Monument to Murder - Margaret Truman [48]
As he drove to his rendezvous with Dexter, Mac Smith’s face kept injecting itself into his thoughts, and Annabel’s, too. She was a beautiful woman—too beautiful for her husband. He played out a fantasy of slowly slashing the husband’s throat while a naked Annabel looked on. That brought a smile to his face as he pulled into the lot and parked.
Dexter was already at a table wedged into a corner away from others. “Order something,” he said when Silva came to the table. Silva returned with a tray holding a chicken sandwich and a Diet Coke.
“You pick the nicest places to meet,” Silva said through a smile.
“It serves its purpose,” Dexter responded.
“Why was my trip abroad canceled?” Silva asked.
“It became inconvenient to send you.”
“Pity. I was looking forward to getting away. So, why am I here today?”
“We may have another assignment for you.”
“Where?”
“That hasn’t been decided yet. But in the meantime I want you to leave the city for a few weeks until the Mutki affair cools down.”
Silva laughed and tasted the sandwich. “I never realized how much of a storm that would create.”
“It was handled poorly.”
Silva frowned. “Not by me,” he said.
“By everyone. Our sponsors have made their displeasure known to me.”
Dexter’s mention of his “sponsors” triggered a series of thoughts for Silva. He’d never been sure who gave the orders for someone to be eliminated using the group headed by Dexter that was headquartered in the Virginia office building. That facility was relatively new. When Silva first started working for the enterprise there had been no central location. All orders came from hotel suites. But it was decided—by whom, Silva didn’t know—that it would be best to establish a business front with space to house the various instruments, technology, and weapons used to carry out the group’s missions.
Emile Silva had intended to make a career out of the marines. But a series of incidents in which his rage overflowed, resulting in physical attacks on fellow servicemen, led to a decision by his superiors that he was mentally unstable, unable to function in the corps’ structured environment. He’d fought that finding but had been unsuccessful, and left the service with a general discharge—and a need to seek revenge on those former comrades-in-arms whose testimony had been the basis for his dismissal. One in particular topped his retribution list.
Silva and Buddy Carcini had become friends while in uniform, as much of a friendship as Silva, constitutionally a loner, was able to develop with anyone. Carcini was a fast-talking Italian from New York who appreciated Silva’s cockiness and jaundiced view of the world, and of authority. They were competitive in many aspects of their service, on the shooting range, in hand-to-hand combat drills, and in a special sharp-shooting unit both had applied for and been accepted into.
It was off the base where the problems between them emerged and festered. It seemed to Silva that Carcini spent every hour off-duty chasing girls from the local town. Silva went along with him on some of his hunts but was never comfortable with his buddy’s sweet talk to each young woman they met. It wasn’t that Silva was shy. He could talk as good a story as Carcini, and a number of the girls made it obvious that they were taken with him. But when it came time to follow through, to entice a girl into a local motel or into the backseat of a borrowed car, Silva backed off, much to Carcini’s amusement. But after a few episodes like this, Carcini’s amusement turned to sarcasm, and then to questions about whether Silva was a closet homosexual.
Silva had finally had enough. One night as Carcini