The Heaven Trilogy (100 page)
Jan quickly pulled the drapes. He shot her a fleeting smile, grabbed her hand, and hurried for the door. “If there is danger it will likely be at Ivena’s house, not here.”
“He said three days,” Helen said. The street was clear and they walked briskly for the car.
“That was while he still had two good hands. I may have changed his mind.”
Helen uttered a small nervous laugh and climbed into the Cadillac. But there was no humor in her voice. They sped from the house and Helen demanded Jan tell her exactly what had happened at the Towers.
He did.
Helen knew then that someone would die. That much was now a certainty. The only question was who.
CHARLIE WILKS stood in Glenn’s office, stunned by the bloodied floor before him. Glenn sat limply in his chair, weakened by the ordeal. It was an unusual sight to be sure; not because Charlie was unaccustomed to bullet wounds or puddles of blood, but because it was Glenn’s blood. The strong man had been visited by his match.
A doctor Glenn called Klowawski had already fixed his shoulder in a temporary sling and bound his hands in white strips of gauze like a boxer. The repair work would be done in the clinic, but not until Glenn had had his say with Charlie.
“You’re sure it was Jan Jovic who did this?” Charlie asked. “Not someone who looks—”
“It was the preacher, you idiot! He stood here for ten minutes waving my own gun at me. You think I imagined the whole thing?”
Charlie glanced at the bloodied shirt glistening in a heap on the floor. “Of course not.” Someone had tried to mop some of the blood from the floor with the white cotton shirt and succeeded only in smearing circles on the tile. Glenn had this coming to him, and for that Charlie felt no sympathy. But the law did prohibit citizens from storming into other people’s offices and blowing holes in their hands. Jan Jovic had just found himself a heap of trouble and Glenn would play it to his advantage.
“This gives me what I need,” Glenn said. “You do realize that.”
“Yes it does. It gives you the right to have Mr. Jovic apprehended. But nothing more.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“And what are you talking about, Glenn?” Charlie knew, of course.
“This muddies the waters. It gives you a good cover.”
“Gives me cover? And why would I need cover? I’ll get your man, throw him in the slammer for a few days, prosecute him like the law requires—”
“That’s not what I want. It’s not enough.”
“What then? You want him dead?”
“No.” Glenn wore a small smirk. “Not him—he’s too valuable alive. I just paid ten million for his backside. I need him alive but I also need him willing. The old hag, on the other hand . . .”
“The woman?”
“I’m going to kill the old woman and I want you to stay out of my way. Help me if I need it.”
Charlie took a breath and let it out slowly. It wasn’t the first time, of course. But Glenn was messing with decent people, not the regular scum he mixed with.
“I’ll make it worth your while, of course.”
Charlie sat in a guest chair. “So let me get this straight. You want to kill an old defenseless woman who’s known by half the country as an icon for motherly love and you want me to cover up the murder? That about it?”
Glenn’s lips flattened. “Yes. That’s exactly what I want. You haul the preacher in and let me deal with him up close, and you use the distraction of this whole mess as a smoke screen when they find the old woman’s body.”
“They are two different people—”
“I don’t care if they’re ten different people!” Glenn yelled, red in the face. “I’m going to kill the old hag, and you’re going to see that no one looks my way! Is that too much to ask? He’s a criminal, for crying out loud. He shot an unarmed man.”
Charlie drummed his fingers on the chair’s armrests and pursed his lips. It could be done, this cover-up of Glenn’s. But it could also blow up.
“There’s fifty thousand in it for you,” Glenn said. “One hundred if we need your help.”
Charlie felt his pulse quicken. “Fifty? Five-O?”
“Fifty.”
“Help in what way?”
“Setting her up.” He waved a bandaged hand in a dismissal. “It won’t come to that.”
“You’ll make it look like an accident?” Charlie said.
“Of course.”
“Okay. But if this goes sour, this discussion never happened. You remember that.” Charlie stood. “I’ll put out an APB on the preacher; you go ahead and create your little accident. But for God’s sake, keep it clean.”
Glenn smiled past crooked teeth. “It’s already done, my friend. It’s already done.”
JAN SAW the black Lincoln parked across the street from Ivena’s house the moment he entered her block. He jerked the Cadillac’s steering wheel and plowed into the curb sixty yards from the house.
“What are you doing?” Helen demanded. “You just drove off—”
She saw the car and froze.
Jan clawed at the handle and shoved the door open. “Stay here.”
“Jan, wait . . .”
But he didn’t hear the rest because he was already sprinting for the house. The black Lincoln had been in the Towers’ parking garage. It had no business here. He muttered under his breath and veered for Ivena’s backyard.
A tall wooden fence bordered Ivena’s heavily vegetated yard. Purple hydrangea and white gardenia flowers spilled over the white pickets. Jan slid to a stop at the fence, peered through two slats, and seeing nothing but an empty lawn past the vines, clambered over. He dropped to a crouch, his heart now pounding in his ears. Behind him, a car door thumped shut—Helen was following. Too late to stop her now.
The greenhouse’s glass walls were too crowded with vines to see past at this distance. A steady breeze whispered through the leaves overhead, but otherwise the air lay quiet. Jan rushed for the back door.
Images of Ivena’s body, crumpled and bleeding, filled his mind. If he was right she would be in the greenhouse with the flowers. It was a preoccupation for her.
Jan grabbed the knob and threw the door open.
Ivena stood there in the middle of the room, her face raised to the ceiling, her eyes closed. The breeze swept her hair back from her neck. If she’d heard him, she did not show any sign of it.
Jan scanned the room. The doorway to the house gaped to a dim interior. The assailant, if there was one, would be in there, waiting.
“Ivena,” he whispered, keeping his eyes on the kitchen doorway.
“Hello, Janjic. You are back, I see,” she said loudly.
He started and snatched his finger to his mouth, but she hadn’t moved her head to him.
“Come in, Janjic.”
“Ivena!” he whispered harshly. “Shhh. Quickly! You must come!”
She faced him. “What’s wrong?”
“Come now! Shhhh!”
He looked through the door to the house and Ivena followed his gaze. She hurried over to him, wide-eyed. “What is it?”
Jan didn’t respond. He grabbed her hand and yanked her through the door. Such a relief swept through his bones at her stumbling safely into the backyard, that he hardly noticed the tall man materialize in the inner door’s shadows.
But then he did notice, and his heart lodged firmly in his throat. His muscles locked up. The man stepped from the shadows, a gun leveled. Behind Jan, Ivena crowded his back. “Janjic Jovic, you tell me the meaning of this immediately or I will—”
Jan threw himself backward, into Ivena.
She cried out, but managed to stay upright.
Boom!
The gun’s detonation sounded obscenely loud in the small room. Ivena needed no further encouragement. Jan snatched her hand and they ran together nearly step for step toward the back fence.
Helen had one leg draped on each side of the pickets. “Back, Helen!” Jan shouted. “Get back!” He spun around, grabbed Ivena around the waist, and hoisted her the full height of the fence with a grunt. “Pull her over!”
Helen complied and Ivena disappeared. Jan threw himself over without waiting. He glanced back in time to see the black-clad gunman slide to a stop at the corner of the greenhouse. The man was no idiot; he was powerless outside with a noisy gun.
Jan dropped to the ground. Helen had Ivena’s hand and they were running for the car already.
Winded and panting like billows in chorus they piled into the Cadillac. Jan fired the engine and threw the car into drive. Jan squealed through a U-turn and sped down the street.
JAN SWERVED through suburban Atlanta a good five minutes before easing his foot from the accelerator and slowing the Cadillac to the posted speed limit. It took a full ten minutes for the flood of questions and explanations to subside into silence. Ivena seemed more horrified with Jan’s attack at the Towers than with the fact that a gunman had nearly put a bullet through her skull in her own home.
“It was foolish, Janjic. Now you’ve endangered yourself.”
“And I wasn’t endangered before? He’s a beast. I couldn’t just stand by while an animal rampages through our lives.”
“And now he will rampage less? I don’t think so.”
Jan ground his teeth but didn’t respond directly.
“Where are we going?” Helen asked beside him.
“To Joey’s cottage,” Jan said.
“The gardener?” Helen asked.
“Yes. He lives in a small house on the property, bordering the gardens.”
“You think it’s safe there? What makes you think Glenn’s men aren’t already there waiting?”
“Glenn may be a monster, but he’s not omniscient. No one knows of the place. It’s pretty secluded.”
Ivena spoke from the backseat. “My, my, I see we are in a pickle, Janjic. What are you up to now?” This from a woman who’d been kidnapped and beaten not forty-eight hours earlier.
They sped toward Joey’s Garden of Eden rehashing their predicament. Ivena was right, Jan thought: They were in a pickle. Jan took a deep breath and breathed a prayer.
I beg you to see us out of this madness, Father. It was your meddling that started it.
But it was not God who’d blown holes through Lutz’s hands, was it? No. On the contrary, not so long ago someone had driven holes through
God’s
hands. So what did that make Jan? The devil? Now there was a thought.
They approached Joey’s cottage unseen as far as Jan could tell. Overgrowth crowded the dirt driveway that snaked along the property’s bordering twelve-foot hedge. Tall oaks surrounded the small wooden structure, foreboding in the failing light. A yellow Ford Pinto sat on a gravel bed beside a house shrouded in foliage. The shades were pulled, but light glowed beyond them. It was six o’clock; Joey would be home from his day in the garden.
They climbed from the car, unspeaking. Vines crawled over the red brick. Green vines with large white flowers. They stood still and gazed at the sight. Ivena’s flowers covered the side of the house; Jan could not mistake them.
Ivena walked for them without a word. She touched a blossom and turned back, her eyes round. Jan led Helen up the steps. Joey opened the door before their first knock. “Jan? Well, my goodness. I wasn’t expecting company.”
“Forgive me, Joey. We—”
“Come in, come in.” The short man swept a thin arm into his home. “I didn’t say I didn’t
want
company. Only that I wasn’t expecting it.”
They walked in and Joey closed the door.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
“Actually, Joey, this isn’t exactly a social visit. I mean it is, but not like you might expect. I’m afraid we’re in a bit of trouble.”
“The flowers have done well, I see,” Ivena said.
Joey smiled. “Yes. Yes they have.” They looked at each other but said no more.
Joey turned back to Jan and Helen. “Well, well, please sit down.” He hurried around the small living room, straightening rust-colored cushions on a green rattan couch and a matching chair. A stone fireplace ate up half the floor space, but the decor was surprisingly colorful and cozy. Then again, Joey was a gardener—he would favor beauty.
He sat on the washed stone mantel. “So you are in some trouble. Tell me.”
He listened while they spun their story, hearing it from beginning to end in one sitting, Saying it aloud, Jan was struck by its absurdity. This tale of love and horror, it sounded impossible in this land of peace. And to think, not four miles away construction was already in progress on the castle he was building for his bride. He looked at Helen—at the amber light shining in her glassy eyes—and a hand seemed to squeeze his heart. God’s hand, he thought.
Joey kept looking at him as if checking to make sure it was really him, the author he knew. He could only nod. But in the end Joey insisted that they would be safe here. At least for a day while they decided what to do. Although they would have to manage with two bedrooms. Joey would take the couch.
He offered them bowls of a beef stew and they talked over a dozen options, none of which made any sense to Jan. The situation seemed impossible. Walking into a man’s place of business and shooting him wasn’t exactly self-defense. At the very least Jan needed to contact an attorney. In fact, why not drive to the police station right then and turn himself in? Yes indeed, why not? It seemed their only option.
Jan finally set his bowl on the coffee table and sighed. “I think there’s only one thing that makes sense. But it’s not Helen who’s angered Glenn now. It’s me. And he’s made a direct threat against you, Ivena. There’s only one way to ensure your safety.”
“And what of you?”
“Please hear me out. If I were to contact the police and demand protective custody for you I believe they’d give it. You’ve already lodged a complaint. They can’t ignore you now.”
“So you want them to put
me
in jail?”
“You’ve done nothing wrong; they wouldn’t put you in jail.”
“But you have, Janjic. You have assaulted this man. They will put
you
in jail for that.”
“Maybe. But then a prison may be the safest place for me. Until they unravel the truth.”
“The truth is you shot a man,” Helen said. “Regardless of what Glenn has done, they won’t let that slide.”
They looked at each other. “Either way I’ll face consequences. If I can bring a detective here to hear our story we’ll at least buy protection for Ivena. Do you have any doubt that Glenn will hurt Ivena?”