As he entered the kitchen, the yellow beam briefly swept the room, then went out. In that short time John Craig could see that the place was more than just a sloppy shambles. It had been demolished. The table was overturned, the chairs broken, cupboard doors torn from their hinges, plates and drinking glasses shattered on the floor.
“What the hell happened here?” John Craig said.
“Nothing good, that’s for goddamn certain.”
“Is the place empty?”
“Yes and no.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I’ve got some bad news, which could be good news, and some really bad news.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Nothing that can’t wait another few minutes until I can get some damn lights burning.”
* * *
It took Dick Canidy a good twenty minutes to find the rat’s nest of wires that was the main fuse box and then determine that the glass fuses—most of them anyway—were not blown or otherwise broken. Then he spent another ten minutes going methodically through both floors, flicking switches on and off, until he finally found a light that came on.
It was on the first floor, in what had been a living room at the opposite end of the apartment from the kitchen. It was a lone bulb in an overhead fixture that somehow had survived the almost total destruction of everything in the apartment.
It’s disturbing how—what? furious? psychopathic?—they had to be to destroy this place, Canidy thought as he unscrewed the bulb and the room went dark. I’m surprised they didn’t firebomb it for good measure.
He then carefully cradled the bulb, flicked on his flashlight, and went back upstairs. This time, John Craig followed, pulling himself up the stairs using the handrail.
John Craig was just reaching the top step when Canidy got the bulb installed. It lit the area fairly well, and John Craig now could see that the whole upper floor had been a bedroom.
Then he gasped.
In the middle of the room, with wrists and ankles tied by fabric to a wooden armchair that lay on its side, was the bloated corpse of a naked dark-haired man.
“That’s the bad news I mentioned,” Canidy said matter-of-factly.
“That’s not Tubes!”
“No, of course not. But I’m not sure who the hell it is.”
John Craig looked around, saw the bathroom door, and shuffled as fast as he could through it. The tiny room reverberated with his loud retching.
Not so much throwing up as it is dry heaves, Canidy thought.
There can’t be anything left in his stomach after all he threw up in the airplane.
Canidy turned and got a better look at the dead man. He looked like he could be maybe thirty. He had a large nose and a black mustache. His thick black curly hair was matted with caked blood from the single bullet hole in the center of his forehead.
He’s the spitting image of Frank Nola, just not as tall.
Has to be his cousin Whatshisname . . . Mariano.
I wonder if he was working with Frank? Or with the mob? Or is there really a difference?
Almost every inch of the dead man’s olive skin was deeply bruised.
He got the shit beat out of him.
They must have started at his feet and worked their way to his face.