The Killing Kind

Then Mr. Pudd seemed to stare down to where I sat before draping Al Z's coat across the old man's shoulders and receding into the shadows.

Onstage, the curtain was falling and the audience had burst into applause, but I was already moving. I climbed over the edge of the orchestra box and ran up the aisle, the doors flying open noisily before me. To my left, a flight of stairs, topped by an eagle clock, led up to the next level. I took them two at a time, brushing aside an usher as I drew my gun.

“Call an ambulance,” I said as I passed. “And the police.”

I heard the sound of his footsteps echoing on the marble as I reached the top of the stairs, my gun raised ahead of me. An exit door stood open and the counterweighted fire escape, which descended under body weight, was rising back up. Below me was a loading dock, from which a car was already speeding, a silver Mercury Sable. Its side faced me as it turned onto Washington Street, so I didn't get the license number, but there were two figures inside.

Behind me, the seats were emptying for the intermission, and one or two people glanced out the open door. These doors were all alarmed, so security would be up here soon to find out who had opened them, and why. I retreated inside and moved to the front row where Al Z still sat. His head hung down, his chin on his chest, the coat draped loosely across his shoulders to hide the bulge of the blade's handle. The handle anchored him to his seat, preventing him from falling facedown. Blood flowed from his mouth and drenched the front of his white dress shirt. Some of it had fallen into his wineglass in a final, terrible act of consecration. I couldn't see Tommy Caci.

Behind me, two Wang Center security staff appeared, but they backed off at the sight of the gun in my hands.

“You call the police?”

They nodded.

Across the aisle to my right, a door stood slightly ajar. I gestured to it. “What's in there?”

“VIP lounge,” one of the security guards answered.

I looked down to the base of the door and saw what looked like the toe of a shoe in the gap. Gently, using my elbow, I pushed it open.

Tomy Caci lay facedown on the floor, his head to one side and the edge of the wound at his throat clearly visible. There was a lot of blood on the floor and on the walls. He had probably been taken from behind when he left his seat and entered the lounge. Beyond him was a bar, with some couches and chairs, but the room looked empty.

I stepped back into the aisle as two blue uniforms appeared behind me, advancing with their weapons drawn. I heard the order to drop my gun amid the audience's cries of surprise and fear. I immediately did as I was told and the two cops descended on me.

“I'm a private detective,” I said as one of them pushed me against the wall and frisked me while the other checked out Tommy Caci, then moved toward the body in the front row.

“It's Al Z,” I told him when he came back, and I felt a kind of sadness for the old thug. “He won't be bothering you again.”

I was interviewed at the scene by a pair of detectives named Carras and McCa

“What case would that be?” asked McCa

“Some trouble last year in a place called Dark Hollow.”

When I mentioned Dark Hollow, the scene of Tony Celli's death at the hands of the man now dead beside us, their faces cleared, McCa

I stood beside them at the main door of the theater as the audience was fed through a rank of policemen, each member being asked if he or she had seen anything before being told to supply an ID and telephone number. At police headquarters I gave a statement sitting beside McCa

After they let me go, I tried calling Mickey Shine at the florist's but there was no reply and I was told that his home number was unlisted. Another call and five minutes later, I had a home telephone number and address for one Michael Sheinberg at Bowdoin Street, Cambridge. There was no reply from that number either. I left a message, then hailed a cab and took a ride out to Cambridge. I asked the cab to wait as I stepped out onto the tree-lined street. Mickey Shine lived in a brownstone apartment block, but there was no answer when I tried his bell. I was considering breaking and entering when a neighbor appeared at a window. He was an elderly man in a sweater and baggy blue jeans and his hands shook from some nervous condition as he spoke.

“You lookin' for Mickey?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You a friend of his?”

“From out of town.”

“Well, sorry, but he's gone. Left about an hour ago.”

“He say where he was going?”

“No sir, I just saw him leave. Looks like he may be gone for a couple of days. He had a suitcase with him.”

I thanked him and got back in the cab. The news of Al Z's death would have traveled fast and there would be a lot of speculation as to who might have been behind it, but Mickey knew. I think he knew what would happen from the moment he received the call that I was coming and realized that it was, at last, time for the reckoning.

The cab dropped me back at Jacob Wirth's on Stuart, where Rachel was waiting along with Angel and Louis. There was a sing-along in progress around the piano as people who had been deaf since birth mugged “The Wanderer.” We left them to it and made our way a few doors up the street to Montien, where we sat in a booth and picked uneasily at our Thai food.

“He's good,” said Louis. “Probably been keeping tabs on you since you arrived.”

I nodded. “Then he knows about Sheinberg, and you two. And Rachel. I'm sorry.”

“It's a game with him,” said Louis. “You know that, don't you? The business card, the spiders in the mailbox. He's playin' with you, man, testin' you. He knows who you are, and he likes the idea of goin' up against you.”

Angel nodded in agreement. “You got a reputation now. Only surprise is that every psycho from here to Florida hasn't caught a bus and headed for Maine to see just how good you really are.”

“That's not very reassuring, Angel.”

“You want reassurance, call a priest.”

Nobody spoke for a time, until Louis said, “I guess you know we be joinin' you in Maine.”

Rachel looked at me. “I'll be coming too.”

“My guardian angels,” I said. I knew better than to argue with any of them. I was glad, too, that Rachel would be close. Alone, she was vulnerable. Yet once again I found this beautiful, empathic woman reading my thoughts.

“Not for protection, Parker,” she added. Her face was serious, and her eyes were hard. “I'm coming because you'll need help with Marcy Becker and her parents, and maybe the Merciers too. If the fact that I'm with you and the odd couple makes you feel better, then that's a plus, nothing more. I'm not here just so you can save me.”

Angel smiled at her with both admiration and amusement. “You're so butch,” he hissed at Rachel. “Give you a gun and a vest and you could be a lesbian icon.”

“Bite me, stubby,” she replied.

It seemed to have been decided. I raised a glass of water, and they each lifted their beers in response.

“Well,” I said, “welcome to the war.”