Done. Almost. He pulled the Beretta from his waistband and affixed the silencer, and waited by the door that led into the house.
The front doorbell surprised Monte Royce, causing him to jerk his cup of tea as he sat in the breakfast room. “Who could that be at this hour?” He set the dripping cup on its saucer and walked through the kitchen to the foyer, looking through the peephole before opening the — “What?”
The latch clicked and the door swung tentatively inward, the form of Monte Royce appearing in the widening gap. “Good morning, Monte.”
“John… What are you doing here?”
“Monte.” The voice, feeble but obviously female, came from upstairs. “Who is it?”
“Uh… No one, mother,” Royce lied. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
“She has good ears,” John observed. What a shame. She was the only part of this that caused him pause. But what had to be done had to be done.
“What—”
“Inside, Monte,” John suggested forcefully. “Somewhere she won’t hear us. We need to talk.”
Royce looked past his unexpected and unwelcome visitor. The liberally landscaped front yard and its high walls blocked any view of the street, and hopefully was preventing any of his few neighbors from seeing this. “All right. Come in. Into the study.”
John entered and made an immediate left, walking below an impressive open arch that led into the combination study/library. His host closed the front door and followed him in.
“What is it, John?” Royce asked again, watching as John continued walking toward the fireplace at the far end of the study. His hands were doing something to his front, but what… No!
“I wouldn’t, Monte,” John said as he turned, causing the elderly executive to end his retreat from the room. He closed on Royce, keeping the silenced Beretta pointing at the man’s chest. “To the garage. Now.”
Royce followed the instructions after a hesitation caused more by surprise than defiance. At the door that connected the garage to the kitchen he was shoved away, toward the sink. A second later another familiar face was in the room. And another gun.
“What is this?” Royce asked quietly, not wanting to disturb his mother.
“Down,” John said, motioning to the exquisitely tiled floor. “On your stomach.”
“John…”
“Now.”
Royce still had no idea what was happening. Was this some sort of warning to him? Some attempt to frighten him? Did they think he was going to talk? Lowering himself from a pushup position to the floor he tried to figure it all out. But all his deductions were wrong.
“Son,” John said.
Toby drew a bead on the back of Monte Royce’s head from a distance of seven feet and fired one round, which drilled into his skull with the sound of a dropped egg cracking upon the floor. The old man’s body jerked once, the arms actually coming in to attempt a rise, but that motion ceased in a few seconds. As blood poured from the entry wound the body went completely limp, then still.
“He’s done,” John said, looking to his son. “You stay here. I’ll be down in a minute.”
He went to the carpeted stairs and walked quickly to the second floor. The room he was interested in was at the near end of the hall, its location affording a gorgeous view of the hills to the west. John eased the cracked door fully open and stepped into the bedroom. A pair of old, yet very bright eyes immediately met his.
“John! Is it you?”
“It’s me, Canadia,” John answered, taking a few more steps that put him right at the old woman’s bedside.
Canadia Conyers Royce looked up at the man she revered. The man she saw as the hope for her people. “You look so good, John.”
“Thank you.” He sat on the edge of the mattress, facing the sweet lady, the gun resting on his lap. Its presence did not go unnoticed by her.
“It’s time, John, isn’t it?”
He nodded, looking at her tenderly. “Things have to be done, Canadia.”
Now she nodded, though very weakly. “And Monte?”
“He’s gone.”
She actually smiled. “He tried, John. But he was not you. He wasn’t like you at all.”
“I owe you a great deal, Canadia. Our people owe you a great deal.”
“I’ve done this for the same reasons my grandfather carried the Stars and Bars,” she said proudly, her eyes tearing,
“Shhh.” He put his right hand on the gun and slid it toward her, resting the silencer on the pillow next to her left ear. “It’s time for me to go.”
“Yes.” She looked straight at the ceiling, a full smile stretched across her face. “I must go, too. Good luck, John.”
He said nothing more, then squeezed the trigger once. The impact of the bullet snapped her head right as a fountain of red arched onto the white bedding. John headed back downstairs without even looking at the sight, and joined his son in the kitchen.
“She’s dead?” Toby asked, though he knew the answer already.
“Our work is done,” John said. “For now. Let’s get out of here.”
Twenty minutes later they were back at the Aerostar, and a few minutes after that they were just one of the thousands of cars creeping along the Ventura Freeway, none of their fellow commuters wise to the fact that two murderers were in their midst.
He drove a Mercedes, which he would retire as his get-to-work car once the newest-model Corvette he’d ordered came in. His wife tagged it just a symptom of a mid-life crisis long in coming, but Seymour Mankowitz knew the real reason. He was tired of the staid, lawyerly image forced upon him by the profession he’d chosen, and wanted at least some zest in his life. Cruising from his Pacific Palisades home to his office on Reseda Boulevard each day in a jet black rocket would provide just that.
But, for now, it was the respectable Mercedes, which he guided into the alley behind his office in the north of the San Fernando Valley. Halfway to the narrow path’s end he turned right, into the private parking lot reserved for himself and his two partners. Neither of their cars was there, which he expected. Both were already gone, on their way to Telluride for a Thanksgiving on the slopes. Him? He was here to meet with…
Mankowitz shook the feeling away. John Barrish was his client right now, and he had to treat him as such. Not as an aberration. Once the ties were severed, which he hoped would be soon, then he could allow himself to express what he truly felt. Until then…
His professionalism restored, Mankowitz took his briefcase in hand and stepped from the Mercedes, clicking on the alarm that sounded with a chirp. He walked toward the back of the car, the entrance to his building just beyond, but slowed as a long, old car glided to a stop in the alley, blocking the entrance to the lot.
Darian put the car in park and stepped out, looking at the man from across the hood of the Buick. Moises got out from the passenger side. He was just a few yards from the clearly frightened white man. At almost the same instant both men produced their Ingrams, leveling them at their target.
“Wait! No!” Mankowitz dropped his briefcase and took an unsteady step backward. But it would change nothing.
Moises fired first, grabbing the front end of his Ingram and raising it just a bit from the center-mass point of aim he’d been instructed to use. The thirty rounds began impacting just below the lawyer’s pronounced Adam’s apple and stitched up the length of his face. Only a third of the .45-caliber slugs actually found their target, but that was more than enough to turn Seymour Mankowitz’s head to a grotesque bloody rose of flesh and bone. Darian’s shots were placed well, all but five devastating the lawyer’s midsection. What remained of the body flopped backward a few feet, tumbling to the ground at the side of the Mercedes.