Killer Girls Page 5

  Once, a patrol car followed her for a short distance but trailed off into one of the side streets. Even the best policeman with trained eyes could hardly tell by her nose or demeanor that she had killed two masked men with her knives a short time ago.

  The streets became rougher as she closed on her destination. The South Bronx was no longer the hell-hole of the seventies in the past century, but still not the place where one walked without a loaded revolver in the moonlight.

  Except for Lucia Lezzi.

  She reached Birchall Avenue and reduced her speed, scanning her surroundings with a suspicious eye. Gordon had not sounded as if someone had held a gun against his head, but it paid to be careful. Lucia had learned the hard way to expect the unexpected. Certainly, her friend had picked a bizarre neighborhood to pitch his tent.

  Social Housing for rent was about as far removed as the moon.

  Birchall Avenue straddled the industrial estate between the freight train station and the Bronx River Parkway, The sound of the continuous road traffic and the noise of trains clanking to sidings filled the air.

  Pedestrians were remarkable by their absence.

  Amtrak had erected a modern administration building right here. The former station buildings were crumbling only a stone’s throw away, covered in graffiti and surrounded by weeds, windows boarded over.

  This was the place where Gordon lived.

  She parked the Chevrolet in a fashion to make a quick escape, should the need arise. Although she could see neither friend nor foe, she had long ago learned to mistrust any seeming quiet and security.

  She reached for one of her knives as she opened the unlocked metal door before her. It felt good to carry a blade again.

  Knives never misfired.

  And they were silent.

  For Lucia there was nothing better.

  She listened as she climbed the steep stone stairway. The air was cold and penetrating. A smell of wet cardboard and Diesel oil hung in the air.

  Gordon made no great demands regarding his living conditions.

  She had always thought her own hideout in the old factory to be spartan, but compared to Gordon’s quarter her own refuge seemed like the luxury loft of a millionaire’s daughter.

  She crept up the left side of the stairs, on the lookout for any hidden danger.

  Suddenly, she heard a metallic click and a second later the barrel of a gun touched her temple.

  A softer click followed.

  And then she heard Gordon’s voice.

  ‘Relax. I was only testing. Nothing wrong.’

  Angrily, Lucia sheathed her knife, took the last step in a stride and reached a large room that had once been the control center of the switching station. It served as Gordon’s bedroom, laboratory, living room and meditation retreat all in one.

  ‘Did you call me here to serve as a guinea pig for your crazy self-defense system?’ She asked, her voice trembling with annoyance.

  Gordon was a tall man. He had gentle eyes, but the many prison tattoos on his arms and chest proved he knew well enough how to survive in absolutely lethal surroundings. On this day he wore torn jeans and a black leather vest over his naked torso that showed not inconsiderable muscles. His voice was as soft as silk, like that of a storyteller.

  ‘You look well,’ he said when Lucia stood in his field of sight. ‘And in a while you will feel even better.’

  ‘I hope so because right now I feel like the pits.’ She growled. ‘You know I hate all those secret hints and time-wasting. I hate it even more when someone wastes my time with stupid, empty riddles.’

  ‘I hope that wasn’t meant for me? Take it easy and have a coke.’

  ‘I don’t want a coke. I want to know why I’m here.’

  She crossed her arms over her chest and stared angrily at Gordon.

  He banished the amused grin and reached for a scratched, well-used, Tablet PC, then typed a password on the keyboard.

  Lucia creased her forehead.

  ‘I hope you aren’t trying to entertain me with a seedy video show.’

  Gordon refrained from answering, Instead he pointed at the tablet screen. It showed a low-quality video, probably taken with a smartphone. A baby was lying in a cot, turning and twisting as it played with a plastic duck.

  Next to the cot a television set showed news. There was no sound, which seemed unimportant. What mattered was the date and the view of the London terror attack that had taken place just a day earlier.

  Lucia’s mouth was suddenly bone dry. She could not turn her eyes from the child.

  It was Adrian. She could have recognized him among a hundred other tots.

  He lived and appeared to be healthy.

  Suddenly, tears burst from her eyes. She cried with relief. Neither her heart nor her brain had been able to accept the notion that the little mite could be dead. She congratulated herself for her disbelief, of her doubt over the earlier fake news.

  Only yesterday, Adrian had been well and kicking.

  That left only the question, where he was.

  In the meantime Gordon has fetched a tin of Cola and now pushed it into her hand.

  ‘Here! Drink that. It will do you good.’

  She opened the can. It felt ice-cold. The prickling fluid bubbled over her sandpaper tongue.

  ‘Thank you, Gordon,’ she said, suddenly strangely touched. ‘Where was the video taken?’

  ‘I searched around a bit. The TV news was broadcast by BVN station, located in Belgium, but can be received via satellite all over the world. But I am sure the clip was made in Belgium.’

  ‘Why?’

  Gordon pointed to the window behind the cradle.

  ‘Look at the house on the opposite side of the street. Such narrow windows and brown bricks are mainly found in northern Belgium or Holland.’

  Lucia believed him, although she had no experience in that field. Her family had emigrated from Italy more than a hundred years ago, but she knew little about Europe. She had never traveled outside the USA.

  She stroked Gordon’s cheek, although such tenderness was not her forte.

  ‘Thank you, my dear. You’ve lifted a huge weight from my heart. How did you get this video?’

  ‘I realized how you must suffer through Adrian’s kidnapping. That drove me to trying to find out what had happened to the child.’

  ‘And thank God you managed it,’ Lucia sighed. ‘But you haven’t answered my question, Gordon. Where is this clip from?’

  He breathed deeply.

  ‘You won’t like the answer.’

  Lucia’s mood changed rapidly.

  ‘Damn it! Spit it out!’

  Gordon hesitated for a moment before he opened his mouth again.

  ‘I searched the darknet and found a marketplace for pedophiles. They have a kind of auction where a baby can be purchased. Quite obviously, the kidnappers don’t want to depend on Old Barns coming up with the ransom.’

  9

  ‘Lucia Lezzi is dead?’

  ‘That’s what I just said, Chuck. Are you a parrot?’

  Jablonski did not take the bait. Instead, he said: ‘The file should state in which way the suspect parted from our oh-so-wonderful planet earth.’

  ‘You’re a master of intelligence, Chuck.’ Borges bent over the monitor. ‘There it is! Lezzi suffered a broken skull during a fight among the inmates of the Albion-Prison for females. She died without regaining consciousness again.’

  Jablonski snapped his finger.

  ‘There we have the answer. The Albion is a cesspool of corruption. That Lezzi was probably carried in a laundry truck towards freedom, while a sack of sand was buried in the prison graveyard and the prison doc collected a small fortune for her death certificate.’

  ‘Or a large one,’ his partner countered. ‘If you’re right. Okay, Lezzi is the knife thrower. That fits her crime sheet. There’s a mention here that she always preferred cold steel. If there isn’t a good knife to hand, a sharp screwdriver will do the job as w
ell. That leaves the question, why our beloved Lezzi should have grabbed the German bitch. There must be some connection between her and the kidnapped baby.’

  ‘Maybe Lezzi was Adrian’s child nurse?’ Jablonski suggested.

  Borges rolled her eyes.

  ‘You can try to amuse me with your golden humor as much as you like, but it won’t work. Let’s try and find the green Chevy. We can assume, Lezzi headed for Brooklyn.’

  Her partner nodded.

  ‘Could be.’

  Again they widened their field of search, checked a few dozen traffic cameras.

  When Jablonski opened his mouth again, his voice sounded excited.

  ‘In Red Hook the car in question entered an abandoned factory site! Are we agreed that would be a great place to hide the German woman and her screams of pain?’

  Borges rose and joined him to stare at the monitor.

  ‘That’s an area where you can hide a whole company of hostages. We’d better move quickly. I’ll call the local station. It’ll take us at least three quarters of an hour to get there. I don’t want to find an empty nest.’

  10

  Kea had never before ridden in a speedboat.

  That was only one of many new experiences she made at that moment for the first time. And she might have gladly forgone the others.

  Right now, she was far too excited to consider the past and future. It was as if the wind from the Atlantic drove all her thoughts out of her mind as Mario pushed the twin engines to maximum speed. She had to clamp her hands around the railing to avoid being catapulted into the murky waters of Hudson Bay.

  The motors roared so loud that she could only communicate with Mario by screaming into his ear.

  He stood, legs spread, in the cockpit of the racing speedboat and rode the waves like a cowboy an unbroken steer. Kea had to smile at the comparison that had come unsought for to her mind. Another first in the New World.

  Something else irritated her.

  She was smiling. And that only a short time after Tom’s death! Was she changing under the influence of Lucia and Mario into an unfeeling monster?

  Strange thoughts seemed to fill her head. She struggled to suppress her own euphoria.

  This speedboat ride was simply --- sexy.

  Adrenalin raced through her body. Mario half turned, smiling at her.

  ‘Not bad, what? Sorry I can’t show you too much. The cops aren’t exactly stupid. They’ll send a chopper. We’ve got five minutes at the most to disappear.’

  So little? To Kea, it seemed as if the boat had been racing for hours past buoys that marked the way to the Atlantic. Suddenly she saw the Statue of Liberty before her on Liberty Island. So close that it seemed she only needed to stretch out a hand to touch it. But even if it had been possible, she was afraid to release her grip from the railing.

  Her fear had not disappeared, was only pushed into the background. It mattered little. She wanted to enjoy every moment. In a short time, reality would return, like a monster lurking in the darkness.

  Right now she was almost happy, feeling the cold spray on her face and the wind pulling at her hair. She blinked saltwater from her eyes to watch the mad ride that might well be her last happy experience.

  Mario handled the speedboat like an artist, a professional pilot. Maybe he even was one. She knew so little about him and wondered how much of what he had told her was true. But he avoided the heavy tug boats with their pounding engines and the Staten-Island-Ferry with its camera-wielding tourists as easily as he avoided the truth.

  She would have liked for the mad ride to go on forever. A feeling, almost a regret, filled her as he throttled the motors and headed for the wall of the quay before them, killed the engine and threw a hawser over a bollard, jumped on land and reached out a hand for her.

  ‘Come quickly! Please!’

  For a brief moment she thought of throwing off the hawser to speed away with the boat. But she was too scared. And apart from that, she had no idea how to handle a speedboat.

  When she finally reached land again, her legs trembled with sudden weakness. Still, the excitement had not yet left her.

  ‘That was wonderful,’ she dared to say.

  ‘I’m glad our little sightseeing tour was to your liking,’ He replied with a smile. ‘But now it is time to be gone. We might be in another state, but it won’t be long before the New York cops put their New Jersey colleagues in the picture.’

  In another state!

  For Kea there seemed little difference from the desolation she had left a short time ago. All she saw was rusty fences, barracks with sagging roofs, container parks, cranes and car breakers.

  Mario seemed at home in these surroundings.

  He reached for her hand and pulled her along with him. To an observer, we must look like a pair of lovers fleeing from an unseen enemy, Kea thought.

  Suddenly, her sorrow returned with a vengeance. She sobbed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Lucia’s brother asked the question without stopping. He moved so quickly that she could hardly keep pace with him. If he had not pulled her along, she would have fallen behind.

  ‘My friend, Tom… I still can’t believe he was killed.’

  ‘I understand. Such things are hard to bear. Our parents too died a non-natural death. Since then, Lucia and I have only each other. Can you now understand why I care for my sister? Even though she can be a little difficult at times.’

  That had to be the understatement of the year, Kea thought. But she dared not speak the words.

  At the end of the pier a motorbike waited.

  ‘Have you ever ridden on a Harley, Kea?’

  ‘No, I …’

  She halted. She had wanted to say that she had never mustered the courage. But it was not necessary. She was certain that Mario thought her a coward as much as his sister anyway.

  Which was the truth.

  ‘Then it’s time to learn.’

  Without waiting for an answer, Mario straddled the heavy machine. Kea climbed up behind him. She realized she depended on this man, for better or worse. Still, it was better than what Lucia might have in mind for her.

  He handed her a helmet that had hung over the handlebar. Mario himself seemed to feel such protection unnecessary.

  ‘Hold on tight to me! If we run into a traffic control, I’ll have to go full speed. I can’t afford to be taken in by the cops.’

  Before Kea could ask about the reasons for his statement, he kick-started the engine. The motor roared. Kea tightened her grip around his waist as the bike leaped forward.

  Lucia’s brother seemed to ignore every speed restriction. The visor of the helmet was closed and Kea felt no wind on her face. But it whistled through her clothes. Her body seemed to vibrate as the heavy motorcycle roared over suburban boulevards. Out of the corners of her eyes Kea saw Asian shop signs race by, liquor stores with heavy steel shutters over their windows, KFC, Dunkin Donuts, filling stations, Seven Eleven, cleaners, money lenders and drab social housing blocks.

  Fate has a strange humor, Kea thought. The man by her side had been replaced almost as soon as she had stepped on American soil. Instead of Tom she found herself totally dependent on Mario, about whom she knew practically nothing. Except that he was nicer than his psycho-sister and had done nothing so far to arouse her fear. And the way things looked that was all she could expect for the time being.

  The almost painful screech of a police siren interrupted her thoughts. She turned her head and saw a patrol car that tried to close up on them. With growing panic she spotted a policewoman who held a pump gun in her left hand, a microphone for a roof-mounted loudspeaker in the other.

  ‘Lucia and Mario Lezzi, stop at once, kneel down and put your hands behinds your heads!’

  The meaning of those words reached Kea’s awareness somewhat belated.

  They think I‘m the mad woman who is trying to kill me! Is fate really such a comedian?

  Mario reacted by increasing his spee
d even further. At the next bend of the road Kea was certain it would all end in a terrible accident, But the police car could not be shaken off.

  Instead, the next message followed.

  ‘This is the last warning before we open fire! Stop at once!’

  Mario braked.

  For a moment, Kea thought that he was going to follow the order. Instead, he turned sharp right, crossed the pavement to send pedestrians jumping aside with screams or curses. Before them lay a narrow alley where the squad car could not follow Kea thought he was going to follow the order. Instead, he turned a sharp right, crossed the pavement making pedestrians jumping aside with screams or curses. Before them lay a narrow alley where the squad car could not follow. But what help could that prove to be? Kea remembered what he had shouted about the helicopter a short while earlier.

  She thought she could hear the chopping rotors above them already. The tires rumbled over rubbish that was strewn about. She could have sworn she saw a couple of rats scuttling away.

  Suddenly, he screeched to a halt shortly after a second bend. He half turned towards Kea.

  ‘Can you climb?’

  ‘I ...’

  ‘You look fit enough. We’ll make it.’

  Mario ran to a fire escape, jumped up and caught a rung to pull the iron ladder down. Kea thought no longer of escape but ran towards him as if in a trance.

  Almost mechanically, she followed Mario as they climbed up to the second story. Halfway he threw his Smartphone towards a pile of rubbish.

  ‘They can locate the dammed thing,’ he explained when he saw her questioning look. ‘With luck we’ll have long disappeared before they find it. Shouldn’t be too difficult.’

  He had already started to work on a window and pushed it up after only a few seconds. He held out a hand to Kea. Moments later they clambered into a small, but clean and tidy apartment with an air of normality.

  A feeling that Kea had almost forgotten. At least so it appeared to her.

  ‘How can we disappear in this place?’

  She wondered what he would say to her question.

  ‘You might have noticed that the cops took you for Lucia. That’s logical since they couldn’t see your face because of the helmet. And your clothes are those of my sister dear. Her typical style. The cops know quite a lot about Lucia. Not surprising, since she has to account for quite a few dead bodies.’