Andy drove Lowell to The Starlight Detective Agency’s office. With everyone temporarily centered at the townhouse it was eerily silent. As David entered the front door, he froze. Someone had been there, too.
He entered his private office and turned on the overhead light. His swivel chair, which he always left facing the desk, was turned a fraction to the right. A folder on top of one of his many stacks was slightly askew.
He walked to the far wall and took a Monet print down, a small hole in the center of a flower. He took a small penknife and edged it in behind the wood paneling. The piece of plywood came off easily to reveal a small chamber. Inside was the security camera for the office.
He removed the camera, flipped open the little screen and watched as the blond man rummaged through the office, opening drawers, searching the file cabinets. When he had finished his search, he attempted to put things back the way they had been and then left. The expression on his face showed that whatever he was looking for he obviously didn’t find. Maybe it was the hard drive.
Lowell knew what he had to do. There was no other way. Their very lives depended on his actions. If he didn’t deal with this now, he and his loved ones would never feel safe. But he had to time it exactly right. He began every day reviewing his chart, and he knew that Mars would be on his ascendant late that afternoon and he would need the extra jolt of energy the God of war would give him.
He sat at his desk and pulled out the large bottom drawer. He took a pair of latex gloves and put them on. Next he pulled out a shoulder bag and started filling it with a few odds and ends: a thick number-two pencil, two pool balls, and a tiny digital camera with a wide-angle lens. He picked up a container of baby powder, which he emptied into a zip-lock sandwich bag and then sealed it shut. He took out the revolver he had procured several days before from his incompetent mugger. He cocked the gun, loading one bullet into the chamber, and then replaced the gun clip with one from the drawer. He dropped the gun into the bag, removed the gloves, and headed for the door, hooking an umbrella over his arm.
Lowell exited the building, turned left and started walking west on Twenty-fourth Street. What he needed to do couldn’t be done in a limo; it required that he be followed. He sent Andy home and began to walk. He crossed Park Avenue, then Madison and Fifth. The people hustled by, all caught up in their own dramas. The lunch rush was over, and the streets, though active, weren’t crowded. It would be easy for the blond man to follow him.
At Seventh Avenue he turned left, walked south three blocks and then turned right onto Twenty-first. Lowell had entered an area of Manhattan that once held countless warehouses. It was still a bit of a commercial zone, though nowhere near what it had once been. This neighborhood also used to be one of the music centers of New York, but the overinflated real estate market of the past decade and subsequent rising rents had put many of the rehearsal and recording studios out of business. There were still a few remaining, as evidenced by a pair of guys walking by carrying guitar casese. But this part of the city was now more of a center for the fashion industry, with a lot of photography studios. Models now far outnumbered guitarists.
He made an act of turning around to see if he was being followed, but he knew, hoped, that he was. The mouse was leading the cat.
***
Lowell pushed open an unlocked, papered-over glass door of what was once a thriving bakery. He had come here often in his early years for a cheap espresso and warm croissant. Earlier in the year he had bought the building in hopes of bringing the store back someday, restoring it exactly as he remembered it, down to the rutted plank floors. Lowell felt passionately that these places full of unique tastes and smells had to be as much a part of the new New York as the sterile new cupcake and frozen yogurt outlets. He only awaited a good contractor who would get the job done in his lifetime, though his hair would only get grayer waiting for that miracle to happen.
But he couldn’t dwell on that now.
He walked to the back of store, the old counter on his right, opened a half-rotten wooden door, and went down a flight of equally rotten wood stairs.
The blond man approached the outside door, opened it slowly and listened intently. He could hear Lowell walking down the stairs. He walked slowly down the hallway and saw the glow of a light come from the cellar.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, the blond man saw Lowell casually leaning against a table.
“You have violated my home, threatened my family and friends, and almost blown up my house,” said Lowell. “I’d like to know why.”
The man looked around him to judge his situation. There were mostly empty shelves along the wall, random items here and there: an old umbrella, some board games, a few books. A large metal mixing machine covered with cobwebs stood alongside the stairs. No other doors. He towered over Lowell by half a foot and licked his lips like a stray dog before a wounded woodchuck.
“It was a job,” he finally answered.
“A job? Who hired you?”
“That’s none of your business. But it’s a job I plan to complete.”
The big man moved in and reached toward Lowell, grabbing his coat. Lowell moved one step to his left and took one of the man’s enormous hand in his, twisting in an awkward way as his other hand pushed against the big man’s elbow. The man went down.
The big man didn’t stay down for long. He stood, flexing his arm and grimacing. He moved toward Lowell and put his hands around his throat. Lowell quickly moved back one step and turned the man’s hands inward as he swept his foot under the other man’s, causing him to stumble.
“What is that? Judo or some sort of crap? You think that nonsense is going to stop me?”
He leaped toward Lowell, grabbing him by the torso, lifting him off the ground and slamming his back against the wall. Lowell groaned, but he reached over to the shelf, grabbed the two pool balls, and smashed them against the man’s ears. He let go of Lowell, raising his hands to his head.
Lowell put his left foot against the man and pushed. The man fell against the shelf, tearing it from the wall and opening a gash on his face. He wiped the blood away from his eye and grunted like a wild animal.
He rushed forward, but Lowell had taken a baggie from his pocket and now he threw the baby powder into the man’s face. He gagged and was temporarily blinded. Lowell took the brass pipe and with all his might struck the man’s shoulder. He howled in pain.
Still the man did not go down.
He wiped the powder from his eyes, reached up with his right hand and grabbed Lowell by the throat again. He squeezed tight. With a gasp, Lowell reached into his coat pocket and took out the revolver. He aimed as carefully as he could and pulled the trigger. The bullet went through the man’s left shoulder. The assassin finally released Lowell from his grip.
Lowell stepped back two paces and began to catch his breath. But still the assassin came, an arm hanging uselessly at his side. Lowell raised the gun, but the man grabbed it before he could shoot. He pointed it at Lowell’s midsection and fired. Lowell put his hands to his stomach and dropped to his knees in agony.
The hitman stood with the gun still pointed at Lowell.
“Little man, it takes a long time to die from a gunshot to the stomach. I’m going to rip you to pieces a little bit at a time. I’m going to reach inside you and tear your organs out one by one until you beg me to kill you.” He wiped the dripping blood from his face. “When I’m done with you I’m going to your townhouse and visit your daughter and that other little girl. I’m going to rip them apart. And then I’m going to enjoy watching the life pour out of them as they struggle for their last breath.”
Lowell struggled to speak. “You killed the judge… didn’t you?”
“Sure I did. And that little prick Rosen. And now I’m going to kill you.”
“How did you… set up… the girl?”
“Rosen kept an eye out for the perfect patsy. When she showed up in court he knew he had what we needed. So I stole some explosives from her army unit and set it all up. It was easy, until you showed up.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you kill them?”
“It was a job. This is what I do.”
Lowell, on his knees, slumped against a wooden crate and let out a deep groan. “Who…who hired you?”
“I don’t know. I never know. They pay me and give me my assignment. What the hell do you care, anyway? You’ll be dead soon.”
The man turned toward the sound of an ambulance siren outside. When he turned back, the point of an umbrella was headed toward his groin.
The man doubled over, but managed to raise the gun again. “You bastard.”
He fired. Lowell didn’t flinch. He fired again. Nothing happened. And then Lowell clocked him over the head with the heavy wooden handle of the umbrella, an old piece perfectly decorated with a thick piece of silver at the bend.
The man went down in a heap.
Lowell had the confession he needed on the videocam that he had placed on the shelf when he first arrived. He grabbed the tiny camera, stuffed it into his pocket, and headed for the stairs.
Halfway up, he heard a grunt and felt a hand grab his ankle. The ancient stairs moaned their displeasure at the weight of two men. Lowell grabbed a small metal handrail near the top of the steps and pulled his foot free, but the man was already moving up the stairs.
He had the gun turned around in his hand, ready to crash it down on whatever part of Lowell’s body he could reach first when his foot broke through one of the wood steps.
He fell awkwardly sidewise, and his hip hit the stair’s runners, torqueing his body up and over, sending him headfirst into the high metal arm of the bakery’s old mixing machine and then to the basement floor.
The man’s head lay at an unnatural angle, his body drooping against the shelves.
Lowell slumped onto the floor of the bakery and leaned against the end of the counter. The skin of his neck throbbed and his back would hurt for weeks, but nothing was broken. He was sure more places would ache as the shock wore off.
What hurt the most right now was the sting of where the blank had hit his abdomen. Lowell knew, today, that he had overestimated his physical talents, but he still had a few good tricks, including those latent acting skills.
Lowell had gambled on that, and won, if the death of an adversary, no matter how loathsome, could be called winning. After all, the man dead downstairs was just one of the real killers of Judge Winston and Larry Rosen, and the only consolation today came from clearing Johnny’s name. His work was far from over.
Lowell stood up, brushed off his clothes, and tried to retie his pony tail. He gave up, stretched his back, and took out his cell phone. Ten minutes later Andy arrived, followed closely behind by two squad cars.