Malice Times Read online

  “I estimate the true value of those diamonds is approximately sixty million dollars. We should be able to sell them for about twenty to thirty million. I hope for thirty, but I believe twenty is more realistic.”

  “And Tom Watkins?”

  “Either he has the diamonds and he is getting ready to flee or he doesn’t. I don’t care. Either he is a thief or a complete and utter failure. He had one job to do. Go to Malice Grove, pick up the diamonds and bring them to me. Not a particularly difficult job if you ask me.”

  I thought about that for a moment. Tom Watkins didn’t have the diamonds. At least he hadn’t. There was a desperation about Watkins that was bordering on the psychotic right now. And as the days and hours ticked on, that desperation would only grow.

  “Where does Dutch Gordon fit into all of this?”

  He sighed and stared at the ceiling. I could see his mind working, not knowing how much I knew or how much he had to tell me. Once he made up his mind, he started, “Once upon a time, there was a man by the name of Brian. He was not a very nice man. He had saved another man, Buddy, and his family from a fiery death. See there was this other man, Dutch. He wasn’t a very nice man either. He set this man’s house on fire. But Brian was able to save Buddy and his pregnant wife from the flames. Brian became Buddy’s closest ally. Buddy loved Brian like a son. Well, the years roll by and things escalated between Buddy and Dutch. Then, Brian’s wife and children are killed in a car accident. Brian is convinced that Dutch killed his family. Dutch’s men had the right car, but the wrong driver. Brian loses it and he is going to punish Dutch. He hunts down and abducts Dutch’s son, George. Brian tortures George and does, well other things as it turns out. Brian can’t let anyone know about that and George would tell everyone, so he kills him. Buddy is horrified by the act of vengeance on the son of his rival. He sends Brian away, because he is still very indebted to Brian. Dutch Gordon searches for Brian Prater, but can’t find him. This infuriates Gordon. He tries a different tack, a poetic one, he tries to kill Buddy’s son. He fails. He tries again and fails. The third time he tries, Buddy and his wife both die. Buddy’s son is scared. So, a knight in shining armor steps in and facilitates a truce, but one that sees Dutch buying The Golden Seagull to help compensate him for the loss of his only son. But that’s not the end of it. You see, two men come together to plot a most extraordinary revenge and end this feud once and for all. They are going to steal something of great value. They are going to frame Dutch for the crime. Dutch getting arrested and sent to prison is only window dressing. The real revenge comes when Dutch is killed by the very nasty people he stole millions in uncut diamonds from. And these two men live happily ever after.”

  “And the two men? You and Bruce Drake?”

  He nodded ever so slightly.

  “And you roped Brad Graber into this?

  He nodded again.

  “Because he owed you for allowing him to live after he killed Prater in your office.”

  “Well, Prater was supposed to carry out the heist, but it became increasingly obvious that he did not have the temperament nor the restraint to carry it off. He had to go, but we couldn’t just let him go on living in Malice Grove now could we. He had to go, really go. It was unfortunate, but Buddy was dead and it seemed like the best solution. So, we called him back to New York. An accident was set up. But then an extraordinary thing happened. Joseph Marchello calls me and tells me something very disgusting. So, I make sure that Brad Graber has an easy path to get to him. Then, I have someone else on the hook. Someone I can use to carry out the plans that Prater, Drake and I had organized. It took a little while to get Brad up to speed. I don’t think he would have done it if I hadn’t offered him a quarter of the money. Five million is a lot of money. The other five million was to go to Bruce.”

  “This was all about protecting Costello’s son,” I said.

  “You are a very smart young man. So smart that for the first time in a very long time, I think I might actually see that ten million dollars. I had given up hope. I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. The ten million was only icing on the cake.”

  “That’s a lot of icing.”

  “Or ice, if you will,” he laughed. “But make no mistake, I want those diamonds. I will give you ten million dollars in cash as soon as you place those diamonds in my hand.”

  “What about Bruce’s cut?”

  “Bruce has had a year to locate that money, too. I am letting him off easy. It wasn’t his screw up after all, it was Tom’s.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” I said.

  “Or I will be,” he said.

  We shook hands. He kissed Regina on the cheek. As we took the taxi back to the hotel, Regina eyed me warily. I stared out the window as New York sped by. New York always sped by. There was no waltzing by or meandering by, it always just sped.

  “Mrs. Regan seemed like a nice woman,” Regina said. I looked at her. She was probing.

  I looked back out the window. “Is she?”

  “Something changed in you when she walked in that room. I could feel the tension.”

  “Have you ever looked into someone’s eyes before and seen someone else?”

  “I guess so,” she said.

  “That’s what happened to me when I looked into Mrs. Regan’s eyes.”

  “And who did you see?” she asked.

  I sighed, thinking back to that night. That icy grip around my arm, his face close to mine, fear gripping at my heart. Those sapphire eyes boring into my soul right before he licked my face. “I saw Don Webb, also known as Brian Prater. She’s his sister, which make Regan his brother-in-law.”

  “So, Regan was looking for revenge on Dutch Gordon, too, for killing his sister-in-law and his nieces and nephews.”

  “If you believe Regan. That’s a big if.” I was still watching New York pass us by. The taxi stopped at a red light. I saw a mother and her two children walking down the sidewalk together hand-in-hand. The children following huddled close to their mother’s legs.

  “So, you don’t believe him?” she asked.

  “I think what he told us was mostly true.”

  “You are being very cryptic,” Regina said anxiously.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off of the little family. My heart was breaking it was so beautiful. A family can be a really special thing. You forget that sometimes when yours is not. “He lied about one thing for sure. Regan didn’t want to kill Prater himself. His wife, for one, would never have forgiven him. That’s why he let Brad kill Prater. So he could put it on Brad. He could tell his wife that Brad had done it. His wife would probably want him dead, but Regan would convince her that after he used him for his own purposes that he would get rid of him. Brad panicked that night when he found out that Regan was arranging a swap of personnel. Brad imagines himself getting hauled off by Watkins back to New York to answer to Regan. Watkins would come back to Malice Grove for a period of time to make it look like Brad had been swapped out just to make my father not suspect anything.”

  “You mean Regan had Graber killed?” she asked.

  “I said he intended to. But something happened on the way to New York.”

  “So why not just kill him then, why get him involved in this diamond heist?”

  “Regan was stuck. The man who was planning the heist, Brian Prater, had to be killed. He was jeopardizing the whole operation. So when Prater is killed, they needed someone else and Brad was made-to-order. Brad owed him and Brad wanted out of Malice Grove. But he needed capital to keep Celia Archer happy.”

  “Prater planned the heist,” she said. “I thought Regan and Drake did.”

  “No, Regan and Prater were planning it. They wanted to end this war between the families once and for all without it being able to be linked to any of them. To keep everyone safe. Gordon had to die. He would never allow Costello’s son to live. His fury would have gotten the best of him eventually and he would have hunted him down and killed him. He had tried to kill him three tim
es. That kind of determination doesn’t just disappear. His son had died horribly. Costello’s son would die horribly. That is eye for an eye justice there. The fact that Costello was dead wouldn’t wipe the slate clean for someone like Dutch Gordon.”

  When we got back to the hotel, Regina said that she needed to take a shower because she hadn't been able to take one that morning. That was all fine and good for me. As soon as she closed herself in the bathroom I left the hotel.

  I needed to talk to a gun store owner who insisted the gun used in the murder of Daniel Miles was the same gun that Tom Watkins bought there eight years ago. The neighborhood I had to go to was not pretty. The streets were littered with trash, the sidewalks with the homeless.

  The place I needed to go to was simply called The Gun Mart. That told me everything I needed to know. A place like this didn't keep records. The fact that the gun was bought eight years ago, long before the Brady Bill, also made it impossible. Someone had paid off the owner, a Hispanic by the name of Carlos, to lie about who had bought the gun. Someone was trying to frame Tom Watkins.

  When I walked into the store a short, fat, bald man was being waited on by the man I would soon learn to be Carlos. When Carlos saw me he quickly abandoned his customer to another employee.

  "What can I do for you?" Carlos asked without a trace of an accent.

  "I need to know about a gun," I said and flashed my credentials.

  "Private cop," he said. "You know I don't have to answer any of your questions."

  "And you know that none of the answers you give me will be official in any way."

  He weighed that and as if deciding that he didn't want to ruin a perfectly good day he asked, "What gun?"

  "The gun you told the Malice Grove Police Department you sold to Tom Watkins eight years ago."

  "Yeah, what about it?"

  "You've got a pretty good memory if you can remember all the way back then."

  "I keep records," he said.

  "You might keep current records," I said. "To protect yourself, but you don't have records that date back eight years."

  "So, what's it to you?"

  "My brother was killed with that gun,” I lied. “Who paid you off to tell the cops that Tom Watkins bought that gun?"

  "No one," he said. He looked down at the floor as if pondering the mysteries of tile work. "Your brother?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "This is strictly off the record. I don't know who it was. I only talked to him once. He sent me one thousand dollars in cash and told me that the cops would be coming around asking about a gun. He told me to tell them that Tom Watkins had bought the gun eight years ago. He even sent me a phony record book and a photograph of the man. He told me to tell the cops that I remembered him because he was a regular."

  "Can I see the record book and photo?"

  "You can see the record book, but I was told to destroy the photo once I felt I could pick him out of a lineup."

  He went behind the counter and pulled out a leather book from under the cash register. It was a nice piece of work. The book was even beat up and looked at least ten years old. I found the weapon sold to Tom Watkins with the serial number of the gun next to it. Color me impressed.

  "Do you think you would recognize the man's voice if you heard it?" I asked.

  "No," he said. "And I wouldn't want to. A thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

  I nodded and left Carlos alone. It didn’t matter. I went back to the hotel, where Regina was waiting for me furious for going without her, but she got over it when I told her what I had learned.

  “Do you think it was Dempsey?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t Dempsey,” I said. “He put Watkins in the frame because he wanted me to leave town. That’s what that was all about. He didn’t want his last few months on Earth to be without his little girl. He gave that up after his daughter repeatedly pled with him to leave me alone.”

  “Why is everyone so hot and bothered to frame Tom Watkins?” she asked.

  “Because he is made to order. Unfortunately, a cornered Watkins could be a very dangerous thing.”

  37

  We returned to Malice Grove that night. After she left I checked my brother's answering machine. The first message was from Doctor Salvatore demanding I make an appointment to see him some time in the next week. It didn't seem possible that it had been a week since I had been shot. I wrote down a reminder to make an appointment tomorrow morning.

  The next message was from my father. He wanted to see me immediately. I decided I'd see him tomorrow. There was something else I wanted to do that evening and it was going to take some careful planning.

  After sleeping for a few hours I woke at three in the morning and drove to The Malice Times. My clothes clung to my body from the humidity. Sweat built on my forehead. I walked up the street looking at the darkened structure. I passed The Grove and finally came to stand across the street from where The Diamond Schooner sat at the end of the pier. There was no one around at this time of day. I walked across the street and down the pier.

  I stopped and looked more closely at the ship. I looked out across the water and could see thick wooden beams beneath the surface of the water holding the structure in place. Thick ropes reached from the fake masts down across the edges of the structure and into the water tied tightly to the beams underneath. It added a dash of aesthetic authenticity. A gate surrounded the gangplank. I removed my clothing and stashed it away in a darkened area. I lowered myself over the side of the pier and slid silently into the water. I swam around the stern of the ship to where I had seen the ship unloading cargo into The Diamond Schooner. Ropes hung down from the ship where boats would be able to tie themselves off. I grabbed hold of one of the ropes and slowly climbed up the rear of the boat. I eventually got to the top and pulled myself up and over. The muscles of my arms screamed, my fingers worn red from the rope. There was no pain in my shoulder from my gunshot wound. Perhaps the activity and the work of the last week had lifted the mental block I had been suffering. As I laid there waiting for someone to descend on me, I listened for any sounds and could hear nothing but the lake lapping gently against the side of the ship.

  I stood and walked towards the bow where Rae and I had dinner that night. I would have to talk to Rae eventually. I wasn’t sure what to say. Sorry hardly seemed to suffice. I found the stairwell that I had seen Joshua talking to Drake at and made my way below decks. I didn’t know where I was going or what I was doing. There were a few lights on, so it wasn’t completely dark. I walked towards the bow of the ship again and through a door. A large kitchen occupied the entire front part of the ship underneath the outdoor dining area above.

  I closed the door gently and went back to the steps. I walked down the hallway in the other direction. I opened up the first door on the right and entered. The room was dark. I couldn’t see. I stood quietly and listened. I could hear no noises. I found a light switch and flipped it. The lights illuminated what I could only assume was Drake’s office. I went to his desk and started going through the drawers quietly. I came across a leather-bound ledger that looked just like the one I had seen at the gun shop in New York. I opened it. There was entry after entry. It was the ledger for The Diamond Schooner. I put it back in its place.

  I heard footsteps above me. I quickly doused the light and moved towards the door. I opened the door slightly and could see feet descending down the steps. I shut the door. Footsteps stomped down the steps. I balled myself up ready to pounce as soon as the door flung open. Footsteps started approaching the door. I stared at the door waiting for light to spill through. Footsteps walked past the doorway and further down the hallway. The tension released from my body and I moved towards the door. I opened the doorway a little and peered through the crack. Joshua was reaching for a doorknob further down. He opened the door and walked through. A moment later, light poured out of the open doorway. I left the room and quietly climbed the stairs. At the top of the stairs, I stopped.

&nbs
p; “What the hell are you doing?” Drake shouted. “It is four in the morning.”

  “I just thought you should know that Watkins is getting ready to go on the run,” Joshua said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I am going to kill him now.”

  “You can’t kill Watkins yet. Not until I get the diamonds.”

  “You’ve been looking for those damn diamonds for a year,” Joshua said. The anger in his voice was palpable. I could feel it coursing through the whole ship. “Watkins has them.”

  “Paul doesn’t think so,” Drake said in a very calming voice.

  “Uncle Paul is wrong,” Joshua said. “Now, Watkins is getting ready to take off. I can feel it. I want him.”

  “Look, we need those diamonds. Watkins’ time is almost up. If you can get the diamonds from him, then get them. Do whatever you have to do to get them.”

  “I don’t care about your damn diamonds. That bastard let Graber kill my father.”

  “I know he did.”

  “And you and Uncle Paul promised me, Bruce. You asked for proof that he had the diamonds and I gave it to you and now you want me to get the diamonds. Get them yourself. You should be able to find them a lot easier after he’s dead.”

  I heard a door slam. I scurried quietly to the rear of the ship and hid in the shadows. Joshua emerged up the stairwell. He walked to the starboard side of the ship and gripped the railing. His black leather gloves squeaked as he gripped the aluminum rail tighter. Then, he screamed. I backed away further into the shadows. He stood there for a moment staring out across the lake. If he walked to the stern of the ship, I was as good as dead. I was unarmed and unclothed save for my underwear.