The Final Detail: A Myron Bolitar Novel

by Harlan Coben

  “Who do you work for?” Bonnie asked.

  “No one.”

  “Then why would you care if he came here?”

  “I’m just trying to put some things together,” he said.

  “What things?”

  “Just general stuff.”

  Bonnie Franklin looked at Veronica Lake. Both nodded. Then Bonnie Franklin made a show of turning up the cattle prod. “‘General stuff’ is an unacceptable response.”

  Panic squeezed Myron’s gut. “Wait—”

  “No, I think not.” Bonnie reached toward him with the cattle prod.

  Myron’s eyes widened. No choice really. He had to try it now. If the prod hit him again, he’d have nothing left. He just had to hope Veronica would not kill him.

  He had been planning the move for the past ten seconds. Now he rolled all the way back over his neck and head. He landed on his feet and without warning shot himself forward as though from a cannon. The three cross-dressers backed off, prepared for the attack. But an attack would be suicide. Myron knew that. There were three of them, two armed, at least one very good. Myron could never beat them. He needed to surprise them. So he did. By not going for them.

  He went instead for the one-way glass.

  His legs had pushed off full throttle, propelling him rocket-ship fashion toward the glass. By the time his three captors realized what he was doing, it was too late. Myron squeezed his eyes shut, made two fists, and hit the glass with his full weight, Superman style. He held nothing back. If the glass did not give, he was a dead man.

  The glass shattered on impact.

  The sound was enormous, all-consuming. Myron flew through it, glass clattering to the floor around him. When he landed, he tucked himself into a tight ball. He hit the floor and rolled. Tiny shards of mirror bit into his skin. He ignored the pain, kept rolling, crashing hard into the bar. Bottles fell.

  Big Cyndi had talked about the place’s reputation. Myron was counting on that. And the Take A Guess clientele did not disappoint.

  A pure New York melee ensued.

  Tables were thrown. People screamed. Someone flew over the bar and landed on top of Myron. More glass shattered. Myron tried to get to his feet, but it wasn’t happening. From his right, he saw a door open. Mall Girl emerged.

  “Bitch!”

  Mall Girl started toward him, carrying Bonnie’s cattle prod. Myron tried to scramble away, but he couldn’t get his bearings. Mall Girl kept coming, drawing closer.

  And then Mall Girl disappeared.

  It was like a scene from a cartoon, where the big dog punches Sylvester the Cat, and Sylvester flies across the room and the oversize fist stays there for a few seconds.

  In this case the oversize fist belonged to Big Cyndi.

  Bodies flew. Glasses flew. Chairs flew. Big Cyndi ignored it all. She scooped Myron up and threw him over her shoulder like a firefighter. They rushed outside as police sirens clawed through the milky night air.

  CHAPTER

  16

  Back at the Dakota, Win tsk-tsked and said, “You let a couple of girls beat you up?”

  “They weren’t girls.”

  Win took a sip of cognac. Myron gulped some Yoo-Hoo. “Tomorrow night,” Win said, “we’ll go back to this bar. Together.”

  It was not something Myron wanted to think about right now. Win called a doctor. It was after two in the morning, but the doctor, a gray-haired man straight from central casting, arrived in fifteen minutes. Nothing broken, he declared with a professional chuckle. Most of the medical treatment consisted of cleaning out the cuts from the heel blade and window bits. The two heel slices—the one on his stomach was shaped like a Z—required stitches. All in all, painful but relatively harmless.

  The doctor tossed Myron some Tylenol with codeine, closed up his medical bag, tipped his hat, departed. Myron finished his Yoo-Hoo and stood slowly. He wanted to take a shower, but the doctor had told him to wait until the morning. He swallowed a couple of tablets and hit the sheets. When he fell asleep, he dreamed about Brenda.

  In the morning he called Hester Crimstein at her apartment. The machine picked up. Myron said it was urgent. Midway through his message Hester took the call.

  “I need to see Esperanza,” he told the attorney. “Now.”

  Surprisingly, the attorney hesitated for only a moment before saying, “Okay.”

  “I killed someone,” Myron said.

  Esperanza sat across from him.

  “I don’t mean I actually fired a gun. But I might as well have. In many ways what I did was worse.”

  Esperanza kept her eyes on him. “This happened right before you ran away?”

  “Within a couple of weeks, yes.”

  “But that’s not why you left.”

  His mouth felt dry. “I guess not.”

  “You ran away because of Brenda.”

  Myron did not answer.

  Esperanza crossed her arms. “So why are you sharing this little tidbit with me?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I am,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “It’s something of a ploy. You hoped that your big confession would help me open up.”

  “No,” Myron said.

  “Then?”

  “You’re the one I talk to about things like this.”

  She almost smiled. “Even now?”

  “I don’t understand why you’re shutting me out,” he said. “And okay, maybe I do hold out some hope that talking about this will help us return to—I don’t know—some kind of sense of normalcy. Or maybe I just need to talk about this. Win wouldn’t understand. The person I killed was evil incarnate. It would have presented him with a moral dilemma no more complex than choosing a tie.”

  “And this moral dilemma haunts you?”

  “The problem is,” Myron said, “it doesn’t.”

  Esperanza nodded. “Ah.”

  “The person deserved it,” he went on. “The courts had no evidence.”

  “So you played vigilante.”

  “In a sense.”

  “And that bothers you? No, wait, it doesn’t bother you.”

  “Right.”

  “So you’re losing sleep over the fact that you’re not losing sleep.”

  He smiled, spread his hands. “See why I come to you?”

  Esperanza crossed her legs and looked up in the air. “When I first met you and Win, I wondered about your friendship. About what first attracted you to each other. I thought maybe Win was a latent homosexual.”

  “Why does everyone say that? Can’t two men just—”

  “I was wrong,” she interrupted. “And don’t get all defensive, it’ll make people wonder. You guys aren’t gay. I realized that early on. Like I said, it was just a thought. Then I wondered if it was simply the old adage ‘Opposites attract.’ Maybe that’s part of it.” She stopped.

  “And?” Myron prompted.

  “And maybe you two are more alike than either one of you wants to believe. I don’t want to get too deep here, but Win sees you as his humanity. If you like him, he reasons, how bad can he be? You, on the other hand, see him as a cold dose of reality. Win’s logic is scary, but it’s oddly appealing. There is a little part in all of us that likes what he does, the same side of us that thinks the Iranians might be on to something when they cut off a thief’s hand. You grew up with all that suburban liberal crap about the disadvantaged. But now real-life experience is teaching you that some people are just plain evil. It shifts you a little closer to Win.”

  “So you’re saying I’m becoming like Win? Gee, that’s comforting.”

  “I’m saying your reaction is human. I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s right. You may indeed be sinking into a quagmire. Bending the rules is getting easier and easier for you. Maybe the person you killed deserved it, but if you want to hear that, if you want absolution, go to Win.”

  Silence.

  Esperanza’s fingers fluttered near her mouth, debating between biting
the nails and plucking her lower lip. “You’ve always been the finest person I know,” she said. “Don’t let anybody change that, okay?”

  He swallowed, nodded.

  “You’re not bending the rules anymore,” she continued. “You’re decimating them. Just yesterday you told me you’d lie under oath to protect me.”

  “That’s different.”

  Esperanza looked straight at him. “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes. I’ll do whatever I have to to protect you.”

  “Including breaking laws? That’s my point, Myron.”

  He shifted in his chair.

  “And one other thing,” she said. “You’re using this whole moral dilemma thing to distract yourself from two truths you don’t want to face.”

  “What truths?”

  “One, Brenda.”

  “And two?”

  Esperanza smiled. “Skipped over one pretty fast.”

  “And two?” he repeated.

  Her smile was gentle, understanding. “Two, it gets your mind off why you’re really here.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “You’re starting to do more than wonder if I killed Clu. And you’re trying to find a way to rationalize it away if I did. You killed once, ergo it may be justifiable if I killed too. You just want to hear a reason.”

  “He hit you,” Myron said. “In the parking garage.”

  She said nothing.

  “The radio said they found pubic hairs in his apartment—”

  “Don’t go there,” she said.

  “I have to.”

  “Just stay out.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I don’t need your help.”

  “There’s more to it than that. I’m involved in this.”

  “Only because you want to be.”

  “Did Clu tell you I was in danger?”

  She said nothing.

  “He told my parents that. And Jessica. I thought at first it was hyperbole. But maybe it’s not. I got this weird diskette in the mail. There was an image of a young girl.”

  “You’re ranting,” she said. “You think you’re ready for this, but you’re not. Learn something from your past mistakes. Keep away from this.”

  “But it won’t keep away from me,” Myron said. “Why did Clu say I was in danger? Why did he hit you? What happened at the Take A Guess bar?”

  She shook her head. “Guard.”

  The guard opened the door. Esperanza kept her eyes down. She turned and left the room without looking back at Myron. Myron sat alone for a few seconds, gathered his thoughts. He checked his watch. Nine forty-five. Plenty of time to get to Yankee Stadium for his eleven o’clock meeting with Sophie and Jared Mayor. He had barely left the room when a man approached him.

  “Mr. Bolitar?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is for you.”

  The man handed him an envelope and disappeared. Myron opened it. A subpoena from the Bergen County district attorney’s office. Case heading: “People of Bergen County v. Esperanza Diaz.” Well, well. Esperanza and Hester had been right not to tell him anything.

  He stuffed it into his pocket. At least now he wouldn’t have to lie.

  CHAPTER

  17

  Myron did what every good boy should do when he gets into legal trouble: He called his mommy.

  “Your aunt Clara will handle the subpoena,” Mom said.

  Aunt Clara wasn’t really his aunt, just an old friend from the neighborhood. On the High Holy Days she still pinched Myron’s cheek and cried out, “What a punim!” Myron sort of hoped she wouldn’t do that in front of the judge: “Your Honor, I ask you to look at this face: Is that a punim or is that a punim?”

  “Okay,” Myron said.

  “I’ll call her, she’ll call the DA. In the meantime you say nothing, understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “See now, Mr. Smarty Pants? See what I was telling you now? About Hester Crimstein being right?”

  “Yeah, Mom, whatever.”

  “Don’t whatever me. They’ve subpoenaed you. But because Esperanza wouldn’t tell you anything, you can’t hurt her case.”

  “I see that, Mom.”

  “Good. Now let me go call Aunt Clara.”

  She hung up. And Mr. Smarty Pants did likewise.

  Bluntly put, Yankee Stadium was located in a cesspool section of the ever-eroding Bronx. It didn’t much matter. Whenever you first caught sight of the famed sports edifice, you still fell into an immediate church hush. Couldn’t help it. Memories swarmed in and burrowed down. Images flashed in and out. His youth. A small child crammed standing on the 4 train, holding Dad’s seemingly giant hand, looking up into his gentle face, the pregame anticipation tingling through every part of him. Dad had caught a fly ball when Myron was five years old. He could still see it sometimes—the arc of white rawhide, the crowd standing, his dad’s arm stretching to an impossible height, the ball landing on the palm with a happy smack, the warm beam coming off Dad’s face when he handed the prized possession to his son. Myron still had that ball, browning in the basement of his parents’ house.

  Basketball was Myron’s sport of choice, and football was probably his favorite to watch on TV. Tennis was the game of princes, golf the game of kings. But baseball was magic. Early childhood memories are faint, but almost every boy can recall his first major-league baseball game. He can remember the score, who hit a home run, who pitched. But mostly he remembers his father. The smell of his after-shave is wrapped up in the smells of baseball—the freshly cut grass, the summer air, the hot dogs, the stale popcorn, the spilled beer, the overoiled glove complete with baseball breaking in the pocket. He remembers the visiting team, the way Yaz tossed grounders to warm up Petrocelli at short, the way the hecklers made gentle fun of Frank Howard’s TV commercials for Nestlé’s Quik, the way the game’s greats rounded second and slid headfirst into third. You remember your sibling keeping stats, studying the lineups the way rabbinical scholars study the Talmud, baseball cards gripped in your hand, the ease and pace of a slow summer afternoon, Mom spending more time sunning herself than watching the action. You remember Dad buying you a pennant of the visiting team and later hanging it on your wall in a ceremony equal to the Celtics raising a banner in the old Boston Garden. You remember the way the players in the bullpen looked so relaxed, big wads of chew distorting their cheeks. You remember your healthy, respectful hate for the visiting team’s superstars, the pure joy of going on Bat Day and treasuring that piece of wood as though it’d come straight from Honus Wagner’s locker.

  Show me a boy who didn’t dream of being a big leaguer before age seven, before Training League or whatever slowly began to thin the herd in one of life’s earliest lessons that the world can and will disappoint you. Show me a boy who doesn’t remember wearing his Little League cap to school when the teachers would allow it, keeping it pitched high with a favorite baseball card tucked inside, wearing it to the dinner table, sleeping with it on the night table next to his bed. Show me a boy who doesn’t remember playing catch with his father on the weekends or, better, on those precious summer nights when Dad would rush home from his job, shake off his work clothes, put on a T-shirt that was always a little too small, grab a mitt, and head into the backyard before the final rays faded away. Show me a boy who didn’t stare in awe at how far his father could hit or throw a baseball—no matter how bad an athlete his father was, no matter how spastic or what have you—and for that shining moment Dad was transformed into a man of unimaginable ability and strength.

  Only baseball had that magic.

  The new majority owner of the New York Yankees was Sophie Mayor. She and her husband, Gary, had shocked the baseball world by buying the team from the longtime unpopular owner Vincent Riverton less than a year ago. Most fans had applauded. Vincent Riverton, a publishing mogul, had a love-hate relationship with the public (mostly hate) and the Mayors, a techno-nouveau-riche pair who had found their fortune through computer sof
tware, promised a more hands-off approach. Gary Mayor had grown up in the Bronx and promised a return to the days of the Mick and DiMaggio. The fans were thrilled.

  But tragedy struck pretty fast. Two weeks before the deal to buy was finalized, Gary Mayor died of a sudden heart attack. Sophie Mayor, who had always been an equal, if not dominating, partner in the software business, insisted on going ahead with the transaction. She had public support and sympathy, but Gary and his roots had been the rope tethering her to the public. Sophie was a midwestemer, and with her love of hunting mixed with her background as a math genius, she hit the prenatally suspicious New Yorkers as being something of a kook.

  Soon after taking over the helm, Sophie made her son Jared, a man with virtually no baseball experience, co-general manager. The public frowned. She made a quick trade, gutting the Yankee farm system on the chance that Clu Haid still had a good year or two left. The public cried. She had stood firm. She wanted a World Series in the Bronx immediately. Trading for Clu Haid was the way to get it. The public was skeptical.

  But Clu pitched amazingly well during his first month with the team. His fastball was back over ninety, and his curves were breaking as if they were accepting signals from a remote control. He got better with each outing, and the Yankees grabbed first place. The public was appeased. For a little while anyway, Myron guessed. He had stopped paying attention, but he could imagine the backlash against the Mayor family when Clu tested positive for drugs.

  Myron was led immediately into Sophie Mayor’s office. She and Jared both stood to greet him. Sophie Mayor was probably mid-fifties, what was commonly called a handsome woman, her hair gray and neat, her back straight, her handshake firm, her arms tawny, her eyes twinkling with hints of mischief and cunning. Jared was twenty-fiveish. He wore his hair parted on the right with no hint of style, wire-rimmed glasses, a blue blazer, and a polka dot bow tie. Youths for George Will.

  The office was sparsely decorated, or maybe it just appeared that way because the scene was dominated by a moose head hanging on a wall. A dead moose actually. A live moose is so hard to hang. Quite the decorating touch. Myron tried not to make a face. He almost said, “You must have hated this moose,” à la Dudley Moore in Arthur but refrained. With age comes maturity.