Thomas Perry - Vanishing Act

When she thought about it that way, she even knew what Harry had seen. He had recognized the men that Martin had hired to kill Cappadocia. He had recognized them when nobody else had. They were strangers, outsiders. But Harry had seen them before. He had probably met them where Martin had met them—in prison. Martin was still inside, where nobody would suspect him. Nobody suspected him even now, after he had killed Harry.

When her eyes focused again she was looking at the bureau, where her purse lay open in front of the mirror. The money. Even that had been misinterpreted. He got out of prison and wandered around collecting money from banks, so everyone suspected some clients had deposited money in his name. Maybe that was where it had come from to begin with, but he had had it for eight years, long before he met Harry. In fact, there was probably less of it now, because he had paid his subcontractors to kill Cappadocia for him. Then, without warning, the rest of it came to her: Martin had put up the money, but he couldn’t have given it to them himself, because he was in jail.

Martin would have cooked up some convincing reason why good old Harry should go to some safe-deposit box or bank account or dig up a hole to get the money and give it to the two men. It would be compelling, and Harry would believe it, just as she would have. Then Harry saw the men one last time, kneeling over Cappadocia’s body to search the bloody clothes for poker money.

Now Jane knew the reason why Martin could kill Harry and not be afraid of the people who had paid him to do it: There were no such people. All anybody had paid him for was the death of Jerry Cappadocia. He had done it by farming out the contract. And the ones he had hired could never talk, because they had actually pulled the triggers and nothing they could say would ever keep them alive. He had nothing to fear from anyone except Harry.

So he had fooled the person who could lead him to Harry, made her take him on the same trip that Harry had taken. Maybe he had even let those four men see him in St. Louis, brought them along behind him as evidence to convince her that he was a victim. He had known they wouldn’t try to kill him until he had led them to Harry. She didn’t let herself turn away from any of the anguish of it now. She had insisted that his new name be John because she had known it would make him feel less strange and disoriented, and that would keep him from making mistakes. But he had been watching everything she did, and that had been the last bit of information he had needed from her. It told him that no matter what last name Harry had on Lew Feng’s list, he would still be called Harry. Even if all he could get from Lew Feng under torture was the list, he could still find Harry Kemple. He had cut Harry’s throat quietly, without a struggle, and let him bleed to death on that dirty shag carpet in the apartment in Santa Barbara.

Jane started to pace again. Another big plane took off on the nearest runway and she could feel a faint vibration under her feet, but she didn’t let it distract her. As she concentrated on the facts she had accumulated, she knew that they were beginning to assume their proper order at last. She tried to reconstruct the story in a logical sequence this time, to be sure she had the truth. The truth mattered. It had started with Harry. No, it had started nearly ten years ago, when she had met Alfred Strongbear on the reservation in Wyoming. That was the real beginning, because it happened first and it was what made everything else possible, even probable. Once she had saved someone like Alfred Strongbear, it was inevitable that she would meet someone like Harry. Alfred might not have had a heart attack on a cruise ship, but something someday would make him give a man like Harry her name and address.

Harry had remembered it the way he remembered the names of underrated racehorses that might one day make him some money. He had gotten caught at something a couple of years later. One of the two gravediggers had said it was fraud, but that didn’t really tell her anything, because most of the things Harry did could have been called fraud. In any case, he hadn’t run to her to avoid the arrest, so it must have come quickly and without warning. Then she realized that this might not be the reason why Harry hadn’t tried to hide. Harry was an optimist. Right up until the guards put his watch and wallet into the envelope and marched him off to get fitted for a uniform, he had been perfectly capable of believing he would get off somehow.

He was put into a maximum-security prison, not because he was dangerous, but because his accretion of minor arrests must have made him look worse than he was. His cellmate was a man named James Michael Martin. Harry was very lucky to draw a man like Martin as a cellmate in a violent place like that. The soft little gambler might as well have had VICTIM stenciled on the back of his shirt above the number, but Martin was a killer. Martin saved Harry’s life. He probably saved it daily, just by being there and letting other prisoners judge that he would rather have Harry to talk to than see his body hauled off in a bag. So Harry, who had no other way to thank Martin, had told him the story of the old man on the cruise ship and the name and address of Jane Whitefield, the woman who made people disappear. Coming from one career criminal to another, it probably had made a nice gift. She caught a glimpse of herself as she passed the mirror on the bureau, and the expression of intense anger startled her. She walked back to the bed and lay on her back to stare up at the ceiling.

After two years, Harry had gotten out of prison about as reformed as most prisoners. He had started his floating high-stakes poker game, sure that in another few years he would be a one-man portable Las Vegas. Harry had been so elated that he had gone to visit his old friend in Marion to tell him all about it. When Harry had run into trouble, with Jerry Cappadocia showing signs of moving in on the game, he had told Martin that, too.

She sensed that she was missing something important. Her muscles tensed and she sat up. What she was forgetting was Martin’s relationship with Jerry Cappadocia. Martin had been with Jerry C. the night of his arrest. They were acquaintances. He would have known that Cappadocia would be interested in Harry’s card game, so he made sure that he heard about it. She went over it again. Could even Martin have been capable of that much premeditation? Was he that good? As she questioned it, she felt a chill. Yes, he was. She had seen his work. He nurtured relationships with people and remained detached. He watched and waited and listened to them for as long as necessary, until he heard something that he could use.

Martin made sure that Jerry C. heard about the game, and then got himself into it. Now Martin had to find the proper instruments for killing him. He selected two prisoners he and Harry knew in Marion. Maybe they weren’t killers yet, but in Marion it wasn’t hard to find two men with faces that hadn’t been seen in Chicago and who were willing to learn to pull a trigger. They were about to get out. Maybe they already were out and he had recruited them earlier and told them to wait until he could arrange the right opportunity. It was impossible for her to know which it was, and she was concentrating on coaxing out tidbits she could be sure about. She was sure Martin would need to pay the two killers in advance.

Martin still had five years to go on his sentence. He couldn’t ask his two men to kill an important gangster and then wait five years until payday. He could easily have time added to his sentence, or even die before they saw a dime. They had recently gotten out of prison themselves, so they had no money. They would need some to disappear as soon as they had killed Jerry Cappadocia, and that could only mean that they would have to be paid in advance. Martin was in prison, so he needed a bag man on the outside.