed a crystal obelisk, about eight inches tall, off the end table and brought it down hard as I could on Jimmy’s wrist. The bones snapped and the gun fell to the floor. His bloodied hand hung down from his arm at an unnatural angle, exposed bone peeking through the skin. I nearly puked at the sight of it. Jimmy screamed, but didn’t freak. This was a man who had played NFL football. Talent, strength, size, and speed were parts of that equation, but the
