“It’s a bonus,” Joel said.
Maya was outright beaming now. “We thought Dylan’s salary for a year would have a nice symmetry.”
“It’s got a lot more than symmetry,” Hardy said. “Are you sure this is . . . I’m afraid I’m just a little overwhelmed. This is more than extremely generous.”
Maya nodded. “You saved my life, Dismas. In many ways.” She reached over and put a hand on her husband’s knee. “I told him.”
“Good for you,” Hardy said. And turning to Joel, “And I bet you weren’t even tempted to leave her.”
He put his hand over hers. “Not even close. I never would. No matter what. I don’t know if she ever really believed that before. But we all make mistakes, huh? Do things we’re ashamed of, and worse than that.”
“I know it’s happened to me,” Hardy said. “Though if you’d keep that in this room, I’d appreciate it. My associates would be shocked and dismayed.”
“In any event,” Maya said, “I . . . we just wanted to thank you so much. It has been such a burden for so long and now I don’t have it anymore. I feel like a different person.”
Joel hadn’t let go of her hand. “The same person, only happier. And better.”
She looked contentedly across at him. “Arrête un peu.” In French. Stop a little. But not too much. Then, back at Hardy, with a sigh. “Anyway . . . if you don’t mind, I’ve got one last little thing that you could explain that I wanted to understand, and just really don’t.”
“If I can, I will.”
She let out a small breath. “Why me?”
“Why you what?”
“I mean, with Craig Chiurco. How did he pick me to frame? I never met him, I never even had heard of him, and suddenly he picks me out of nowhere and tries to ruin my life. I just don’t understand what happened. How that happened.”
Hardy picked up his coffee and took a sip. He knew that it was an excellent question, and that she deserved an answer. But there was no certain answer. Craig was dead, and no one would ever really know for sure. Hardy just hoped that the one he had—and he’d given it a lot of thought—was good enough for her.
“Well,” he began, “here’s my best guess. Dylan was in the blackmail business, and he was a greedy man. For a long time he was happy stringing you along, selling his dope, keeping up on his customer list. But remember, he also knew that Craig had killed the Gomez boy. Now, the fact that he’d done it in connection with a robbery they were both involved in made it a little squirrelly, since technically, legally, they’d both be guilty of that murder, whoever it was that pulled the trigger.
“But he liked pushing the limits, Dylan did. And what I think happened is that they were all together at BBW that day a few weeks before he got killed, and Dylan brought it up again. And here’s Craig going for his private eye license, straight all these years, thinking his past is all behind him, and then Dylan ups the stakes. Somehow. Tells him what he’s been doing with you, maybe without any of the specific details, but enough to make Craig know that you’ve got every reason to want Dylan removed too.
“So he decides to kill Dylan, and all he needs is to have you show up soon after.”
“So he called me? That was him?”
“I don’t know for sure. But Dylan had a Brooklyn accent, which isn’t so hard to mimic. Craig calls you late at night and makes it short and sweet, saying it’s an emergency he can’t talk about now . . . well, you came running. He knew what time Dylan got to the alley every day. He knew he’d have your gun with him. In any event, it all worked. If you want my opinion, you’re damn lucky he didn’t wait around to kill you too.”
“I thought of that. I’m kind of surprised he didn’t.”
Hardy shook his head. “Two dead people, and the police still left looking for who killed them? Too much to orchestrate. He wanted to keep it simple.”
“So what about Levon?”
“Levon would have remembered the conversation at BBW, their fight that Eugenio Ruiz witnessed, remember? So he goes to Levon’s, pulls his gun, has Levon call you on his cell phone and invite you over, walks behind him and . . . well, you know the rest.”
“So he didn’t know me at all, and just did that?”
“That’s what I think,” Hardy said.
“That’s about what I told her too,” Joel added. “She just said that sounded like the essence of evil. She doesn’t want to believe that people could really be that bad, in their souls.”
“I mean,” she said, “we all make mistakes, sure. Even terrible ones. But this wasn’t a simple mistake. This was a conscious decision to just destroy somebody he didn’t know at all.”
Hardy nodded. “That’s right.”
“I don’t want to believe that people can actually be like that,” she said.
“Not all of them. And thankfully, maybe not too many. But definitely some,” Hardy said. “Definitely some.”
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Hardy 13 - Plague of Secrets, A Page 39
