Francis instructed Jennifer to drive to a mall
twenty-five miles from the apartment. They idled out front until the
doors were unlocked at ten. “I’ll make my calls from pay phones and
phone you on your cell for a ride home,” Francis said. “It may take me
an hour or so. It would probably be best if you returned to the
apartment to wait.”
Jennifer watched Francis enter the mall, then drove away
with an agenda of her own in mind.
A few miles away, John Cantrell sat on the edge of his
bed in his motel room and punched at numbers on the desk phone. Garko
carried a cell phone and answered on the first ring.
“This is John.”
“Please hold,” Garko said.
A moment later, the hum of background noise was gone.
“How’s it going?”
“Dimitri’s not going to make it,” John said. “The girl is
more than an even match.”
“Then you know what has to be done.”
“And you know better than to ask.”
“I have no one else I can trust to do a clean job,” Garko
said. “The situation is getting out of hand.”
“I’m not killing the girl.”
“You need to do what has to be done. You have no option
in the matter.”
Garko terminated the connection as abruptly as he’d
terminate the lives that crossed him.
John set the phone down. What now? He had let Garko call
the shots for too long to be changing the rules of the game, but it had
to end. Sasha was dead, but he had learned by now that there were other
Sasha’s in the world. Jennifer Wessner was one of them. He couldn’t take
revenge for every innocent killed and neither could he stand by and
continue to watch them die.
He had brought his gym clothes with him. He badly needed
to get out and burn off steam. He changed and left the motel room,
jogging in the warming sun along the highway to the county park entrance
a half mile away. There, he ran trails like green tunnels cut through a
woods so intensely and preternaturally alive that he knew with startling
clarity, for the first time in his life that he had lived in a deprived
world of narrow horizons where no aspect of life could have flourished
like it did here out in the open where things were meant to live. He
headed back to the motel thinking that if the opportunity arose to
change the rules of the game, he would take it.
He barged into his air-conditioned room having assumed
his anonymity in this irrelevant and alien corner of the world. Jennifer
Wessner was waiting for him, sitting cross-legged in the middle of his
bed with a small revolver cradled idly in one hand.
John stood transfixed by the intruding angel, the
inhabitant of a world he had never visited, one in which he imagined he
would be seen as ugly flotsam. She was ethereal, cloaked in shadow, her
full lips parted as if caught in a trance of some distant passion. When
she moved, her body moved like a snake. She unfolded her legs, eased
herself off the bed, and put the gun to his face.
“Who the fuck are you?” she said.
John adored the child in an instant. “My name is John. I
was sent to kill Dimitri Carvelli. How did you find me?”
“I saw your car. You followed me last night. I figured
you’d be holed up in this part of town, so I came looking.” She lowered
the gun slightly. “You’re not helping Dimitri. You’re not helping me.
What are you waiting for?
He decided not to try to lie. “I was told to wait until
Dimitri killed you. I was then to kill Dimitri.”
The information startled her. He saw her twinge with the
impact of his uncaring bluntness.
“You witnessed a murder,” John said. “The publicity would
have reflected poorly upon important people.”
“Bastards,” she spat quietly. “So what were you going to
do if Dimitri couldn’t kill me? He can’t, you know. He’s too slow and
stupid. Especially stupid.”
“If Dimitri failed,” John said, “I was ordered to kill
you both myself.”
Her eyes widened just enough to notice. She stepped back
and brought the revolver back up on target, knowing that she held a very
precarious upper hand.
“You've got reason to be upset,” John growled softly at
her, “but I drew a line from the beginning. I have no intention of
crossing it. You have nothing to fear from me.”
Tears glittered in her eyes. “Yeah, right. How can you
expect me to believe you?”
“It wouldn’t be wise to believe anything I tell you.”
“Then I guess I’ll just have to shoot you.”
John glanced out the window at the sunny day outside,
feeling an odd detachment from it all.
“I’ll go to the police!” she cried, trying to elicit a
reaction by which to judge his character and intent.
John shook his head. “Don’t go to the police. Kill
Dimitri. Kill Dimitri and you’ve soiled your hands. The mob will ignore
you knowing you won’t be likely to lock yourself in a prison cell.”
Jennifer brushed tears from her face and fought to calm
herself. “Then that’s what I’ll do. And it’s still what I should do with
you, too.”
John stared at her without expression. “You picked the
wrong time and place to kill a man. It’s not something you had planned.
From your point of view, it’s probably the safest route, but you’ll get
nailed if you go that way. If you hadn’t planned a hit, you probably
haven’t given any thought to the bullet you’ll leave behind, prints of
the front door, your car parked out front, possible witnesses, tread
patterns. That doesn’t mean I like the idea of being shot, so I’ll just
make it clear that you’d make yourself an easy target killing the only
person on the face of the Earth who could protect you.”
It took her time to think over the bait he set before
her. “Why would you protect me?”
“Because you look to be about my sister’s age when she
was raped and murdered and I got myself into this profession nixing the
scum that hurt her. There’s no way I’m going to let the same happen to
you. I don’t kill children.”
Her aim faltered.
“You don’t need to lower your guard,” John warned softly.
“I’m not lowering my guard, mister. I’d be dead if you
wanted me dead. You had a chance last night, don’t you think? Don’t you
think I know that?”
A cell phone rang. She took it from her purse and
answered it without taking her eyes from him. “I’m on my way,” she said,
and put both it and the gun away.
She moved around him, just out of reach. “I’ll be back,”
she said softly. “Wait for me.”
She paused at the door, gazing back at him in utter
fascination. And then she slipped away, closing the door so softly he
heard nothing but the gentle snick of the tumbler.
John hoped that she would not be back. Her intrusion into
his life stirred unpleasant turmoil to life. If she came back, she would
only bring more pain back with her, more than he could hope to bear.
But he felt curiously helpless watching her drive away in
the white Ford. John sat back down on the edge of the bed. He had been
dealt a strange hand and had no option but to let it play itself out.
Novels by
William G. Tedford