“Ten-four,” came the crisp reply.
Gunther dialed again.
A very sleepy Gail answered.
“It’s Joe. Wake up.”
“Joe?”
“Yeah. I hate to do this to you, but you’ve got to listen, and please do what I tell you. I’m on my way, and I’ll explain it in less than an hour.”
“Joe, what’s going on?” Her voice was now clear, brittle, alarmed by his tone.
“A man may be after you, using you to get at me. You need to get out of the house.”
“Who? Why? What’s this about?”
“Later, Gail. I promise. I just want you safe right now.”
“Okay, okay.”
He was pulling on his shirt, almost dropping the phone. “Not yet, though, okay? Don’t use your car, and don’t leave the house until a police car shows up. He’ll be playing his lights. Right now get dressed and wait by the front door, and then wait till he comes to the door. He’s going to take you to Waterbury. That’s where I’ll find you.”
“Is he outside now?” she asked, her voice tight with fear. He knew that all the nightmares she’d learned to control since her rape must be suddenly exploding from her subconscious.
“Not necessarily,” he tried soothing her. “He may not even know who you are. I just got a call about this guy from the police in Newark, and I’m only being cautious. He made a generalized threat against whoever might be in my life, and then he vanished.”
He heard a hard edge creep into her voice. “Joe, if it was that vague, you wouldn’t have called me.”
“I’m not lying to you, Gail. What would you prefer? That I overreact, or pretend nothing will happen until it does?”
“I’m scared,” she said after a pause.
“I know that. I’m truly sorry. Now please do what I asked so I can start heading your way. Okay?”
“Okay.”
The trip to Waterbury was the fastest Joe had ever driven, never dropping under a hundred miles an hour and often hitting a hundred and thirty. Only once did he let go of the wheel with one hand, to confirm by radio that Gail had been picked up, but throughout it all, as in a closed-circuit mantra, he berated himself nonstop.
To put this particular person into this kind of danger, not only after all they’d shared, but especially as they had recently entered some ill-defined and unaddressed emotional landscape, led to an anxiety he hadn’t felt since he and his late wife had confronted her terminal cancer over thirty years ago.
The barn fires, the killing of John Gregory, the intellectual satisfaction of trying to solve the puzzle, all melted away in the face of this suddenly loose cannon bringing what was normally an exercise at arm’s length to cataclysmic proximity. All-too-recent memories of how he’d felt watching Peggy’s car burn into the pavement crowded his mind. That death had made him feel guilty. A similar fate for Gail-with him directly to blame-would be devastating.
Joe drove as if his life depended on it.
Gino sat in the passenger seat of his van, rendered invisible from the streetlights by the cab’s inner gloom. The throbbing blue flashes from the passing cruiser’s strobes bounced off the row of apartments opposite him, a paradoxical combination of blinding aggression and colorful harmlessness.
Intrigued after an initial surge of startled apprehension, he watched as the car pulled up to Gail’s address and a uniformed officer got out and approached her door.
Something must have happened back in Newark, he thought. His mind immediately went to Fredo-loyal, obedient, but sloppy. Easy for the cops to squeeze, but not someone with a lot to tell.
Gino looked thoughtful as Gail was escorted back to the car and ushered into the front seat.
They hadn’t wasted any time, he’d give them that, but, then, he’d also lost a few days collecting himself and doing his homework-target acquisition, as he liked to term it.
But speed was no longer the point. In fact, it wasn’t even a factor. In some part of his grief-racked brain-a part he wasn’t directly consulting-Gino was actually thinking that he had the entire rest of his life to complete this assignment, regardless of how brief that might be.
He slid down into his seat more comfortably as the cruiser turned around in the driveway and returned whence it had come. He didn’t know where she was being taken or how long they’d keep her under wraps. But he knew where she’d resurface. He’d taken the time to study her history, her personality, her habits.
And that’s where he’d be waiting.
Chapter 24
Joe found Gail in a small meeting room floor on the third floor of the Department of Public Safety headquarters building in Waterbury. She was sitting at a fake-wood table in front of a cardboard cup of tepid coffee, surrounded by blackboards, motivational posters, and a rickety metal stand supporting a TV and a VCR.
She stood as he entered, but didn’t circle the table to greet him. He went to her instead, putting his arms around her shoulders.
“I am so sorry, Gail,” he told her again. “When I heard this guy might be in the neighborhood, I couldn’t not warn you.”
Gently, she placed her hands on his chest and pushed him back enough to see his face. “That was not a warning, Joe. With my history, that was a threat. Telling me not to drive my car or step out of the house? Who is this man?”
Joe pulled two seats around so they could face each other and indicated she should sit. She did so, but cautiously, as if preparing to run at any moment. It was anyone’s guess what panic she’d been struggling with-an army of ghosts he could only imagine.
“His name is Gino Famolare,” he explained. “He’s an arsonist, Newark-born, Mob-connected, and he was hired to burn a few barns around St. Albans.”
“And now he’s after me?” she asked incredulously.
“Maybe. Like I said, I’m only being careful there. He was overheard saying he’d do to me like I’d done to him, or something like that, before he disappeared a few days ago.”
“And you did what to him?”
“It’s what he thinks I did. Would you like a refresher on that coffee?”
Gail gave him a flat look. “No.”
“Sorry. We-the Newark cops and we-were putting pressure on him indirectly. Talking to his wife, his girlfriend, staking his place out, and in the midst of it, the girlfriend bolted, we don’t know why. We chased after her, but she crashed her car and died. Apparently, Famolare made it personal.”
Joe didn’t mention how easily he understood Gino’s motivation, and how thoroughly, in two brief encounters, he, too, had fallen under Peggy’s spell. Gino’s vow to do unto Joe as Joe had done unto him carried more emotional weight than Joe felt comfortable sharing.
Gail blinked a couple of times, still staring at him. “Do you have a picture of him?”
He reached into his breast pocket. “I thought you might ask.”
He laid a mug shot on the table beside them. As with all such photographs, it was debatable whether the subject’s own mother would recognize him, but it was all Joe had.
Gail picked it up and studied it. “A wife and girlfriend both.”
“Yeah, the girlfriend was young enough to be his daughter. Beautiful, very much in love with him.”
“You spoke with her?”
“Yes. Tried to get her to give him up. He had her stashed in a town house in the safest part of town. Quite the love pad.”
“And the wife?”
Joe had no idea where these questions were going, or what had stimulated them, but he didn’t feel he could quibble. “More like an urban suburb, the way Newark and its surroundings are set up.”
She frowned, dropped the mug shot onto the table, and sat back for the first time. “I meant, did you meet her, too?”
“Oh, yeah. Slightly dirty pool. We wanted to know what she knew, and we used the girlfriend as leverage.”