Val’s ranger training kicked in: if you find yourself in an untenable position, remove yourself as rapidly as possible. He sprang up, threw some clothes into a gym bag, and bolted. It wasn’t the FBI that worried him now.
He took the stairs three at a time, burst through the front door, and spotted the black Lincoln at the curb, Marco standing by its open rear door with a semi-automatic in his right hand.
“Get in.”
Val dropped the gym bag, shrugged, and shuffled toward the car. When he got within reach, he lashed out with both hands, grabbing the pistol by its slide with his left and cracking Marco’s forearm with his right. The maneuver was supposed to end with the gun in Val’s left hand, but he was out of practice. The semi-automatic fell and discharged a round as it clattered on the pavement. Val clutched the back of Marco’s neck and cracked his head against the roof of the car.
But the Lincoln’s front doors were opening now. Two more suits climbed out.
*
Agent Hanrahan sat behind his desk in the federal building on Dorrance Street, an unlit cigar clamped between his jaws. Burns and Twisdale, the Gardner security chief, sat in leather chairs on the other side of the desk. They all looked glum.
“Carrozza still isn’t talking,” Hanrahan said. “Claims he bought the ku at a flea market and doesn’t know anything about any stinking museum robbery.”
“He expects us to believe that?” Twisdale asked.
“Of course not,” Hanrahan explained, “but it’s his story and he’s sticking to it.”
“We still got him for possession of stolen goods,” Burns said.
“Like I give a shit,” Twisdale said. “The rest of the art is still missing. What are you two fuck-ups doing about that?”
The agents didn’t say anything.
“What about Sciarra?” Twisdale asked. “Think he might break if you question him again?”
“Maybe,” Burns said, “but the asshole’s in the wind.”
“What? How did you let that happen?”
“Two days ago, when the Dispatch story broke, we rolled up to his Federal Hill apartment at six a.m.,” Hanrahan explained, “but Sciarra wasn’t home. A neighbor told us he liked to walk down to Broadway for coffee and the paper first thing every morning, so we drove over there. We checked three or four coffee places along the street, then headed back to Sciarra’s. The same neighbor said he’d come back but that a couple of bruisers forced him into a black car and took off.”
“Did he get the plate?” Twisdale asked.
“No.”
“Christ! Why in hell did I bring you clowns into this? Should have gone with my first instinct and handled it myself.”
The cell on Hanrahan’s desk played the theme from Dragnet. He answered it, listened for a minute, said, “We’ll be there in ten,” and clicked off. “Well, gentlemen, Sciarra’s not in the wind anymore.”
*
By the time Tisdale and the agents arrived at the construction site behind Rhode Island Hospital, Providence detectives had already cordoned it off with yellow police tape. They ducked under it and looked down at the footing for the basement of a planned suite of doctors’ offices.
“A security guard who works for the contractor called it in,” a Providence detective told them. “Half an hour later and the body would have been buried under eight feet of wet concrete.”
“Medical examiner on the way?” Burns asked.
“Like we need him to tell us the cause of death,” the detective said. “I can count the bullet holes from here.”
Tisdale held his head in his hands.
Hanrahan gave him a brotherly clap on the shoulder. “Look on the bright side,” the agent said. “There’s one less mob scumbag running loose on the streets.”
ARMORY PARK
BY TAYLOR M. POLITES
Armory District
The squawks of the chickens jerked Cal awake. Red and blue lights flashed off the flat white ceiling. Laura slept, her face toward the wall, Elmo curled at her feet. Cal peered through the narrow blinds. Across the lane, police officers milled around an old Caprice Classic, a decommissioned police cruiser painted a flat black that accentuated scar-like bolt holes where the top lights and flood lamp had been. Parked in a line behind it, their lights sparking like strobes, were two actual police cruisers, Providence PD. There seemed to be others down toward Willow Street. The dead-end lane could not fit more.
Cal moved to the living room for a better view. The chickens squawked and clucked, bobbing and turning in their little enclosure behind hexagonal wire. He could see them from the side window, all six safe but unsettled. Two EMTs rolled a white-sheeted gurney to the black car. There was a man inside. Not moving. The chickens cackled. The police radios cackled back.
His hands tingled like they were asleep. He had been expecting something like this since Laura had insisted they move to the neighborhood. She would never admit she had made a mistake, but how much evidence did you need?