Kurtz and Barent Mystery Series: Books 1-3, page 75
The whole front of the house appeared to be windows, all of which looked down across a wooded valley and at a line of mountains, probably the Poconos, on the horizon. No way that only five men could cover all possible approaches, Kurtz reflected, not with all that glass, but judging from the fact that they hadn’t left a man posted at the top of the stairway, it seemed unlikely that they were concerned.
The sides of the house on the ground floor had only two small windows, presumably because there was nothing to look at from the sides but trees. The last tree was only about ten feet away from the house. Kurtz stayed in the tree line as long as he could, scurried across the few feet of lawn on his stomach, rose to his feet under the window and peeked inside. Jerome Herbert lay on a bed, all alone, his hands and feet tied together and a piece of duct tape across his mouth. His chest rose and fell slowly. His hair was tousled, his shoulders slumped. Gingerly, Kurtz tried the window. It was locked. Too bad.
He pressed his ear to the glass. He could hear voices coming from somewhere inside the house but the words were inaudible.
He scurried along the side and around the corner to the back, then through the tree line. From twenty feet up the hill, he was above the roof of the house, with a moonlit view of both sides. Nobody was outside. He climbed back down, reached up and, as quietly as he could, pulled himself onto the deck. He lay there on his stomach for a few moments, his nose only inches from the cedar planking.
Still on his stomach, he crawled around to one side of the house. The sliding glass door, as he had figured it would, opened onto a small bedroom. The lights were off, the bedroom empty. He put his ear against the glass. Nothing. Hopefully, all the occupants were downstairs. He grasped the edge of the door and pushed. It didn’t move. Peering inside, Kurtz could see that the door was locked by a steel cylinder set into the bottom frame.
He could break the glass and get in that way. The floor of the room was covered with carpet. It might muffle the sound. He seriously considered it. Time was passing. Maybe Burnett was holding Herbert for ransom. If he was planning on killing him, there was no reason that Kurtz could see to wait. But even if they were all down on the main floor, they might hear the sound of breaking glass and five against one—maybe more—without the advantage of surprise was not good odds.
Kurtz worked his way around to the other side of the house. Another locked glass door, another empty bedroom. Kurtz was beginning to get desperate. He had just about decided to break the glass and take his chances when he heard voices. Kurtz stayed on his stomach. The light in the bedroom turned on. Two people, a man and a woman, came in and closed the door. The man was about thirty, well built, dressed in jeans and a tee shirt. The woman was younger, black-haired and very pretty. They closed the door. The man said something to the woman, reached out and ran his hand over her breasts while the woman smiled, closed her eyes and arched her back. Then the man kissed her, ran both hands up under her shirt and pulled the shirt off over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She stood there for a moment, letting him look at her breasts, then they both undressed. The man sat on the edge of the bed and the woman knelt on the floor between his legs. Her head bobbed up and down in his lap for a minute or so while the man caressed her hair, a soft smile on his face. Finally, he pulled her head up, kissed her on the mouth and lay back on the bed. She climbed on top of him and they began to move together.
Great. His own little dirty movie.
The woman’s mouth was open. She moaned.
Kurtz frowned, then he smiled. The woman was moaning pretty loudly.
He scurried back across the deck to the other bedroom. Through the glass, he could see that the inner door to the room was closed. Good. He took the Swiss army knife out of his pocket, scored a deep circular line in the glass near the lock. He hoped the woman was still making noise. He took off his jacket, wrapped his fist in a sleeve and punched the middle of the circle. The glass came out in a single piece and fell to the carpet with hardly a sound. Kurtz reached in, grasped the cylinder and raised it. The door slid open. Kurtz stepped in and put his ear to the wall. The woman’s moaning had stopped. Kurtz thought about it. The bad guys were split up. Maybe this improved the odds. Maybe it made them worse. He decided that he didn’t like the idea of having the enemy behind him as well in front. He would wait. About ten minutes later, he could hear a door open down the hall. The woman said something that Kurtz could not make out and the man laughed and their voices vanished down the stairs.
Kurtz crept forward, opened the door a crack. The hall was empty. Trying not to make a sound, Kurtz put one foot in front of another and tiptoed to the top of the stairs. He could hear voices and laughter and the clink of ice cubes and music playing. Even bad guys like to party.
A lot would depend on the interior layout. If the stairwell opened out near the back of the house, then he had a chance of getting down without being seen. If it opened onto the living room or the den or wherever Burnett and his men were holed up, then he would have to reconsider his options.
There was a landing halfway down, where the stairway took a right turn. Kurtz crept down to the landing and peered around the corner. The stairs ended in a hallway. On one side of the hallway was the kitchen, on the other, the den. At right angles to the hallway was another, smaller hallway which led to the bedroom where Jerome Herbert was tied up. Kurtz crept under the guardrail, held onto the edge of the landing with his fingers and hung over the side. His toes were a few inches from the floor. He let go, landed soundlessly on the carpet and crouched under the stairwell for a moment. The voices continued from the end of the hallway, unalarmed. Kurtz could make out a word here and there. He took the .38 out of his belt and held it in his left fist, then, crouching low, he took two quick steps into the opposite corridor, grasped the doorknob with his right hand and turned it. He stepped into the room, closed the door behind him and locked it.
Herbert saw him. He raised his head off the pillow, made a gasping sound behind the tape covering his mouth and began to struggle. “Hold still,” Kurtz said. “This is going to sting.” He pulled the tape off Herbert’s mouth. Herbert groaned. “Sorry,” Kurtz said. He opened the Swiss army knife and cut the cords binding Herbert’s hands and feet. The cords were tight. Herbert’s fingers were blue. Herbert sat up, hissed softly between his teeth. His face was ashen and he was shivering. “I feel sick,” he said. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Take a few deep breaths. We’re not out of this yet.” Kurtz took a quick look around the room. The night table was bare. “No phone?”
“No. There’s only one phone; it’s in the den.”
“Too bad,” Kurtz said. “The local police would look awfully good right now.”
For the first time, Herbert seemed to actually see Kurtz. “Where did you come from, anyway?”
“They grabbed me when I left the office.”
“So? Why aren’t you tied up, too?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell it to you later. Right now, let’s get going.”
Herbert nodded, rose to his feet, tottered for a moment and then collapsed onto the bed. He groaned. “My legs don’t work. I was tied up too long.”
“Rub them,” Kurtz said. “Get the circulation back.”
Gingerly, Herbert reached down and rubbed his toes. He grimaced. “It hurts.”
“Keep rubbing. In the meantime, tell me what’s going on here.”
Herbert shook his head, looking bitter. “Burnett is not a dummy. He knew that I was sick of it. I suppose he was ordered to get rid of me or watch the game go up in smoke.”
Kurtz looked at him. “Tell me about the game,” he said.
“Briefly?” Herbert sighed. “Herbert Development has been owned by the mob for nearly seventy years. My grandfather was not much of an executive. It was 1937. The country was in a Depression. Prohibition was over and nobody wanted to pay money for bathtub gin. He sold out. He didn’t have much choice, since he was in hock up to his eyeballs.” Herbert grinned bitterly. “The corporation puts up the money. We invest most of it and ship the rest to the Cayman Islands or wherever. There are a dozen different dummy corporations and charitable foundations. And who owns them?” Herbert shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Kurtz shook his head. “Corporations have every right to invest their money overseas. What’s the big secret?”
Herbert snorted. “The secret is where the money comes from. It starts out as heroin and prostitution and loan-sharking and extortion and anything else you can think of. Herbert Development is one giant money-laundering scheme.”
“Oh,” Kurtz said.
“Right,” Herbert said glumly. He rubbed his hands together and groaned. “My fingers are numb, too.”
“Wriggle them. Hurry up. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“I’m trying, damn it,” Herbert said. He clenched and unclenched his fists, groaning.
Kurtz watched him impatiently. Sooner or later, Burnett and his boys were going to get tired of partying and decide to do whatever it was they had come up here to do. Kurtz wanted to be long gone by the time that happened. Herbert tried again to stand, gave a stifled moan and sat back down on the bed. “A few more minutes,” he said.
“I don’t get it,” Kurtz said. “After a whole lifetime, just like that, you decide that you’ve had enough. Why?”
“I told you why, back at your office. Eleanor, and Gina Cole. Gina Cole is why.”
Kurtz looked at him. “Tell me about Gina Cole.”
Chapter 36
“No,” Lenore said. “He’s not here. He’s usually home by now.” She was silent for a moment, then she grudgingly admitted, “I’m worried.”
So was Barent, but he didn’t want to say so. “I understand,” he said. “I wish I could tell you more. Let us know if he shows up. Otherwise, we’ll keep you posted.”
Calls to Mrs. Schapiro and to David Chao both proved little help. David could pinpoint the time when Kurtz had left the office but that was all.
“At what time did Herbert walk out?” Barent asked Mrs. Schapiro.
“About one thirty,” she said grimly.
Barent glanced at the clock. It was now almost eight. Plenty of time for Jerome Herbert and Richard Kurtz to vanish. Jerome Herbert might be worth kidnapping and holding for ransom. But Kurtz?
“What are you going to do?” Mrs. Schapiro asked.
What a mess. They had already put out an all points but beyond that, he hadn’t a clue. Kurtz, and Jerome Herbert, could be anywhere. He glanced again at the clock, watched the second hand ticking away.
Anywhere at all. “Wait,” he said.
“We had an affair.”
“Who did? You and Gina Cole?”
Herbert gave a tired little laugh. “She was involved with a man named Mark Woodson. Gina’s mother had died a few years before. Her father was retiring and selling the house. She and Woodson were helping him pack the place up. They were rummaging through a trunk in the attic and they came across some papers that Gina’s great-grandmother had left, letters from Joseph P. Herbert, Junior to Gina’s great-grandmother, and some other stuff about the corporate finances back in the thirties. God knows why the old lady saved them. God knows how she even got them—stole them, I suppose. Maybe she had some notion of putting in a claim against the estate. Maybe she was the sentimental sort. Anyway, Woodson figured out that Gina was old Joe Junior’s great grand-daughter. He tried to blackmail us. Gina didn’t like blackmail. She told Woodson to take a hike but she was intrigued. Suddenly, she had a bunch of relatives she didn’t know existed. She wanted to meet us.” Sadly, Herbert shook his head. “She called and made an appointment with my father and myself. Dad was suspicious of her at first. I mean, after sixty years, what was the purpose of all this? He figured she was just a phony but she wasn’t like that at all. She didn’t want anything from us at all, just to meet us, just to talk.” Herbert shook his head sadly. “She was so innocent, so sweet. I fell in love with her.
“Gina and I had a date the night after the hospital dinner. We spent the night at my apartment. Gina left in the morning. I never saw her again.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
Herbert made a rude noise and gave Kurtz a look that said he should have known better. “Herberts don’t go to the police,” he said. “Too much chance they might get interested in the wrong crimes. Besides, we have our own way of dealing with things.”
“Things? Like Mark Woodson?”
Herbert shrugged. “Woodson had evidently done some digging. He didn’t have a lot of proof but his suspicions regarding the corporation were essentially correct. He was threatening to expose the organization. I’m not surprised he wound up dead.”
“But naturally you don’t know a thing about it.”
“No,” Herbert said. “And frankly, I don’t give a shit.”
Neither, frankly, did Kurtz, now that he thought about it. Not at the moment, anyway. He glanced at his watch. “Can you walk yet?”
Herbert rubbed his toes and grimaced. “A few more minutes.”
Kurtz looked longingly at the window and sighed. “Why didn’t you tell your aunt about Regina Cole?” he asked.
“We would have. I was planning on surprising her. Dad and I had talked about bringing Gina to the next family dinner, but then she vanished.”
“How did your father react when she turned up dead?”
Herbert looked at him keenly. “He seemed distraught. Why? Do you think he did it?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
Herbert just looked at him. Kurtz said nothing. After a moment, Herbert looked away and gave a little shrug. “The thought had crossed my mind,” he admitted. He shrugged again. “I doubt it. My father is a businessman. I can’t see him as a murderer.”
Murderers, or so Barent had often said, came in all shapes and sizes. The fact that Jerome Herbert didn’t think his father had done it showed a touching familial loyalty but meant absolutely nothing. Kurtz said, “A man who is willing to have his oldest son killed in order to keep a family secret wouldn’t think too much about murdering Gina Cole and Mark Woodson.”
Herbert grimaced. “You mean me? I doubt that my father knows anything about it.”
“Doesn’t Burnett work for your father?”
Herbert made a faint, disparaging sound. “It might be more accurate to say that my father works for Burnett. The Herberts, let me point out, are not exactly the tycoons that we appear to be. We’re employees—well paid employees, but employees just the same. A part of the front, that’s all. Gina had no interest in the family finances and she wasn’t trying to blackmail anybody.
“Woodson was a different story. Woodson was threatening to blow the whole scam wide open. I’m not surprised that they whacked Mark Woodson.” Herbert shook his head sadly, then flexed his feet and took a few small steps. He smiled. “Let’s get going.”
About time. The window opened outward. It should be just big enough for Kurtz to scramble through. He removed the inner screen, set it on the floor and cranked the glass open.
Just then, the doorknob rattled. Herbert stared at it.
The doorknob rattled again. Outside the room, somebody said something that might have been a curse. Kurtz couldn’t make out the words but the tone was definitely annoyed.
Kurtz boosted Herbert up to the window. “Climb through,” he said. “Run for the trees.”
A loud thump came from the door. The wood around the lock suddenly splintered. Kurtz scrambled up to the window ledge just as the door opened. Two men, both of them large, both of them carrying guns, rushed in.
There was no time to be careful. Kurtz let himself fall out the window. He landed heavily on his left shoulder and rolled over onto his back. His shoulder throbbed but he ignored it and pulled the Ruger from his pocket. A hand poked out the window, holding a gun. A head followed. The head was bearded and looked angry. The head saw Kurtz lying on the ground and the hand holding the gun came down. Kurtz shot him. The man’s left eye exploded in a mist of blood and his head thudded against the window jamb, then flopped back to the floor inside. Kurtz scrambled to his feet and ran a zig-zag for the woods.
Two men charged toward him from around the front of the house. They didn’t stop to negotiate and neither did Kurtz. Both of them began shooting. Kurtz dived for the tree line, felt a sharp pain along his calf, turned to his left and scrambled up the hill, trying to keep trees between himself and Burnett’s men.
The bad guys couldn’t see him but that didn’t stop them from peppering the woods with bullets. A loud whine buzzed past Kurtz’ ear and in front of him, a dried branch flew off a tree with a shower of splinters. It was hard to see where he was going, even with the moonlight. Ahead of him, a large oak tree had fallen, the trunk lying at an acute angle to the ground, its empty branches making a lacy pattern against the starlit sky. The base of the tree was covered with dried brown leaves, making a dark crevasse. Kurtz crawled under the trunk and quickly covered himself with leaves. Then he waited. His lower leg throbbed. A warm trickle ran down his pants and into his sock but it didn’t seem to be too bad. He ignored it.
Burnett’s men were city boys. They were no doubt pretty good at tracking a target down a concrete sidewalk but a forest—particularly a forest at night—was a different story entirely. Kurtz had grown up on a farm and spent his childhood roaming through woods much like these. Now that he himself wasn’t making any noise, he could hear his pursuers quite clearly. Two of them were stumbling through the woods off to his left and another was behind him and to the right. He had already killed one of them. He wondered how Herbert was doing. If Herbert was smart he would hole up somewhere and wait it out. The two men to his left were getting further away. The one to his right was coming closer.
