Liars & Thieves: A Novel Read online

  I knew very little about his personal life. He never wore a wedding ring, nor had I ever heard him mention a wife. I didn’t know if he had a girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever. When I first got to know him I had wondered if perhaps his demeanor was an act—perhaps he lived a secret life in the Washington kinky sex scene—but finally I realized that was pure fantasy. He wasn’t the type.

  I sure hoped he lived alone, though. Without a dog.

  It was ten minutes after four in the morning when I found Pulzelli’s building. There were four apartment buildings in a row along the street, each about about ten stories high. The street was a wide one decorated with speed bumps to keep the local auto mechanics fully employed. Pulzelli lived in the first building. I drove on by and parked in the parking lot of the second one.

  I got out and locked the car—I left the MP-5 in the trunk—and stood looking and listening. There wasn’t a soul in sight, just a sea of cars under lights mounted on poles. The stark scene was relieved somewhat by scraggly young trees in the ribbon-thin borders.

  No security patrol, no early risers or late partygoers that I could see. I walked toward the nearest apartment building, then around it, keeping in the shadows. Once around the building, I angled across the parking lot toward Pulzelli’s tower.

  I was hoping the FBI wasn’t watching everyone I knew, waiting for me to break cover. Of course, if a watcher was sitting in one of these cars, I was dead meat. It was a serious risk, but a necessary one. I needed Pulzelli’s help.

  The lobby of Pulzelli’s hive was empty. Security cameras were mounted high in every corner. A computer sat on a small podium where perhaps a security guard had once stood vigil. It looked as if the owners had bought a computer and fired the guard. I typed Pulzelli’s name into the computer … voilà! Apartment 310.

  I called him on the telephone, which rang and rang. After ten rings I gave up.

  Seventeen minutes after 4:00 A.M. Don’t tell me he’s out partying! Pulzelli?

  The elevator required a card to activate it. I walked around the elevator shaft to the door to the fire stairs. This door would be fitted with a push bar on the inside so that anyone coming down the stairs could exit through the door, yet there would be a conventional lock securing the door from this side. That lock I could pick.

  When I saw the door a cold chill ran up my spine. The door had been forced with a crowbar, which bent the metal so that the lock no longer latched. It had taken a strong man to do that.

  The door came open with a groan—the hinges hadn’t seen oil since the building went up. Once inside the stairwell, I removed the pistol from my belt and checked the safety. I went up the stairs making as little noise as possible, which meant anyone but a deaf man could have heard me. Sound reverberated around inside that concrete staircase as if it were a kettledrum.

  At the door to the third floor, I paused, checked the pistol again, then eased the door open with my left hand. No one in the hallway.

  Pulzelli’s apartment was four doors away from the elevator. The lock appeared intact.

  I knocked. Waited … no sound.

  Finally put my ear to the door.

  The lock wasn’t any big deal. I hoped he didn’t have the chain on, though.

  Took me about two minutes to pick the lock and open the door. No chain.

  I went in with the gun in my hand.

  Salvatore Pulzelli was lying naked on the living room floor. Apparently he had been strangled with a wire garrote. His arms, chest, and crotch were smeared with blood, which hadn’t completely dried. His pajamas were on the floor near him, so I used the top to swab at one arm. Lots of little cuts.

  He must have opened the door for them. They tortured him, then killed him.

  The apartment wasn’t large. In addition to the living room, which doubled as a home office, there was a kitchen, a bath, and two bedrooms, one of which was obviously for guests. I checked the rooms to see that they were empty—anything was better than looking at Pulzelli.

  Standing in the living room with my back to the body, I managed to get my stomach under control and tried to get my brain in gear. Did the killers ask him about me? Was it me they were trying to find?

  The killers hadn’t been gone long. Pulzelli’s blood hadn’t dried to a crust.

  I used a kitchen towel to keep from leaving fingerprints on the telephone in the kitchen. Willie Varner’s telephone rang and rang. He didn’t answer.

  Oh, man!

  I remembered to pull the apartment door shut behind me and checked to ensure that the lock engaged.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I couldn’t get Pulzelli’s face out of my mind. God, he looked bad, the muscles in his face contracted, baring every tooth, his eyes bulged out and staring at infinity. The poor guy … he didn’t want much out of life, just a comfortable job, decent clothes, and a pension to look forward to. He had planned to travel when he retired in three years—I recall him mentioning that one time when I caught him perusing travel brochures at his desk. He envied me, he said, because I got to travel a lot. I told him that I would gladly trade: He could travel while I put in forty hours a week behind his desk and got seriously involved with three or four hot women.

  Maybe Pulzelli liked women, too.

  I couldn’t help him now. That was a fact.

  Willie Varner lived in a second-story flat on a dumpy street in northwest Washington. The assassins I saw at the Greenbrier safe house were white, and Willie’s neighborhood wasn’t. Maybe that mattered—I didn’t know.

  Washington was a seedy town. Outside of monumental Washington one found endless miles of row houses in various states of disrepair. Most would have collapsed long ago if they weren’t all jammed together, holding each other up. Undereducated, unemployed black males lined the sidewalks selling drugs. The inner city was one giant drug bazaar. I had made that observation to Willie the Wire one day, and he got all huffy. He had lived here all his life, except when he was in prison, and was sorta proud of the town, although he would never admit it. He growled at me and gave me the outsider stare. I knew what it meant: “You ain’t black.”

  I spotted an empty parking space two blocks from Willie’s place, said a word of thanks to whoever was running the universe this week, and wheeled the car in. Believe me, I locked the doors and tugged on both the driver’s and passenger’s doors, just to make sure.

  Even at that hour of the morning there were people out and about, all black. A couple of winos sat on a curb, one was sleeping in a doorway, and a young man in baggy trousers and a shirt three sizes too large was striding along toward me, arms going, eyes moving ceaselessly from side to side like a predatory animal. He looked me over as he approached and didn’t slacken his pace. Yet when he was ten feet away he looked elsewhere, pretended I wasn’t there as he walked on by.

  There was a car double-parked in front of Willie’s.

  Staying on the sidewalk, I eyeballed everything as I walked up. Man behind the wheel. White man. No other white guys around.

  I left the sidewalk in a bound, passed behind his car, and drew the pistol as I walked up on the driver’s side. Stuck it right in his ear.

  “Freeze, asshole. Hands on the wheel.”

  He froze all right, wide-eyed and rigid as a frozen steak. He was maybe thirty-five, white, balding on top, with medium-length dark hair, wearing an earring.

  “Turn off the ignition and hand me the keys.”

  As he started to move I jabbed him with the piece. “I’ll blow your brains out if you twitch.” He did as ordered, slowly extracted the keys, and held them out with his right hand. I took them with my left and pocketed them.

  “Hands where I can see them, out of the car.”

  He came, slowly and steadily.

  He had a pistol in a belt holster on the left side, an old five-shot .38 revolver with a two-inch barrel. I took it, shoved it in my pocket. Standing behind him, I patted him down. He had a wallet. I helped myself.

  “If this is a stickup, better t
hink twice,” he said. “I’m a federal officer.”

  “Yeah, right. Got a badge?”

  “Not on me. I …”

  No knife … if he had had a knife, I would have drilled him then and there. Maybe. Well, I sure would have been tempted. He did have a cell phone, which I liberated since he didn’t need it anymore.

  “I’m going to count to five,” I said, “then start shooting. You can run like hell or die right where you stand. One … two …” He glanced over his shoulder at me, then began running. I raised my pistol and aimed it. He ran faster.

  After he rounded the corner and disappeared, I surveyed the street—this was a “mind your own damn business” neighborhood if ever there was one—and glanced up at Willie’s apartment. I could see a glow from behind the curtains, so the lights were on there. I went into the building with both hands on the piece and the safety off.

  The stairs were at the very back of the dark hallway. As I went tiptoeing along with the pistol at the ready, I regretted not shooting the guy out front. He wasn’t on his way to the airport to take a six-month sabbatical. What if he came charging upstairs while I was in the middle of delicate negotiations? Or did a knife job on me next week? Of course, the law generally frowned on people who took it upon themselves to waste assholes; there were so many, and where would it stop?

  The stairwell had an old-building mustiness to it, a delicate aromatic mixture of stale tobacco, marijuana, and beer vomit. Willie lived in the flat on the left at the head of the stairs. There was a window at the end of the upstairs hallway that faced the street; the only light in the hall came through that glass. I seemed to recall a fixture up here, so I looked. Right at the top of the stairs, a naked bulb on the ceiling. I could just reach it.

  The bulb was loose in the fixture. Some thoughtful soul had screwed it out far enough to extinguish it. I left it that way.

  I put my ear to the door. I could hear muffled voices but couldn’t distinguish words.

  The shortest and quickest way into that apartment was through that door. If it was locked, I wasn’t going in. The door was a security door—wooden panels over steel—and wore four locks, including a new Cooper. It would take me a half hour to pick them all, and everyone inside would hear me do it.

  I got a firm grip on the gun, then grasped the doorknob and applied pressure. It refused to turn.

  The only other way in was the fire escape.

  There was no help for it—I eased down the stairs and headed for the door. Just in time I remembered the jackrabbit that had been behind the wheel. He was nowhere in sight.

  The alley was a home for garbage cans. There must have been a dozen in there.

  The bottom of the fire escape consisted of a ladder with a weight on the bottom, but it appeared to be chained up, no doubt to discourage overweight burglars. I hoped it would hold me … and the noise wouldn’t inspire someone in Willie’s to lean out the window and shoot my sorry old self.

  With a pistol in each hip pocket, I ran and jumped as high as I could reach. Got one hand on the rusty metal, then the other. The whole contraption creaked, but it held.

  I did a chin-up, then hooked a leg and squirmed my way up. On the next flight I came to Willie’s living room window. Gun in hand again, I inched my head around … and I saw Willie. They had him naked with a plastic tie on his wrist, sitting in a chair from the kitchen. They were working on him with a knife.

  How many of them were there?

  I could see two.

  White guys.

  Two deep breaths, then I squared myself in front of the window and drilled the nearer guy in the back, which drove him to the floor. My second shot spun the knife holder halfway around, so I shot him again. He was a big fucker: He stayed up, spun toward the window, released the knife, and tried to get a pistol out of a belt holster. I gave him two more bullets, the second one in the face. That one snapped his head back, and he toppled.

  I kicked out the rest of the glass and stepped through the window. A man rushing from the kitchen snapped off a shot that stung my arm. He had started running when he heard the shots and entered the room before he knew my location, which proved to be a fatal mistake. I nailed him dead center before he could shoot again. He lost his weapon and his legs folded and he somersaulted forward onto his face.

  Willie was still conscious. The sadist with the knife hadn’t gotten to his crotch yet. His girlfriend was gonna thank me someday.

  I got the little .38 out, and with a pistol in each hand I checked the rest of the apartment. No one else there.

  I cut Willie loose with a kitchen knife and used a towel to clean him up some. There was blood everywhere. Then I half carried, half dragged him to the bedroom and put him on the bed. He had some Scotch tape on his dresser, so I used that. Slapped tape on the worst of the cuts to hold the edges together and slow the bleeding.

  “Come on, man, we gotta get you to the emergency room.”

  “That you, Tommy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You get the motherfucker with the knife?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He dead?”

  “Seems to be.”

  “Shoot the fucker again. Drive a stake through his goddamn heart.”

  I began working pants and a shirt onto him.

  “They wanted to know about you,” Willie said. “Where you were, when I talked to you last, who your girlfriends were, everything … .”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Everything I could think of when that prick got to cuttin’ on me with that fuckin’ knife.”

  The hell with his shoes.

  “You’re gonna have to help me, Willie. I can carry you, but we’ll both be dead if we meet another of these bastards.”

  “Okay.”

  I draped one of his arms over my shoulder and lifted him. He could barely stagger. I half carried him into the hallway and made sure the door locked behind us.

  “You’ve lost a lot of blood and you’re still bleeding, man.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “You tell them about Dorsey?”

  “Who?”

  “Dorsey O’Shea.”

  “Probably. Fuck, I was jabberin’ my fool head off there at the end.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Cops.”

  “How do you know?”

  “By the way they asked questions. The good guy, bad guy routine, all of it.”

  “You’re guessing.”

  I almost put him down and went back to search the corpses, but he was still leaking blood at a good rate. It was the hospital quick or the morgue later.

  Going down the stairs he said, “I been grilled by cops all my life. I could tell.”

  We took the hitters’ car. Willie was not in any shape to do the two blocks to mine, that was certain. I drove back to my rental heap and took the time to collect the MP-5, then headed for the nearest hospital that I knew about. I asked Willie if indeed the one I was thinking of was the one, but he had passed out by then.

  I whipped into the ambulance entrance and carried him into the emergency room. There was a vacant gurney there, so I put him on it. An attendant rushed out to help me.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood. Some guys cut him on his arms and chest. No drugs. He’s not allergic to anything that I know of.”

  As the attendant rushed the gurney through the swinging doors, I turned to the window where the admitting lady sat with a client.

  “I’ll be right with you, sir,” she said. “Please take a seat.”

  “I’ll park the car and be back,” I said.

  As I got behind the wheel and headed for Wisconsin Avenue, I wondered if Willie did tell them about Dorsey O’Shea. Well, they were dead, so even if he did, it didn’t matter.

  Unless they called someone, of course. Maybe that was what the guy in the kitchen was doing when I rudely interrupted. I didn’t recall seeing a cell phone in the kitchen. Of course, he might have put it in his pocket as he
drew his pistol, after I fired the first shot.

  Perhaps I should go back to Willie’s and search the bodies.

  I decided to do it. I had the brains to come down a side street and look toward Willie’s before I turned that way and committed myself, which saved my silly ass. Two cop cars with lights flashing were parked in the street.

  I turned the other way and fed gas. As I drove I heard the moan of an ambulance.

  My arm was leaking blood where the bullet had grazed me.

  I hoped they were dead. All three of the sons of bitches.

  Fifteen minutes later I pulled into a McDonald’s and parked. The sky was turning light. The sun wasn’t up yet, but it soon would be. The vehicle registration certificate was in the glove compartment. The car was registered to a Donald P. Westland in College Park. His insurance certificate verified the address. I used his cell phone to call information.

  “I’m sorry,” the operator said. “I don’t have a listing for a Donald Westland in College Park.”

  “Could it be an unlisted number?”

  “No. I have no listing at all for anyone by that name.”

  I read her the address. “It might be under his wife’s name,” I said.

  After a moment of silence, she said, “I’m sorry, sir. I have no Westland listed.”

  I thanked her and broke the connection.

  I was getting quite a collection of cell phones. I punched my way through the stored numbers on this one, looking for one I recognized. They were all new to me.

  I turned the telephone off and sat there trying to think. My heart was still beating a mile a minute. I was leaving bodies all over, and I didn’t know who these guys were.

  What if this was a government car, and the name and address on the registration and insurance were merely cover? I got out, opened the door, looked for an oil change sticker. And there it was: Jiffy Lube.

  I opened the wallet. The driver’s license was for one Johnson Dunlap, Bethesda. The mug staring at me from the license was the balding getaway driver outside of Willie’s. That certainly wasn’t conclusive—my employer routinely issued fake ID to back up false identities. The credit cards were also in the name of Johnson Dunlap. Couple hundred dollars in bills in the wallet, several credit card invoices, a dry cleaning stub, and an AAA membership card.