Jack Higgins: Day of Reckoning

When they arrived at the Park Avenue townhouse, Fox was waiting eagerly. He took the disks and tapes Terry Mount offered and said to Russo, 'Look after him.' He turned to Falcone. 'You stay. It could be bad.'

'Then it's bad for both of us, Signore.' They had been friends since boyhood.

Fox started checking the disks, mostly work notes, letters, accounts, and quickly discarded them. Then he started on the tapes Mount had found in the tape recorder, and on the second struck pure gold.

At first, the sounds were of an innocuous conversation about family business and so on. The woman's voice was very pleasant and intimate, and the man's…

Falcone said, 'Jesus, Maria, Signore, that's you.'

There were restaurant sounds in the background, a little music. Fox said, 'She was recording us.'

Suddenly, the tape changed. Now, the woman was clearly making notes to herself.

'There can be little doubt that Jack Fox, in spite of the war hero and Wall Street image, is nothing less than the new face of the Solazzo family and the new Mafia. I'll lull him to sleep with the first article in Truth and then hit him hard with the rest. There might even be a special on the Truth Channel in this. I've just got to take it easy, and flatter him. His vanity should take care of the rest.'

Fox switched off the machine. 'The bitch.'

'So it would appear, Signore. What should we do?'

Fox got up, went to the sideboard, and poured a glass of Scotch. He turned. 'I think you know, old friend.' He went to the telephone and punched in a number. 'Katherine Johnson, please. Hello, Kate? Jack Fox. Would you be free for dinner tonight? I was thinking about that piece, and, what the hell, there's some more you might be interested in… You are? Terrific. Listen, don't bother going home. I'll send a car. You come on over to Park Avenue and pick me up. We've just bought this new restaurant in Brooklyn, and I'd like to check it out. Will you help?… Great! I'll send Falcone to pick you up.' He put the phone down, surprised at the genuine regret he felt.

In that evening of dreary rain, darkness already descending, she sat in the rear of the Lincoln, a small, pretty woman of forty, with dark hair and an intelligent face. Russo was at the wheel and Falcone beside him. They reached the Park Avenue house and Falcone called Fox on his mobile.

'Hey, Signore, we're here.' He turned. 'He'll be right down.'

She smiled and took out a Marlboro. Falcone gave her a light.

'Thank you.'

'Prego, Signora.'

He dosed the glass divide between them, and a moment later, Fox arrived, wearing a black overcoat. He scrambled in and kissed her on the cheek.

'Kate, you look good.'

The Lincoln took off.

'You look pretty good yourself.'

He smiled amiably. 'Well, here's to a good night.'

At that precise moment, Terry Mount was swallowing another whisky sour in a downtown bar, aware of the bulge that seventeen thousand dollars now made in his right hand breast pocket. He went out into the street, drew up his collar as rain dashed in his face, started along the pavement, and sensed someone move in behind him, and then a needlepoint going through his clothes.

'Just turn right into the alley.' He did as he was told, and d himself shoved against a wall. A hand searched. 'Hey, seventeen grand. You were right.'

'Who are you?'

'I'm a big black mother named Henry, and you wouldn't want to meet me in the showers on Rikers Island.'

Terry was terrified. 'I just did what I was told.'

'Which means you know too much. Regards from the Solazzos.'

The knife went up through the breast bone and found the heart, and Terry Mount slid down the wall.

It was early evening and March dark on Columbia Street, Brooklyn, as the Lincoln turned right and pulled on to a pier where a few coastal ships were tied up. Russo switched off the engine. Suddenly alarmed, Katherine Johnson said, 'What is this? Where are we, Jack?'

'This is the end of the line, Signora. You sure played me for a sucker.'

She managed a smile. 'Come on, Jack.'

'Come on, nothing. I've had your house searched. Found your little tape recordings of us. Not that I said anything, but you sure did. Just take it easy and flatter me, huh? You shouldn't have done that to me.'

'For God's sake, Jack, you've got to listen to me.' 'No, I'm done listening. And talking.'

A limousine pulled up behind. Fox got out and said to Falcone, 'Aldo, you make this good.'

'At your order, Signore.'

Fox got in the rear limousine and was driven away.

Katherine tried to open the door, but Russo was there, his great hand raised. Falcone cried, 'Leave it. I don't want bruising.' He found her neck and yanked her forward on her knees on the rear seat. Her skirt rose up.

'Go on, get on with it.'

He held her as she struggled. Russo took a box from his pocket, opened it, and produced a hypodermic. 'You'll like this, girlie. Best heroin on the market.' He jabbed her left thigh, then injected her again, this time in the right buttock. 'There you go.'

She cried out and slumped forward.

Russo patted her. 'Hey, she's not bad looking. Maybe I could do myself a little good here.'

He turned, reaching for his zipper, and Falcone gave him a shove. 'You stupid bastard, that'll blow the whole thing. Come on, give me a hand.'

Grumbling, Russo picked up her feet while Falcone took her arms, and they carried her to the edge of the pier. 'Easy now,' and she was in the water.

'Come on, let's go get a drink.' They walked back to the Lincoln, and a minute later they drove away.

Neither of them noticed Katherine Johnson's purse, where it had fallen out of the car, in the shadows beside a packing case.

The following morning at six o'clock, rain drove in across the East River, rattling the windows of the old precinct house.HarryParker, brought out of bed only an hour before, drank coffee from a machine and made a face as a woman detective sergeant named Helen Abruzzi came in.

'This is disgusting,' Parker told her. 'Reminds me of why I switched to tea. Okay, what have we got?'

'This kid is called Charlene Wilson. She was working a strip bar not far from here.'

And doing business on the side?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'What happened?'

A man called Paul Moody took her home. When we found her, she'd been raped orally, half-strangled, her wrists tied.'

Parker frowned. 'That sounds like those two murders in Battery Park.'

'That's what I thought, Captain, and that's why I phoned you to come here. Charlene got away because he got drunk and fell asleep and she managed to loosen her hands.'

Parker nodded. 'Okay, let me know when the line-up's ready.'

She went out and Parker went to the window, the rain driving against it, and found a Marlboro, having long since stopped pretending to have quit. He lit it and looked out at the river morosely, a huge black man who had started life in Harlem, earned a law degree at Columbia, and then decided to join the police rather than a law firm. He'd never minded seventy-hour weeks, although his wife had, and had divorced him for it.

For three years now, he'd been captain in charge of a special homicide unit based at One Police Plaza. Sometimes he got depressed dealing with one killing after another, in a never-ending series, and when you were close to fifty you began to wonder if there was something better to do. He wondered if Blake had really meant what he'd said that there might be room for him in that special intelligence unit of his in Washington…

The door opened and Helen Abruzzi called. 'Show time, Captain.'

The girl in the viewing room was in a bad way, a blanket around her shoulders, her face swollen, one eye black, bruise marks on her neck. Helen stood behind her, a hand on her shoulder, while Parker read the file. He finished, nodded, and she pressed a buzzer. A light flared and five men appeared on the other side. The girl cried out.