The Final Cut

He was bored with this view. He started up the Crown Vic and moved a block north, which gave him a clear shot of three sides of the house, and settled back in to watch and wait for Savich and Sherlock. His cell rang. It was Sherlock. They’d been held up another thirty minutes.

Ben tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He knew two of the seven sons lived with Anatoly. No mother, no wives, no children. Only the three grown-ups, all bad to the bone. He wouldn’t want to play poker with them. He couldn’t imagine them being good losers. Actually, he wouldn’t want to eat breakfast with them, either.

And that made Ben realize he was hungry. The bagel he’d inhaled for breakfast was long gone. He’d seen a pizza place as he’d come in, Papa Leone’s. A pepperoni sounded good. After their meeting with Anatoly, maybe he could talk Savich and Sherlock into a slice.

One more drive by, Ben decided, and started up his Crown Vic. He drove slowly by the Anatoly mansion, and lo and behold—he saw the front door wasn’t closed.

Why hadn’t he noticed before? Because something had happened, something he hadn’t seen. Adrenaline poured through him. He wasn’t about to wait now. But no way was he going to approach the house by himself, not after Anatoly had looked at him last night like Wouldn’t you look good without a face? And Anatoly would be glad to oblige.

No time to wait for Savich and Sherlock, no time to call in other FBI agents. Instead he called the Brighton precinct. Three minutes later, a blue-and-white NYPD cruiser sharked around the corner, two more cruisers in its wake. These boys knew whose house this was.

Ben waved at them as they slowly pulled to the curb. A sergeant approached him, an older guy, going bald and sporting a growing paunch. His nameplate read F. Horace.

“What’s the problem, sir?”

Ben stuck his creds in his face. “Special Agent Ben Houston, FBI. I had a chat with Mr. Anatoly last night down at Federal Plaza. I’m expecting two other agents, but not for maybe twenty more minutes, and I didn’t want to wait.” He pointed to Anatoly’s front door. “It’s open, but I haven’t seen anybody go in or out for the past three hours.”

“And you’re wondering why Mr. Anatoly would leave his front door open. Gotta say, I’m wondering, too. Let’s go check this out,” and Horace opened the snap over his Glock. He waved to the other officers, telling them to stay outside, wait for the two FBI agents that were expected, and keep their eyes open. Then they set off.

Ben pushed, and the front door swung in easily.

He stopped cold. Not good, not good. “Smell that?”

“Blood,” Sergeant Horace said, all humor gone. “I don’t like this, I really don’t.” He laid a beefy hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Listen to me now, Agent Houston, in case no one taught you, be sure to walk carefully. We don’t want to disturb any evidence, okay?”

Ben didn’t know where the manic grin came from. “Thanks for the wise words, Sarge. I’ll be extra-careful.”

Horace’s gruff laugh was his only reply.

The two men walked, guns drawn, at the ready, through a vast entrance hall decorated to the hilt with what looked to Ben to be Italian antiques. They followed their noses and stopped cold when they reached the huge vaulted kitchen, modern, shiny, pristine except for the three bodies pressed together in the middle of the kitchen floor, hands tied behind their backs. Two had fallen forward, one canted over as if he were sharing a secret with the man next to him. They’d all been shot in the back of the head, execution-style.

Sergeant Horace keyed the mike on his shoulder. “We need the crime scene unit and an ME out to Anatoly’s place. Triple homicide.” He turned back to Ben. “We gotta clear the house. Step careful.”

As Horace cleared the bottom floor, Ben went up the stairs, Glock steady in his hand.

In the second bedroom on the right, he found another body slumped on the floor, a male Caucasian, his back against the door frame, sitting in a pool of dried blood. His eyes were open, slightly gummed over, and he was facing the bed. He was dressed in black from head to toe. His hands were cupped around a wound in his stomach. He’d taken a while to die, Ben thought, looking at all the dried blood on his clothes, black now, stiff.

This man wasn’t big like the Anatolys. He had to be one of the shooters, had to be. So there were a minimum of two shooters, but his partner hadn’t shown him any love. He’d left him to die, and that was cold, real cold. Ben searched the man’s pockets but found no ID, no nothing.

The room itself was a mess, the bed unmade, smelled of dirty laundry, and, oddly, old toast. One of the sons’ rooms, then. He pictured the shooter coming into the room, and the son was fast enough to grab up a gun and gut-shoot him.

Had the son gone downstairs then, only to end up dead on the kitchen floor? He’d had a gun, he knew something bad was going on, but it hadn’t mattered. Whoever was waiting downstairs had overpowered him.

Ben methodically went through the rest of the rooms upstairs, then called down to Horace, “Upstairs is clear. Got a body, gut shot. Looks like he was part of the crew who broke in.”

“A quadruple homicide? Now, ain’t that something on a beautiful Friday.”

Ben rejoined him in the kitchen. Horace pointed at the bodies. “That’s Anatoly in the middle, and the younger ones are two of his sons. Someone was really pissed off. Nice of the killer to off them in the kitchen, no ruined carpet.

“But how the hell did he manage to get the drop on all three of these badasses? I just can’t see that.” They both stared down at the bodies.

Ben said, “Had to be more than one person responsible for this, had to be. Like you said, they were three very big strong men, even Anatoly.”

Horace nodded. “Plus, those Anatoly sons are meaner than hungry crocodiles. Their old man used to be, but he’s mellowed out, doesn’t kill those who piss him off himself any longer, just gives the orders. You need to see this.”

Ben followed Horace into what looked to be Anatoly’s office. The room hadn’t been ransacked. What looked to be an original Picasso had been gently lifted from its spot behind the huge mahogany desk and carefully placed against the wall. And there was a wall safe, the thick metal door hanging ajar.

Horace said, “There’s still packs of cash, legal papers, and lookee here—half a key of coke.”

Ben said, “That’s weird. If they found what they came for, why leave the cash and the drugs?”

“If I was the badass who broke in here,” Horace said, “I sure wouldn’t have left the C and C. I wonder what they did take out of that safe?”

Ben holstered his Glock.

“No clue.” He looked up to see Savich and Sherlock appear in the living room doorway.

56

Savich and Sherlock looked down at the three dead men on the kitchen floor while Ben filled them in.

“There was another body upstairs, most likely one of the killers. Whoever did this had to be big and strong and fast. These three couldn’t have been easy to take down, much less forcing them to kneel and accept being shot. They were really bad news.”

Sherlock dropped to her knees, studied the three faces, flesh slack and gray, eyes all open, staring at the floor. “This is really bad,” she said. “Really ugly, but no anger, no rage, all business as usual, I’ve got to say. Very controlled. In, do the job, and out. Didn’t take long.”

Horace said, “Yeah, that seems right, but how? Just holding a gun on them doesn’t seem like enough. And I can’t see these three cooperating. No muss, no fuss, just kill us?”

Sherlock lightly touched her palm to the side of Anatoly’s face. “He hasn’t been dead all that long, maybe two hours, more or less, the ME will tell us.” She frowned, then she sniffed. She looked up at Savich. “Dillon, guess what?”