Free Close Call by Laura Disilverio Page B

Moira said, bumping the screen door open with her shoulder. “He seems better today,” she observed as they lowered themselves awkwardly to the cement stoop and sat, hips almost, but not quite, touching. “Yesterday, when the police officer brought him back in borrowed clothes, he was shivering like an abandoned kitten. I’ve never seen him look like that.”
    â€œI’ve talked with the cops. It won’t happen again.” Paul blew on his coffee and sipped. Sheets flapped on the neighbor’s clothesline and a bee buzzed nearby. He could sleep for a week in the sun’s warmth.
    â€œBut something will. I can’t—you can’t—watch him twenty-four hours a day.”
    Paul tilted his head, met Moira’s gaze. “Are you saying … what? That he needs to be institutionalized?”
    She paused before answering, holding the cup close to her plump bosom. “It’s something to consider.”
    The thought of his pop cooped up in a Lysol-scented facility, surrounded by octogenarians who couldn’t control their bodily func tions, made Paul feel like his intestines were coiled around his stomach, squeezing. “He’d hate it.”
    She put a soft hand on his arm. “He doesn’t know where he is or who you are most of the time, Paul. He knows me, but—”
    The tinny ring of his cell phone from inside the house brought Paul to his feet. His client. Letting the screen door bang shut behind him, he jogged to his father’s bedroom where the phone rang from the pocket of the jacket he’d left draped over a chair. “Yeah?” he said on the fifth ring.
    â€œYou killed the wrong person,” the familiar voice said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou didn’t kill Sydney Ellison. You killed her fucking boyfriend. It’s all over the news.”
    â€œHer?” How was he supposed to know “Sidney” was a girl? Shit.
    â€œHer. Sydney Linn Ellison. The bimbo who got caught with the Speaker of the House fifteen years ago? Her. And now she’ll be on her guard.”
    â€œShe can’t know anything that ties us—”
    â€œDo you still have the .22 you used on Nygaard?”
    â€œWho?” Paul felt like he was three steps behind in this conversation and losing ground.
    â€œJason Nygaard, the guy you shot at Ellison’s house. Do you still have the gun?”
    â€œOf course.” Paul liked the Ruger .22. He’d seen no need to dispose of the gun after yesterday’s killing.
    â€œYou need to plant it in the house or her car, make it look like Ellison killed him. I hear the cops are already looking at her for it. It’ll confuse the issue, cast doubt on anything she says, at the very least—anything she might happen to mention about a phone call on a burner phone, for instance. I have the address where she’s staying now.”
    Paul memorized the address and Ellison’s license plate number as the man read them out. “The gun won’t have her prints,” he pointed out. “There won’t be a record of her buying it.”
    â€œDon’t worry about that. Just fucking make it happen.” As if he sensed Paul’s impending rebellion, the client added, “I’ll double the bonus if they’re both taken care of by the election Tuesday.”
    Paul thought of Moira’s insistence that his father needed full-time care. With the money from this job, he’d be able to stay home for three or four months, not take another contract for a while. He could maybe even retire. “Done.”
    The line went dead. Paul pocketed the phone. He would leave immediately, drive back to DC, and take out Montoya on Friday, as he’d planned before this whole Ellison thing came up. He’d spent three weeks doing recce, planning the hit. He could plant the gun on Ellison beforehand. Flexibility was the key to airpower, the flyboys always said .
    Maybe he could