The Winner Read online

  LuAnn reached out as quickly as a striking rattler and grabbed his wrist. He winced as she squeezed it with a strength he had not anticipated. Big and strong as he was, it would’ve taken all his might to break that grip. “I said I wanted an answer, and it better be the right one.”

  “I earn my living” — he smiled and corrected himself — “I used to earn my living by taking care of little problems for people.”

  LuAnn continued to grip the wrist. “What problems? Did this have to do with the drugs Duane was dealing?”

  Romanello was already shaking his head. “I didn’t know anything about the drugs. Duane was already dead. Maybe he was holding out on his supplier or maybe skimming off the top and the other guy cut him up. Who knows? Who cares?”

  “What happened to the other guy?”

  “You were the one who hit him, weren’t you? Like I said in the note, dead as a doornail.” LuAnn didn’t answer. He paused and took a breath. “You can let go of my wrist any time now.”

  “You haven’t answered my question. And unless you answer it, you can just go call the sheriff, because you ain’t getting one red cent from me.”

  Romanello hesitated, but then his greed won out over his better judgment. “I went there to kill you,” he said simply.

  She slowly let go of his wrist after giving it one more intense ratchet. He took a minute to rub the circulation back in.

  “Why?” LuAnn demanded fiercely.

  “I don’t ask questions. I just do what I’m paid to do.”

  “Who told you to kill me?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.” She reached for his wrist again, but this time he was ready for her and jerked it out of danger. “I’m telling you I don’t know. My clients don’t just drop by and have coffee and chat about who they want me to take out. I got a call, I got half the money up front. Half when the job was done. All through the mail.”

  “I’m still alive.”

  “That’s right. But only because I got called off.”

  “By who?”

  “By whoever hired me.”

  “When did you get the call?”

  “I was in your trailer. I saw you get out of the car and take off. I went to my car and got the call then. Around ten-fifteen.”

  LuAnn sat back as the truth dawned on her: Jackson. So that’s how he took care of those who refused to go along.

  When she didn’t say anything, Romanello leaned forward. “So now that I’ve answered all your questions, why don’t we discuss the arrangements for our little deal?”

  LuAnn stared at him for a full minute before speaking. “If I find out you’re lying to me, you won’t like it one bit.”

  “You know, somebody who kills for a living usually strikes a little more fear into people than what you’re showing,” he said, his dark eyes flickering at her. He partially unzipped his jacket again so that the butt of the 9- mm was once more visible. “Don’t push it!” His tone was menacing.

  LuAnn glanced at the pistol with contempt before settling her eyes back on his. “I growed up surrounded by crazy people, Mr. Rainbow. Rednecks getting drunk and pointing twelve-gauge shotguns in people’s faces and then pulling the trigger just for fun, or cutting somebody up so bad their momma wouldn’t have knowed them and then betting on how long they’d take to bleed to death. Then there was the black boy who ended up in a lake with his throat slashed and his private parts gone, ’cause somebody thought he was too uppity hanging around a white girl. I’m pretty sure my daddy had something to do with that, not that the police down there gave a damn. So your little gun and your big man bullshit don’t mean crap to me. Let’s just get this over with and then you can get the hell out of my life.”

  The danger in the depths of Romanello’s eyes rapidly dissipated. “All right,” he said quietly, zipping his jacket back up.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A half hour later Romanello and LuAnn exited the deli. LuAnn climbed into a cab and headed back to her hotel where, to follow through on her cover story to Charlie, she would spend the next several hours at the beauty salon. Romanello walked down the street in the opposite direction, silently whistling to himself. Today had been a very good day. The arrangements he had made with LuAnn weren’t a hundred percent foolproof, but his gut told him she would honor the deal she had made. If the first installment of the money wasn’t in his account by close of business two days from now, then he would be on the phone to the police in Rikersville. She would pay, Romanello was sure of that. Why bring all that grief on yourself?

  Since he was in a festive mood, he decided to stop and buy a bottle of Chianti on the way to his apartment. His thoughts were already focused on the mansion he would buy in some faraway land to replace it. He had earned good money over the years exterminating human beings, but he had to be careful in how he spent it or where he kept it. The last thing he wanted was the IRS knocking on his door asking to see his W-2s. Now that problem was behind him. Instant, massive wealth allowed one to soar beyond the reach of the Revenue boys, and everyone else. Yes, it had been a great day, Romanello concluded.

  Not finding a cab handy, he opted for the subway. It was very crowded and he could barely find standing room in one of the train cars. He rode the subway for a number of stops before pushing through the masses and once again hitting the street. He turned the key in his door, closed and locked it, and walked into the kitchen to drop off the bottle. He was about to take off his jacket and pour himself a glass of Chianti when someone knocked at the door. He squinted through the peephole. The brown uniform of the UPS man filled his line of vision.

  “What’s up?” he asked through the door.

  “Got a delivery for an Anthony Romanello, this address.” The UPS man was busily scanning the package, an eight-by-eleven-inch container that bulged out at the center.

  Romanello opened the door.

  “You Anthony Romanello?”

  He nodded.

  “Just sign right here, please.” He handed Romanello a pen attached to what looked to be an electronic clipboard.

  “You’re not trying to serve me with legal papers, are you?” Romanello grinned as he signed for the package.

  “They couldn’t pay me enough to do that,” the UPS man replied. “My brother-in-law used to be a process server up in Detroit. After he was shot the second time, he went to work driving a bakery truck. Here you go. Have a good one.”

  Romanello closed the door and felt the contents of the package through the thin cardboard. A smile broke across his lips. The second installment on his LuAnn Tyler hit. He had been told of the possibility of being called off. But his employer had assured him that the rest of the money would be forthcoming regardless. The smile froze on his face as it suddenly struck him that the payment should have been mailed to his post office box. Nobody was supposed to know where he lived. Or his real name.

  He whirled around at the sound behind him.

  Jackson emerged from the shadows of the living room. Dressed as immaculately as when he had interviewed LuAnn, Jackson leaned against the doorway to the kitchen and looked Romanello up and down behind a pair of dark glasses. Jackson’s hair was streaked with gray and a neatly trimmed beard covered his chin. His cheeks were large and puffy, the ears red and flattened-looking, both the result of carefully designed latex molds.

  “Who the hell are you and how did you get in here?”

  In response, Jackson pointed one gloved hand at the package. “Open it.”

  “What?” Romanello growled back.

  “Count the money and make certain it’s all there. Don’t worry, you won’t hurt my feelings by doing so.”

  “Look—”

  Jackson slipped off the glasses and his eyes bored into Romanello. “Open it.” The voice was barely above a whisper and spoken in an entirely nonthreatening manner that made Romanello wonder why he was shivering inside. After all, he had murdered six people in premeditated fashion over the span of the last three years. Nobody intimidated him.
>
  He quickly ripped open the package and the contents spilled out. Romanello watched as the cut-up newspaper drifted to the floor.

  “Is this supposed to be funny? If it is, I’m not laughing.” He glowered at Jackson.

  Jackson shook his head sadly. “As soon as I hung up with you I knew my little slip over the phone would prove to be serious. I made mention of LuAnn Tyler and money, and money, as you well know, makes people do strange things.”

  “What exactly are you talking about?”

  “Mr. Romanello, you were hired to perform a job for me. Once that task was called off, your participation in my affairs was at an end. Or let me rephrase that: Your participation in my affairs was supposed to be at an end.”

  “They were at an end. I didn’t kill the lady and all I get from you is cut-up newspaper. I’m the one who should be pissed.”

  Jackson ticked the points off with his fingers. “You followed the woman back to New York. You, in fact, have been following her all over the city. You sent her a note. You met with her, and while I wasn’t privy to the conversation itself, from the looks of things the subject matter wasn’t pleasant.”

  “How the hell do you know all that?”

  “There isn’t much I don’t know, Mr. Romanello. There really isn’t.” Jackson put the glasses back on.

  “Well, you can’t prove anything.”

  Jackson laughed, a laugh that sent every hair on Romanello’s neck skyward and made him reach for his gun, a gun that was no longer there.

  Jackson looked at the man’s amazed face and shook his head sadly. “Subways are so crowded this time of night. Pickpockets, I understand, can stalk honest people with impunity. There’s no telling what else you might find missing.”

  “Well, like I said, you can’t prove it. And it’s not like you can just go to the cops. You hired me to kill someone. That doesn’t do a whole lot for your credibility.”

  “I have no interest in going to the authorities. You disobeyed my instructions and in doing so jeopardized my plans. I came here to inform you that I was aware of this, to plainly show you that the rest of your money has been forfeited because of your improper actions, and that I have decided upon the appropriate punishment. A punishment that I fully intend to mete out now.”

  Romanello drew himself up to his full six feet three inch height, towering over Jackson, and laughed heartily. “Well, if you came here to punish me, I hope you brought somebody else with you to do the punishing.”

  “I prefer to handle these matters myself.”

  “Well, then this is going to be your last job.” In a flash, Romanello’s hand went down to his ankle and he was erect again in a second, the jagged-edge blade in his right hand. He started forward and then stopped as he eyed the device in Jackson’s hand.

  “The touted advantages of strength and superior size are so often overrated, wouldn’t you agree?” said Jackson. The twin darts shot out from the taser gun and hit Romanello dead center in the chest. Jackson continued to squeeze the trigger, sending 120,000 volts of electricity along the thin metal cords that were attached to the darts. Romanello went down as though poleaxed, and he lay there staring up as Jackson stood over him.

  “I’ve held the trigger down for a full minute now, which will incapacitate you for at least fifteen minutes, more than ample for my purposes.”

  Romanello watched helplessly as Jackson knelt down beside him and gingerly pulled the two darts free and packed the apparatus back in his pocket. He carefully opened Romanello’s shirt. “Quite hairy, Mr. Romanello. A medical examiner will never pick up on the extremely small holes in your chest.” The next item Jackson withdrew from his coat would have left Romanello numb if he hadn’t already been. With his tongue feeling as big as a knobby tree root, Romanello thought he had suffered a stroke. His limbs were useless to him; there was no physical sensation at all. He could still see clearly, however, and suddenly wished he had been blinded as well. He watched in horror as Jackson methodically checked the hypodermic needle he held in his hand.

  “It’s mostly an innocuous saline solution, you know,” Jackson said as though he were addressing a science class. “I say mostly, because what’s lurking in here can be quite deadly under certain conditions.” He smiled down at Romanello and paused for a moment as he considered the import of his own words and then continued. “This solution contains prostaglandin, a substance produced naturally in the body. Normal levels are measured in micrograms. I’m about to give you a dose several thousand times that, measured in milligrams in fact. When this dose hits your heart it will cause the coronary arteries to severely constrict, triggering what doctors would technically term a myocardial infarction or coronary occlusion, also known as a heart attack of the most devastating kind. To tell you the truth, I’ve never combined the effects of electrification caused by the stun gun with this method of inflicting death. It might be interesting to observe the process.” Jackson was betraying no more emotion than if he were about to dissect a frog in biology class. “Since prostaglandin occurs naturally in the body, as I mentioned, it’s also naturally metabolized by the body, meaning there will be no suspiciously high traces left for a medical examiner to detect. I’m currently working on a poison to which I will attach an enzyme, encapsulated by a special coating. The protective cover is quickly broken down by the components in the bloodstream; however, the poison will have ample time to do its work before that occurs. Once the protective coating is gone the enzymes will instantly react with the poison compound and break it down, in effect destroying it. They use a similar process to clean up oil slicks. It’s absolutely untraceable. I was planning to use it on you tonight; however, the process is not yet perfected and I hate to rush things of that nature. Chemistry, after all, requires patience and precision. Hence, the fallback to the old reliable: prostaglandin.”

  Jackson held the needle very close to Romanello’s neck, seeking the perfect entry site. “They will find you here, a young, strapping man felled in his prime by natural causes. Another statistic in the ongoing health debate.”

  Romanello’s eyes almost exploded out of his head as he struggled with every ounce of will to break the grip of inertia the stun gun had caused. The veins stood out on his neck with the effort he was exerting and Jackson quietly thanked him for providing such a convenient place, right before the needle plunged into the jugular vein and its contents poured into his body. Jackson smiled and gently patted Romanello on the head as his pupils shot back and forth like a metronome.

  From his bag, Jackson extracted a razor blade. “Now, a sharp-eyed medical examiner might pick up on the hypodermic’s entry site, so we will have to address that.” Using the razor, Jackson nicked Romanello’s skin at the precise place the needle had gone in. A drop of blood floated to the surface of the skin. Jackson replaced the razor in the bag and pulled out a Band-Aid. He pressed it across the fresh cut and sat back to study his handiwork, smiling as he did so.

  “I’m sorry that it’s come to this, as your services might have been useful to me in the future.” Jackson picked up one of Romanello’s limp hands and made the sign of the cross over the stricken man’s chest. “I know that you were raised Roman Catholic, Mr. Romanello,” he said earnestly, “although you obviously have strayed from the teachings of the Church, but I’m afraid a priest to administer last rites is out of the question. I hardly think it matters where you’re going anyway, do you? Purgatory is such a silly notion after all.” He picked up Romanello’s knife and placed it back in the sheath strapped to his ankle.

  Jackson was about to stand up when he noted the edge of the newspaper sticking out from the inside of Romanello’s jacket pocket. He nimbly plucked it out. As he read the article detailing the story of the two murders, drugs, LuAnn’s disappearance, and the police’s search for her, his features became grim. That explained a lot. Romanello was blackmailing her. Or attempting to. Had he discovered this piece of information a day earlier, Jackson’s solution would have been simple. He would�
�ve executed LuAnn Tyler on the spot. Now he could not do that and he hated that he had lost partial control of the situation. She had already been confirmed as the winning ticket holder. She was scheduled to appear to the world in less than twenty-four hours as the lottery’s newest winner. Yes, now her requests made more sense. He folded up the piece of paper and put it in his pocket. Like it or not, he was wedded to LuAnn Tyler, warts and all. It was a challenge, and, if nothing else, he loved a challenge. However, he would take control back. He would tell her exactly what she had to do, and if she didn’t follow his instructions precisely, then he would kill her after she won the lottery.

  Jackson gathered up the shredded newspaper and remnants of the UPS package. The dark suit he was wearing came off with a tug on certain discreet parts of the garment, and together with the now revealed body moldings that had given Jackson his girth, all of these items were packed in a pizza carrier bag that Jackson pulled from a corner of the living room. Underneath, a much slimmer Jackson was wearing the blue and white shirt proclaiming him to be a Domino’s Pizza delivery person. From one of his pockets, he pulled out a piece of thread and, edging it carefully under the putty on his nose, lifted the piece cleanly off and stuck it in the pizza box. The mole, beard, and ear pieces he similarly discarded. He swabbed his face down with alcohol from a bottle pulled from his pocket, removing the shadows and highlights that had aged his face. His hands worked quickly and methodically from years of long practice. Last, he combed a gel through his hair that effectively removed the sprayed-on streaks of gray. He checked his altered appearance in a small mirror hanging on the wall. Then this chameleon landscape was swiftly altered by a small bristly mustache applied with spirit gum, and a hair extender hung in a long ponytail out from under the Yankee baseball cap he was now putting on. Dark glasses covered his eyes; dress shoes were replaced with tennis shoes. He once again checked his appearance: completely different. He had to smile. It was quite a talent. When Jackson quietly left the building a few seconds later, Romanello’s features were relaxed, peaceful. They would forever remain so.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN