Which words also described Mankewitz's life pretty well.
Their host, one of the heads of the national union, had flown in from New Jersey to talk to Mankewitz. He'd offered Mankewitz a cigar as they sat in a conference room in the union headquarters--where no-smoking ordinances weren't taken seriously--and proceeded to tell him that the joint federal and state investigation had better be concluded, favorably, pretty soon.
"It will be," Mankewitz had assured. "Guaranteed."
"Guaranteed," the man from New Jersey had said, in the same abrupt way he'd bitten the tip off his cigar.
Hiding his fury that this prick had flown from Newark to deliver his warning like a prissy schoolteacher, Mankewitz had smiled, conveying a confidence he absolutely didn't feel.
He began spearing his romaine lettuce from the Caesar salad, dressing on the side but anchovies present and accounted for.
The dinner was purely social and the conversation meandered as they ate. The men talked about the Packers and the Bears and the Giants but delivered mere sound bites, aware that a lady was at the table, and everyone found the subject of vacationing in Door County or the Caribbean a more palatable topic. The New Jersey man offered his anchovies to Mankewitz, who declined but with a smile, as a wave of absolute fury passed through him. Hatred too. He'd decided that if their host ever ran for head of the national union Mankewitz would make sure his campaign sank like the Edmund Fitzgerald.
As the salad plates were noisily whisked away, Mankewitz noticed a man enter the restaurant by himself and shake his head curtly to the hostess. He was in his late thirties, with short, curly hair and an easy face and looked like a good-natured Hobbit. The man oriented himself, looking around the underlit and over-Italianized place, which was owned by Ukrainians and staffed by Eastern Europeans and Arabs. He finally spotted Mankewitz, who was hard to miss, being 230 pounds, with an enviable shock of silver hair.
They made eye contact. The man stepped back, into the corridor. Mankewitz took a slug of wine and wiped his mouth. He stood up. "Be right back."
The labor boss joined the Hobbit and they walked toward the banquet rooms, tonight empty, down a long corridor, where the only other presences were effigies: pictures of people like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and James Gandolfino, all of whose signatures and endorsements of the restaurant in bold marker looked suspiciously similar.
Eventually Mankewitz got tired of walking and stopped. He said, "What is it, Detective?"
The man hesitated, as if he didn't want his job title used under these circumstances. And Mankewitz decided that of course he didn't.
"There's a situation."
"What does that mean? 'Situation'? That's a Washington word, a corporate word." Mankewitz had been in a bad mood lately, unsurprisingly, which prompted the retort, but there wasn't much edge to it.
The Hobbit said, without a fleck of emotion, "Up in Kennesha County."
"The hell is that?"
"About two hours northwest of here." The cop lowered his voice even more. "It's where the lawyer in the case has a summer house."
The Case. Capital C.
"The lawyer from--"
"Got it." Now Mankewitz was concerned about indiscretion and cut the cop off with a wave before he mentioned Hartigan, Reed, Soames & Carson. "What's the story?" Mankewitz had dropped the irritated act, which was replaced by a concern that was no act at all.
"Apparently what happened was there was a nine-one-one call from her husband's phone. Went to the county. We're monitoring all communication involving the players."
The Players. In the Case...
"You told me that. I didn't know they were checking all the way out there."
"The systems're all consolidated."
How did they do that? Mankewitz wondered. Computers, of course. Privacy was fucked. As well he knew. "A call. A nine-one-one call. Go on." Mankewitz looked at a smiling Dean Martin.
"Nobody seems to know what was said. It was really brief. And then it seemed to get rescinded."
That's a word cops don't use very often. "Whatta you mean?"
"The husband, he called back and said it was a mistake."
Mankewitz looked along the dark corridor to where his wife was chatting happily with a tall, balding man standing at the table. He wondered if the man only stopped by because he'd seen Mankewitz wasn't at the table.
Determined, slick, tough pricks...
He focused on the Hobbit. "So it was an emergency and then it wasn't."
"Right. That's why it didn't go to anybody on the task force. I'm the only one who knows. The record's there but it's buried.... I have to ask, Stan, what should I know about?"
Mankewitz held his eyes. "There's nothing you should know about, Pat. Maybe it was a fire. Nine-one-one--who knows? A fender-bender. A breakin. A raccoon in the basement."
"I'll go out on a limb for you but not walk the plank."
For what he was slipping into the cop's anonymous account, the man should've been willing to jump off the fucking plank and kill sharks with his bare hands.
Mankewitz happened to notice his wife glancing his way. The entrees had arrived. He looked back at the cop and said, "I told you from the beginning there's nothing you have to worry about. That was our deal. You're completely protected."
"Don't do anything stupid, Stan."
"Like what, eat here?"
The detective gave a halfhearted grin. He nodded at a photo next to them. "Can't be that bad. It was Sinatra's favorite restaurant."
Mankewitz grunted and left the man in the corridor, heading for the men's room and fishing a prepaid cell phone out of his pocket.
ON THE SECOND
floor of the house at 2 Lake View were five doors, all closed. The carpet was Home Depot Oriental and on the walls were posters from an art gallery that was thirty feet of aisle in Target or Wal-Mart. Hart and Lewis moved with infinite care, slowly, pausing at each door. They finally found the one the women's voices were coming from. Lewis was staying focused. And, thank God, quiet.
The words the women were speaking were impossible to make out but it was clear that they didn't seem at all suspicious the men were nearby.
What the hell were those gals talking about?
Strange allies on a strange night.
Hart wasn't thinking much about that, though. He was feeling keen satisfaction in the success of the car trick. That he was about to kill two human beings meant nothing to him, nor did the fact there'd be some pleasure in the death of Michelle, who'd shot him, or of the policewoman, who'd tried to. No, this nearly sexual pleasure he felt was due only to the approaching conclusion of a job he'd begun. The bloody deaths of two women happened to be that resolution but, to him, it was no different from that glow he felt when he gave the last fine-steel-wool buff to the lacquer on a cabinet he'd built or dusted herbs on an omelet he'd fixed for a woman who'd spent the night.
Of course, there'd be consequences from the deaths. His life was about to change and he understood that. For instance, the cop's colleagues would go all out to find her killer. He even wondered whether her kin--husband, brother or father--might take the law into their own hands, if the local investigators didn't do a very good job finding Hart, which he suspected they wouldn't.
But if and when the cop's husband, say, came after him, Hart would create a plan to deal with that. He'd execute it and eliminate the problem. And feel just as satisfied with the symmetry of conclusion as he was about to now, when he fired the fatal bullet into her body.
Hart gingerly tried the knob. Locked. The voices continued, unalarmed. Hart pointed to himself and his good shoulder.
Lewis lowered his mouth to Hart's ear and whispered, "Your arm?"
"I'll live with it. When I'm through I'll drop down on the floor and give covering fire. You come in over me and take them out."
"They have guns, you think?" Glancing toward the door.
"Why take knives if you've got guns? But we oughta count on one of them having a piece."<
br />
Lewis nodded and gripped the shotgun, eyed the safety. The red button showed.
Inside, the talking continued, casual as could be.
Hart stepped back, glanced at Lewis, who held the muzzle of the Winchester skyward and nodded. Then, hunched down like a tackle, Hart sped forward and flinched as his right shoulder connected with wood. With a loud crack the lock popped and the door flew inward, but stopped only a few inches inside. Hart gasped as his head slammed into the oak and he stumbled back, stunned.
The door had hit some barricade.
Inside the bedroom the voices stopped instantly.
Hart shoved the door again--it moved no farther--and then snapped to Lewis, "Push, help me. Push! It's blocked."
The younger man dug his feet into the carpet but the door wouldn't budge. "No way. It's blocked solid."
Hart looked around the hall. He ran to the bedroom next door, to the right, and pushed his way inside. He searched the room fast. It had a French door leading to a deck outside. He kicked this open and looked out, to the left. The deck was thirty feet long and the bedroom where the women hid opened onto it as well, via a similar French door. There were no stairs off the deck. They hadn't escaped this way; they were still inside.
Hart called for Lewis to join him. Together they stepped out onto the deck. They moved to the first bedroom, stopping just short of the windows, which were closed, shades pulled or curtains drawn, and it seemed that other pieces of furniture had been pushed against the windows as barricades. The French door, beyond the end of the windows, was curtained as well.
Considering how best to approach the assault, whether the woman would be holding her Glock toward the hall or window, barricades, escape routes--for the women and for Hart and Lewis...
Lewis was eager to move but Hart took his time. Finally he decided. "You go down to that door. I'll stay here and kick this window out and try to push that dresser or table, whatever it is, out of the way. I'll fire. They'll focus on that. Then you let go with a couple rounds."
"Crossfire."
Hart nodded. "We got ammo. We can afford to use it. Then we'll go in through the door. Okay?"
Lewis, crouching, covered the distance to the door, staying low. He took a deep breath and glanced back. Hart nodded, kicked in the window, with a huge crash, and pushed over a small dresser. He dodged back as Lewis broke out a pane in the door and fired three shotgun rounds into the room, shaking the curtains and rattling the glass, while Hart fired his Glock four times in a random pattern. He didn't expect to hit anything but he knew it would keep their prey down, give him and Lewis time to get inside.
"Go!"
The men ran through the doorway, guns ready.
They found a room filled with mismatched antiques, rustic prints, books and magazines stacked on dressers and in baskets. But no human beings.
Hart thought for a moment that the women had used the delay to escape by the door to the hallway but it was still blocked--by a big dresser, it turned out. He gestured to the closet. Lewis pulled the door open and fired a shotgun round inside.
The noise was deafening. Wished the man had held back. The sudden deafness was freaking Hart out; he couldn't have heard anybody sneaking up behind him.
Looking around again. Where? The bathroom, Hart supposed. Had to be.
The door was closed.
Lewis stood in front of it. Hart pointed at Lewis's fatigue-jacket pocket. The man nodded and set down the shotgun and pulled out his silver SIG-Sauer pistol, still loud but less deafening than the Winchester scattergun. He chambered a round and flicked off the safety.
Hart started forward. Just as he was about to kick in the bathroom door, though, he paused, cocking his head. He gestured Lewis back. "Wait," he mouthed. He pulled a drawer out of a dresser and tossed it into the door, which snapped open.
Fumes poured from it. Their eyes stung fiercely and both men began to cough.
"Jesus, what is that?"
"Ammonia," Hart answered.
"Like fucking teargas."
Holding his breath, Hart flicked on the bathroom light.
Well, look at this.
The women had propped a bucket of ammonia on the top of the door so that whoever walked through would get drenched--and possibly blinded. Luckily the door eased shut by itself and tipped the bucket to the floor before the men arrived.
"A fucking trap."
He imagined what it would've been like to get soaked with the chemical. The pain, unbearable.
Wiping his eyes, Hart slammed the door shut and scanned the bedroom. "Look." He sighed. "It wasn't them at all. That's what we heard." He pointed to a TV. The electric cord of the Sony was tied around the leg of the dresser and then plugged into the wall outlet. When Hart had tried to break in the door, he'd pushed the dresser inward about three inches, which had unplugged the TV--making it seem that the women had stopped talking and presumably were hiding in the room.
He plugged the cord in again. The Shopping Channel came on. "Women talking," Hart whispered, shaking his head. "No music. Just voices. They set it up and went out the patio door and through the other bedroom. To keep us busy and give 'em time to get away."
"So they waited in the woods, saw us go past and're halfway to the county road."
"Maybe." But Hart wondered too if they'd made it seem like they were escaping to the highway when in fact they were hiding somewhere else in the house. He'd glanced downstairs earlier; the place seemed to have a large basement.
Yes or no? He finally decided: "I think we'll have to search."
Lewis replaced his pistol in his jacket and picked up the shotgun. "Okay. But let's get the fuck out of here." He was coughing. They pulled the dresser away from the door. But Hart paused, noticed something stuffed under a table. It was a pile of wet clothes. Of course, the cop would have changed after her swim in the freezing lake. Hart looked through the clothes. The pockets were empty. He examined the front of the shirt, the name tag, black and etched with white lettering. Dep. Brynn McKenzie.
She'd tricked him, sure, but Hart was pleased. For some reason he always found knowing the name of his enemy comforting.
MUTED GUNSHOTS FROM
inside 2 Lake View Drive snapped like impatient fingers. There was a pause and then more shots followed. Brynn and Michelle were approaching the Feldmans' house, which was now completely dark. The air was thick with the smell of fireplace flames and loam and rotting leaves. The young woman had shut down again, sullen and resentful. She limped along more slowly, using a pool cue as a cane.
Brynn squeezed her arm.
No response.
"Come on, Michelle, we have to move faster."
The young woman complied but was obviously distraught. She seemed put out. As if she were the only victim here. It reminded her of Joey's attitude when Brynn insisted he do homework before playing computer games or text-messaging his friends.
As they neared the house Brynn was reflecting on the dispute she'd had with Michelle back at 2 Lake View after agreeing to put the furnace on.
But she'd done that simply to trick the men into believing they were hiding out in the house. She'd said to the young woman, "Come on. We're going back to the Feldmans' place."
"What?"
"Hurry."
Michelle, with her injured ankle and in shock from losing her friends, had begged to stay in the house at Number 2, hiding, even in the spider-filled basement, and waiting for the police. Acting like a bit of a princess, she'd resisted heading outside. She couldn't understand why Brynn felt certain the men would circle back, rather than go on to Route 682.
But Brynn was convinced they would do just that. The drive to the highway was just a trick.
"But why?" the young woman had argued adamantly. "It doesn't make sense."
Brynn explained her logic. "From what you told me, I don't think this was just a random breakin. They're professional killers. That means they're going to come after us. They have to. We can identify them. And that means w
e're a link to whoever hired them. So they're doubly desperate to find us. If they don't, their boss is going to come after them."
Brynn didn't, however, tell her that there was another basis for her conclusion: the man named Hart. He wasn't going away. She'd recalled how confident he'd sounded talking to her in the house. Unemotional and fully prepared to kill her without a second's hesitation when she showed herself.
Hart reminded her of the surgeon who, in a perfectly even voice, explained how her father had died during exploratory surgery.
More chillingly, though, he reminded Brynn of her ex-husband. Hart's look was the same as in Keith's face once when she found him slipping a pistol she didn't recognize into the lockbox in the bedroom. She'd asked about it and the state trooper had hesitated but confessed to her that fellow officers would sometimes pocket a weapon found at crime scenes, if it wasn't necessary evidence. They'd collect them. "Just to have," Keith had explained.
"You mean...you mean, to plant them on a perp--so you can say you shot him in self-defense?"
Her husband hadn't answered. But he'd glanced at her with a look that was identical to Hart's in that instant he rose from the foliage, holding his pistol and looking for a target.
There was something else in the glance too, Brynn decided. Admiration?
Maybe.
And a challenge too.
May the best person win....
Assuming the men would return to the house where she and Michelle were hiding, Brynn had set the TV to a shopping network, blocked the door with a dresser and rigged the power cord around the leg. Then she'd found a bottle of ammonia and poured it on the floor, alongside a bucket, to make it look as though she'd set a trap. That would make Hart and his partner wary, thinking she was willing to blind her pursuers--though in reality she would not risk hurting the homeowners or rescue workers later.
They'd grabbed a few other things, which they now carried: weapons. Each woman had a sock containing a billiard ball--like a South American bolo throwing weapon, which Brynn had learned about helping Joey with a project on Argentina for school. They also had Chicago Cutlery knives in their pockets, wrapped in sock scabbards, and Brynn carried a pool cue at the end of which was taped a ten-inch-long Chicago Cutlery carving knife.