Dead reckoning, p.18
Dead Reckoning, page 18
part #4 of Jack Sheridan Series
“Well, you did say Carson didn’t strike you as the brightest bulb.”
“That’s true.” Jack nodded. “But he can’t possibly be so stupid he doesn’t recognize the fact that a beautiful, rich young widow isn’t going to sit at home alone every night for the next twenty to thirty years pining over the punk who got himself convicted of murder.”
Edie rested her head on Jack’s shoulder as she considered his words. “Makes sense, I guess,” she said.
He shrugged. “And even if he was that monumentally stupid, Burke would hammer away at the point until he recognized the truth.
“And once that happened,” Jack concluded, “Burke would finally bring up the subject of a plea deal. Plead guilty to the murder charge, while turning states’ evidence against Amber Spinelli, and the district attorney’s office would agree to allow for the possibility of parole in Carson’s sentence. They would dangle the carrot of the potential for freedom in ten or twenty years in exchange for his testimony to convict the second person in the conspiracy.”
“You don’t think they could convict Spinelli without Carson’s testimony?”
Jack shook his head. “I doubt they would even try. There’s no direct evidence absent Carson’s testimony, and given the way district attorneys look at the world through the lens of public opinion, there’s no way they would put a beautiful young widow on trial unless they feel they have something like a ninety-eight-point-six percent probability of getting a conviction.”
Jack fell silent and Edie continued to rest her head on his shoulder. The TV news had moved on to the sports report, and how the Red Sox weren’t living up to the spring’s hype. Again.
“How do you know all this?” she finally asked. “Are you secretly a trial lawyer in your spare time?”
Jack grinned. “God forbid. I’m not that twisted. And I have no more secrets, remember? My life is an open book, at least for you.”
Edie hugged him tightly. “And it’s my favorite book.”
Another stretch of silence, as the weather report confirmed that a high-pressure area stalled over New England would continue the region’s run of beautiful conditions indefinitely.
“I’m worried,” Edie said suddenly.
“About what?”
“You said Burke is smart and dogged. He’s talked to you at length. He’s seen you face-to-face. What happens if he figures out who you are?”
Jack stroked her shaggy blonde hair and then kissed the top of her head. “I’ll be okay, I promise.”
“Are you just trying to make me feel better or do you really mean it?”
“You always get right to the heart of the matter, don’t you?”
“Answer the question.”
Now it was Jack’s turn to fall silent.
“Because if you’re trying to make me feel better,” Edie said wryly, “this ain’t helping.”
“The last thing I want to do is worry you,” Jack said. “But I also want to give you an honest answer. The fact of the matter is I think I’ll be fine, but there are no guarantees in this world. Yes, Burke saw me face-to-face and yes, we talked more than once. But he had suffered a major head wound when we were in the same room together, and he was woozy and far from living his best life at that moment.”
“Do you think he would recognize you if he saw you again?”
“I have no way of knowing,” Jack said.
“But if someone were to stick a gun to your head and demand your opinion.”
He sighed. “I think if we were to pass on the street I’d probably be fine. But if he were to see me in the context of a law enforcement situation, then yes, it might flip a switch in his mind.”
Edie shivered as if suffering from a chill. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” He hugged her tightly and kissed her again. “My fingerprints are nowhere in the system, thanks to The Organization’s smoke and mirrors, and neither is my DNA. I’ve never been convicted of any crime, or even charged with one for that matter. I have to believe the risk is minimal.”
“Minimal,” Edie repeated.
“That’s right. I mean, if Burke and I happen to get into a car accident and we need to exchange license and insurance information I’m probably screwed. But otherwise, I’m not too worried. Even though he lives and works in New England, it’s not like our paths should ever cross. He’s half an hour away on the coast, and as you may have noticed I don’t spend much time at the beach.”
“So I don’t need to worry.”
“You don’t need to worry. There is, however, something you do need to do.”
“And what is that?”
“Look at me.”
She lifted her head and Jack kissed her hard.
He picked up the remote and turned off the TV.
Epilogue
Matt Burke sat at his home computer, viewing the footage of the Rocco Spinelli murder for roughly the three hundredth time.
But he wasn’t looking at Spinelli.
The dead mobster was old news.
As part of the deal that led to the arrest of Amber Spinelli on an accessory to murder charge, David Carson had agreed to plead guilty to second degree murder, with the understanding that a life sentence would be off the table and the possibility of parole would be on it.
Then he spilled his guts.
He’d met Amber Spinelli by chance—or so he thought at the time—eight months ago at a Dorchester deli not far from his mother’s home. Spinelli sat down at his table and began chatting him up without introducing herself and without asking permission to join him. She simply injected herself into his life as if she had every right to be there, as if knowing her beauty would allow her to do so.
And, of course, she had been right.
It never occurred to the younger man to question her possible motives. It never occurred to him to wonder why a model-beautiful blonde in her mid-twenties might show so much as a passing interest in an acne-scarred street punk she’d never met and likely had nothing in common with.
By the time Carson discovered the blonde beauty was married to the man he’d been pestering for a spot in the Palermo crime family, he considered it nothing more than a long-overdue lucky break after a lifetime of shitty ones.
They hit it off immediately—again, so Carson thought—and before the day was out had slept together in a dive motel room, Amber blowing his mind as well as other things.
Looking back, Carson said, he could see he’d been reeled in like the fish he was. Soon they were meeting almost every day, having sex several times a week, and talking and texting via burner phones. Only after his arrest did it occur to David Carson to wonder why the married woman would insist the single man utilize an untraceable phone for his end of their conversations.
Within a week of their first meeting, Amber had begun complaining about her abusive husband and daydreaming wistfully—out loud, of course, and in David’s presence—about how wonderful it would be if Rocco were somehow to be removed from the picture so the two of them could live together forever, blissfully happy and blah, blah, blah.
David bought it all, thus proving, Burke thought, the old adage that there’s no fool quite as foolish as a fool in love.
Over a period of twelve hours of videotaped interviews, Carson swore the entire murder plot was hatched by Amber Spinelli, including planting the suggestion that the Palermo crime family would be so impressed with David’s cunning and cleverness if he were able to eliminate Rocco—“everybody inside the Palermo family hates him, anyway,” she supposedly told him—and then pin the murder on an unsuspecting sap, that a key position in the family would be waiting for him if he could pull it off.
The tapes were gold.
They were better than gold.
Obviously Carson tried to paint himself in the best possible light, and any jury worth its salt would take that fact into consideration. But the video was damning for Amber Spinelli, and Burke had seen enough defendants in enough criminal trials to know the blonde would be going away for a long time.
All of which did his heart good, but it was a celebration for another time. Tonight’s viewing consisted of the short snippet of video showing the appearance inside the murdered Rocco Spinelli’s bedroom of the second visitor to the home that evening: the professional assassin that damned fool David Carson had tried to frame for murder.
The man entered the bedroom and dropped into a crouch, gun out. He took in the bloody crime scene, focusing on the unmoving body of the victim and then scanning the room from left to right. Burke willed the man to look up toward the ceiling—and the hidden video camera—but no matter how many times he rewound the video and played it again, the visitor stubbornly refused to do so.
After a moment, the man approached Spinelli and checked for a pulse. Then he tilted his head and gazed out the window, clearly sensing movement. He duck-walked to the window and looked out, then turned and bolted out the bedroom door, not seeming panicked but moving quickly.
At no time did the recording show the man’s face.
And that bothered Burke. The assassin had to be the same man who’d tipped Burke off to David Carson—not that I wouldn’t have ended up focusing on Carson anyway, he thought drily—and the same man who quite possibly saved Burke’s life inside the Carson home.
Not to mention saving his career. Had Burke lost Carson after getting the murder suspect delivered to him on a silver platter, he might well have been forced to retire, particularly if Carson had gone on to injure or kill anyone else while on the run from the law.
But the mysterious assassin had prevented all that from happening.
Why would he do that? Why would he save Burke? Why would he help Burke at all? And most importantly, why would he allow Burke to see his face inside the Carson home? Why risk it?
Burke had been badly injured, concussed and with a deep gash in his skull that had required thirty-some-odd sutures to close, but his eyes still worked. He’d gotten a good look at the man and he knew he would recognize the assassin should they ever meet again.
But it likely wouldn’t matter, because they would never meet again, unless Burke could uncover some piece of evidence that would point him in the man’s direction.
He shook his head and cursed under his breath. He hated loose ends, particularly when those loose ends were directly linked to a murder case.
A rapping on his closed office door caused him to jump.
Through the door a female voice called, “Come on, Burke, are you going to be in there all night?”
He ran his fingers across the wound in his skull and winced. Half the time it hurt like the devil and the other half it itched maddeningly.
“I’m sorry, honey,” he answered. “Its just this case. It’s driving me crazy.”
“You forgot, didn’t you,” the voice called.
“I most certainly did not,” he answered immediately. “Uhhhh…remind me what it was I didn’t forget?”
“It’s our anniversary, ya big lug.” The door swung open to reveal Connie Burke, dressed in a see-through nightgown Burke didn’t recognize.
And nothing else.
They had been married twenty-seven years and to this day, Burke couldn’t quite figure out why she’d chosen him. Connie would turn fifty next summer and she still looked better than most women half her age. And she’d never questioned Burke’s choice of careers, nor his dedication to it.
She was perfect, in other words. And despite his occasional forgetfulness of things like the date of their wedding anniversary, he knew they were perfect together.
“Well?” she said. “Too busy to celebrate?”
He cleared his throat.
Stopped the video.
Decided his search for the mysterious assassin could wait.
Then he smiled. “Nope. I’m not too busy at all. Happy Anniversary, babe.”
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Jack Sheridan will return soon in his fifth pulp thriller. To be the first to learn about new releases, and for the opportunity to win free ebooks, signed copies of print books, and other swag, take a moment to sign up for Allan Leverone’s email newsletter at AllanLeverone.com.
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About the author
Allan Leverone is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of twenty-two novels, as well as a 2012 Derringer Award winner for excellence in short mystery fiction and a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee. He lives in Londonderry, New Hampshire with his wife Sue, and has three grown children and three beautiful grandchildren. He loves to hear from readers and other authors; connect on Facebook, Twitter @AllanLeverone, and at AllanLeverone.com.
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Also by Allan Leverone
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The Lonely Mile
Final Vector
The Organization: A Jack Sheridan Pulp Thriller
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The Tracie Tanner Collection: Three Complete Thriller Novels
Allan Leverone, Dead Reckoning
