Peter Pan Must Die (37 page)

The garden was the same width as the building, forty or fifty feet, and extended out at least twice that distance in length. The only break in the redbrick walls enclosing it was a set of large double doors in the far end. They were wide open, framing a view of the river, the jogging path, and the manicured tranquillity of Willow Rest. The view from here was similar to the view from the problematic apartment three blocks away. Only the angle was different.

The garden itself was a pleasant combination of grass paths, vegetable beds, and herbaceous borders. The waiter pointed to a shaded corner, to a small white café table with two wrought-iron chairs. Adonis Angelidis was sitting in one of them.

When Gurney arrived at the table, Angelidis nodded toward the empty chair. “Please.”

A second waiter materialized and placed a tray in the center of the table. There were two demitasse cups of black coffee, two cordial glasses, and an almost full bottle of ouzo, the anise-flavored Greek liqueur.

“You like strong coffee?” Angelidis’s voice was low and rough—like the purring of a large cat.

“Yes.”

“You might like it with ouzo. Better than sugar.”

“Perhaps I’ll try some.”

“You have an okay drive here, yes?”

“No problem.”

Angelidis nodded. “Beautiful day.”

“Beautiful garden.”

“Yes. Fresh garlic. Mint. Oregano. Very good.” Angelidis shifted slightly in his seat. “What can I do for you?”

Gurney took the cup of coffee closest to him and sipped it thoughtfully. On the drive up from Walnut Crossing he’d concocted an opening gambit that now, as he sat facing this man who might well be one of the cleverest mobsters in America, struck him as rather feeble. But he decided to give it a shot anyway. Sometimes a Hail Mary pass is all you’ve got left.

“Some information came my way that might interest you.”

Angelidis’s gaze was mildly curious.

Gurney went on. “Just a rumor, of course.”

“Of course.”

“About the Organized Crime Task Force.”

“Rotten shits. No principles.”

“What I heard,” said Gurney, taking another sip of his coffee, “is that they’re looking to pin Spalter on you.”

“
Carl?
You see what I mean? Bunch of shits! Why would I want to lose Carl? I told you before, like a son to me. Why would I think to do such a thing? Disgusting!” Angelidis’s big boxer’s hands had closed into fists.

“The scenario they’re putting together is that you and Carl had a falling-out, and—”

“Bullshit!”

“Like I said, the scenario they’re putting together—”

“What the fuck’s a
scenario
?”

“The hypothesis, the story they’re making up.”

“Making it up, all right. Slimy shits!”

“Their hypothesis is that you and Carl had a falling-out, you hired a hit on him through Fat Gus, and then you got nervous and decided to cover your tracks by getting rid of Gus—maybe doing that one yourself.”

“
Myself?
They think I hammered nails into his head?”

“I’m just telling you what I hear.”

Angelidis sat back in his chair, a shrewd look replacing the anger in his eyes. “This is coming from where?”

“The plan to hang the murder on you?”

“Yeah. This coming from the top of OCTF?”

Something about his tone gave Gurney the idea that Angelidis might have a line to someone inside the task force. Someone who would be aware of the major initiatives.

“Not the way I hear it. I get the impression that the move against you is a little off-center. Unofficial. Couple of guys who’ve got a bug up their ass about you. That ring any bells?”

Angelidis didn’t answer. His jaw muscles tightened. He remained quiet for a long minute. When he spoke, his tone was flat. “You drove up here from Walnuts just to bring me this information?”

“Something else, too. I found out who the hitter was.”

Angelidis became very still.

Gurney watched him carefully. “Petros Panikos.”

Something changed in Angelidis’s eyes. If Gurney had to guess, he’d say the man was trying to conceal a stab of fear. “How do you know this?”

Gurney shook his head and smiled. “Better not to say how I know.”

For the first time since Gurney arrived, Angelidis looked around at the garden and its brick walls, his eyes stopping at the doors that were open to the view of the river and cemetery. “Why are you bringing this to me?”

“I thought you might want to help me.”

“Help you do what?”

“I want to find Panikos. I want to bring him in. To cut a deal, he may be willing to tell us who bought the Spalter hit. Since that wasn’t you, OCTF can go fuck themselves. You’d like that, right?”

Angelidis rested his burly forearms on the table and shook his head.

“What’s the problem?”

“The problem?” Angelidis emitted a short, humorless laugh. “The part about you bringing him in. That don’t happen. Trust me. That don’t happen. You got no idea who you’re dealing with.”

Again Gurney shrugged, turning up his palms. “Maybe I need to know a little more.”

“Maybe a lot more.”

“Tell me what I’m missing.”

“Like what?”

“How does Panikos work?”

“He shoots people. Mostly in the head. Mostly in the right eye. Or he blows them up.”

“How about his contracts? How are they set up?”

“Through a fixer. An arranger.”

“A guy like Fat Gus?”

“Like Fat Gus. Top shelf for Panikos. Only a handful of guys in the world he deals with. They do the transaction. They transfer the payment.”

“He gets his instructions from them?”

“Instructions?” Angelidis let out a guttural laugh. “He takes the name, the deadline, the money. The rest is up to him.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Let’s say you want a certain target whacked. Theoretically. For the sake of argument. You pay Peter Pan’s price. The target gets whacked. End of story.
How
he gets whacked is Peter’s business. He don’t take
instructions
.”

“Let me get this straight. The nails in Fat Gus’s head—that wouldn’t have been part of the deal?”

The point seemed to interest Angelidis. “No … that would
not
have been part of the deal. Not if the hitter was Peter.”

“So that would have been his own initiative, not an order from the client?”

“I’m telling you, he don’t take orders—just names and cash.”

“So the nasty shit he did to Gus—that would have been
his
idea?”

“You hear me? He don’t take orders.”

“So why would he do what he did?”

“I got no idea. That’s the problem here. Knowing Panikos and Gurikos, it makes no sense.”

“No sense that Panikos would worry that Gurikos might know something damaging? Or that he might talk? Or that he might already have talked?”

“You gotta understand something here. Gus did
time
—a
lot
of time. Twelve fucking years in that Attica prison shithole, when he
could’ve been out in two. All he had to do was give up a name. But he didn’t. And the guy couldn’t have touched him. There wasn’t gonna be no retribution. So it wasn’t fear. You know what it was?”

Gurney had heard stories like this before, and he knew the punch line. “Principles?”

“You bet your fucking ass, principles! Steel balls!”

Gurney nodded. “Which leaves me wondering—why on earth did Panikos do what he did? None of this hangs together.”

“I told you, it don’t make no sense. Gus was like Switzerland. Quiet. Didn’t talk to nobody about nobody. This was a known and respected fact. Secret of his success. Principles.”

“Okay. Gus was a rock. What about Panikos? What’s he all about?”

“Peter? Peter is … special. Only takes jobs that look impossible. Lot of determination. High success rate.”

“And yet …?”

“Yet what?”

“I’m hearing a reservation in your voice.”

“A reservation?” Angelidis paused before going on with evident care. “Peter … is used only in … in
very
difficult situations.”

“Why?”

“Because along with his skills … there’s some risks.”

“Like what?”

Angelidis made a face as if he were regurgitating yesterday’s ouzo. “The KGB used to assassinate people by putting radioactive poison in their food. Tremendously effective. But you got to be very, very, careful using that shit. That’s like Peter.”

“Panikos is that scary?”

“Get on his wrong side, could maybe be a problem.”

Gurney thought about that. The notion that getting on the wrong side of a determined, crazy killer
could
be a problem made him want to laugh out loud. “Did you ever hear that he liked to set fires?”

“I might’ve heard that. Part of the package you’re dealing with. Which I don’t think you really understand.”

“I’ve faced some difficult people over the years.”

“
Difficult?
That’s pretty funny. Let me tell you a story about Peter—so you know about
difficult
.” Angelidis leaned forward, extending his palms on the tabletop. “There were these two towns, not far
apart. A strong man in each town. This created problems—mainly, who had rights to various things between the two towns. As the towns got bigger, closer together, the problems got bigger. Lot of shit happened.
Escalation
.” He articulated the word carefully. “
Escalation
, back and forth. Finally, there is no possibility of peace. No possibility of
agreement
. So one of these men decides that the other one has to go. He decides to hire little Peter to take care of it. Peter at that time is just getting into the business.”

“The hit business?” asked Gurney blandly.

“Yeah. His profession. Anyway, he does the job. Clean, quick, no problems. Then he shows up at the man’s place of business to get paid. The man he did the job for. The man tells him he has to wait—a cash-flow problem. Peter says, ‘No, you pay me now.’ Man says, ‘No, you gotta wait.’ Peter says this makes him unhappy. Man laughs at him. So Peter shoots him. Bang. Just like that.”

Gurney shrugged. “Never a good idea to stiff a hitter.”

Angelidis’s mouth twitched into what might have been a split-second grin. “Never a good idea. True. But the story don’t end there. Peter goes to the man’s house and shoots his wife and two kids. Then he goes around town, shoots the man’s brother and five cousins, wives, kills the whole fucking family. Twenty-one people. Twenty-one shots to the head.”

“That’s quite a reaction.”

Angelidis’s mouth widened, showing a row of glistening capped teeth. Then he uttered an eruptive growling sound that Gurney thought was probably the most unnerving laugh he’d ever heard.

“Yeah. ‘Quite a reaction.’ You’re a funny guy, Gurney. ‘Quite a reaction.’ I got to remember that.”

“Seems like a chancy thing to do, though—from a business point of view.”

“What do you mean, ‘chancy’?”

“I would think, after that—after killing twenty-one people because of an overdue payment—potential customers might worry about dealing with him. They might want to deal with someone less … touchy.”

“ ‘Touchy’? I’m telling you, Gurney, you’re a fucking riot. ‘Touchy’—that’s good! But what you don’t understand is that Peter has a special advantage. Peter is
unique
.”

“How so?”

“Peter takes the
impossible
jobs. The ones other guys say can’t be done—too risky, the target is too protected, shit like that. That’s where Peter comes in. Likes to prove he’s better than anyone else. You see what I mean? Peter is a unique resource. Highly motivated. High determination. Nine times out of ten he gets the job done. But the thing is … there’s always the possibility of some collateral damage.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Example? Like maybe the time he was hired to hit a target on one of them high-speed Greek island ferries, but he didn’t know what the guy looked like, only that he was going to be on the boat at a particular time. So what did he do? He blew the fucking thing out of the water, killed about a hundred people. But I’ll tell you something else. It ain’t just that he produces collateral damage—the word is he likes it. Fires. Explosions. Bigger the better.”

That started Gurney wondering about a lot of things. But he kept coming back to one central question: Exactly what was it that made Panikos seem like the right choice for the Spalter hit? What made that job seem impossible?

Angelidis interrupted his train of thought. “Hey, I almost forgot, one more thing—the thing everyone who was there still talks about. The thing that really got to them. You ready for this?” It wasn’t really a question. “While little Peter was going around the town, wiping that whole fucking family off the face of the earth—guess what he was doing.” He paused, real excitement in his eyes. “Guess.”

Gurney shook his head. “I don’t guess.”

“Don’t matter. You couldn’t guess it anyway.” He leaned forward another inch. “He was singing.”

Before Gurney left the restaurant garden, he looked out again through the open doors in the back wall. He could see the Spalter plot clearly—all of it, with no light pole obstructing any part of it.

He heard Angelidis’s fingers tapping restlessly on the tabletop.

Gurney turned toward him and asked, “Do you ever think about Carl when you look over at Willow Rest?”

“Sure. I think about him.”

Watching Angelidis’s fingers drumming on the metal surface, Gurney asked, “Does knowing that Panikos was the paid hitter tell you anything about the buyer?”

“Sure.” The drumming stopped. “It tells me that he knew his way around. You don’t go to your phone book, look up ‘Panikos,’ and say, ‘Hey, I got a job for you.’ It don’t work that way.”

Gurney nodded. “Very few people would know how to get in touch with him,” he said, sounding like he was talking to himself.

“Peter accepts contracts through maybe half a dozen guys in the world. You have to be well placed to know who those guys are.”

Gurney let a silence build between them before asking, “Would you say that Kay Spalter was well placed?”

Angelidis stared at him. He appeared to find the suggestion surprising, but his only answer was a shrug.