Burma Road

"The plan fell through. The hit man had a damn heart attack. Hell! He was only forty-five years old," answered the younger man.

"Where was he when he had this heart attack? Don’t tell me he tried for Roe just before he died, don’t tell me that!" snapped the old man.

"Not sure. He was found just off Indian Creek Road, in the woods, fifty yards from his truck - hunting rifle in his hands," the younger man said.

"Damn boy! Don’t you think it’s a little strange that he died that way? You said he was good, very good . . . you told me. Hell, he was scared to death, I suppose. Who did the autopsy?"

"Jim Halens, down at Newberry?"

"No! I did. Jim was out of the state and they called me so I know it was cardiac arrest. His heart almost blew out. A damn massive heart attack, just like Leah . . . damn heart attack. Can’t believe it," stuttered the younger man."

"Well, he must have been there to kill Roe. You know what that means, boy. Roe knows someone is after him. He suspects it might be someone tied to the killing of those girls, we gonna be hunted. You damn well better believe that!"

"Why should he think that dad? He probably thinks it’s tied to something he did with the government. You said he worked for the CIA and others like them. Killed terrorists and all that. Must be plenty trying to get him for stuff like that. Those foreigners are a strange lot. Always want revenge, you know that."

"No! What I do know is that Benjamin Roe is a damn shrewd man. That’s the reason I felt lucky all those years because he thought Carlo Columbo, killed that girl. Now you go and screw up this one. I told you to make sure that Saltman girl was dumped far away from here, but no . . . your buddy screwed that up royally. You’re lucky you got to do the supposed autopsy on her. You did get rid of him like I told you, didn’t you?"

Frank Riley felt like hitting his old man for mentioning Leah. "He won’t talk Dad. He knows he’ll go to the chair just as fast as ourselves if we were to get caught."

The old man shook his head in disbelief. His son, now fifty-two years old and a Doctor seemed as stupid as all the others he had known in his lifetime. The old man knew that Benjamin Roe was not stupid. Of all the men he had come across through the years, Benjamin Row was one he feared more than anyone was. The next on his list was Vinny Columbo. Like two peas in a pod, he thought.

He had made a big mistake when he killed Rebecca Steinman years back. If he had known that Vinny was her stepfather, he would have taken her far away and dumped her body along with his accomplice . . . Carlo Columbo. He never worried that Carlo would talk since Carlo’s father and possibly the rest of the family would have been killed in the process. He didn’t know much about the way those guys thought, but he had heard that crossing the Godfather was a death sentence.

Carlo and his father had crossed him, but good. The twenty or thirty million dollars worth of gems smuggled by him through their West Coast operation during the forties was only a small amount of the total value of gems that made its way through the mob. Old man Columbo seemed quite happy with the two hundred million that he knew of. He once commented to Carlo how well Carlo’s father and he had managed the outfit out West in L.A. Had he known better, it’s for sure Carlo’s father wouldn’t have made it to his old age before he passed away. Carlo had not talked for sure. William Riley Key was sure of that because he himself had lived in his seventies already. Had anyone known, he would have died long ago.

He knew that now his only boy had screwed this one up, but good. Benjamin Roe for sure had figured out the hit man was tied to the girls; William Riley Key knew that. He himself had worked around Roe all those years in Burma and the Orient and only once had their trails crossed. He was sure Roe didn’t remember, but William Riley Key remembered well. No one crossed William Key and lived, but Benjamin Roe had lived and he was one to be feared always. Key knew that he himself would need to take care of the matter if it was taken care of at all.

"In due time, Key said out-loud. "In due time."

Key had recently made his own plans to leave this area. To go somewhere else to spend his last few years, and let the past die. It would have to be Burma or at least Thailand he thought. Of all the places he had been in his life, Burma was his place of preference. He knew that he wanted to lie beside his wife there someday. She had died of a virus many years ago. His son was too much like her...weak, he thought. He had hoped that the boy would be more like himself, but he had turned out to be too much of a weakling as far as Key was concerned.

"Enough of this remembering," he said out loud. "Got to get rid of Benjamin Roe, that’s the only way . . . got to get him out of the way."