Kill Me Twice (A Zeke Edison Novel Book 1) Page 8

“Is your father still alive?”

  “Yes, he lives up in Wilmette, a block east of me.”

  “As far as you know, did he ever get a look in the trunk that had belonged to your aunt?”

  Paulette frowned. “Zeke asked me if I did, and I told him I didn’t. And I don’t know if my dad did either.”

  “Is the trunk still around?”

  Paulette shrugged. “What I do know that my dad doesn’t throw anything away, and he’s still living in the same house where I grew up.”

  Reggie bobbed her head. “That’s good.”

  “You think Mr. Edison will want to talk with him?”

  “I’m sure he will, first thing in the morning.”

  “Will you be there, too?”

  “You and me both,” Reggie said.

  Paganini and Chopin sat opposite each other in a booth at the back of a greasy spoon on Harlem Avenue, Chicago’s city limits on the West Side. The door to the alley where their car was parked with the key in the ignition was three feet away. If that avenue of escape was cut off, the stairway to the joint’s basement was next to the rear door. A passageway under the diner led into the adjoining building.

  If that exit was also blocked, they still had a choice. Give up or detonate the bomb in the basement that would level half the block and presumably anyone trying to kill or arrest them. At that point, it all depended on whether they wanted to take their chances in court or go out with a bang.

  The names under which Paganini and Chopin worked were pseudonyms given to them by Donald Magro. Unlike gangsters who had to toil under nicknames like Eggs, Squint or Mad Dog, their boss considered the two killers to be virtuosos with a variety of weapons. Also, like their namesakes they were of Italian and Polish heritage.

  Earlier that day they’d conferred a measure of legend on Hector Campos by bringing his life to an end that would not be easily forgotten. Dismemberment had become cliché, of course, but the strategic placement of Campos’ segmented remains delivered a message of subliminal menace to anyone with the wit to see it: At work, home or on the go, we can get you, and when we do it won’t be pretty.

  With some jobs, though, you couldn’t help but be stained by your work. On the table between the killers, in addition to their Italian beef sandwiches, fries and Old Style draft beers, was a small pile of blood-stained Handi Wipes. They were meant to be reusable, but the killers went through them liberally. A busboy came to take them away every minute or two.

  The basement also had a furnace with a roaring fire.

  The short order cook who ran the place for them, and listened to a police scanner as he worked to give Paganini and Chopin a heads-up if the cops were on their way, came up to the table with his usual deadpan expression. He handed a sealed envelope to each of the killers.

  “These came into the drop box not ten minutes apart.”

  The cook turned and left. Besides making great Italian beef, the man’s signature virtue was a complete lack of curiosity about anything that wasn’t his business. He knew that was the best way to live a long life. He might have felt differently had he known about the bomb in the basement.

  The two killers looked at each other and then opened the envelopes.

  After reading the new jobs they’d been given, they stared at one another.

  Paganini said, “Mine says we’re supposed to ace Jonas Dawson.”

  Chopin said, “Mine says we do Don Magro.”

  The conflicting hits were highly problematic. Magro was their boss, but Dawson was the guy who actually paid them for their work. While trying to resolve the knotty problem, Paganini brought up another hurdle to clear.

  Paganini held up his work order. “This says to kill Zeke Edison, too.”

  “So does mine.”

  How the hell could they do that? Both killers were Bears fans.

  As such and like so many others, they hoped Zeke would return to the team.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, Zeke and Reggie sat at the table on the lakeside terrace of his house munching apple slices sprinkled with cinnamon between bites of croissants and sips of coffee. They watched as George put Paulette Mallory through modified blocking drills. He had Paulette hold her open hands at shoulder height and close to her torso. Her feet were positioned at shoulder width for balance. Both she and George stutter-stepped to one side and then other.

  At random intervals, George would make a feint toward Paulette. That was her cue to thrust her hands forward and pop him as hard as she could. With people of equal size, you wanted to hit the other guy somewhere between his chest and shoulders, throw him off balance if you could and then knock him on his ass with a second blow.

  With the disparity in height between George and Paulette, the best she was able to manage was a shove just above his navel. Still, he yielded an inch or two of ground as a courtesy so she wouldn’t get discouraged. Every third time or so, he’d even offer up a small grunt as if she’d pummeled a wisp of breath out of him.

  Looking on, Reggie told Zeke, “What she ought to do with a guy so much bigger than her is drop into a crouch and throw a flurry of straight punches into his crotch.”

  Reggie demonstrated just how she’d do it.

  “Effective but not sanctioned by the league,” Zeke told her.

  “We’re not talking namby-pamby football here. The first and only rule of fighting is win.”

  Zeke knew Reggie had the video of his collision with George on her phone. She understood the brute force involved in playing big-time football. Still, she was right. When it was your life not a game on the line, you did anything necessary to come out on top.

  “You know what I’m thinking?” Zeke asked.

  “Nine times out of ten.”

  “And how often do you agree with me?”

  “About the same ratio. That’s why we get along so well. Right now, you’re thinking I should supplement Georgie boy’s instructions with some of the nasty stuff I know.”

  “Right. Ms. Mallory seems like a quick study. She has a good sense of balance, moves fluidly and one time when she popped George, I think I saw a real wince.”

  “Probably nailed that umbilical hernia he refuses to have fixed,” Reggie said. “That’d sting.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Even with all the physical tools and training, you know what really makes the difference if you get into it with somebody.”

  “You have to be willing to inflict pain,” Zeke said.

  “Not just that. You have to like dishing it out, at least a little. Maybe more than a little. The way you and I feel about it.”

  Zeke gave Reggie a look but not a denial.

  The drive to Ed Mallory’s house in Wilmette took all of twelve minutes. He greeted his daughter with a hug, pumped Zeke’s hand enthusiastically and gave Reggie a long look and a wink. Which earned him a gentle elbow to the ribs from Paulette.

  George had to skip meeting Paulette’s dad; he had a call-back interview to attend.

  “Thanks for stopping by,” Ed said to his group of visitors. “I was just watching Mass for Shut-ins.”

  Paulette rolled her eyes. “He still trims the trees outside himself, and they’re forty feet tall. He would have redone his roof, too, only I paid a contractor while he was off on a fishing trip.”

  “The trees are more like fifty feet and I still intend to repay you for the roof.”

  “It was a gift, Dad, and I sleep much better knowing you won’t be up there.”

  Reggie cut in on the father-daughter repartee. “You’re former military, aren’t you, Mr. Mallory?”

  He nodded and gave Reggie a second top-to-bottom evaluation.

  “Airborne, jumped out of perfectly good airplanes and loved every hair-raising second of it. You’ve worn the uniform, too, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Reggie shrugged. “Washed out of Ranger training on the last day. Did a stint as a public information officer after that, until my commanding officer decided my surgically repaired ankle was
giving my press releases a commie-pinko-liberal slant and put me in for an early honorable discharge. I took it without complaint.”

  Ed Mallory smiled and said, “We’ll have to share war stories some time.”

  “You bet. Tell me, did you ever show Paulette any of the skills you learned?”

  Paulette rolled her eyes. Ed Mallory sighed.

  “I tried, over much objection from my wife and reluctance from Paulette, but I think she might still remember a trick or two.”

  “She moves very well,” Zeke said.

  Paulette blushed, but Ed beamed.

  Being a good dad, the senior Mallory didn’t push the matter.

  He only said, “I hear all you nice young people would like to tidy up my attic.”

  There might have been a dust mote or maybe even two in Ed Mallory’s attic, but Zeke thought you’d have to look hard to find them. Every object in the place was arranged both alphabetically and by size, smallest to largest. Ed pointed out a trunk in a far corner and said to his daughter, “That’s what you’re looking for, honey.”

  He gave her the combination to the lock from memory.

  Paulette said, “So you haven’t changed the lock.”

  It took Ed Mallory a second to catch up with that one. Then he shook his head and grinned. “That’s right. You picked those numbers right out of thin air when you were little. Your mother and I never understood how you did that. Well, let me know if you find any treasure maps. Short of that, I don’t need to know what’s in there.”

  Paulette kissed her father’s cheek. “Why do you keep all this stuff, Dad?”

  “Sometimes, I like to look back and see what I got up to. It makes the memories tangible.”

  He gave Zeke a wink, Reggie a salute and departed.

  Once Zeke was sure Ed Mallory was out of earshot, he said to Paulette, “You’ve never told your father about Jonas Dawson.”

  She shook her head.

  Reggie said, “Because you’re afraid of what he’d do, if he knew.”

  “Yes.”

  “Smart choice,” Zeke said “He also seems to feel it’s better that he doesn’t know what’s in the trunk.”

  Paulette nodded.

  Reggie asked, “What are you going to do if his curiosity finally gets the better of him and he asks what you saw?”

  “If it’s ho-hum stuff, I’ll tell him. If it’s bad news, I’ll tell him the two of you are handling it.”

  Zeke and Reggie decided that was wise.

  Paulette opened the trunk. The first thing they noticed were stacks of old newspaper clippings, sealed in plastic and all but pristine. Headlines blared about crooked cops ripping off drug dealers. Photos of a younger Jonas Dawson were featured prominently. In one his right hand was in the foreground, reaching out to grab the camera.

  Far more important, though, and related to the news of bygone days, were accounting ledgers. The entries had been made by Paulette’s aunt, Pamela Keller. Or Paulette’s previous incarnation, if you wanted to look at it that way.

  The name of the business on the the covers of the ledgers was Dawson Window Replacement. Seeing that made Paulette gasp. Zeke started forward to steady her, but Reggie put a hand on his arm, restraining him.

  He shot her a look: Are you sure? She was.

  Paulette was staring straight ahead, but whatever she was seeing wasn’t in the attic.

  Seeing the ledgers had put her in touch with something that had happened long ago.

  Possibly before she was born. Things were getting weird. Zeke almost expected to see Rod Serling step out of a shadow. Tell him he’d entered The Twilight Zone.

  After Paulette’s spellbound moment passed, she looked at Zeke and Reggie, aware of her surroundings again. “There should have been insurance payments.”

  She picked up the most recent ledger and turned to a page in the middle, as if she knew just where to look. Written in a neat Palmer Method hand was the question: Where are the insurance payments?

  She showed it to Zeke and Reggie.

  They looked at each other, and they understood.

  Homeowners and storeowners, overwhelmingly, carried insurance on the places where they lived and did business. Even if most of the residential claims for broken glass didn’t meet their deductibles, certainly some of the commercial ones would. So why hadn’t Dawson Window Replacement, not even once, been compensated by a check from an insurance company?

  Zeke grabbed another of the ledgers and flipped the front cover open. He found just what he’d hoped he would: further evidence of Pamela Keller’s meticulous nature. The principals of the company were noted. Jonas Dawson, President; Donald Magro, Executive Vice President.

  He showed the ledger to Reggie and then they looked at Paulette.

  She was looking back at them, tears falling from her eyes.

  “I should have seen it right off,” she said, “but I thought I loved him. I was such a fool.”

  Paganini and Chopin went for a ride, as opposed to being taken for a ride. The distinction was the difference between living and dying. Of course, they were facing the rear seat of the limo where the big boss sat. So at the the nod of the big boss’s head, Jimmy Eyebrows, riding shotgun, could put .22 rounds into the back of their heads and not even muss the upholstery.

  The expression on the big boss’s face said he might well be in the mood for blood.

  Just not Paganini and Chopin’s. He told them, “You did the right thing, fellas.”

  He held the two written demands for murder in his right hand. Neither of them specifically mentioned a target or who had put out the hit. For that matter neither the word kill nor any of its synonyms was used. But the messages were clear to those who knew how to read them. The big boss took out his cigar lighter and touched the flame to the paper.

  He let the fire burn down to the point where it touched his skin and then used his other hand to extinguish the flame, brushing the ashes onto the floor of the limo. That was when Paganini and Chopin began to breathe more easily. By protocol, they should have been the ones to destroy their orders from above.

  Such discipline was taken very seriously. They might’ve been popped for not following the rules. Examples had been made for lesser infractions. Things had been a lot easier before the NSA started listening in on every phone call in the world, hacking every computer. Making hard-working criminals go back to pen and paper.

  “What do we do now, boss?” Paganini asked. “If we just sit tight, both Dawson and Magro are gonna know something’s wrong.”

  Chopin added, “Of course, if we do both jobs, nobody will be left to complain.”

  The big boss smiled. “Yeah, I thought of that, too. But there might be a few details to take care of first. I’ll put out the word that you two are doing something for me.”

  “What about the hit on Zeke Edison?” Paganini asked. “Both of those guys wanted that.”

  The boss said, “That’s one of the things I need to do, find out why they want to kill someone the whole town thinks is a hero.”

  Both killers nodded in agreement.

  “So you guys like him, too?” the boss asked.

  Chopin said, “It’s almost like professional respect. In his own way, Edison’s a killer, too.”

  “That was some hit he put on Green Bay,” the big boss said with a smile. “But if there is a good reason to take him out …”

  The two killers shrugged and Paganini said, “We do the job.”

  Roberta Lane was waiting for Zeke, sitting on the doorstep of his house, when he, Reggie and Paulette returned from their visit to Ed Mallory’s place. Paulette felt the need to go to her room and collect herself. Zeke asked Reggie to keep an eye out for her.

  Reggie agreed but not before being recognized by Roberta.

  “You’re Regina Green, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, that’s me, when I’m being formal about things,” Reggie said.

  “I really admire your work; I write for the Trib. I only wish I h
ad the courage to report from the places you’ve been.”

  “War zones can get hairy,” Reggie said, “but the army taught me how to kill, and I’ve always been a merciless broad.”

  “I can vouch for that,” Zeke said.

  Roberta laughed a bit nervously.

  She wanted to ask Reggie if she’d actually killed anyone — other than that Taliban guard she strangled. Zeke wondered the same thing. Reggie had told him about shooting that guy in the crotch. But were those two guys the extent of the damage she’d done. He’d decided to wait her out. It wasn’t a subject, he felt, where it would be smart to pry.

  Reggie gathered the accounting ledgers from the car and told Zeke she was going inside and would be on the phone for a while. Zeke nodded and then asked Roberta, “You want something from me or do you have something for me?”

  “Both.”

  Zeke glanced over his shoulder at the house. The guys were hard at their rehab work. He didn’t know how either Paulette or Reggie would find any shelter from the noise, but that was their concern.

  To Roberta, he said, “You up for a walk?”

  “Sure. I can use the exercise.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  The reporter waited until they were away from the house, walking down Orrington Avenue, before she said, “I’d like to tell you about a story I’m working on, but I need to ask you to keep what I tell you to yourself.”

  Zeke grinned. “I won’t go running to the Sun-Times, promise.”

  Roberta smiled. “Sorry. I just like to be careful.”

  “No problem. So what’s your story?”

  She told him about Hector Campos’ dismemberment and Paul Callas’ disappearance. How both men were involved in a crooked deal with Jonas Dawson. Zeke paid close attention.

  “Cut the guy in three pieces,” he said, confirming that detail.

  Roberta nodded. “All of that is already on the public record, but here’s the part only I know. At least, I think so. Jonas Dawson has also dropped out of sight. Nobody knows where he is, except me, assuming he hasn’t moved since I drove up to Evanston.”

  “How’d you find him?” Zeke asked.

  “I did my homework before I approached him to ask if he’d like to confess his misdeeds for my story. I learned about all his girlfriends, clients, places he eats, where he gets his clothes dry cleaned. You name it. I started running down the list and got lucky. I saw him going into a residence in Lincoln Park.”