Dimitri followed the girl out the back door in time to
see her go over the low fence along the drive and across the dark lawn
on foot. He cried warning, then silenced himself. The Dobermans would
tear the fleeing wraith to shreds of meat, and himself as well, if he
got in their way. Instead, he circled around to the garage and drove
down to block the gate with his Audi, just in case.
He sat trembling in his car, certain she was trapped
within the grounds. The illegal, charged wire at the top of the gate
would contain her. He told himself to relax. The dogs would leave him
with nothing but the chore of disposing of bloodied remains.
Things had gone wrong. He threw his head back, jammed his
eyes closed, and cried out his panic to the night. Clenched fists
pounded the steering wheel. He should never have started drinking. The
time and the place had been all wrong. Francis had sent the wrong girl.
He had been told Evelyn Haxx was a brunette. The blonde had denied it.
“No, honey, I’m Evelyn Haxx! Honest!”
Lying bitch. He had botched it. He couldn’t believe the
extent of his foul luck. And a little girl sitting at the top of the
stairs in the middle of the night to boot, waiting for nothing more than
to serve as witness for the death of a whore. Who in Satan’s name could
she have been?
Dimitri reached for the door handle. The dogs were taking
too long. He paused when headlights flickering through the trees above
his position set shadows weaving to and fro in the surrounding
underbrush. The sudden glare of high beams blinded him. And then he
heard it, the roar of the worn engine of the old Dodge gaining momentum
down the steep slope by the second.
Dimitri had no time to escape the car. He braced himself
the instant a tremendous impact struck from behind, spinning his lighter
Audi in a half circle off the driveway. The Dodge rebounded, backed up,
and then burned rubber ramming the wrought iron gate. Fractured cast
iron cascaded out across the street, ringing like a discordant
percussion from hell itself.
A piece of iron banged against Dimitri’s hood. Another
cracked the passenger door window. The old sedan slid screaming out into
the street, then went chugging off into the darkness with broken
headlights.
Dimitri resisted the temptation to pursue her. Both
vehicles risked attracting the attention of any police cruisers roaming
the area. He reached for his car phone instead, braced his hand against
the leather console to stop the trembling, and punched out a number.
“Marcelli,” a sleepy male voice muttered.
“This is Dimitri Carvelli. I have an emergency. There has
been an attempt on my father’s life. She’s a hooker, one of Peugeot’s
girls. I need a list of addresses and I need them now.”
The voice grunted. Dimitri heard the sound of bed springs
creak and a woman’s murmur of inquiry. “Dimitri, I need authorization
from either Bernard or Karl Garko for you to use our services.”
“My father’s ill, but I’m certain he’s called Garko by
now. If you don’t help me and do it in the next goddamn minute or two,
we’re all in big trouble. I know you’ve got a file on Peugeot
Secretarial Services. My father and his friends do business with them
all the time. You cleared them yourself.”
A chair creaked. “Give me a moment to fire up the damned
machine.”
Dimitri heard the beep of a computer booting and the
rattle of a keyboard. “Peugeot Secretarial Services. Okay, so I got
eight local listings.”
“Give them to me.”
“Okay. You got a pencil and paper handy?”
“Just give them to me. Now!”
The voice angrily rattled off eight names and addresses.
“And there’s a note here that Miss Peugeot has a kid with her, some kind
of underaged mascot she uses to run errands. I don’t have a name or
address on that one. The note says Peugeot picked her up in Los Angeles,
but we checked and records say she’s native to Dubuque County, Iowa.”
Dimitri set the phone back in place, calculating the
depth of his crisis. He’d get himself in trouble accessing his father’s
private investigators without authorization, but tracking down the girl
was a priority. He’d sure as hell never be forgiven for tainting the
name of a politician of strategic importance to the mob. They’d kill him
for his transgression, send him straight to hell with a bullet behind
the ear.
Eight addresses. In his mind’s eye, he could see a map of
the city. The addresses were widely scattered. Only three were close by,
and one was very close. She’d go there. Even if she phoned Peugeot for
help, she’d be steered to the closest place of refuge.
He stood a chance. She had damaged the old Dodge ramming
his car and the gate. He’d catch her if he played it smart, hopefully
cut her off before she had a chance to talk to anyone.
Dimitri put the Audi in gear. He whipped the car onto the
street in a squeal of rubber, grimly determined to salvage the mess he
had made of things. There was nothing left to do but try. What better
goal for the balance of his precariously short lifespan than simple
moment to moment survival?
Novels by
William G. Tedford