“And how would you know all of this?”
“Because I am at war with Arthur Leehagen,” said Hoyle. “I make it a point to know as much as possible about his actions.”
“And assuming any of this is true, why are you so eager to share it with us?” asked Louis.
“There is bad blood between Leehagen and me. It goes back a very long way. We grew up not far from each other, but our lives have taken somewhat divergent paths. Despite that, fate has seen fit to bring us into conflict on occasion. I would like to outlive him, and I would like that process to begin as soon as possible.”
“Must be real bad blood,” said Louis.
Hoyle nodded at Simeon. A portable DVD player was placed upon the table. Simeon hit the “Play” button. After a second or two, a grainy film commenced.
“This arrived two months ago,” said Hoyle. He did not look at the screen. Instead, he watched the reflection of the ripples upon the wall behind them.
The film showed a pretty blond woman, perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties. The woman appeared to be dead, and her face and hair were smeared with mud. She was naked, but most of her body was obscured by the massive heads of the hogs that were feeding on her. Angel looked away. Simeon hit “Pause,” freezing the image.
“Who is she?”
“My daughter, Loretta,” said Hoyle. “She was seeing Leehagen’s surviving son, Michael. She was doing so out of spite. She blamed me for all that was wrong with her life. Sleeping with the son of a man whom I despised seemed, to her, fitting revenge, but she underestimated the Leehagen family’s capacity for violence, and vengeance.”
“Why would he do that?” asked Louis quietly.
Hoyle looked away, unable to meet Louis’s eye. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, the clear implication being that whatever had provoked such a response had been similarly vile.
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“Because there was no proof that Leehagen did this. I know the recording came from him-I can feel it-but even if I managed to convince the police that Leehagen was responsible, I guarantee that there would be nothing of my daughter left for them to find, assuming they could even locate the hog farm in question. There is also the matter of my own dealings with Leehagen. Neither of us is entirely innocent, but it has gone too far for us to stop now.”
He gestured at Simeon, who picked up the DVD player and removed it to a darkened alcove, then disappeared into one of the back rooms.
“I should add that you were not my first port of call in this matter,” said Hoyle. “I first hired a man named Kandic, a Serb, to kill Leehagen’s remaining son, and, if possible, Leehagen himself. I was informed that Kandic was the best in the business.”
“And how did that work out?” asked Louis.
Simeon returned. In his hands was a glass jar, and in the jar lay a human head. The corneas had been drained of color by the embalming fluid, and the skin had been bleached to the color of bone. The flesh at the base of the neck was ragged and torn.
“Not very well,” said Hoyle drily. “This arrived one week ago. Either I was misled when I was told that Kandic was the best, or it’s bad news for anyone who might consider following in his footsteps.”
“And now you want Leehagen to pay for what happened to your daughter.”
“I want this to end. It will do so only when one of us is dead. Naturally, as I said, I would prefer it if Leehagen predeceased me.”
Louis stood. The movement caused the two men by the door to reach for their weapons, but Simeon stilled them with a wave of his hand.
“Well,” said Louis, “this has all been very interesting. I don’t know where you get your information from, but you should talk to your source, because he’s feeding you some poor product. I don’t know about any Luther Berger, and I’ve never handled a gun in my life. I’m a businessman, that’s all. I’d also be careful about saying some of those things out loud again. It could get you into trouble with the law.”
Louis walked to the door, Angel behind him. Nobody tried to stop them, and no one said anything until they had passed into the lobby and were waiting on the elevator.
“Thank you for your time, gentlemen,” said Hoyle. “I’m sure I’ll be hearing from you soon.”
The elevator doors opened, Louis and Angel stepped inside, and rode in silence to the ground before disappearing into the streets.
Louis was silent as they drove from Hoyle’s building. Around them, the city moved to its own hidden heartbeat, a rhythm that varied from hour to hour, tied to the movements of the individuals that inhabited it so that sometimes he found it hard to tell if the city dictated the lifestyles of its people, or the people influenced the life of the city.
“I thought the gloves were a nice touch,” said Angel. “If his tan had been a little darker, he could have done Al Jolson.”
There was no reply. A signal changed ahead of them, but Louis floored the gas and sped through the lights. Louis knew better than to risk attracting the attention of the cops, but now he seemed reluctant to stop for any reason. Angel could also see that he was driving with his mirrors, keeping a close watch on cars behind them, or passing on the left and right.
Angel looked out of his window, watching storefronts flash by.
“What are we going to do?” he asked. His tone, though soft and neutral, indicated to his partner that a response of some kind would be wise.
“I make some calls. I find out how much of what Hoyle told us is true.”
“You don’t trust him?”
“I don’t trust anyone with that much money.”
“The head in the jar was pretty convincing. You really never hear of the guy he hired?”
“No, I never did.”
“Can’t have been too good at his job, if you never heard of him.”
“The fact that his head currently resides in a jar would tend to support that,” said Louis.
“So?”
“If Hoyle is telling even some of the truth, then we’re going to have to move against this Leehagen,” said Louis. “We’ll need to do it fast. He’ll know that we’re looking for whoever is trying to light us up. He needs to get to us before we figure it out. So, like I told you, I’ll make some calls, and we’ll take it from there.”
Angel sighed. “And I was starting to enjoy the quiet life.”
“Yeah, but you need the noise to appreciate the silence.”
Angel looked at him. “What are you: Buddha?”
“I must have read it someplace.”
“Yeah, in a fortune cookie.”
“You got a soul like a raisin, you know that?”
“Just drive. My raisin-like soul needs peace.”
Angel went back to staring out of the window, but his eyes took in nothing of what they saw.
CHAPTER NINE
ANGEL SAT ALONE AT his workbench. Before him were scattered the components of an assortment of keyless entry systems: pushbutton handsets, hard-wired keypads, wireless remote deadbolts, and even a proximity card reader and a fingerprint reader, the latter alone representing about two thousand dollars worth of butchered electronics. Angel liked to keep up with developments in his area of expertise. Most of the equipment he was examining was capable of being used for both commercial and domestic purposes, but homeowners and contractors had, in his experience, yet to embrace the new technology. Equally, most locksmiths were not adept at dealing with keyless locks. Many were suspicious of the new systems, regarding them as being more open to corruption or breakdown. The reality was that electronic systems had fewer moving parts and, once they were installed, were potentially much harder to access than traditional mechanical systems. Angel could pick a five-pin tumbler lock with a screwdriver and a pin. A biometric reader was another matter entirely.