“How did that get you stuck here?”
“I had come to New York ahead of time. I was supposed to make everything smooth. I rented apartments, leased a good car. I was waiting at the airport when I saw the ambulance come and take Anatoly away. The others had my name and address with the paperwork, so I couldn’t ever go back to Odessa either. It was because Anatoly’s luck changed.”
“Do you think Kapak’s luck has changed?”
“I don’t know, but I’m watching. When it happens, it can take an hour. A minute. And who would take over if Kapak died?” asked Voinovich.
“That’s a good question,” Jerry said. “He hasn’t made any arrangements that I’ve heard of.”
“When a rich man dies, relatives show up,” said Voinovich. “Then we’ll see how our luck is.”
Jerry said, “Maybe we should figure out how we want this to play out, and then make sure it happens the right way.”
“Who would be in on it?”
“You, me, and my brother Jimmy.”
27
SPENCE KNELT ON the bare floor in the apartment under the window and assembled the rifle. It was before noon, but there was no point in waiting to get ready. The girl, this Sonia, worked in an office, and that meant she left for work at eight in the morning and came home at six. Today she must have called in sick or left early, because she was home. But for Spence, it didn’t matter what time it was.
He raised his head from his work and looked through his second-floor window down into the girl’s apartment. She had changed into a pair of black sweatpants and a T-shirt that had been printed with the words “Mackinac Island.” It wasn’t a great sign. If she was expecting Carver to visit, then she should be dressed better than that.
But he wasn’t going to assume Carver wouldn’t show. He might arrive much later, when he would feel safe. She seemed to be fooling around in the kitchen, doing some kind of cooking, so maybe she was making a fancy dinner. And maybe he showed up here only at bedtime, when the sweatpants and T-shirt came off.
Spence was resigned to the fact that he might have to keep coming to this apartment and watching for weeks before Carver showed up. Spence moved back from the window to a dark spot on the floor where the sunlight didn’t reach him and stared through the rifle sight at Sonia. He had the rifle’s elevation sighted to a distance of a hundred yards, and this distance was under a hundred feet, so he would have to remember to adjust. She was turned to the side and staring down at whatever was on the stove. He sighted low on her temple, aware that the bullet would take her an inch above, but it would blow through her skull and embed itself in a wall. With the magnification he could see individual wisps of hair that had escaped from her ponytail and trailed near the delicate pink rim of her ear. He moved the crosshairs to the diamond stud in her earlobe. She turned toward him as though she had felt an unexpected chill, but her eyes were low, looking out her window at the empty lawn between the two buildings.
He didn’t intend to shoot the girl, not even later. She was just bait. He lowered the rifle, released the empty box magazine, and set the rifle across the arms of his easy chair. He reached for the box of ammunition and opened it.
He heard a metallic snick-chuck-snick sound that made his breath catch— shotgun! He dove toward the side and rolled, trying to get closer to the corner of the wall where he could scramble out of the line of fire.
A voice said, “Stop, or I’ll have to take your head off.”
Spence already had the fingers of his right hand touching the handgrips of the pistol in his jacket pocket, but he knew he wouldn’t have the time to get it out before the muzzle flash brought obliteration. “So why haven’t you already?” He could see the man at the back of the room, standing and holding the short pump shotgun in his direction—not aiming, just carrying it with the muzzle at Spence’s chest level so he could hardly miss. He knew that the man must have come in and sat in the bedroom or the bathroom waiting for him to arrive, then stood and watched him.
“Because I wanted to talk to you, Spence. That’s why I brought you here.”
“So this was for me—the girl and everything?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because as I watched you and Kapak and his men, and listened to what you all said, it seemed to me that you were the solitary guy, the one that the others were afraid of and maybe didn’t quite trust. So it had to be you.”
“When did you get close enough to see that?”
“It doesn’t get me anything to tell you how I do things. But this is the last time I try to talk to any of you. It’s too risky to arrange meetings just to keep explaining over and over again.”
“What do you have to explain?”
“I’m not the guy who robbed Kapak.”
“Your girlfriend down there told me that.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. I met her just after I came to town, but when I heard that what she told the Gaffneys was what made Kapak think I was his robber, I realized she was the way to get to you. That’s all.”
“If you did or didn’t rob Kapak, why did you stick around after you heard we were looking for you?”
“I figured if I hid out and waited awhile, then the real robber would turn up, rob somebody else, or even rob Kapak again. He’d get caught, and that would be the end of it. But when your friends started getting close to finding me, I knew I’d better go see Kapak. I talked to him and let him see my face, so he’d know I wasn’t the one. I thought at first that he was persuaded, but when I was walking away, he took a shot at me.”
“It hurt him more than you. He fired through a closed window and was up to his armpits in glass.”
“It pissed me off.”
“You have to understand him. He’s been in a vulnerable position for thirty years. His clubs make a profit, but there are always people who are trying to rob him in one way or another. People want a piece of the profits, or they’re selling protection, or a fee to keep the city council off his back, or a fee to prevent labor troubles. He tries to stay out of squabbles, but it isn’t enough. He has to be somebody who doesn’t put up with anything.”
“It doesn’t seem to justify killing me.”
“When Kapak got robbed, it was right in the middle of Ventura Boulevard. The cops knew, so the newspapers knew, so everybody knew. Kapak had to make a serious effort to get whoever robbed him. It wasn’t the twenty grand he lost that night. It was his reputation. Everybody who heard about it had to believe he wouldn’t put up with that kind of thing or there would be a long line of people waiting to stick a gun in his face. When he sent guys out to investigate, the only name that turned up was yours, and it came up twice. Just because you said you weren’t the one, it didn’t mean you weren’t.”
“I showed him my face.”
“The guy who does the robberies wears a mask.”
“Kapak never said that.”
“He was pissed off. Before you came to his house, you had already wrecked two Hummers with the crane.”
“I scared a few of his guys and took some money. I could have done worse.”
“You’re reminding me that you can kill me.”
“I can, but I don’t plan to.”
“Why not?”
“That’s not what I want. Look, I’ve had to move around a bit over the past couple of years, and I didn’t like it. I want to stay in Los Angeles, and I don’t want to have to kill anyone to do it. But if I have to, I remember how.”
“I can see you’d be fairly good at it.”
“I’m looking for a different idea,” Carver said. “Why don’t you and I talk for a bit?”