“Don’t get up.” He entered the office as Pitt sank back into his desk chair.
“How’d you get in here anyway?”
“You gave me a key, remember?” He twirled the key chain around his index finger.
Pitt swallowed hard. “Want a drink?”
“No, thanks. I just stopped by for an update.”
He tucked the key inside his jacket pocket and removed a deck of cards, which he started shuffling.
“Speaking of which,” Pitt said, his voice cracking, “what the hell happened to the original plan? I wasn’t going to say anything. I knew you had changed your mind about when and where to murder Grant and I didn’t think I wanted to know why. But since you’re here, why did you change? The cops were supposed to find Watters with Grant’s body in the office. Case closed. The plan had been to set up Calvin. I had started to dial your number at the Golden Horseshoe but thought better of it. So I sat back and waited. So?”
“Sometimes plans just change. That’s all you need to know. If you want to run with the rich and powerful, you have to learn that.”
“I will.”
He moved toward Pitt, through a haze of cigarette smoke, all the while shuffling the cards.
Pitt squirmed in his chair and glanced toward the corner of the room, his neck and face damp with sweat. “Don’t worry. The cops don’t suspect a thing. They were already in here asking about Calvin. They suspect him because he was at the office this morning and now they’re searching for him. Poor bastard―in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He grinned, raised his glass and drank a silent toast. “Like I asked before, what are you doing here? You only come out of the shadows when something’s up.”
“What did you tell the cops?”
“Nothing, I swear.”
“Does Calvin suspect anything?”
“That boy is as dumb as a stump. Not a thing.” Pitt took another hearty swig. “The idiot left his prints all over that office. But it wasn’t easy getting him there. Calvin came in here screaming he wanted out, that he was done. But I managed.”
“You’ll be well compensated, Donald.”
Ace’s reassurance seemed to relax Pitt.
“But I don’t think we should underestimate Watters. He could be a dangerous liability. We don’t know where he is, where he’s going, or what he’s going to do next.”
“You worry too much.” Pitt ground his cigarette into an ashtray and took another sip. His bleary eyes suggested he’d been sipping on scotch all evening. “We both have much invested in Grant’s death. For as long as I’ve known you, I’ve learned that you leave no detail out. That’s why you’re rich and about to get even richer. We have nothing to worry about.”
Because Pitt had been talking and drinking continuously, he hadn’t noticed that Ace was now standing behind him. He couldn’t see Ace pull on a pair of black leather gloves.
But Ace knew the man sensed him. He saw Pitt’s back hair rise.
“You are right. I am a rich man because of my attention to detail.” He dropped a gloved hand firmly on Pitt’s shoulder and kneaded the tight ball. “You’re too tense, Donald. Relax a little.” He massaged the bookie’s fat shoulders and neck.
Pitt tightened up more and gripped the arms of the chair.
“You like poker?”
The question seemed to catch the bookie off guard. “What?”
“Poker. I love it. I know that Texas Hold ‘em is all the craze right now, but I’ve always been a fan of Primero, or as rookies know it, Straight. This was the very first game of poker ever played, the root of the game. This is what they played in the Wild West.”
“What’s with the gloves?” Pitt asked with a tremble in his voice.
“Oh, you know me. Always the cautious one. Shall we try your luck?”
When Pitt attempted to get up, Ace wrapped an arm tightly around Pitt’s throat, squeezed and raised his chin to expose the esophagus. The man struggled to breathe, so Ace tightened his grip, obstructing the air passage. Pitt tried to call out but couldn’t.
“Sorry, Donald. No loose ends. Wrong place, wrong time.”
The cards were gone. With his right hand, Ace pulled a new hunting knife from his jacket and with precision and speed swiped the blade across the bookie’s throat.
Pitt instinctively grabbed at the wound, but it took only seconds for his body to go limp.
In a calm, easy manner Ace cleaned his knife on Pitt’s already blood-stained white boxers. As he was about to slide the knife back into its sheath in his pocket, he heard the toilet flush in the office bathroom. A sliver of light showed beneath the door. The light flickered.
Moving with great speed and agility, he flipped the knife from his right hand to his left to get a better angle on the person coming out of the bathroom. He slipped behind the door, waiting for it to open.
A small, thin woman stepped out. He moved in behind and grabbed her around her wiry neck, the knife ready to strike. He flexed his arm, stifling any scream, and breathed in her heavy floral perfume, but the woman tore at his grip. Her nails cut into his bare right wrist.
“You bitch!” he roared. Saliva spit from the corner of his mouth.
He overpowered her with ease. Sliding his arm down to her shoulders, he slashed the blade across her throat. Blood squirted from the gash as he let the woman drop to the floor.
Again he wiped his knife clean on his victim’s limited clothing and put it back in its sheath. He looked down at the two bodies and smiled.
Now to get what he came for and make it look like a robbery.
He’d known for years where Pitt’s safe was and how to unlock it. That kind of information was always easy to buy, for the right price.
Ace pulled open the cheap framed painting hanging on the back office wall and looked at the hidden safe. As he was about to start spinning the heavy combination lock, he heard a loud thud in the back alley. It might have just been a stray cat, but he couldn’t take that chance.
“Shit!”
After making sure he had left no evidence, he quickly surveyed the area and closed the painting. He exited through the front and locked the door on his way out.
Chapter 19
Calvin left Rachel in a motel until he could return. He didn’t want her to see what might happen when he confronted Pitt.
He couldn’t see Pitt pulling off an elaborate scheme to set him up alone and he wasn’t leaving the office without a name.
The bookie’s Cadillac was parked out front. Calvin used his key and let himself in, locking the door from the inside. Pitt wasn’t getting away.
He marched back where he knew he would find Pitt, a good chance screwing one of his working girls. The thought of a sweaty, hairy Pitt on top of a young streetwalker turned Calvin’s stomach.
As soon as he entered, he picked up the unmistakable, repugnant odor of blood even through the usual stench of the back office. When he followed the scent and saw them, he grabbed the wall. His torture and cruelty hadn’t prepared him for the blood spatter and damage that had occurred in the tiny room. Calvin bent over at the knees.
There was no point checking for pulses—Pitt and the woman were dead. He still had to find out who worked with Pitt to set him up.
As he stepped over the woman’s body, he heard something or someone fumbling at the front door lock.
“Fuck!”
He couldn’t be found there.
With no time to search the office, Calvin jumped a pool of blood and bolted through the office and out the back door.
The front door was locked, of course, so Pitt could engage in activities Dale didn’t want to imagine.
After he picked the cheap lock on Pitt’s door, he walked inside. He saw no one in the front office and kept moving to the back room. The faint fluorescent lights were dim and made the corners of the room difficult to see. He couldn’t hear any noise so, hoping to do a brief search before Pitt heard him from another area, he used a bright compact flashlight to examine the room.