Betrayal dh-12

by John Lescroart

  Liars deal in lies.

  Suddenly she opened her eyes and sat up.

  She needed to get to Evan. She needed to warn him.

  17

  Though it wasn't really a hangout for cops, the Old Town Traven wasn't far from the police station downtown, and it served a decent-tasting though nutritionally suspect happy-hour spread of chicken wings, peanuts in the shell, tiny meatballs in gravy, and popcorn. Even though happy hour had officially ended more than two hours before, there was still plenty of food available. The Traven didn't exactly pack 'em in, and now Evan, who'd changed out of his uniform at the station, and his bowling partner Stan Paganini, also in street clothes, held down one end of the bar all by themselves.

  Between his low-watt nervousness over the envelope he'd mailed to the FBI and his need to keep himself occupied so that he wouldn't do something stupid and try to get in touch with Tara until she'd dumped Nolan, if she actually was going to dump him after all, Evan felt that a drink or ten wouldn't be amiss. Pass the difficult night in a haze and see what tomorrow brings.

  Now it was half past nine and he and Paganini were on to the name of the place. Due either to the marginal intelligence of its owners, a drunken mistake, a simple typo, or all of the above, the neon sign above the door read "Old Town Traven." The place's business cards also had tavern spelled incorrectly, so Evan decided it was probably that the proprietors just weren't too bright and certainly had not been the San Mateo County Spelling Bee champions, as he had been when he'd been in eighth grade.

  "No, you weren't." Paganini stabbed the last meatball on his plate with a toothpick and washed it down with a good swig of his gin and tonic.

  "Was too. I won on hygiene, which is almost unfair, it's such an easy word."

  "Wait! Don't tell me." Paganini took in a little more of his drink. "H, Y," he began.

  "Good so far."

  "G." He paused, glanced at Evan.

  "I before E." Evan tipped his vodka rocks all the way up. "Except after C."

  "Don't tell me!"

  "I just did. 'Or when sounded like a as in neighbor or weigh.'"

  "Okay, trying the old head-fake double reverse. I get it. But I'm on to you, boy. So here goes, again. H, Y, G, E…"

  "Buzz! You're out." Evan shook his head. "I just told you, i before e, Stan. I told you the whole damn poem. You think I was making that up?"

  "I thought you were trying to trick me. And then g is close to c sound-wise, so it was the exception."

  "Nope. It's the rule." Evan spelled the word out.

  "That doesn't sound right. I'm going to look it up at home."

  "You want to bet?"

  "No, I don't want to bet. But you're right, that's a pretty simple word to win the whole county spelling bee on."

  "Well, harder than tavern, anyway. And they got that one wrong here. Twice. Three times? Who knows, maybe more. They might have it on the matchbooks."

  "Yeah, well…" Paganini shifted his bulk and cried out. "Hey!"

  "What?"

  "Sat on something." Paganini slid himself off his stool and was digging in his pants pockets. Plopping down a large set of keys in the bar's gutter, he reached in again and produced a heavy item that he plunked onto the bar. "Knucks," he said.

  At one of their bowling league nights, the cops had gotten into a discussion about various common enhancements to a man's natural defensive arsenal. Brass knuckles had featured large in Paganini's experience, and Evan said he'd never actually encountered them.

  Now he picked up the hunk of fitted metal. "Heavy sucker."

  "Get hit with it, you're clocked," Paganini said. "Although who fights with their fists anymore, huh? Nowadays, you know you're going to be in a fight, you pack heat, am I right?"

  "Maybe you don't want to kill who you're fighting?"

  Paganini chuckled. "Yeah, like that happens anymore. Go ahead, put ' em on. Keep 'em if you want. I collect the ones I get off perps. I got a half dozen like these at home."

  As Evan was pocketing the brass knuckles, the bartender, a midthirties slacker with a wispy effort at a beard, suddenly appeared in front of them. Paganini looked down at his glass. "We empty again?"

  "Seem to be," Evan said. "Let's double us up here, would you, Jeff?"

  Jeff looked from one of them to the other. "You guys walking home from here? You pull a DUI, they can come back and get us."

  "We're not going to get any DUI," Paganini said. He reached around into the back of his pants and pulled out his wallet, opened it to the badge. "Pour us a couple more, would you, please, and I won't report the obvious health violation keeping those meatballs out so long. Awesome meatballs, by the way. Remind me of my mom's." He cocked his head over toward Evan. "I believe the gentleman requested a couple of doubles."

  Jeff took a beat, nodded, and then turned to get fresh glasses and ice.

  Evan lowered his voice, leaned into Stan. "Am I slurring?"

  "Nope. You're as eloquent as Cicero. How about me?"

  "How about you what?"

  "Am I slurring?"

  "No."

  "You keeping track of where we are?"

  "The Traven," Paganini replied.

  "Drinkwise, Stan. Drinkwise. I know where we physically are."

  "Four, I think, maybe. Couple of doubles is six, and we've been here"-he checked his watch-"three hours. So I figure we're blowing point oh five, six, max, which means we're totally cool to drive and will be for the foreseeable future."

  But Evan-all too familiar with the average cop's rationalization genius when drinking-was doing his own math. He was fairly certain they'd had more than four drinks already, maybe as many as six or seven, and if they had a couple of doubles on top of that, two doubles each, that would take him up to eleven generous pours. He was just about to say that maybe he'd better stick with singles to give them a better chance to metabolize off, when the bar's door opened. Glancing up at the mirror behind the bar, he put a hand on Paganini's arm and without a word stood up and turned around.

  "Your mom said this was where she might look for you." From their table in the back, where they couldn't be heard by anyone else, Tara looked around the seedy bar. "Nice place. You come here often?"

  "Sometimes. Nights get long, and I go crazy at home. Some nights I bowl. Or read or something. Two days ago I was at Mom and Dad's. I've got a life."

  "Of course you do. I didn't mean that."

  "Yeah, you do." He sat back and folded his arms. "You disapprove of me being here." He looked at her, flat affect. "You come down here to bust my chops?"

  "No," she said. "No. I don't mean to do that. I came down here to…well, just to talk to you again."

  Jeff showed up with two drinks and put them down at their table. "And for the lady?"

  "Maybe I'll just have one of his. And some cranberry juice."

  When Jeff left, Tara pulled her chair up, reached out across the table, and touched Evan's hand. "I'm really not here to criticize you, Evan. It's just that the other night you said you'd been drinking too much and were trying to slow down a little."

  "Yeah, well, I guess I'm not succeeding tonight. What's that look? You don't think a couple of drinks is a good idea?"

  "I didn't say that. If you need it, you need it." She pulled his hand from his glass and covered it with hers. "Look," she whispered, "I don't know even any small part of what you've been through. You're the one who said it would be better if you didn't need so much alcohol."

  "That would be better. I agree." Defiantly, he picked up his glass and took a long drink. "But that doesn't seem to be what I'm doing right now, which is trying to keep things together."

  "What things?"

  "My job, for one. What happened with my guys in Iraq. Why I'm still alive. Anger. Guilt. You name it." He brought his eyes up, unfocused, heavy-lidded. "And all those are before we even get to you."

  Jeff showed up with Tara's cranberry juice, placed it on the table in front of her, turned, and left. A silence settled. Evan
again lifted his glass, then put it back down. "You want to tell me about you and Ron?"

  "There isn't any me and Ron. Not anymore. How can you even ask that after…?" She swallowed. "I called him after I saw you at school on Monday. It's over." Sighing, she went on. "But then this afternoon he came by."

  "Didn't take the hint, huh? How did that go?"

  "I never let him in. He told me he never said I'd ripped up your letter."

  Evan took that in with a solemn nod. "The guy's a congenital liar."

  "Evan, look at me." Her eyes bored into his. "You're swearing to me that he said that? You didn't make that up to make him look bad? I know it's awful of me to ask, but I've got to ask you straight out. I've got to know for absolute certain."

  Evan covered Tara's hand with both of his. "I swear to God," he said. "I swear on the memory of the lives of my men, I have never lied to you."

  Tara let out a long, shuddering breath, as though something that had been squeezing her had suddenly let go. "He also denied what he told you I said in the hospital, about making your own bed and you could lie in it."

  Evan shook his head, almost in admiration. "Old Ron was on a roll." Lifting his glass, he finished his drink, reached across, and took the second one from in front of Tara. "He said it, all right."

  "He said something else today too."

  "I can't wait to hear it. What? Did I kill somebody now?"

  But Tara had straightened up. "God, Evan, why do you say that?"

  "What?"

  "That you'd killed somebody."

  "I didn't. I was kidding. What?"

  She started to talk and stopped herself, then started again. "Ron told me you broke into his house last weekend and left stuff that you'd somehow smuggled out of Iraq to make it look like Ron had killed this man and his wife, when in fact it was you who'd killed them."

  Evan's shoulders sagged. He slumped in his chair. He lifted his drink and put himself on the outside of it in one gulp.

  "Evan?"

  "That fucker. That motherfucker."

  She went on. "He said you'd brought over hand grenades and guns to his place that you'd smuggled out of Iraq. And planted incriminating pictures on his computer."

  Evan's body molded itself back into his hard chair. He spoke slowly, with great caution lest his thick tongue betray him. "This guy who got killed, Khalil. He was Iraqi. Think about it. Think about Ron's real job over here…"

  "What do you mean? Ron's a recruiter mostly. He's…"

  "No, listen. He's a mercenary mostly. Those were his weapons, his grenades, his pictures."

  Tara sat back and crossed her arms. "You mean you do know about this? How could you know about this? Or about Ron?"

  He just looked at her, opened his mouth, closed it again.

  She came forward now. "Are you telling me he wasn't lying about you breaking into his house? Did you do that, Evan? Tell me you didn't do that."

  "No, I…" Evan shook his head, hard, trying to clear away the fog of alcohol. "I mean, okay, I went in."

  "You broke into Ron's house? And did what?"

  "Nothing. I didn't do anything. No," he said, "that's not true. I got on his computer and got pictures of this guy's house before it burned down."

  "Why did you do that?"

  "'Cause Ron's a murderer, Tara. He killed this guy and this was the evidence…"

  "So what did you do with it?"

  "Mailed it to somebody."

  "The FBI, you mean?" She hit the table with her palm. "Did you send your diskette to the FBI, Evan? Because Ron had the FBI over at his house today, and he told them you'd planted all that stuff there. And now you tell me you were actually inside, so they'll find your hair or fingerprints or something, don't you see that? He's trying to have you framed for this." She ran both of her hands through her hair, over her scalp, down to her neck. "God, God, God, how can this be happening? They may be at your apartment right now, wanting to talk to you, do you realize that? And then what are you going to do? What are you going to tell them?"

  He stared blankly at her for a long minute, then brought his hand up and chewed at the knuckle of his index finger. "Enough of this shit." His words starting to slur.

  "Evan." She gripped at his hands. "He's already got the FBI in on it, don't you understand? It's already happening."

  "Can't be. I've got to stop him."

  "No. Don't you do anything. Get a lawyer or talk to one of your bosses. Maybe they can deliver a message, get something through to Ron. But you stay out of it personally. Ron's dangerous, Evan. And he's out to get you. You've got to be smart. Get sober and get a plan."

  Evan slammed a heavy hand on the table. "What do you mean, get sober? Is that what everything's about, whether I'm sober or not? I'm sober right now, enough for fucking Ron Nolan."

  "Evan," she pleaded, "you're not. Listen to yourself. You don't swear when you're sober. You don't slur when you're sober." She stood up, reached out and touched his arm. "Look, why don't you come home now with me. I could drive us."

  "And then what?" Evan's thick voice trembled with rage. "And then the FBI finds me there? Or at work tomorrow? What do I do then?"

  "Come home with me. We can talk about it and work something out." She let her arm fall along his sleeve and took his hand. "Come on. Really."

  "No!" He pulled his hand from hers, turned away. His shoulders rose and fell and then he turned back to her. "I am not fucking dealing with him anymore! This has got to end. It can't go on."

  "You're right, but it can't end tonight, Evan."

  "Yes, it damn well can."

  Tara kept her voice low, conciliatory, restrained. "Evan, come on. There's no way you can do anything the way you are now, so don't be crazy. You're just really mad-"

  "Way more than that, Tara. I'm going to kill the son of a bitch."

  "Shh, shh, shh." She moved up and put her fingers to his lips. "Don't talk like that. That's just crazy drink talk. Let's just the two of us get out of here and-"

  "Hey!" Taking her hand down, roughly, away from his mouth. "Listen to me!" Low and deadly earnest. "It's got to stop! It can't go on! It's not about fucking drinking. Are you hearing me? It's about honor. Who I am. What he's done to us! Don't you see that?"

  "Yes, I do see that. You're right. You're completely right. But this isn't the time to fix all that." She moved in close and stood straight before him, arms at her side. "Please, Evan. I'm going to ask you one more time. Please come home with me. Whatever it is, we'll work it out together. I promise."

  But the glaze in his eyes was all that answered her. Standing, weaving slightly, he gripped the back of his chair. "Enough's enough," he said.

  She looked him in the face one last time. "I'm begging you," she said. "Please."

  If he heard her at all, he didn't show it. He stared blankly ahead at her, shaking his head, shaking his head. Then he started walking toward the door.

  "Evan, please," she called after him. "Wait."

  He stopped, and for a second she thought that she'd convinced him. He turned back to her. "Leave me alone," he said. "I know what I've got to do and I'm gonna do it."

  And then he turned and again started walking unsteadily toward the door.

  PART THREE. 2005

  18

  Tara had never felt so grateful for her job.

  It was getting to the end of the year, and her kids were handing in their big reports and concluding their projects on the ancient world in preparation for the school's open house on Friday night, when all the work would be displayed in the classrooms. In Tara's room, they had rearranged all the desks to make room for the papier mâché pyramids, the dioramas of the growing cycle along the Nile, the plumbing schemes for the residences of the pharaohs. Hieroglyphics, the early domestic cat, the library at Alexandria, Moses and the Exodus.

  So all day and much of the nights of Thursday and Friday, Tara was busy organizing and tending to last-minute crises among her students and, often, their families. She had no time to
contact Evan to find out what, if anything, had happened after he'd stormed out on her on Wednesday night. And, truth to tell, she wasn't too inclined to call him anyway. She thought she would let him take a few days to sober up and get over his embarrassment about how he'd acted. Then, after he'd called her and apologized, they'd see where they were. But in the meanwhile, she had her job and her kids. She thought that a couple of days' respite from the emotional turmoil and upheaval surrounding Ron and Evan might do everybody involved a world of good.

  Saturday, she slept in until nearly ten o'clock, then went down to the pool and swam a hundred laps. Coming back upstairs to her apartment, she showered and threw on some shorts and a T-shirt, made a salad for lunch, and after that dozed off watching a tennis match on TV. When she woke up, she graded the last of the written reports for another hour or so. At a little after four, she was just finishing up the last one when her doorbell rang. Checking the peephole, she saw Eileen Scholler, her face blotched from crying.

  Limping, scabbed, and bruised in his orange jail jumpsuit, Evan entered his side of the visiting room chained to twenty other men. Watching the line enter, Tara stood among a loose knot of mostly women in a kind of bullpen waiting area on their side of the Plexiglas screen that separated the visitors from the inmates. A row of facing pairs of talking stations bisected the room from one end to the other.

  Tara had to fight to hold back her tears as they unfastened Evan from the chain of men to whom he'd been attached. He saw her and started to raise a welcoming hand, but his wrists were still attached to the chain around his waist. The guard directed him to one of the desks and Tara excused herself through the now-pressing crowd of visitors and sat herself at last facing him. There was a hole in the Plexiglas through which they were supposed to talk.

  It was Wednesday, his fourth day in custody, and the first day that his injuries had healed enough to allow him to walk unaided and to see visitors. In the first moment, neither could find anything to say. They looked at each other, then away, and back again.