William Lashner - Marked Man

“Welcome home, Charlie Kalakos,” said McDeiss in a booming voice. “We’ve been looking for you for quite a while.”

“I been away,” said Charlie.

“We’re going to have ourselves a chat,” said McDeiss.

“In due time, Detective,” I said. “In due time. But first we have some serious matters to take care of.”

I turned to take a peek at the workbench and then did a double take. Slowly, I walked toward it. The first of the wooden boards that made up the tabletop had been pried off the pipe frame. The front pipes on either side had been yanked forward. I looked inside each. Both were empty.

“How long have you guys been here?” I said.

“About ten minutes,” said Slocum.

“Was the basement door locked or unlocked?”

“Unlocked.”

“Crap,” I said. “Now we know why he was in such a hurry to get to Toledo.”

“Who are we talking about, Carl?” said McDeiss.

“I’m talking about a little guy who goes by the name of Lavender Hill. I didn’t know we were in a race, but he did. He was the one who took care of our friend from Allentown, Detective, and after he did that, and after listening in on his microphone to everything Charlie had to say, he rushed up here to seize the painting. The Rembrandt has been stolen once again.”

“We’ll find him,” said McDeiss.

“I doubt it,” I said. “But the painting all along has been just a sideshow. Hasn’t it, Jenna?”

“All along,” she said.

“Time to take care of the main event? Are all the terms of our agreement still in place?”

“They are,” said Slocum.

“Okay, then. Joey Pride, do you remember where the pit was?”

Joey looked at me and nodded.

“Go ahead,” I said.

He looked around the basement and stepped toward the rear. He cleared some boxes and pointed at a cracked portion of the uneven cement floor. “There,” he said.

McDeiss lifted the pickax and held it toward the CSI guys in the corner. One of them stood and started toward McDeiss when Charlie spoke up.

“Can I do it?” he said. “It’s been haunting me for half my life, that hole in the ground. Can I open it up?”

“Like lancing a boil?” I said.

“Something like that.”

I looked at McDeiss. He thought about it some, looked at the CSIs, who shrugged. McDeiss turned to offer the pickax to Charlie.

“I’ll help, too,” said Joey Pride, pushing away some cartons that were piled around the spot he had pointed to.

Then we all stood back as Charlie Kalakos hoisted the pickax in the air and let its sharpened point drop into the floor. The cement was thin, brittle, it cracked easily under the weight of the heavy metal tool. Charlie pulled it loose and hoisted it again. When he started breathing heavily, Joey took hold of the pickax. One of the CSIs stooped down to lift up the loose chunks of concrete. Then Joey raised the pickax high in the air and let it fall.

Slowly they worked, Charlie Kalakos and Joey Pride, clearing the cement that covered the crimes of their past, blow by blow, bit by bit, as Slocum and McDeiss, Jenna Hathaway and Monica Adair, as all of us looked on, some with stoic faces, some with tears, looked on knowing exactly what we’d find and dreading it all the while.

“I’ve brought him hometo you, Mrs. Kalakos,” I said.

“You good boy, Victor,” she said to me. “I knew you do just as I say.”

“I appreciate your confidence,” I said.

The room was dark, the air thick with incense, I was back in the chair, by the bed, where Mrs. Kalakos, as usual, lay stiff and still. And yet there was something very different about her appearance. Where normally her hair was wild and unkempt, this night it was combed and teased and set in place with bobby pins, the twirls at her temples taped to her flesh. Her cheeks held red circles, her lips were brightly painted, with two peaks in the middle of the upper one, and there was lace in her bodice. Miss Havisham waiting for her groom. Yikes.

“So where he is? Where my boy?” she said.

“He’s just outside the room, but I wanted to talk to you about him first.”

“Don’t make me wait, Victor. I’m old woman, without much breath left. Bring him to me. Now.”

“Charlie is very anxious to see you, Mrs. Kalakos. Both excited and scared.”

“What he need to be scared about from such pitiful bag of bones?”

“Because you’re his mother,” I said. “That’s enough terror for anyone. And then, also, because he knows you so well.”

“You try to flatter old woman, Victor?”

“That’s not my intent, ma’am. I just wanted to tell you that your son has been through a lot in the last couple of weeks, especially today. There was another attempt on his life just a few hours ago. And, even more significant, he was forced to dig up something very dark from his past. Something that happened as a result of the robbery thirty years ago.”

“What you trying to tell me, Victor?”

“There was a girl killed.”

“A girl?”

“The Adair child, the one that went missing.”

“I remember.”

“She was murdered by Teddy because she saw them with their stuff from the robbery. Charlie didn’t do the killing, but he knew about it. It was why things turned rotten for your son, why he ended up with the Warrick brothers and ended up on the run. And it is why he’s going to be spending some time in jail now. He knows you’ll find out about it, and he wanted me to tell you first.”

“And for this my Charlie spoiled his life?”

“That’s right, ma’am.”

“He’s even bigger fool than I thought.”

“What I’m asking, Mrs. Kalakos, is that you be especially gentle with your son.”

“What you think I am, Victor, monster?”

“No, ma’am, just a mother.”

“Okay, you told me. Now, Victor. No more delay. Let me see my boy.”

I stood up from the chair, went to the door, opened it, and nodded to the little group standing outside.

Thalassa, gray and tense and stooped, came in first. “Mama,” she said. Mrs. Kalakos lay unmoving on the bed, her eyes now closed as if she had been unconscious for days instead of talking to me just an instant before. “Mama, can you awaken? Mama? Are you still with us?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Kalakos with a voice weak yet rich with the drama of the grave. “I am still here. What have you for me, my child?”

“It is Charles,” said Thalassa, speaking her words as if speaking to the mezzanine far in the distance. “My brother, your son, Charles. He has come home to say good-bye.”

“Charlie? Here? My Charlie? My baby? Bring him, dear Thalassa, bring him to me.”

Thalassa stepped back, the door opened wider, and Charlie Kalakos, his hands cuffed in front of him and McDeiss close behind him, entered the room. He stepped hesitantly forward, knelt before his dying mother, clasped his cuffed hands together and laid them on the bed.

“Mama?” he said.

Without opening her eyes, she raised her hand toward Charlie. When it reached the top of his bald head, it dropped there and then moved down to feel his forehead, his eyes and nose, down and around his chin, and then up to his mouth.

“Is that my Charlie?” she said.

“Yes, Mama.”

“You’ve come back to me.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“To say good-bye as I requested.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Come closer, my child.”

“Yes, Mama,” said Charlie as he leaned forward so that his lips were almost touching his mother’s cheek.

Her left hand rose from his face, reared back, and slapped him. Hard. The sound was as loud as a shot in that room.

“What kind terrible fool you?” she said, her eyes now open and trained on her son. “How you run away so long? How you leave us scrape to save the house? How you let your friend kill that girl? You weak, you always weak. When will you stand up, Charlie, and be a man?”