Free Death Logs In by E.J. Simon Page B

it up to the capriciousness of American women. It had been a long drive this evening.
    The garage door didn’t budge. When rushed, he often pressed the button prematurely, before he was within range of the remote-controlled sensor. He pressed it again, pushing down hard and holding it until he saw the door begin to rise, revealing a still-dark interior. As the door lifted, disappearing into the garage ceiling, the interior light attached to the ceiling brightly illuminated the space immediately in front of his Range Rover. Hightower stared mindlessly into the void in front of him. Once the garage door had completely disappeared from view, he placed his foot on the accelerator pedal. But, despite his scotch-induced grogginess, something he saw caused him to stop; something was out of place, terribly wrong. At first, it simply didn’t register; as though his brain was unable to interpret what his eyes were seeing.
    The interior of the garage was now like a theatre stage—flooded with the glare from the Rover’s powerful headlights and the lights attached to the garage door opener in the ceiling.
    With the car idling, he opened his eyes wider, hoping, perhaps, that the vision in front of him would recalibrate, reshuffle and then make better sense. But, as he sat staring ahead, it only became clearer.
    First, he saw the dangling legs, attached to black shoes and socks, black trousers, hanging, as though suspended like a mobile in midair. He raised his eyes, following the legs to a torso, and a full body, hanging, and, finally, a head and face, unnaturally red and grotesquely twisted to the side and downward. It was moving—the motion of the rising garage door mechanism had apparently caused the body to swing, as though it was trying to escape.
    Hightower couldn’t move his eyes away from what he hoped he was imagining. Although lifeless, this dangling body was bizarrely familiar in its black jacket and white cleric’s collar. Time froze as he continued to stare ahead at what appeared to be a perfectly staged panorama, until he was sure that what he was seeing was really there.
    Finally, he looked down at his cell phone on the console near his seat and, with a shaking hand and trembling fingers, punched in 911.
    The strong voice came through the Range Rover’s speaker system, “Greenwich police, what is the nature of your emergency?”
    “I’ve just pulled up to my garage. There’s a man hanging from the ceiling.”

Chapter 19

    Chapter 19
    Flushing, New York

    F at Lester knew that his life was falling apart. He felt like he’d jumped off a skyscraper and was in a rapidly accelerating free fall. He knew he’d be meeting the pavement soon. His conversation with Rizzo made him wish it was now.
    “OK, Lester. I’m coming off some bad weeks, so today I gotta hit it big. Then, we’ll tone it down a bit, maybe even some small losses tomorrow so it all looks kosher, you know?”
    Rizzo had kept his word and delivered the relief that Lester so badly craved. As he sat at his desk at Tartarus, speaking with Rizzo on the phone, Fat Lester knew it was payback time. Today there would be thirty-six major league baseball games. By late tonight, eighteen teams would be winners. Joe Rizzo would begin a winning streak by placing bets on seven of them while losing two others. The losing bets would simply lend credibility to the winning ones. Lester would record the bets, known in the trade as “past posting,” only after the results of each game were decided.
    “Lester, I don’t care how the fuck we do it, but I need to collect two-hundred grand over the next two weeks.”
    “Jesus, Joe, how the hell am I going to pull that off? I can’t do that much right away.”
    “You should have thought of that before, you know, when you were desperate for a fix. The way you’re gonna be again in a few days when what I gave you runs out. Or haven’t you thought about that?”
    Fat Lester knew his torment had only just begun. For in