Kills Well with Others (Killers of a Certain Age #2)

Chapter Twenty-Three

If we’d had time, we would have debated the wisdom of bringing Wolfgang to the house, but I figured the faster we got off the streets, the better. The last thing you want in our line of work is to be memorable. Venice is a city that wakes slowly, and—with no actual rush hour to speak of—there aren’t many places to hide. Besides that, Wolfgang was still making a spectacle of himself, dripping gore onto his shirt and blubbering in broken German. I fished his phone out of his pocket and dumped it in a canal just in case Galina was tracking him after all. He was so busy crying he didn’t even notice.

Mary Alice brought us as close as she could to the house, maneuvering the boat into a narrow channel behind the campo. From there it was a fast walk of two minutes to get into the house, and we made a point of coming from the opposite direction as the police station.

Akiko was waiting at the door, her face creased in worry wrinkles until she saw Wolfgang covered in blood. At that point, she swayed and had to sit down.

“What happened?” she asked, her voice muffled by the fact that she had her head in her hands.

“Shootout,” Helen said succinctly.

Akiko gave a low moan.

“I’m fine, honey, we’re all fine,” Mary Alice assured her. She knelt on the floor next to Akiko, circling her wife with an arm.

“I am not fine!” Wolfgang howled.

I shoved him towards the bathroom. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Helen looked at me. “Are you sure? It’s not going to be pretty.”

“I’d rather put him back together than witness whatever’s coming next,” I said with a nod towards the married couple in our midst. The only thing less interesting than my relationship problems is other people’s.

Just then, Taverner emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel. He took in the scene with a glance, assessing the situation. He looked at me long enough to realize the blood flowing freely wasn’t mine and then went back to the kitchen. I knew there was going to be a conversation coming that I didn’t want to be a part of, but that was a problem for later. The first priority was to mop up Wolfgang and keep him from going into shock.

Wolfgang followed me to the bathroom where I sat him down on the toilet lid and went to work. Cleaning the wound was the worst part. The bullet had clipped the bottom of the lobe, shearing a bit of it clean off. If we’d had the piece, we might have sewn it back on. As it was, I had to make do with pinning the edges together as neatly as I could and securing them with tiny stitches. When it was finished, I sprayed it with antiseptic and bandaged it, then gave him a couple of painkillers and an antibiotic shot out of the medical kit I always carried. It was basic, just the nuts and bolts, but it could handle a lot of small jobs. Luckily, in our line of work, a missing bit of earlobe was considered a small job.

“I’m not the best at this, but it’ll do,” I told him. “I should have asked Helen to stitch it. At least she does needlepoint.”

He shrugged, looking down at his hands. His shirt was sticky with coagulated blood, and I helped him peel it off, handing him a warm washcloth to mop himself up. He was built like a toddler, pale with a sloping belly. I brought him a henley of Taverner’s which was too small, but he stretched it over the curve of his stomach. He looked up as I rinsed out his shirt the best I could, soaking and wringing until the water ran pink and then clear. I hung it up. The stains would never fully come out, but at least it fit him and would be clean.

“She shot me, didn’t she?”

His hands were shaking a little—delayed shock setting in. Little crescents of blood had dried under the whites of his fingernails.

“Yeah. I’m sorry.” Galina herself may not have pulled the trigger, but we both knew she’d given the order.

“What happens now?” he asked in a small voice.

I took the washcloth and wiped up some blood he’d missed on his cheek. “What happens now is we eat.”

—

Natalie had arrived by the time Wolfgang and I joined the group. She was looking a little the worse for wear, but most of the blood belonged to other folks and her eyes were bright as she told the others how she took out two of Galina’s hired ruffians.

“I mean, I’ve seen people bang two guys’ heads together in movies, but I’ve never had the chance to try it for myself,” she was saying. “It makes a fun little crack. Like coconuts.”

She stopped and looked up in surprise at Wolfgang. “What happened to you?”

“They shot me,” he said morosely.

“Bummer. The first time’s always a bitch,” she told him. “Get something to eat. You’ll feel better.”

The next few minutes were spent loading our plates. When the adrenaline fades after a fight, the only things you want to do are eat and have sex, and sex wasn’t on the table that morning. So we filled up on eggs Benedict and sourdough cardamom cinnamon rolls, courtesy of Taverner, and when our plates were finally empty we pushed them away and looked at each other.

“Postmortem?” Helen asked. The rest of us nodded and she began. “I think it’s safe to say that could have gone better.”

“Well, we couldn’t really anticipate that she would try to kill Wolfgang,” Natalie pointed out.

“I cannot believe it,” he said, still looking dazed.

“Wolfie, you realize you’re not safe until we take her out,” I said.

He nodded miserably. “She is a monster.”

“Don’t take it personally. She killed her own aunt, after all,” Natalie reminded him soothingly.

He said a few things in German—mainly expressions of woe—and lapsed into silence, covering his face with his hands. Mary Alice gave me a look, jerking her head towards him. I sighed and patted his shoulder awkwardly.

“It’s okay, Wolfgang. We’ll protect you,” I promised him. “And the sooner we find her, the sooner we can take care of this and you can go back to hitting those high Cs.”

He pushed his bottom lip out. “I do not have a high C. That is for tenors.”

“Whatever. As long as Galina is out there, you aren’t safe. You can’t go home, you can’t work. Help us, Wolfie.”

His fingers were busy, picking at a few drops of dried blood on his hands. “She tried to kill me,” he said, maybe more to himself than to us.

“She did,” I said gently. “Maybe next time, Galina tries herself or maybe she lets Tamara have another pop at you. And maybe she hits her bull’s-eye.” I pressed a fingertip to the center of his forehead and he shuddered.

I went on. “Wolfie, you didn’t tell us anything when we met yesterday. You didn’t betray Galina. There was no reason whatsoever for her to give the order to kill you—except that she’s a sadistic bitch. And she’s not going to stop until she’s dead. Or you are.”

I think he’d have caved then, but before he could speak, Taverner brought out another pan of cinnamon rolls dripping in cardamom cream cheese frosting. Wolfie looked up, sniffing the air like a dog. Taverner handed him the entire pan and a fork, and Wolfie gave him a worshipful look. Wolfie busied himself for a few minutes, and just when I was about to try again, he looked up, cream cheese wreathing his mouth.

“What do you want to know?”

I smiled. “Everything, Wolfie. Everything.”