[2010] The Violet Hour Read online

  “I don’t feel so hot all of a sudden,” he muttered. He took another step, staggering now, bumped the coffee table with his shin, wavered a moment, then slumped down to one knee. She immediately thought of his downstairs neighbors—the street-level apartment, she had noted as they entered his place, had been dark, but it was late, its occupants could have been asleep. If that were the case, would they still be now?

  He started to get to his feet again, and knowing he would certainly fall once more and make even more noise, she quickly moved to his side and grabbed hold of his arm. It took all of her considerable strength to keep him up.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered.

  Steering him back to the couch, she eased him down onto the cushions. The knife was in her overcoat pocket. A Spyderco Scorpius, three inches of Japanese steel, the single-edged blade serrated, each tiny ridge and valley razor sharp. She reached for the weapon, but before she could remove it, something happened that hadn’t ever happened before. Her victim was looking up at her—his eyes fluttering, his breathing growing labored—with nothing shy of a clear understanding of what was going on.

  He grasped her wrist with his right hand. Despite his condition, there was power in his grip.

  “What did you do?” he demanded.

  She didn’t answer, just looked at him.

  “What did you do?”

  “Just relax,” she told him. “It’ll be better if you just let it happen.”

  “He sent you.”

  “You should just relax.”

  “He sent you, right?”

  She pulled her hand from his grip—it was easier than she had expected it would be; his strength, too, was fading as the drug tranquilized him. Free of him, she took a step back—just in case, this one was full of surprises—and reached again into the pocket of her overcoat. In its deep bottom was the knife. She grabbed it, took hold of it, but didn’t yet remove it.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “He doesn’t want me dead.” It was a struggle for him to speak. “It won’t go well for him if I’m dead.”

  He tried again to stand but made it only as far as moving to the end of the cushion, then slipped off the couch entirely and slumped to the floor. Enough noise already, she thought. Removing the knife from her coat pocket, she held it behind her back, out of his sight. He was attempting yet again to stand, but it wouldn’t come to anything, she knew, not now. The drug was doing its work, was well into his blood at this point.

  “You should call him right now... tell him that he doesn’t want this.” He removed his cell phone from his leather jacket and offered it to her.

  She refused to take it. Shaking her head, she said only, “Quiet now.” Any second he would succumb, and she’d walk to him, ease him down to the floor and roll him onto his stomach, then pull his head back, exposing his throat. One long slashing motion—from the left to the right, the serrated blade cutting through arteries and tendons and muscle, slicing down to the bone—and it would be done.

  Like those before him.

  She waited for that complete surrender. A dangerous man, she had been warned, so take care. Now wasn’t the time to forget that. Instead of surrendering, he struggled once more to stand, made it to his knees, then to one foot, then the other. Rising but not yet upright, he was nonetheless close enough to it. He dropped the cell phone, had both hands firmly on the arm of the couch now, wouldn’t have been able to come this far without it there to support him. He was looking straight at her, his eyes no longer sluggish but wild, grimly determined.

  He was the first to move, lunging for her clumsily, lumbering like a drunk. Still, he was much faster than she had expected would have been possible. He had grabbed his empty glass, the tumbler with the heavy bottom, was cocking his arm back, ready to bring the solid, inch-thick base down upon her skull, had the presence of mind for that much at least. She opened the knife with one hand, felt the solid jolt of the blade clicking into place, gripped the perfectly shaped handle tight. She had already begun to move the instant he had—to intercept his charge, her movements nothing less than swift and precise.

  Muscles coiled but relaxed, center of gravity low, feet directly beneath her, where they belonged, her stance never wider than her shoulders. Years to make her like this, so little chance of her forgetting any of it.

  All she needed was one good swing of the razor-sharp blade, strike at him with one good killing sting.

  Once that was done, there’d be no one left to come between her and the life she’d been promised.

  Back at the hotel, in her room, she removed the bloodstained overcoat, placed it into a plastic garbage bag, did the same with the wig, the torn black dress, the high-heel shoes, padded bra, and panties—everything, even the contact lenses, had to go. She had shut off the heater before leaving, and the cold air against her bare skin was unpleasant. It was, she knew, nothing compared to what awaited her.

  In the bathroom, she paused to look at her face in the mirror, saw the bruise beneath her left eye and the long scratch along her cheek. Deep, it oozed blood. With a trembling hand she started the shower. She knew not to expect anything close to warm water; still, she wasn’t prepared for the utter cold that hit her as she stepped under the drizzling stream.

  She washed away the blood, her own and his, and whatever traces the dress she had worn might have been left upon her waxed skin, was shuddering by the time she was done, barely able to breathe. Drying herself off in all-out convulsions, her core temperature dangerously low, she quickly redressed—jeans and a heavy knit turtleneck sweater, socks and leather boots—then grabbed the garbage bag and flashlight and left the room, hurrying down the long hallway and rotting stairs to the lobby, through that to the kitchen and out again into the windy night.

  Her still-wet hair froze instantly, but there was nothing she could do about that. In the trunk of the sedan the only thing that passed for a digging tool was the tire iron. Through the bordering trees, at the edge of a field, where the dirt was softer, she scraped out a hole deep enough to take the garbage bag, then covered it over. The effort had begun to warm her up, but only barely—she knew she had a long way to go yet before the cold within her would be gone.

  Back in the room, she stood by the electric heater, removed a first aid kit from her mechanic’s bag, and tended to her wound. She worked without a mirror, didn’t want to see her reflection again. When she was done, her hands still shaking, she removed the cell phone she had taken before leaving Militich’s apartment, flipped open its lid, and saw by the digits at the bottom of the screen that it was after one o’clock.

  She didn’t care about that, though, and began right away to scroll through the list of recent calls. She had managed to cut her mark before he got away, a deep enough cut, she knew, even in all the confusion, that it would be necessary for him to get somewhere and have it taken care of as soon as possible. Where else would a wounded and drugged man—a man who was on the run to begin with, living in hiding—go except to a lover, if he had one, or, if he didn’t, a friend? Hospitals were of course out of the question. So were the police. He had left on foot, but close to an hour had passed, so if he hadn’t bled out first, he must have gotten somewhere by now.

  He was out there, then, possibly dead or dying, or maybe being put back together. Whatever the case, she needed to find him, had to know.

  It didn’t take long for her to determine the number he called most often because there was only one number in any of the phone’s contact lists. Odd, perhaps, but this made her job easier. She knew his names—his real name and the name he went by now—but she would ask for his fake name; there was no reason for her to think anyone here would know him as Militich.

  From her mechanic’s bag, Evangeline Amendora removed a prepaid cell phone and turned it on. As she waited for it to power up, she took out the snub-nosed Smith and Wesson .357, studied it for a moment, felt its weight, the solidness of its walnut grip—so assuring, so p
owerful—then returned it to the bag. She preferred a revolver to a semiautomatic. Revolvers didn’t eject bullet casings; semiautomatics did. The marks left by a gun’s hammer on the shell’s primer were nowadays as good as a fingerprint.

  Leave no trace.

  When the phone was powered up, she punched in the number. Pressing the button marked TALK, she brought the phone to her face.

  Her ear ached from the cold—it felt as if someone had smashed it with something hard—but she ignored that. She wondered how Janssen would react to the bad news, which of his many sides this would bring out. She had never failed him before, was, at this moment, in unknown territory. Without him, what would become of her?

  She needed to ignore this, too. It was chatter, born of fear, spoken in the voice of that little girl lost to terror.

  Trying to focus, she counted the rings as she waited for her call to be answered.

  One, two, three, four...

  Two

  On a back road a mile or so north of Bridgehampton Village, in the moments just prior to the fall of full night, Caleb Rakowski, a mechanic, stepped out of the auto repair shop in which he worked and, walking to the edge of the gravel driveway, looked west for a glimpse of what might remain of the sunset. It was a ritual of his, making a point of quietly observing the day’s end like this, but he was, at the age of twenty-two, nothing if not obedient to the careful schedule that carried him each day from waking to sleep.

  He saw tonight only the slightest inference of color along the length of the western horizon, a fading slash of violent red, nothing more, really, than a stain in all that gathering darkness. Maintaining his silent vigil despite a chill wind that at times buffeted him like a crowd, he watched till the last remnant of daylight was gone—a transition that didn’t take that long—and then turned his attention to Scuttlehole Road below, looking for any indication that Lebell was in fact on his way back.

  He hadn’t kept an eye on the time, was too busy concentrating on the engine he was in the final stages of rebuilding—a ’62 Mercedes-Benz 300SL, nothing short of a work of art. But he was certain that Lebell had been gone an hour at least, maybe more. Having finished the fender replacement on the ’58 Citroën in the next work bay around six, Lebell had offered to make Cal’s end-of-the-week supply run—there were only two quarts of oil on the back shelf, he had pointed out, and Cal would need five. He should have been gone for a half hour at the most—ten minutes to get to the store just east of Bridgehampton Village, ten minutes to grab the needed items, and ten minutes to get back—but Lebell wasn’t exactly known for always doing what he should.

  No sign of the guy didn’t necessarily mean anything, then; he could have run into someone he knew or decided to take the long way, or both. Cal was just a little too aware, though, of how quickly things can happen—terrible things, life-altering things. More importantly, he was aware that word of such things often took time to reach those who were most affected. If anything bad had happened to Lebell—swerved off the road, or been part of a head-on collision, anything—there was the chance that Cal would be left to wait for the news to make its way to him. How many hours—or, like before, days—of looking and listening like this, of not knowing, would he be required to endure this time around?

  Foolish thoughts, he knew that. Lebell had simply taken the long way back—any excuse to put his Mustang through its paces, and no better place to do that than the winding back roads of Bridgehampton no-man’s-land. Even the most remote of possibilities was a possibility, and though it had been four years since his life had last been changed by an untimely death, Cal didn’t completely trust that it wouldn’t happen again.

  Taking one last glance down that dark road, Cal turned and faced the garage. It was a clapboard structure, a decade or two shy of a century old—three work bays and an adjoining office with an apartment above. The dark panes of the upper-floor windows told him that Heather was still asleep. She usually lay down for a nap in the late afternoon, but he couldn’t remember her, in the two months since she had arrived, ever sleeping this far into the evening. Still, he wasn’t surprised; she lived these days, as she put it, like a housecat, rarely leaving his apartment, at times doing little more than staring out windows for hours on end, waiting with a patience that bordered on detachment as each day of hiding passed.

  He paused one last time, took in a deep breath of the clear, bracing night air, and looked once more at the place in the sky where the sun had moments ago been. It wasn’t the completion of this ritual, however, that sent him finally back to the shelter of the old garage. It was, instead, a sudden gust of wind, colder than any so far and almost hostile in the way it rushed at him. Slender—lanky, even—Cal, caught off guard by this burst, had to shift to keep his balance. An unpleasant feeling, being shoved like this, even if only by an autumn wind.

  Crossing the narrow gravel driveway, he stepped back into the first bay—the pale blue glow of fluorescent light spilling from its row of small windows was the only illumination visible for miles—and resumed the work that awaited him there.

  Moments later he heard the sound of a car approaching, knew by the pitch of its engine, though, that it wasn’t Lebell’s Mustang.

  Wiping his hands with a cloth rag he always kept in the back pocket of his coveralls, he stepped to the bay door and looked out just in time to see a Corvette rolling past. An unfamiliar car, but that in itself wasn’t uncommon; on occasion passersby, mainly summer tourists, mistook the dilapidated garage for an actual filling station, especially after dark.

  Of course, it wasn’t exactly summer anymore, was it?

  Cal moved into the unlit office and looked through its large storefront window, expecting the driver of the Corvette to realize his or her mistake and drive off. Instead, the vehicle stopped. Cal could see the thing clearly now—not just any ’Vette, it was a Stingray, from the early ’70s, in mint condition, its competition orange paint job visible even in the limited light. Maybe a customer’s dropping it off, he thought—the shop did specialize in classic and collectible vehicles—but almost all of what he worked on was foreign made, European for the most part, the toys of the wealthy and status-minded. Anyway, drop-offs as such were scheduled, and there was nothing due in, that Cal knew of, at least till after the weekend.

  He glanced at the panel beside the office door, making sure that the alarm system was activated, which of course it was. A ritual of his, setting it every time he entered and exited. The garage, though old and falling apart in many ways, was up to date in at least one: its alarm system was state-of-the-art, needed to be to ensure the safety of the vehicles, some priceless, that were stored here at any given time. Cal knew that no one hoping to get his hands on any or all of the three vehicles currently in the work bays would arrive to do so in a Corvette Stingray—painted orange, no less. Still, anything out of the ordinary was of concern to him, and the presence of a strange car at seven o’clock on a Friday night was out of the ordinary.

  He looked through the large window again, thought then of his other concern, his real concern, the possibility that this ’Vette was in some way connected to Heather’s husband and that behind its wheel was either the man himself or someone who worked for him. Her husband had made it clear, according to Heather, that he would never stop looking for her, and as careful as she was—rarely going out, her BMW permanently parked between the rear of the garage and a crowded line of covering trees, out of sight—there was no guarantee that she hadn’t left some kind of trail, something that a man with more than enough money to hire the best would eventually discover and follow. Again, though, would such a man—Heather’s husband or someone he might hire—arrive in a vehicle as notable as a Stingray?

  Stranger things have happened, Cal thought.

  He watched as the ’Vette’s headlights went out. The left-hand door opened, and the driver swung his feet out, one at a time, placing them on the gravel. Cal needed only a glimpse of the white snakeskin cowboy boots to recognize the owner.<
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  He entered the six-digit code into the keypad, disarming the security system, then switched on the office lights. The single long fluorescent bulb hanging above flickered and then came on. Opening the door, Cal stepped back out into the chilly night and watched his boss, Eric Carver, approach.

  A tall man, athletically built, Carver was dressed, as always, in expensive clothes—European jeans, designer-label black sweater, Belstaff leather jacket. He owned not just the business but the building as well, made his money, though, in construction; the shop was simply a means for him to network with the kind of men who had the money to spend on such costly toys and, by extension, the means to finance an addition on an existing home or, better yet, build a brand-new one. Teardowns were his specialty: purchasing modest homes for the lots on which they stood, then promptly demolishing them and constructing would-be mansions—McMansions, the newspapers called them—in their place. Only in his midthirties, Carver already owned a home in Southampton, was on his second wife, and, perhaps most important to the man, had a collection of close to a dozen cars, some new, some classics, all of them, though, clear indications of, if not his status, then at least his desire for it.

  Carver spotted Cal in the doorway and instantly smiled that smile of his—a boyish, knowing grin that was a combination of both pride and sheepishness, meant to communicate that he had not only done something he shouldn’t have done but was finding joy in having done so. Cal had seen that smile many times before, knew by it that Carver more than likely had just recently—possibly even moments ago—bought the ’Vette.

  “So what do you think?”

  Cal nodded. “What’s not to like? When did you get it?”

  “I just picked it up.” Carver, several steps from the door, stopped to look back and admire his new pride and joy, to see it, Cal knew, from this particular angle and linger for just a moment more with the feeling the mere sight of it stirred in him. “I probably shouldn’t have, but I just couldn’t resist.”