Final Stroke (42 page)

In the dark, at a dead end, sitting in his wheelchair in the weeds, he wept. Back in the car with the heat on high to take off the chill, he wept. He swore aloud at himself. “Goddamn fucking stroke! Crying no fucking good now!”

The only thing of significance he was able to gather, without the aid of forensic equipment and records and expertise and time, was that one of the vehicles which had turned into the muddy two-track had rain tires. He recognized the tread design with the deep center groove, recalled seeing commercials for rain tires on television. Unless Jan bought rain tires without telling him, he did not think her Audi had them. If she had bought rain tires, she would have told him because she told him everything. Everything.

A call blasted out of the scanner, the female base station operator again. “Car ten. Frankfort.”

“Go, Frankfort.”

“Farmer called again. Insists someone’s at the dead end.”

“Roger, Frankfort. I was there a while ago. Probably saw me.”

“Farmer’s on the phone now. Says someone’s there.”

“Okay. I’m ten minutes away, but I’ll check.”

He turned on the Lincoln’s lights, turned the Lincoln around being careful not to drop a wheel in the mud, and drove back down the road. For a moment he wondered if he should pick up more maga
zines, but decided it would be pointless. He turned the scanner back on automatic full scan and drove away, heading west, then north, then back east to Route 45. The babble on the scanner was back.

Heading north back on 45, he decided to try the parking lots one more time. The pain in his right side had increased substantially. He reached into his left pocket, took out one of the Valiums he’d brought along and spit-swallowed it. Then everything changed, but not from the Valium. It was like another stroke. A stroke that turned back the clock and made the present time into a time that hadn’t happened at all. Maybe he had brainwashed himself into believing it could hap
pen. Maybe he
was
having a stroke, neurons wagging in pain as they died. Maybe this time the bullet in his brain was out to give him a brand new fantasy world. Maybe the light would go on in his room at Hell in the Woods and he’d wake up in bed and Jan would be there all smiles, face cool and smelling of outside night air.

The call came in from one of the Chicago channels. He skidded to the side of the road and hit the scanner’s freeze button as soon as he heard the first part of the call.

He was making it up. He had to be making it up. But then the call continued.

“… located in parking lot, Saint Mel in the Woods. Red Audi, Illinois license J-B-A-B-E. Registration matches missing person Janet Kowalski-Babe. Car unlocked. No keys. Driver’s door window smashed in.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY

Dino had Legless park in the front lot at Hell in the
Woods. The van backed into a spot far out in the lot in the last row that bordered the woods along the entrance road. Her ankle throbbed, tears came from her eyes, and the tape on her mouth tore at her face. Although Dino sat beside her and turned to stare at her from time to time, she was not sure if he was aware of the pain she was in, or if he did know and did not care.

Dino told Legless to turn up the police scanner and they sat there listening to the litany of police calls. When the announcement came that her Audi was in the parking lot at Hell in the Woods, she looked ahead through the windshield. There it was, her Audi parked here at Hell in the Woods. Although a police car was parked next to it, she could not help imagining that her Audi was here because she has come to visit Steve and has gone inside to be with him.

The Audi and the police car were up closer to the building. One policeman stood outside the squad car having a smoke while another shined a flashlight into her Audi. The van was parked too far out in
the lot to draw the attention of the policemen. And as she stared at the Audi and the policemen who were so close, yet so far away, she realized her captors had parked here because they wanted her to see the Audi. It had been brought back here to make an impression on her, to let her know they could do anything.

Beyond the Audi she could see the front entrance of the building. As she stared at the entrance, she felt at any moment she would see a man in knit cap and leather jacket wheeling Steve out in his wheel
chair. Steve would be strapped into the chair so he could not move. And when they wheeled him calmly out into the parking lot, past the policemen and to the van …

No! She’d have to do something. Tell them something to delay whatever it was they had planned. But even if she could think of something to say that might delay them, how could she with the tape on her mouth?

She glanced to Dino and saw him watching her. When she looked back out at the Audi and back to Dino, he turned toward the front and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

As the van began driving off, she struggled. Despite the pain, she struggled, knowing it was pointless, but wishing nonetheless she could do something to attract the attention of the policemen.

Tyrone wished the rain hadn’t stopped because the streets were still wet and the spray from other cars coated the DeVille with road slime. He hated having the DeVille get dirty almost as much as he hated coming back to Hell in the Woods. Especially when he wasn’t sched
uled to work. That was the shit of it, having to come back to this place at night when he should be banging Latoya back at her apartment.

Because he was just visiting, Tyrone stayed in the front lot instead of driving around back to the employee lot. After parking the DeVille in one of the empty handicapped spots near the entrance, he rum
maged around in the glove compartment for the handicapped permit. He’d found the permit some time back. An old fart with memory half gone had left it lying on the reception counter. He’d never used it here at Hell in the Woods where someone he knew might see him coming in to work. But the late shift had started a while ago, no one coming on or going off for a few hours at least, and he felt somewhat reckless tonight. Feeling reckless was part of the act, part of preparing himself for what he had to do. When he finally found the permit, he hung it from the rearview mirror and got out of the car.

Farther out in the parking lot, as he walked toward the entrance, Tyrone saw a cop standing next to a squad car and almost turned back to the DeVille to move it. But the cop seemed to be attending to an
other car in the lot. Tyrone couldn’t see the car the cop was messing with because it was behind the squad, but he saw the cop shining a flashlight around and figured the cop was busy hassling someone else and so he kept walking.

Fool, he thought. Come to scare a cripple, got help coming even, and you’re scared of a goddamn bluecoat doing his traffic thing.

After Tyrone went through the front entrance he veered off to the side, directly toward the office where the time clock was. This made the guard at the counter ignore him. Dumb shit guards makin’ just above minimum wage didn’t give a shit, and who could blame them?

In the hallway outside the time-clock room, Tyrone checked his watch. Flat Nose wasn’t due for a half hour. That would give him time to clear the way at the loading dock entrance. As he headed down the office hall that led to the exit, which would take him to the nurs ing home wing, Tyrone imagined how big that Babe guy’s eyes would
get when he was awakened by both him and Flat Nose. No messing around this time. In the morning he’d probably think he’d had a nightmare. Yeah, a nightmare from Hell in the Woods he’d never for get. A nightmare that just might shut his fucking mouth forever. So much for therapy, fuckhead.

But once he was in the main hall to the nursing home wing, Tyrone had second thoughts. Not that he wouldn’t go through with it. His second thoughts were about him calling Flat Nose. He must have really wanted the fucker’s help because he had to call several times, getting the same message at Flat Nose’s apartment, then finally getting through to the fucker on his cell and having to listen to the fucker’s lip.

As he stood in the dark hall, the thought of going down to the end of the wing to let Flat Nose in depressed him. He knew Flat Nose would jive him about being a pussy. Or maybe Flat Nose would even say something to DeJesus about Tyrone not being able to handle it.

Tyrone looked at his watch again. Still at least twenty-five min
utes before Flat Nose was due. And in twenty-five minutes … yeah, maybe there was time. Maybe if he went up to three and the fuck
head was asleep and he took care of things himself and
that
got back to DeJesus, then Flat Nose wouldn’t be the only tough motherfucker. Maybe that was the only way to move on up the ladder, get a flashier set of wheels than a DeVille, impress the hell out of the chicks.

He knew he could be smarter, much smarter than Flat Nose. He’d go on up to four first, in case he met up with anyone he knew on the elevator, then take the stairs back down to three. He’d take care of everything himself. And when it was over, he’d just ease on out to the loading dock and tell Flat Nose a thing or two about who’s got the balls for this business. Yeah, he’d get tight with DeJesus, even make like he’s a woman-hater just like DeJesus if he has to. Exaggerate the old gang-bang days, make off it was like being in the military, maybe
even hint he’d iced a couple assholes while he was gang-bangin’. And when he and DeJesus had meetings, he’d talk about his ma a lot, be cause DeJesus lives for his ma.

Tyrone could almost smell the inside of the brand new Benz as he headed for the elevator.

Instead of driving away from Hell in the Woods after seeing the po
lice at her car, they drove around to the back of the complex, far out toward the dark woods surrounding the nursing home wing where she knew employees parked. Before the van pulled into a spot, she could see there were two newer large cars parked amongst the older, more battered employee cars. The van pulled in next to one of the newer cars. She was not certain, but she thought these were the cars that, along with the van, had chased her. Because they were parked in a darkened area between overhead lights spaced far apart in this remote part of the lot, she was unable to see into the cars, but assumed there must be men inside, perhaps the men in knit caps and leather jackets, waiting to be called on their cell phones and told what to do. Just like the driver of the semi that had driven over Tony Gianetti’s Prius had probably been told what to do.

After the van parked and the engine was shut off, Dino spoke to the driver.

“Tell the others we’ll stay put here for a while. Get in with them and stay low. No smoking and no one out walking around in case a cop cruises by. Turn on the scanner in the car and let me know if you hear anything.”

Because there was some light in the van from distant overhead lights, she was able to watch as the driver made his way into his wheel
chair and backed it onto the lift. As he sat on the lift and the door was sliding open, more light came in the open doorway and she watched as he glanced in her direction. He had his knit cap back on, and pulled it down more tightly on his head as he stared at her. After the lift moved the driver outside and down to the ground and the lift returned empty and the door closed, she heard a car door slam.

Dino turned. “I’m going to take off the tape in a little while, Mrs. Babe. Before I do, you’ll need to know the situation. We know all about your husband. We know where his room is. We know that right now he’s in bed after having had a trying day. When things get back to normal you’ll be able to go to him. He needs you, Mrs. Babe. Our man on the inside said he was distraught today. Perhaps you don’t re
alize just how much he needs you.

“We’ve done our research. We know, for instance, that at times you and your husband have closed the door to his room in order to have privacy. Since the police found your car in the lot with its win
dow broken, I’m sure they’ll want to find you to let you know it’s been broken into. I think you can see we have very little time to chat.

“What will happen now, Mrs. Babe, is that I will take off the tape and you will tell me where we should go with our keys. When you tell me, we will take you to your husband, and sometime later this evening, after being unable to reach you at your home number, the police will eventually make some connections and go to your husband’s room and discover you decided to spend the night with him. They’ll tell you that your car has been broken into, you’ll go out with them to see, and that will be the end of it. Very simple, very clean, no more trouble.

“However, if you do not tell me where we should go with our keys, I’m afraid the police will find something entirely different in your husband’s room. They’ll probably call it a mercy killing—slash —suicide.

“So, that’s it. I’ll even take the tape off more gently this time.”

When the tape was off, she cleared her throat, coughed, swallowed the phlegm that had accumulated, and said, “My ankle. That bastard broke my ankle.”

Dino did not respond, but she could tell by the shadowed shape of his head that he still faced her. She knew he was considering the difficulty of her being found with a broken ankle. Dino had given her a scenario to think about. Years earlier Steve had told her of the method. Describe a scene in which everything comes out all right. Just like good-cop-bad-cop. One harangues the prisoner, while the other paints pictures in which the prisoner sees a light at the end of the tunnel. In this case Dino was playing both the good cop and the bad cop. Except he was no cop, and she was no ordinary prisoner. No ordinary prisoner because she knew there was no light at the end of the tunnel if she cooperated. And she had a strong feeling Dino knew that she knew.

Dino’s phone beeped and he took it out of his inside pocket. Instead of turning away from her as he had last time he was on the phone, he con
tinued facing her when he spoke. She kept her mouth shut and listened.

“Nothing except some story.”

“Health care, insurance brokers, all that.”

“Nothing’s out of hand. What makes you say that?”

“Okay, okay. But for someone who wants the old days back, you sure don’t talk like it.”