Witness to Death Read online

  “Let’s clean that out,” Michelle said. “Can you move it?”

  John nodded. “Hurts to lift my arm too high.”

  The sink in the bathroom only ran cold water. She soaked a towel underneath the running water and unwrapped a bar of soap. John sat on the toilet, his back to her. He grunted as she rubbed soap over the wound. Then, using the wet towel, Michelle cleaned off the blood and soap. Hopefully the towels had been washed recently.

  “It’s deep. You need stiches.”

  “No time. I’m going to have a hell of a scar story, if—”

  “If what?”

  He didn’t answer as she soaped him up once more. The bloodstains dripped down his back and revealed the skin underneath. The wound was deep and wide. Michelle didn’t even want to think about the damage to the muscles. What John needed was a hospital.

  He pulled his shirt on and got his jacket. He struggled to pull it on. Michelle went over and helped him with it. Her hand grazed his back and she pulled, and she felt his muscles contract.

  He looked out the window, and his body stiffened.

  “I’m going outside.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s someone smoking a cigarette. Down by the lobby. I don’t trust him.”

  “It’s probably just the desk clerk.”

  “Not the guy who checked us in,” he said. “I’m going to go check it out.”

  Michelle took a short breath.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  After the door to the room shut, the silence returned. Michelle turned the TV back on just to hear something.

  John was gone for nearly twenty minutes. And in that time Michelle flipped through the TV channels. Again. And again. Nothing was on, nothing to distract her from the images of last night flitting across her mind. The muscles in her fingers started to ache soon after John left and hadn’t stopped since.

  She turned the heat up, turned the heat down, anything just to keep her moving. They’d been in the hotel room less than eight hours and already she was going stir crazy. Behind her the TV droned on about someone trying to train dogs.

  And then her cell phone rang. She thought she’d imagined it at first, the space between the first ring and second taking forever. But it finally rang again and she reached the desk where it sat in a couple of hurried steps.

  Please be Frank.

  It wasn’t. The caller ID read “DAD.”

  She lifted the phone, feeling it vibrate in her hand. Three rings. Four. How many was it before the voice mail picked up? Five. Six.

  She flipped the phone open.

  “Michelle, where are you?”

  “I’m fine, Dad.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  Michelle felt sweat form on her ear as she pressed the phone receiver tighter against it. She tried to remember what she’d done last, turned the heat up or down. It didn’t matter.

  “Why do you need to know where I am?”

  “I’m your father.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “How about this? I haven’t heard from my daughter in hours. She said she was going to call me. She was being chased by the police. I’m worried.”

  “You’ve never been worried about me before. Why start now?”

  Though the phone, she heard a deep thunk and then what sounded like a glass hitting something hard.

  “Tell me where you are.”

  “Dad, you’re acting really weird.”

  Her mouth went dry as she said the words. She dropped onto the bed. She tasted bitterness.

  His voice thundered through the phone. “I’m acting weird because my daughter’s ex-boyfriend shot five people and now you’re on the run with him.”

  She remembered the time she’d lied about a grade on her report card only to have her teacher call home that night. Her father had towered over her, fists clenched, tendons in his neck tight like ropes. It only took him one sentence before Michelle blurted out apologies.

  Her hands shook harder now.

  “Dad, I—”

  “Let me talk to John.” He said it slowly, as if she were too stupid to understand.

  “He’s not here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. He went to check on something.”

  She closed her eyes, as if every time she spoke, she was betraying too much. But did it matter? She’d heard her dad talk about track phones.

  “Are you okay?” The tone of his voice was softer now, as if he were trying to soothe her to sleep.

  “Yes,” she said. “We’re fine.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  What is Dad doing to me? Hang up!

  “Tell me where you are,” her father said. “I have connections, you know that. I can get the police to you. Hell, the Feds. I’m going to send you a bodyguard. Someone who’ll help. They’ll get you out, you’ll be safe. Just have to make a few phone calls.”

  “No, it’s not safe. I can’t do it.”

  “Why don’t you trust me? I’m your father.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter, and put her hand on the end table, balancing upright on the edge of the bed. Her legs shuddered again, and she thought she wouldn’t be able to get up, even if assassins came crashing through the door

  I’m your father.

  “I just want you to be okay,” he said. He was calm now. Just like that Tuesday in September years ago, when he’d held her and told her not to worry. He’d take care of things.

  The name of the motel fell out of her mouth.

  “Thank you, Michelle. You’ll be okay.”

  The door to the room swung open and John came through the doorway and without looking at her, said, “Just the new desk clerk getting on shift.”

  He froze in the doorframe when he saw her on the phone. He mouthed, “Who is it?”

  “My dad,” she said aloud.

  “Is that John?” her father asked. “Put him on the phone.”

  Michelle held the phone out in her shivering hand. John took it from her. He didn’t speak, just stared as he listened, his eyes tearing through her.

  The phone call ended without John saying a word.

  “What did he say?” she asked.

  John sat on the bed, next to Michelle, his hands on his lap. The door to the room was still open, the cold air flooding in along with a small drift of snow. Michelle closed it then turned back to John.

  “John.”

  He turned to her, his eyes meeting hers again.

  “What did he say?”

  He said, “My daughter will be safe soon.”

  Christine Verderese pulled off Route 17 and stopped in front of the address Uncle Tony had given her. The snowstorm had dipped to a few dancing flakes, but she wondered what the hell the state employees were doing. The snowplows hadn’t come out yet, and traffic had nearly ground to a halt.

  She approached the brick house, up a long stepped walkway, and rang the doorbell. Uncle Tony answered, his olive skin covered in a sheen of sweat. His cheeks were red, and he wore a NY Giants T-shirt and jeans. He grinned when he saw Christine.

  “There you are,” he said.

  “You all right?”

  “He keeps this place so hot. Feel like I’m at a Turkish bath. But no hookers to enjoy it with.”

  Christine stepped forward, trying to get through the door. Some heat would be nice. The snow was starting to stick to the shoulders of her coat.

  “We don’t have time for you to come in right now,” Tony said.

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “You’re going to get Michelle, bring her back here.”

  Christine’s face felt warm, and it wasn’t from the heat radiating from the open door.

  “She’s in the Poconos, at a motel.” Tony handed her a slip of paper with an address on it. “Get her back here alive. If we have her, it makes the Callahan thing so much easier.”

  Christine looked at the piece of paper. “What’s all
this about?”

  Tony pulled the door closed behind him. The green hand grenade in his hand made her fingers tingle. She’d never held one of those before.

  “How do you use it?” she asked.

  Tony blinked, then said, “Pull the pin and throw. You’ll have about five seconds.”

  She waited for her uncle to make a joke about stamina in bed. It didn’t come.

  “It’s a new kind. Not percussion. Explosive,” he said.

  He stood on a step above her. As she looked up to meet his eyes, snow landed on her eyebrows. She wiped it away before it could melt and drip down her face.

  “It’s a way to get New Jersey back in the game,” he said. “Right now, New York looks at us as if we’re crap. The way the Feds have come down on us, broken us apart. Donte has focused on drugs and prostitution. The real money is elsewhere. You do this for me, the power will be all ours.”

  Everything Tony talked about revolved around Donte Maiore. That and family.

  Years earlier, when she first learned to kill, when her uncle first approached her, she hadn’t realized the thought that went into murder.

  She approached her uncle, shaking and sweating and said she wanted to kill her father. Her real father. So Tony sent her to a friend, a retired Navy Seal who owed her uncle a favor. The first thing Mike O’Connor taught her was to hold a knife, the safe angle. The most deadly angle. It got her attention. He moved on to marksmanship much later.

  When he’d first taught her, they stood in her uncle’s study. It reminded her of a log cabin, with the hardwood floors and only a throw rug in the center of the room. There was a large stained desk against the window where she used to sit and do her homework as a kid. And a thick easy chair her uncle used to smoke cloves in. The air had the faint hint of smoke.

  “No one,” he said, “uses a knife anymore. It’s always guns and bombs. Subtlety has disappeared from our business.”

  He held out a knife in a case that reminded her of a jewelry box. She took it from the box and held it up into the light. It shone like a lantern.

  “What do you want me to do with this?” she asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  She dropped the knife and it clattered off the hardwood floor.

  Her trainer leaned over and picked it up.

  “You have to be careful with this. It is perfectly balanced. One flaw can change its aim. Like making coffee, too many grinds too little water or vice versa. All balance.”

  “That’s not why I came here.”

  “If you want to do things right it is.”

  Christine shook her head and clenched her hands into fists. “This was not what I was promised. This will take too long.”

  “Then I won’t teach you,” he said. “Your uncle is paying me. I owe him a favor, but I am not scared of him. I don’t need this. I can turn the money down.”

  “I want to learn fast,” Christine said.

  “If you want to be good, you’ll do it my way.”

  “You’re a mo—,” she said.

  He held up a hand to stop her from speaking. “If you don’t take your time and learn, you’ll only hurt yourself.”

  “No. I won’t.” She looked up at the ceiling.

  O’Connor took a step back. “Try to hurt me, if you’re so sure you can do it.”

  Christine didn’t hesitate. She charged O’Connor and tried to tackle him. He sidestepped and grabbed her wrist as she passed. He pulled her backwards and twisted her arm behind her back. Christine felt an inferno travel up her forearm to her elbow.

  “I have a knife in my hand. I can cut your throat right now.”

  “M-my uncle,” she said.

  “I told you. I’m not scared of him. I’m not scared of anyone. I can teach you to be the same way. But you have to listen to me.”

  Christine tried to step away, but O’Connor pulled her closer. She thought her wrist might break.

  “Listen to me,” he said.

  Christine blew out of her mouth and said, “Okay.”

  O’Connor released her.

  She took the knife again, stared at it, pictured it sailing through the air at the perfect angle.

  “My mother died of cancer,” she said.

  O’Connor didn’t say anything.

  “I didn’t know my father until three weeks ago.”

  O’Connor crossed his arms.

  She pictured her father standing with her sister at the party. “Tell me what to do.”

  The knife was nowhere near as heavy as she thought it’d be, closer to an apple than a cantelope.

  “Let me show you how to clean it,” he said, as if she’d been using it for hours.

  He handed her a rag. She dragged it over the blade, and felt the cool metal slash through her skin. She jerked her right hand back. Her fingers twitched as blood spilled from her palm.

  O’Connor took the knife from her. He put the knife down, and walked over to the desk against the wall. He came back with a first aid kit. Minutes later the wound was cleaned and bandaged.

  “The knife is a quiet weapon,” he said. “But it gets the job done.”

  The words echoed in her mind now, as Tony held out the grenade, and she wrapped her hand around it. The heat from Tony’s hand mixed with the cold metal of the grenade and ran up her arm like electricity through a wire. She took the grenade from him and caressed it.

  “Bring Michelle back. Everything else has to be destroyed. It’s useless. This thing is like an expensive paper shredder you can only use once. No evidence.”

  Christine nodded. She folded the piece of paper he’d given her and slipped it into her pocket. Leaning in, she kissed her uncle on the cheek, and then caressed the grenade.

  “Do this right, and things are going to be better. Every since Donte took over, our thing has gone to hell. New Jersey has become the Titanic for me. We need to make changes to improve it.” Tony said. “Back like they used to be when my dad was in charge. We need to keep floating.”

  “I don’t remember the way things used to be,” Christine said.

  Tony brushed some of the snow off her shoulders. And then gripped them in his big, thick hands.

  “You ever hear them say the streets were paved with gold? That’s how it was. Money, booze, sports and strippers. Like the Greeks, we had it all.”

  Christine tilted her head. “You mean the Romans?”

  “No, the Greeks. The strippers gave us lots of anal.”

  Christine felt her cheeks get hot. “Oh my God. Come on.”

  “Go get ‘em,” Tony said, laughing.

  Christine stepped down off the walkway and opened the front door of her car. She wondered what Michelle looked like these days.

  Christine shook her head. She didn’t care.

  Instead Christine pictured Mike O’Connor’s blade cutting open Michelle’s neck, while she laughed.

  “You told him where we were.”

  “I didn’t—He said he was going to help.”

  John had Michelle by the armpits, lifting her off the bed. His shoulder screamed as he did so. He didn’t shake her, but she couldn’t back away. He wanted to dig his hands into the flesh and push hard and shake her until she cried, but he didn’t. He wanted to stare into her eyes. The eyes that were wide and dancing everywhere around the room.

  “He’s not going to help, Michelle.”

  He let go of her and watched her take a step back to keep her balance. Perhaps he had held her harder than he meant to.

  “How can you say that? He’s my father. Why wouldn’t he help? I don’t want to be stuck here forever. What other choice do we have?”

  “Wait things out. Why would your father help? He might help you, but not me. He just said it on the phone.”

  “He just said… I’ll be…”

  “But not me,” John said. “He purposefully didn’t mention me.”

  “I think you’re reading too much into what he said. Why wouldn’t he help you too?”

  “Thi
nk about it, Michelle.”

  Michelle took him by the wrist and turned him toward her. The gray light through the window fell on her face, making her eyes shine. Her lips parted as she took in a breath.