Callie’s Last Dance

“Why not?”

“No one ever asked us.”

“But Lou thought Dr. Howard was Darwin. He killed him.”

C.H. shakes his head as if saddened by my intellectual inefficiency. He says, “Dr. Petrovsky paid Lou forty million dollars to kill Dr. Howard and frame him for being Darwin. It was part of his exit plan.”

“Does Dr. P. still possess the code?”

“Yes. Should we change it?”

I do a double take. Dr. P., my new business partner, could have killed me and the entire crew, all but Callie, at any time. And still can.

“Don’t change the code. Cancel it. Immediately.”

Larry salutes me. “Yes, sir!”

“What about your agents?” C.H. says.

“Theirs, too.”

“But what if you want to kill them sometime?” Larry asks.

“I don’t kill my friends,” I say.

They look at each other.

“What?”

C.H. says, “Why does the name Augustus Quinn come to mind?”

I frown. “That’s different.”

He says, “It’s always different when they do it.”

“Can you disable the kill code while I wait?”

“Of course.”

Larry says, “I assume you’ll want us to clear you for a retinal scan.”

I say, “No. This is your home. I know how much you value your privacy.”

“What about emergencies?” C.H. says.

“You’ve been here for years. I’m sure you can handle any emergencies that come your way.”

They seem happy and sad. Happy I don’t want to impose, but sad that I don’t want to have access, like Lou did. So I add, “As we become closer, over time, I would love to have access to your area. But even so, I won’t go beyond the lobby without your permission.”

That brings big smiles to their little mouths.

“Want to take a tour?” Curly says.

“Would you like me to?”

“Absolutely!”

“How about you cancel the kill code first?”

15.

GEEK CITY TURNS out to be six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a conference room, kitchen, workshop, laundry room, and a computer room that defies explanation. They’re music nerds, each possessing a private collection of more than ten thousand songs that blare constantly from breakfast to dinner, at the highest possible volume.

“Do you ever play the same song at the same time?” I ask.

They look at each other and smile. C.H. says, “What a perfect question to ask! Every afternoon at precisely two-forty-six, we play Dream Merchant, by Gee Gee Shinn.”

Not that I give a shit, but because of the way they’re looking at me, I ask, “Why that particular song?”

“The four of us programmed our individual music into our peripheral computers,” Larry says. “Day after day for years no two computers ever played the same song at the same time.”

C.H. says, “Until eighteen months ago. One afternoon, at two-forty-six, two computers played Dream Merchant at the same time.”

“Do you know what the odds are of that happening?” C.H. says.

“A million to one?” I say.

Curly yells, “Jimmy Charles! Nineteen sixty!”

Larry shouts, “Patterson, New Jersey!”

C.H. says, “That’s nothing. Nothing! Who sang backup?” While the others struggle to answer, he yells “The Revellettes!”

“Ah, but who were in the Revellettes?” I say.

They look at each other and do a double-take. Then grab their cell phones and punch the keys furiously.

Larry gets there first.

“Jackie and Evelyn Kline-”

Curly and C.H. shout in unison, “And Dottie Hailstock!”

They slap each other on the back, do a high-five, and some sort of strange victory dance.

Then C.H. says, “The odds of two of our lists playing a single song at the same time are impossible to calculate because our lists were pre-programmed to constantly shuffle, and each computer has a different random sequence. We’ve been working on the calculation for years. I can show you the algorithm flow chart if you’d like.”

“Another time,” I say, which sets them to laughing.

The biggest surprise comes when they show me Moe’s room and I happen to open the closet door and see his corpse hanging from a hook, wrapped in plastic.

“This can’t stay here,” I say.

“Okay,” Curly says.

I supervise as they carry the body to the antechamber.

“How long will you need to keep my laptop?” I ask.

“For what?” Larry says.

“To program it the way I outlined.”

“We can do it remotely. We’ll send you a link when it’s ready.”

“We should exchange phone numbers,” I say.

They laugh.

“Right,” I say. “You’ve got my number.”

“And you’ve got ours,” Larry says. “All you have to do is press the star key twice. We’ll answer.”

“How will you hear my call over the music?”

“All phone calls mute the music.”

We say our goodbyes. When they’re out of sight I look at Moe’s body, at my feet. A man so broken up by Lou’s sudden death, he killed himself. A man so alone in the world there was no one to contact about his death.

Unless the others killed him and made up the story.

I shake my head, call Tommy Cooper, and tell him to bring a friend.

16.

Callie Carpenter.

THE CONTiPORARY GANGSTER handbook calls for high income-earners to keep a low community profile. Following that advice to a T, Frankie and Angie De Luca maintain an unassuming home in a modest neighborhood.

It’s nine-thirty p.m. under a dark sky as Callie approaches the residence. She knows the De Lucas dined across town with Sal, Marie, and several mob lieutenants and wives at Luigi’s, a mob-connected family restaurant. Their plans had been to finish dinner around nine, then watch the fireworks from the restaurant’s courtyard, which overlooks the Ohio River. Luigi’s isn’t the best viewing spot, since the fireworks are launched a mile away, but it’s safe, private, and the De Lucas will be there at least another forty-five minutes. Which means they’ll be gone an