Killer Smile (29 page)

“HELP!” Mary screamed at the top of her lungs. She fought panic long enough to raise the cell phone and start talking.

Access Hollywood
played on a TV mounted in the corner, and fluorescent lights glared harshly overhead, behind pebbled panels recessed in a white tile ceiling. Outdated copies of
Cosmo, Time,
and
Car & Driver
lay in a glossy fan on a low wooden table, and in the corner stood a Formica cabinet holding a Bunn coffeemaker. An orange-handled pot of coffee burned in its hot plate, filling the room with the odor of stale decaf. The small waiting room, reserved for families of patients in the intensive care OR, had been painted an allegedly calming blue and adorned with gauzy landscapes in forgettable hues. Its blue padded chairs sat empty except for Mary, who was in a sort of shock.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Drying blood stained Mary’s white silk shirt and navy suit, stiffening its light wool in patches. She had managed to wash most of it from her hands, but fine dark lines etched the network of wrinkles on her palm. She should wash again, but Keisha had been taken to the OR half an hour ago, and Mary didn’t want to be in the bathroom when everybody got here, especially Bill.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

The words struck home. Mary prayed it wasn’t the hour of Keisha’s death. It couldn’t be. Not because of Saracone or Amadeo or even Frank, or anything logical or tangible. Just because it
could not be
. There had been too much death and it had to be over. Keisha had to live. Mary willed it to be so, the only way she knew how. She started the rosary over again.

Bill arrived a half an hour later and sat slumped in the chair as Mary recounted a sanitized version of how she had found Keisha. He sank deeper and deeper into his clothes, flipping up the collar of his jean jacket as if to ward off a winter wind. Judy, her face a mask of well-scrubbed worry, arrived right after, and she couldn’t take her stricken gaze from the blood drying on Mary’s suit. “You okay, girl?” she asked, her tone hushed.

“I’m fine. Keisha’s in the OR still. She lost a lot of blood.” For Bill’s benefit, Mary didn’t add the details about the slicing of the carotid. Evidently, Chico had known what he was doing. “The doctors said we’ll know more later.”

“They’re great doctors here,” Judy said to Bill, and he nodded.

When Detective Gomez and his partner arrived, Bill listened only idly, all over again, as Mary filled them in. Gomez’s partner, Matt Wahlberg, was a grayish blond detective of about forty-five years who was as tall as Gomez was thick. His blue eyes seemed sunken in a gaunt face that Mary understood when she spotted his triathlete’s watch. Insanely fit, he wore a light tan jacket and khaki slacks, and sat back in the padded chair, legs crossed and arms folded, while Mary leaned toward Gomez.

“I’m telling you, it was Chico,” Mary said as she finished. “He left her for dead in the driveway. He must have gotten out through the church.”

“Did you see his face?” Gomez looked at her directly, and her mouth went dry.

“If I said I had, would you arrest him?” Mary was so tempted to lie.

“We’d question him.”

“Would you question him anyway? I mean, how many people does he have to kill? He killed Frank and now he tried to kill Keisha!”

“In other words, you didn’t see his face.” Even Gomez sounded regretful. His soft mouth had formed a deep frown and his thick eyebrows sloped unhappily.

“No, not really. But I saw him. His back, his shoulders, his
outline
. I know it was him. At least go out and question him.”

Wahlberg snorted. “An outline isn’t probable cause.”

“Who are you kidding?” Judy interjected. “What do you call a racial profile?”

Mary wanted to get back on track. “Didn’t anyone in Rittenhouse Square see Keisha with Chico? There had to be a hundred witnesses. She may have walked with him from Eighteenth & Walnut to the church.”

“We got uniforms canvassing right now. If they find anybody who can ID this Chico, we’ll haul him in for a lineup.”

“Detective Gomez, I know it was him. It makes sense it was him. Chico is a violent man, Saracone’s muscle, and he was there the night I accused his boss of Amadeo’s murder.” Mary felt a deep pang of guilt. If she hadn’t burst into Saracone’s bedroom that night, Keisha wouldn’t be in the OR right now. “I’ll swear out an affidavit, I’ll do whatever it takes. I’m making a formal complaint. He assaulted me. Please, please, please, at least go out there and question Chico.”

Gomez frowned. “Where does he live, do you know?’

“I don’t know, but I think on the Saracone property.”

“But didn’t Saracone just die? The funeral should be when?”

“Today, this morning.” Mary didn’t add that she was moonlighting as a funeral planner. Gomez was already frowning deeply.

“I’m not going out there tonight. They buried the man today.” Next to Gomez, Wahlberg nodded in agreement. “And anyway, your theory that it was Chico, or connected to Saracone, doesn’t make sense. What would be the motive for an attempt on Keisha? Saracone is dead, so what’s the reason for it?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure.” Mary wracked her brain. “I accused Saracone of killing Amadeo and maybe Saracone confessed to Keisha. Or said something that admitted it. Something that the Saracones don’t want to come out.”

“So what if Saracone confessed to Brandolini’s murder? Both men are dead. What can they be hiding?”

“I don’t know, they have lots of money and I have no idea how they got it. Maybe illegally. Drugs, money laundering, whatever.” Mary thought of the investments in the drawers in Saracone’s office, but she couldn’t tell Gomez that. “Maybe stocks and bonds, something corporate, with IPOs. It could be anything. What if Saracone was going to call the cops and confess? What if the wife or the son had to kill him to stop him?”

“
Killed
him? Why would they kill him? He was already on his deathbed.” Gomez frowned. “Why would they care, anyway? So he gets prosecuted for the murder, so what?”

Judy, who had been listening, looked over at Gomez. “They didn’t do an autopsy on Saracone and he was buried today. Can we exhume —”

“No way, I can’t order one unless there’s credible evidence of a homicide. This is getting way out of hand.” Gomez shifted his weight in the hard plastic chair. “Look, we have enough questions that we’ll consider taking a drive and talking to Chico. But not tonight.”

Wahlberg looked at his partner in disapproval. “Dan. Cavuto is cleared. We start running out there, moving too fast, without the facts, we’d lose the evidence in motions —”

“Then consider this as independent of Frank,” Mary interrupted. “Somebody tried to kill Keisha and you have to catch that guy.” She didn’t bring up that Homicide had no jurisdiction unless Keisha died. “You can at least question him. What’s it going to cost you?”

Gomez glanced at his partner. “We can check it out, can’t we, Wally? Aside from Cavuto? You got a problem with that?”

Mary sensed she should shut up but couldn’t. “Just see what Chico’s alibi is. I bet he won’t have one, and if you want me to look at some mug books, I will. He probably has a record, being a thug ain’t exactly a white-collar line of work. Did you recover the knife in the driveway or the church?”

“No. There are crime scene guys looking for it.”

“So he didn’t drop it.” Mary knew from Bennie that this was significant. Also from
Forensic Files
on the Discovery Channel. “He saw me coming and didn’t drop it. He risked getting caught with it, so that means he didn’t want you to look up his prints. Somebody who had no record would have dropped it.” Mary was impressed with her own powers of deduction, but Gomez waved her off.

“Quit while you’re ahead. Wally and me will go out to the house and check it out.”

“When, if not tonight?”

“Soon as possible. We’ll follow standard procedure.”

“Thank you, thank you!” Mary leapt impulsively out of her seat and into his arms. Gomez felt solid and smelled wonderfully of roast beef hoagie.

Suddenly, Bill, who had been sitting quietly off to the side, rose stiffly on his long legs. “You’re all assuming Keisha’s not gonna make it through this operation. I think she is, and it would be nice if you thought so, too.”

Mary felt a twinge she knew the others shared, except possibly Wahlberg. “We’re not assuming that. We’re just talking. Trying to figure it out.”

Bill’s expression said,
Well, don’t
. His dark gaze shifted away.

Later, the detectives left, and Mary and Judy tried to distract Bill by asking him computer questions, which he answered ad nauseam. The three of them were in the middle of his lecture on Microsoft XP when the surgeon entered the waiting room on soft paper booties.

And slid off his mask to give them the news.

When Mary got home, she dropped her briefcase and bag at the front door of her apartment, ignored her bills and other mail, and went almost mechanically upstairs, kicked off her pumps, stripped off her bloody suit, climbed into the shower, and cranked up the temperature. Hot water coursed over her body, and she closed her eyes and stood under the spray, letting it soak into her skin and loosen her muscles.

Thank you, God.

She felt tears of relief well up under her eyelids. Keisha had survived the operation and was in intensive care, but she hadn’t yet regained consciousness. The loss of blood had left her in a coma, and the surgeon wasn’t sure when, or even if, she would recover. They couldn’t determine the damage the oxygen loss had caused to her brain. A somber Bill had stayed at the hospital, saying he’d sleep in the waiting room, but he’d wanted Mary and Judy to leave, and they did, reluctantly.

Mary worried that Keisha wasn’t safe in the hospital. That when Chico found out he hadn’t killed her, he’d come back to finish the job. But Bill had promised to stay by her side, and Mary knew he would. He loved the girl. And he said he’d call Keisha’s mother, so she’d be flying in today. She’d be safe with all those people around her. Now all she had to do was live.

A wave of exhaustion washed over Mary, with the hot water. She shampooed her hair, feeling the sudsy foam slick on her shoulders, but she was too bummed to shave her legs. At least it was a good excuse. She got out of the shower, toweled off, and slipped into her McNabb jersey, then tucked herself into bed. She couldn’t stop thinking about Keisha and wishing that she’d remembered her before she rushed into Saracone’s bedroom that night. She lay sleepless in the dark and didn’t even consider reaching for the remote.

Mary took a right turn, then a left, and ended up in the same place she had started, having gone around in a circle for the third time. On a bright Tuesday morning, after a lousy night’s sleep, she’d hit the road early to find Saracone’s office in the suburbs, right off the Schuylkill Expressway.

LEHIGH VALLEY INDUSTRIAL PARK
read the red-and-yellow letters on the sign, but once she was in the industrial park, everything looked the same. Clusters of four-story brick buildings were laid out like a corporate honeycomb, and lush lawn curved around the buildings, bordered by overmulched beds of tulips planted in bands of red and yellow, evidently the team colors. Some evil genius had embedded the red-and-yellow signs for the various companies among the tulips, destroying forever any chance a South Philly girl had of finding Saracone Investments. But if Mary had crashed a funeral, an industrial park should be a piece of cake.

She gripped the steering wheel and took another turn. Only a few cars were parked in the pocket lots at this hour, and she didn’t see anyone she could ask for directions. She turned left, found another tulip bed, and searched for the sign. Dearborn Computers. Mary was losing her sense of humor. The attempt on Keisha’s life had raised the stakes, and she had fought all last night to suppress the horrific image of the woman slumped bleeding against the alley wall. She had called the hospital from the car, and the intensive care nurse had told her that Keisha hadn’t awakened and Bill was asleep in the waiting room. She cruised to the next cluster and the next tulip bed. Household Plastics, Inc.

A white Cadillac drove past, and Mary followed him to the next chamber of the hive, where they both parked, side by side. The man, in casual dress, got out of the car carrying a bronze Halliburton, his cell phone bud plugged into his ear. Mary frowned. This ear-bud thing had all started with the Sony Walkman, and she didn’t like it one bit. She flagged him down, raising her voice to be heard. “Excuse me, do you know where Saracone Investments is?”

“No idea,” the man answered without breaking stride or further conversation, and Mary growled under her breath and backed out of the space. She drove around reading tulips and with only three missed turns, asked five more people where Saracone Investments was. None of them had any idea. It was getting weird. After another wrong turn, she found a gardener in a yellow jumpsuit with a red Lehigh Valley patch and she jumped out of the car and accosted him.

“On the end,” he said, pointing, and she went back to the car and drove to where he pointed. Then she understood why she hadn’t seen it before. The last brown building had a tiny tulip bed in front and the smallest sign of all, with an array of company names in smaller fonts: Rate Foods, Inc, The Steingard Foundation, Francanucci Insurance, Ltd., Juditha Corporation, Simmons Partners, and Saracone Investments. The pocket lot was empty even though the others had been filling up. Why? She’d see for herself; she had found Saracone’s office. Mary felt a tingle of fear but chased it away.

She got out of the car, her jacket suddenly sticking to her back. She had dressed in her favorite nondescript beige suit, had her hair pulled back, and was wearing her glasses, so Justin wouldn’t recognize her from the newspaper photo. It was an abundance of caution, because she doubted that he’d be back at work so soon after his father’s death, but maybe she could sweet-talk the receptionist and get into his office. She walked up the elegant flagstone walk, past the evil tulips, and reached a brown door, hoping it wasn’t locked. She pulled on the door, and it opened into a hallway with a panel of mailboxes. Each one was labeled: Rate Foods, Inc, The Steingard Foundation, Francanucci Insurance, Ltd., Juditha Corporation, Simmons Partners, and Saracone Investments.