“Goddammit, Dutch,” Calesian said, reasonably, apologetically, “how was I supposed to know that? This morning you had a contract out on them.”
“Never mind this morning. They came here, we talked sense, we made a deal.” Buenadella’s hand swept toward the body lying on the grass just outside the French doors. “And now look.”
“All I knew was, you wanted them dead.” Calesian self-consciously put his pistol away, trying not to draw attention to it in the course of the movement.
“You think everybody’s supposed to be dead,” Buenadella said in disgust. “That cop O’Hara, that was a bright stunt. And now this guy. Who else you been killing, hot shot?”
Calesian became horribly embarrassed; in fact, he felt himself blushing. “Look, Dutch,” he said, and then couldn’t go on.
Buenadella peered at him in wonder. “By God,” he said, “there is somebody else. Who?”
“Al Lozini came to see me,” Calesian said unhappily. “At my home. He—”
“You killed Al?”
“He had a gun on me, Dutch, I couldn’t—”
“You killed Al Lozini? Do you realize how many friends Al has around the country? Do you realize how many—” Buenadella stopped, spread his arms out wide, appealed to heaven. “Give me strength.”
“There wasn’t any choice, Dutch. I didn’t want to, for Christ’s—”
“Didn’t want to? You’ve killed us all, you blood-drinking bastard! Karns, Culligan, a dozen of them. They’d let us retire Al, everybody gets old, everybody has to move over, we were making that play out, everything fine. But kill him? I know three guys off the top of my head that know Al Lozini thirty years; they’ll send an army in here when they find out Al’s dead.”
“They won’t,” Calesian said. “Nobody goes that far for a dead man, there’s no point.”
“They won’t deal with me,” Buenadella said. “Never again. I’m through, I’m finished. Nobody will deal with me. Even if I give them your head on a plate, say it was your idea and I punished you, they won’t believe me and they won’t deal with me.”
That much was right, and Calesian knew it. Casting around, feeling helpless, feeling as though he was being unfairly blamed for a series of bad happenings for which he shouldn’t really have to carry the weight, he looked around the room again and his eye lit on the body outside on the grass. “Then,” he said, “we palm it off on them.”
Buenadella frowned. “What?”
“Those two guys. Your deal with them is blown anyway. So we claim they killed Lozini while trying to get their money.” “Why would they kill Al?”
”To deal with you. They weren’t getting anywhere with Lozini, and they knew you were next in line, so they killed him and came to you. To threaten they’d do the same to you and deal with the next man down the line.” Leaning forward, speaking softly and earnestly, Calesian said, “It’ll play, Dutch. It’ll read just like the truth.”
“Christ,” Buenadella said, looking around, thinking it over. “What a goddam mess.”
“It’ll play, Dutch.”
Buenadella said, “But Parker’s supposed to know Walter Karns. What if it comes down to our word against his?”
“We have to kill him,” Calesian said. Hastily, seeing the expression on Buenadella’s face, he added, “I’m not being trigger-happy, Dutch, it’s the simple truth. If they’re both dead, there’s no more problem.”
Buenadella looked over at the one out on the lawn. “Is he dead?”
“Naturally.”
“Take a look.”
Calesian shrugged and went over to the body and rolled it over onto its back. Blood gouted from the chest, high on the left side. Too much blood, and too high on the chest. Frowning, Calesian touched the guy on the side of the neck, and damn if there wasn’t a faint pulse there. The pulse was keeping the blood flowing out of the wound.
It was seeing the second one in the doorway that had distracted Calesian, thrown his aim slightly off. Two inches from where he’d wanted the bullet to hit.
Buenadella was standing next to Calesian, looking down with distaste. “He really is dead, huh?”
Reluctantly, not looking up, Calesian said, “No.”
Fear in Buenadella found release in anger. “Goddammit! You can’t even do that right! Killing’s all you know how to do, and you don’t even know how to do that.”
A dull anger moved in Calesian, but he didn’t have the will to follow through. He could defend himself, he could yell back, he could get up and punch Buenadella in the face. All he did was stay on one knee next to the dying man and watch the blood pulse out, while Buenadella’s words ranted above him.
Twenty-nine
Parker couldn’t stay in one place. Rage drove him, and frustration. He waited in Lozini’s house for twenty minutes, then had the houseman call Shevelly and Faran and the fat lawyer Walters and the swinging accountant Simms, but nobody knew where Lozini had gone. Parker couldn’t wait any longer. He was prowling the living room, pacing back and forth, aware of Lozini’s family huddled away upstairs, and after the last useless call he grabbed the phone book and looked up Harold Calesian.
He was listed, with an address on something called Elm Way. Parker tossed the phone book at a chair and told the houseman, “When your boss comes back, tell him to stay here. I’ll keep in touch.”
“Yes, sir.” The houseman had the pale face and out-thrust cheekbones of someone who’s terrified without knowing what to be afraid of. He hurried ahead of Parker to hold the front door open, then seemed reluctant to close it again after Parker had gone on through, as though afraid Parker might think it an insult.
Parker drove to the nearest gas station and got directions to Elm Way. It was on the other side of the city, past downtown, so the attendant recommended he go the other way to the Belt Highway and take it around.
Elm Way sounded suburban, ranch-style houses on green plots penetrated by slowly winding blacktop streets, but when Parker reached it the street was straight, concrete, and flanked by big-shouldered apartment buildings, upper middle income, urban renewal, less than ten years old.
Calesian’s building was the biggest of them, taking up a full block width on the right side of the street. The shrubbery at the base of the building looked too green, as though it were artificial, as though in winter it would still be there, arsenic-green, thrusting out of the snow.
There was tenant parking in the basement. Parker drove down the ramp from sunlight to fluorescent light, and found most of the spaces empty; it was Sunday, and the Sunday drivers were out. He backed the Impala into a space near the exit, and took the elevator up to the first floor, where the mailboxes told him Calesian’s apartment was 9-C, at the top of the building. He rode up there, rang the bell twice, and popped the lock with a credit card.
The apartment was cold, the air chilly and flat. Parker moved silently across the foyer, looked across the living room at the view of Tyler through the closed terrace doors on the far side, saw the thing wrapped in plastic on the floor near those doors, and went on to check out the rest of the apartment.
It was empty. None of the drawers or closets contained anything that he wanted to know or study; but Calesian wasn’t the type to leave evidence against himself lying around.
Finally he went back to the living room. He thought he knew what that thing was, wrapped in plastic in there on the floor. Kneeling, he folded the translucent plastic back.
Yes. Lozini.
Thirty
Driving across town, Ted Shevelly felt very nervous. He didn’t like going to Dutch Buenadella’s house in the first place, and he doubly didn’t like it that Harold Calesian was the one who’d summoned him. And to make matters worse, he couldn’t find Al Lozini, couldn’t talk the situation over with him to find out what the hell was going on.