Midmorning, we left to visit Evelyn’s Nikolaev family contact. She pulled into the driveway of a town house complex, less than an hour from her place.
“That was quick.”
“At your age, you want to keep lots of distance between you and your colleagues, so no one makes the connection. By our age, no one cares anymore, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to get together for coffee when you don’t live five states apart.”
She turned from one short, narrow road onto another, heading for the rear of the complex.
“Maggie and Frances are a couple girls I know from way back. Not girls anymore, mind you. They’re more retired than I am, but they still dip their hands in when the rocking-chair life gets dull. Not hitwomen, of course- there were never more than a few of us around. Maggie and Frances used to-” A smile played at her lips. “I’ll let them tell you. They’ll like that.”
I scanned the town houses. The sign out front said they were condos, but the units had that run-down “don’t- give-a-shit” look that I always associate with temporary residents. The one Evelyn pulled up in front of, though, shone with pride of ownership. The shoe-box-size front lawn had been replaced with a perennial garden, English- cottage style. There were cobblestones instead of crumbling walk-ways. A well-maintained, ten-year-old Honda sat under the carport, atop a cracked, but recently resealed, driveway.
“So they both live here?”
“They’re partners.”
“After all these years? Most marriages don’t last that long, let alone business partnerships. Or I guess, by now, it’d be more friendship than business.”
“More than friendship or business.”
“Oh?” I paused. “Ah, ‘partners.’ Right.”
Evelyn opened her door. “It’s a shitty word, isn’t it? People think things have come so far, and we’re still stuck using euphemisms like ‘partners.’”
“Probably better than what they called it fifty years ago.”
Evelyn snorted. “Pretty much the same thing they
I climbed from the car. “So Maggie and Frances worked for the Nikolaevs?”
“No, they hung out with a couple of wiseguys who did. Gay wiseguys. The mob takes a dim view of gays, back then and now. Frances and Maggie gave them convenient girlfriends to parade around. In return, they got protection and contacts in the Russian Mafia.”
Russ
Toilet paper.
Before Russ Belding had left the house, his wife had asked whether there was anything else they needed from the grocery store. Now, watching his mutt-terrier, Champ, squat in the bushes, Russ remembered that he’d put the last roll of toilet paper on the holder the day before and forgot to add that to Brenda’s list. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and caught sight of the time on it: 7:57. Too late. Brenda liked to go shopping as soon as the store opened at eight, before it got busy, and she didn’t have a cell phone.
Should he pick some up on the drive home? He hated leaving Champ in the car. It was a cool fall day, but here in Florida, “cool” didn’t mean the same thing it had back in Detroit. Even with the window open, that blazing sun would turn the car into a furnace.
Would they have enough paper to last until tomorrow? A full roll, put on yesterday, would last approximately-
Russ stopped himself and chuckled. Thirty years in the navy and his engineering skills were reduced to calculating the rate of toilet paper consumption. The joys of retirement.
At the sound of his master’s laugh, Champ bounded across the grass and twined his lead around Russ’s legs. As Russ untangled himself, he thought of a better use for his abundance of free time: dog training. A squirrel darted through the bushes and Champ shot after it, nearly yanking Russ to his knees. Amazing the amount of velocity one small dog can produce. Now there was a scientific question worth considering.
Russ walked off the path to check the spot where Champ had squatted. Even before he could see anything, the smell of dog shit wafted past him. He reached into his pocket for a baggie and found…nothing.
Getting old, captain, Brenda would say. Memory is the first thing to go.
A furtive glance around. This stretch of path was empty, as it almost always was since the town opened the new park. Joggers flocked there for the trails, and parents and children for the playground equipment, leaving this dark, overwooded bit of green space for those who preferred privacy to scenery.
Russ looked down at the brown pile, steaming in the crisp morning air, then sighed and picked up a big oak leaf. Leave a mess on the deck and someone’s bound to slip in it. As he bent over to pick up the dog shit with the leaf, Champ barked.
“You want to do it, sailor? Be my guest.”
Something hit the base of his skull. One split second of blinding pain, not even enough time to form a thought. Then darkness.
The man slid the gun back into its holster and pulled his shirt down over it. As he did, he glanced around, reassuring himself that the path was still empty. The small dog yipped hysterically, darting between him and the body on the ground.
The body lay where it had fallen, a few scant feet from the path. He tugged the folded page from its plastic covering. One more look around before he leaned over and tucked the paper into the dead man’s rear pants pocket. Then he proceeded north, walking alongside the path on the grassy edge where his running shoes left no mark.
FOURTEEN
Evelyn and I walked up the cobblestone path. A cartoon Halloween black cat hung from the wreath hook on the door, with a Pull Me sign dangling from its tail. I obliged. The cat screeched and quaked, eyes rolling in terror. I smiled. Evelyn shook her head and rang the bell.
A moment later, a handsome woman in a wheelchair pulled open the door. As Evelyn leaned down to kiss her cheek, another woman scurried from a back room. She was smaller, rounder and plainer, with a mop of white curls and faded blue eyes.
“ Frances!” she said. “I told you I’d get the door. The locks are too high.”
The first woman shook my hand. “You must be Dee. I’m Frances. This hovering mother hen is Maggie.”
“I’m not hovering. The doctor said you aren’t supposed to lift yourself. You’d have to lift yourself to reach that lock.”
“I’m almost six feet tall. I can reach the lock on my frigging knees.” Frances looked back at me. “Forgive us. The wheelchair is, I’m afraid, a recent development and Maggie isn’t adjusting well.”
“Me?” Maggie sputtered. She swept past Frances, beamed a wide smile at us, embraced Evelyn and clasped my hand between hers. “So you’re the new hitwoman. Lovely. We’re so pleased to meet you.”
Frances rolled her eyes and looked at me. “Bet you’ve never had that greeting before.”
Maggie shooed us into the living room. As with the exterior of the house, one could see that great effort had been made to transform substandard housing into a warm and inviting home. An Oriental carpet, perhaps once worth thousands, now faded and threadbare in places. Jewel-toned pillows adorned an antique sofa and chair set, their upholstery patterns rubbed clean at the edges, their wood trim smooth with wear and shiny with polish.
Unlike at Evelyn’s house, these walls bore no artwork. Instead, they were decorated with photographs. Picture
