He went back to the truck, opened the door, tossed the shotgun into the passenger seat and climbed aboard. Brake off, transmission in gear, he pulled out onto the street and drove away.
The next morning I coffeed, ate two boiled eggs and called my lock-shop partner, Willie Varner, also known as Willie the Wire. “How’s everything?” I asked.
“You just out of jail, or was it the hospital?” Willie was habitually surly, and more so in the mornings. I had lived with that for years, ever since we went into business together.
“Hey, I’ve been out of town.”
“This shop is a business, Tommy, and as a co-owner, you should check on it more often.”
“I’m in business with a black Bill Gates. I trust you, dude.”
“The women come in to see the Great Carmellini. And I need you to sign job bids.”
“And I need some help today,” I told him. “I’ll be there around ten o’clock. We’ll close the shop and open it tomorrow.”
“Any money in this?”
“Contract wages. By the hour.”
“Well, a little extra pocket money would be helpful,” Willie admitted.
“Have any bids ready to sign. I’ll see you at ten or thereabouts.” I rang off.
Willie Varner was about twenty years older than me, and probably the best lock picker alive. He had taught me a lot. He gained his skill picking hotel locks and carrying out the guests’ luggage, unfortunately without their permission. The second time he got out of prison for those activities, he decided to go straight. That’s when he and I went into the lock-shop business together. Despite his abrasive, sour personality, he was my best friend and he could keep his mouth firmly shut. I trusted him, for one very good reason: He knew if he crossed me no one would ever find his body.
Zoe Kerry was a hard-body of medium height, with short dark hair and short fingernails without color. She had a nice jawline and a pleasant face without laugh lines. I tried to decide if she was a runner or tennis player or just an exercise nut.
“Name’s Tommy Carmellini,” I said. “Grafton sicced me on you. I’m supposed to follow you around.”
She eyed me without enthusiasm. “He sent me a memo.”
“Great.”
“Why did he send you?”
“He didn’t say.” I shrugged.
She thought I was lying, which was ridiculous. She also thought I was a boob, and maybe that was the best way to play it.
“I don’t think he likes me,” I said earnestly. “But they have to give me something to do while I’m waiting for my court date. Grafton said you were FBI on assignment.”
“Admiral Grafton.”
“Yeah, that Grafton. He said you shot a couple of folks and came to us to unlax and rewind.” I smiled.
“Umph.”
“So what’s on your agenda today?”
“The agenda is finding out where the FBI was on Paul Reinicke’s and Mario Tomazic’s accidents, and now James Maxwell, the FBI director.”
I goggled at her.
“Maxwell, two bodyguards and his limo driver were assassinated last night. Haven’t you heard?”
“No.” I don’t normally listen to the news or read the paper in the morning, as both of them have detrimental effects on my digestive system. But I didn’t share that personal info with her.
She gave me the bare-bones particulars. She was slightly distracted.
“Did you know any of the three of them?”
“One of the bodyguards.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it.
“He was…” She left it there.
“Unfortunately I cannot accompany you today,” I said apologetically, “as I have another errand. Tomorrow, perhaps.”
“I’ll try to stifle myself until then.”
“Of course.”
It was about ten thirty when I showed up at the lock shop with all the goodies stowed in the car. Willie and I transferred them to the shop van, which already had all the tools we would need arranged in belts and bins inside. We were a one-stop lock shop, modern as hell and really up to date. Willie was already in his lock-shop coverall, so I stepped inside and pulled one on over my trousers and shirt.
As I dressed, Willie said, “So, spy, who we gonna bug?”
“Jake Grafton.”
He stared at me. He had obviously been reading the papers, too, and knew that Grafton was the new acting director. “You’re shittin’ me, right?”
“Nope. At his request. Actually, I think, at his wife’s request.”
Willie mulled it. He still had all his hair, now flecked with gray. If you could have gotten a suit and tie on him, you might have labeled him distinguished. He did indeed own such an outfit. He bought it to be buried in. I saw him wear it just once, a few years back.
When we were rolling along toward the Grafton pad in Roslyn, he said, “Man, they’re poppin’ these big government dudes one after another. I saw on the morning TV that the director of the FBI, Maxwell, got shot to death last night. Behind the National Press Club. You hear about that?”
“Yes.”
“Shotgun. Him and two bodyguards. His driver was whacked as he sat in the limo. Four FBI dudes, deader than hell.”
“This morning?”
“Well, near midnight, I heard on the TV. They’re still lookin’ for the shooter. A fuckin’ hit. Four FBI dudes, just like that.”
I didn’t say anything.
Willie motored on anyway. “Third big government honcho this week, the TV babe said. Tomazic, Reinicke, now Maxwell, the FBI head weenie. Room at the top, that’s what they’re making. Room at the top so all the people in the chain can move up one notch. Like a cakewalk. ‘Ever’body take one step forward.’ I kinda figure it’s raghead terrorists or some frustrated paper-pusher who never got the promotion he figured he’d earned.”
“You think?”
“Kinda looks like that. But maybe it’s someone gettin’ even. Maybe he’ll get the warden at that federal pen in Williamsburg, South Carolina, next. That cocksucker gave me a really hard time. Told me I was too sassy. He didn’t like no sass, y’know, and him bein’ the warden and all, he don’t have to take much. None, actually. He ran that damn prison like he was Adolf Hitler’s bastard kid on a mission for God.”
I didn’t care much for Willie’s prison reminiscences, but it was no use trying to change the subject once he got into one of his moods. I drove and thought about the job. And about killers with shotguns. In Roslyn we pulled around the Graftons’ condo building into the service area and locked up the van. I sent Willie on a reconnaissance to see who, if anyone, might be watching the building while I went up to the admiral’s condo and knocked on the door. Callie Grafton opened it.
“Hi, Tommy,” she said. “Come on in.” I entered, and she closed the door behind me.
Mrs. Grafton is my idea of the perfect lady. She still had her figure and erect carriage, she was attractive, and she was pleasant with everyone she met. She had brains. In her sixties, she was the kind of woman that some men my age wish they had had for a mom. I sure did. Mine was a ditz.
Anyhow, she had been married to Jake Grafton since they were in their twenties. What she saw in him I’ll never know. Oh, he was polite enough and smiled occasionally, but he had my vote for the toughest man alive on this side of the Atlantic. He was also smart, determined, fearless and, when necessary, absolutely ruthless. Maybe his wife had found a warm and fuzzy spot in him somewhere, but I had never seen it. If he had such a place, I thought, it was probably microscopic.