A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(93)

“Good. Now, you’ve got yourself in trouble because you wanted one of your men’s girlfriend, so you killed him. Did you ever go to Sunday school, Mr. Crane?”

“I guess so. Yes.”

“Does the name Uriah the Hittite mean anything to you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Just curious. It doesn’t matter. We’ve gone to quite a bit of trouble to keep you protected so you won’t be sent away and your business broken up or abandoned. Two nights ago a cop was sneaking around the house of Walter Slawicky. You know him, right?”

“Yes.” Crane’s mouth was dry, but he managed to say, “He went to the police for me to say that he’d sold the rifle to Jimmy Sanders.”

“Sanders is the Indian you were trying to pin the shooting on, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I think the cop was looking for the place where Slawicky hid the rifle.”

“There isn’t supposed to be any such place. He was supposed to take it out in a boat and drop the pieces in Lake Ontario.”

The old man’s eyes seemed to sharpen. “Do you know for certain that he got rid of the rifle?”

Crane paused, then said, “I don’t know why he wouldn’t. Having it would get him into trouble, maybe get him charged with murder.”

“You don’t know why he wouldn’t.” The old man almost smiled. “I guess you just haven’t been in trouble much. When you’ve been in trouble you don’t like it, and you think about stashing away things that you might trade to get out of it next time—information, evidence. Maybe someday the cops will have Slawicky on a big charge. If he has the weapon, maybe he can trade it, and you, for a little slack. And maybe he doesn’t trust you. He knows you killed your other guy, Nick. Why not him?”

Crane stared down at his feet, and shook his head. Things just kept getting more complicated and awful.

“Okay,” said the old man. “Enough about him. Time for a sad story. The other night, we had some men watching to learn more about this Slawicky—maybe see if he still has that rifle—and who shows up, but a cop? He’s snooping around Slawicky’s, obviously looking for something. So one of the men shoots him.”

“Those were your men?”

“Not my men, just men. One of them, thirty-one years old with a good family, was there. He and his friends didn’t know there wasn’t only one cop. A second cop who had apparently been in the car took out a shotgun and shot him in the chest. He died.”

“I’m sorry,” said Crane. “That’s terrible.”

“I’m sorry too. He was a good man. He can’t even be given a decent burial for a long time, because he was connected with a lot of other people the police would like to get at.”

“No burial?”

“His friends picked him up so his body wouldn’t be found. You’re going to take a tiny part of the responsibility. He’s in that SUV back there. You’re going to hold on to him for a while until arrangements can be made.”

“Here? In a storage space?”

The old man looked at him, the dark eyes bright like the eyes of a predatory bird. “Do you object?”

Crane said, “No. I don’t object. He can go in J-nineteen.”

“Go tell the guys back by the SUV. In fact, get in and show them where to go. When you’re finished, come back and give Mr. Salamone the keys.”

“Yes, sir.” Crane began to walk. His legs felt stiff like stilts, and he had a moment when the pavement rose up in front of him and he felt faint, but then the men from the SUV got in and opened the passenger door for him. He was relieved to sit.

The driver said, “Where to?”

“You can go around this way,” Crane said. He pointed at the end of the first row of storage spaces. “J is in the third row, and the bay is number nineteen.”

When the SUV reached J-19, one man got out and pulled up the door of the storage bay and the other backed the SUV up into the mouth of it. Then the two men got out, opened the hatch, and pulled out a cooler of the sort that Crane had seen at chamber of commerce picnics, about five feet long, two feet wide and deep. He imagined a man crammed in there with his knees bent. Crane moved in a reflex to help carry the cooler to the back of the storage bay and set it down on the concrete surface. He could see the cover was latched and locked, and sealed with duct tape.

The driver got back in the SUV and pulled it clear, and the other man pulled the door down and slid the bolt in. Crane took one of the locks out of its box and clasped it on the bolt. The man at the door gave the lock a tug to be sure it was fully engaged, and then got in the backseat.

A WOMAN DROVE UP TO the front gate of the storage facility in a small blue car and took a ticket, then drove in through the open gate. She parked in a space close to the main building a few feet to the right of a gray Cadillac. She had a cell phone pressed against her left ear and she was talking into it. Her window was shut, so Salamone and Mr. Malconi couldn’t hear anything she was saying, and she didn’t look at them. All they could really see was the cell phone and her left hand.

Mr. Malconi said to Salamone, “I’ve got some places to be. You can handle the rest of this, right?”

“Sure,” said Salamone. “I’ll bring you the keys in a day or two.”