That brings big smiles to their little mouths.
“Want to take a tour?” Curly says.
“Would you like me to?”
“Absolutely!”
“How about you cancel the kill code first?”
15.
GEEK CITY TURNS out to be six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a conference room, kitchen, workshop, laundry room, and a computer room that defies explanation. They’re music nerds, each possessing a private collection of more than ten thousand songs that blare constantly from breakfast to dinner, at the highest possible volume.
“Do you ever play the same song at the same time?” I ask.
They look at each other and smile. C.H. says, “What a perfect question to ask! Every afternoon at precisely two-forty-six, we play Dream Merchant, by Gee Gee Shinn.”
Not that I give a shit, but because of the way they’re looking at me, I ask, “Why that particular song?”
“The four of us programmed our individual music into our peripheral computers,” Larry says. “Day after day for years no two computers ever played the same song at the same time.”
C.H. says, “Until eighteen months ago. One afternoon, at two-forty-six, two computers played Dream Merchant at the same time.”
“Do you know what the odds are of that happening?” C.H. says.
“A million to one?” I say.
Curly yells, “Jimmy Charles! Nineteen sixty!”
Larry shouts, “Patterson, New Jersey!”
C.H. says, “That’s nothing. Nothing! Who sang backup?” While the others struggle to answer, he yells “The Revellettes!”
“Ah, but who were in the Revellettes?” I say.
They look at each other and do a double-take. Then grab their cell phones and punch the keys furiously.
Larry gets there first.
“Jackie and Evelyn Kline-”
Curly and C.H. shout in unison, “And Dottie Hailstock!”
They slap each other on the back, do a high-five, and some sort of strange victory dance.
Then C.H. says, “The odds of two of our lists playing a single song at the same time are impossible to calculate because our lists were pre-programmed to constantly shuffle, and each computer has a different random sequence. We’ve been working on the calculation for years. I can show you the algorithm flow chart if you’d like.”
“Another time,” I say, which sets them to laughing.
The biggest surprise comes when they show me Moe’s room and I happen to open the closet door and see his corpse hanging from a hook, wrapped in plastic.
“This can’t stay here,” I say.
“Okay,” Curly says.
I supervise as they carry the body to the antechamber.
“How long will you need to keep my laptop?” I ask.
“For what?” Larry says.
“To program it the way I outlined.”
“We can do it remotely. We’ll send you a link when it’s ready.”
“We should exchange phone numbers,” I say.
They laugh.
“Right,” I say. “You’ve got my number.”
“And you’ve got ours,” Larry says. “All you have to do is press the star key twice. We’ll answer.”
“How will you hear my call over the music?”
“All phone calls mute the music.”
We say our goodbyes. When they’re out of sight I look at Moe’s body, at my feet. A man so broken up by Lou’s sudden death, he killed himself. A man so alone in the world there was no one to contact about his death.
Unless the others killed him and made up the story.
I shake my head, call Tommy Cooper, and tell him to bring a friend.
16.
Callie Carpenter.
THE CONTiPORARY GANGSTER handbook calls for high income-earners to keep a low community profile. Following that advice to a T, Frankie and Angie De Luca maintain an unassuming home in a modest neighborhood.
It’s nine-thirty p.m. under a dark sky as Callie approaches the residence. She knows the De Lucas dined across town with Sal, Marie, and several mob lieutenants and wives at Luigi’s, a mob-connected family restaurant. Their plans had been to finish dinner around nine, then watch the fireworks from the restaurant’s courtyard, which overlooks the Ohio River. Luigi’s isn’t the best viewing spot, since the fireworks are launched a mile away, but it’s safe, private, and the De Lucas will be there at least another forty-five minutes. Which means they’ll be gone an hour, if you include driving time.
And why wouldn’t you?
She picks the back door lock so quietly the family dog sleeps through the process.
Until Callie opens the door.
When that happens, several things occur. One. The alarm panel beeps, which tells her the De Lucas have an alarm, but failed to set it. Two. The beep is sufficiently loud to wake the bullmastiff, who goes berserk upon finding a strange woman standing in the hallway. Three. Callie leaps atop the washing machine and spends the next twenty minutes hopping back and forth between the washer and dryer as the dog snarls, lunges, jumps, and tries to eat her ankles instead of the biscuits Callie keeps tossing to the floor.
Callie didn’t know there’d be a dog, but there often is, so she came prepared. The dog biscuits contain enough synthetic opiate analgesic to render your typical canine adversary unconscious within minutes.
Dosing is simple.
Each biscuit neutralizes twenty pounds of dog. For a ten-pounder, you break the biscuit in half. The dog currently trying to maim Callie is a seven-biscuit beast.
Ten minutes of jumping tires most bullmastiffs. Twenty minutes exhausts them. When the De Luca mastiff finally hits the wall, he eats the biscuits and hits the floor with a heavy thud.
Callie races to the kitchen and searches the drawers and cabinets till she finds the burglar alarm pamphlet where she rightly assumed the De Lucas recorded their alarm code.
She tests it.
It works.
She thumbs through the pamphlet and learns how to bypass the monitoring company.
She goes to the garage, finds Angie’s keys right where she expected to: in the console tray of Angie’s car. She removes the door key and slips it in the pocket of her jeans. Then searches the house, finds Frankie’s guns, removes the bullets.
Under normal circumstances, killing Angie and Frankie would be child’s play. But Creed wants her to torture Frankie, hoping to learn something he can use to justify Frankie’s death. If, for example, Creed can prove Frankie’s been skimming money, Sal would condone the hit.
She walks back to the laundry room, sits on the floor beside the dog, and strokes his head. This is an ugly-ass dog. First time Callie’s ever seen one that’s uglier asleep than awake. While Callie isn’t opposed to killing animals, she needs a better reason than its appearance. And killing this one would take the De Lucas out of their routine. They’ll come home, expect the dog to meet them at the door enthusiastically. If it doesn’t, they’re going to be concerned. Killing and torturing people works best when you catch them by surprise, while they’re following their daily routines. The fewer variables, the better.
If killing the dog’s a poor option, not killing him is even worse. He could start barking when Callie returns later tonight. If so, Angie might call the cops. Nothing worse than trying to torture a guy while police bang on the victim’s door, demanding to enter.
If she further sedates the dog, the De Lucas will come home, find their pet unconscious. They’ll panic, and rush him to the vet.
And Callie would break into an empty house.
The dog has turned this simple killing into a complete cluster fuck.
Creed’s original idea had been for Callie to oil the doors, test the floors for sound, and sneak back in at two a.m. while the De Lucas were sleeping. She’d creep into their bedroom, kill Angie quickly, before Frankie can react. Then torture Frankie, gain the information she needs, then kill him.