The Betrayer

by Daniel Judson

  The video ended there. McVicker stood back and Johnny looked at Cat.

  “We found the visor,” she said. “There was some blood on it, and we’re assuming it belongs to Jeremy’s attacker. The fact that his eye was bleeding and he grabbed the helmet means Jeremy must have hit him with it at some point. It’ll take a few days to get DNA.”

  “Do you know any of what happened off camera?”

  Fiermonte answered. “He fired shots at Jeremy.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “There were witnesses. Four of them, coming out of the Delancey.”

  Johnny addressed Cat. “Was Jeremy hit?”

  “No. He dropped the bike, but he got right up and took off on foot.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “No one saw.”

  “How many shots were fired?”

  “Three. A triple tap.”

  Johnny thought about that but said nothing.

  “The thing is,” Fiermonte said, “according to the witnesses, the shots were loud.”

  “The gun I saw was fitted with a suppressor.”

  “And yet the witnesses insist they heard gunshots.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Johnny said.

  Cat nodded. “It doesn’t make sense to us, either.”

  From behind Johnny, McVicker spoke. “I can think of a reason why someone would do that.”

  All eyes went to him.

  “The shooter wanted his shots to be heard,” he said.

  Fiermonte scowled. “This guy has the markings of a pro, Dickey. The triple tap, the equipment he carried. Delancey Street isn’t exactly deserted, even at one in the morning. Why would he want witnesses to hear the shots?”

  “I didn’t say anything about the witnesses.” He paused, then: “The bike Jeremy took off on was a Ducati Monster. The engine is an 1100 V-twin, and exhaust looked to me like a Leo Vince. That’s an open exhaust. And the catalytic converter was missing from the header pipe, so that means it’s an aftermarket racing pipe, probably has ‘for track use only’ stamped somewhere on it. All of this adds up to that being a very loud bike. Particularly to the person sitting on it.”

  “He wanted Jeremy to hear the shots,” Cat said.

  Fiermonte was still scowling. “Why would he want that?”

  “The first time someone fired shots at me,” McVicker said, “I ran. I’d never run so fast in my life.” He looked at Johnny. “They used live ammo during your training, right? Fired it over your heads, to get you used to it. Weren’t you scared the first time?”

  Johnny nodded. “Yeah.”

  “And let’s not forget what we just saw on that video. The man was chasing Jeremy with his weapon drawn and ready. He could have taken a shot while Jeremy was getting on the bike, would have been shooting a stationary target and not a moving one, but he didn’t. He waited till Jeremy was speeding away before firing.”

  “But what would he gain by doing that?” Cat asked. “Why would he want to scare Jeremy?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” McVicker said.

  “Send him running?” Fiermonte suggested, speaking to the group. “Scare him off, get him to quit whatever he’s up to.”

  McVicker shrugged. “Maybe. Or the opposite of that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Drive him in a direction you want him to go. Scare him enough that he does something you want him to do.” He paused. “Or goes to someone you want him to go to.”

  No one spoke for a long moment.

  Finally, Cat turned to Fiermonte, looked at him as if asking for his permission. He nodded, and Cat said to her brother, “Donnie thinks Jeremy might be up to something.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I think it has something to do with your father,” Fiermonte said.

  “Why would you think that?”

  Fiermonte glanced at the man standing behind Johnny, hesitated, then looked at Johnny again and said, “Let’s just say I have my reasons.”

  Cat knew Fiermonte’s mind well enough to know what he was thinking.

  The less McVicker knew, the better.

  But she also knew Johnny, so she wasn’t at all surprised by his reply.

  “You’re going to have to tell me what those reasons are.”

  Fiermonte hesitated again, glanced at McVicker, then said, “He called me about a month ago, said he had remembered some things about the night your father was killed.”

  “What things?”

  “He wouldn’t say. He sounded kind of out there. Manic.” Fiermonte shrugged. “Paranoid, even.”

  Cat said, “And last night he left a note with what might be clues on it. I think he left it for me to find.”

  “What kind of clues?”

  “A phone number. We did a reverse look up, and it’s his cell phone. I’ve tried calling it, but it goes straight to voice mail. It doesn’t even ring. My phone does that when it’s shut off, or when the battery has died.”

  Fiermonte said, “He also left an eight-digit number, maybe a code, but we don’t know to what. And there was the address of a park two blocks from where this surveillance footage was taken.”

  “Parks are popular places to buy drugs,” Johnny said.

  “They are,” Cat conceded. “But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.”

  “Jeremy is an addict, Cat.”

  “The man chasing him was a pro,” Fiermonte said. “Not some street dealer.”

  “You can’t know that for certain. He could just be ex-military and down on his luck. Men like that exist, you know. Too many of them these days. He could be a dealer, or he could be an enforcer for a dealer.” Johnny glanced over his shoulder at McVicker. “And suppressors — particularly homemade ones — can greatly diminish a handgun’s long-range accuracy. He could have removed it for that reason alone. And Jeremy could have been too far away by the time the man unscrewed it, he could have simply missed.”

  “All that may be true,” Cat said, “but you saw the video. Did Jeremy look high to you? Or strung out, for that matter? Because he didn’t look that way to me. The fact that he waved to the camera means he knew it was there. Obviously, he parked there because he wanted whatever was going to happen to be recorded. Which means he probably knew beforehand that the camera would be there. That’s an indication of a man with a plan, not some junkie desperate for a fix. That’s a man leaving a trail to be followed. So is the note.” She paused, then: “We can at least agree that Jeremy is in trouble, right?”

  Johnny nodded but said nothing.

  “I have to find him,” Cat said. “I know how you feel about him, Johnny, but I’d be grateful if you’d help me.”

  “You’re FBI, Cat. What could I do that you couldn’t?”

  “I took a leave of absence this morning.”

  “Still, you have friends in the Bureau, no? And Donnie here has the resources of the state at his disposal. What ground could I cover that the two of you couldn’t?”

  Cat deferred to Fiermonte.

  “I think it would be better if we kept this in the family for now,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because someone betrayed your father, Johnny. Everyone in this room knows that. Someone set him up the night he was killed, then fed lies to the press about him after he was dead. Clearly, killing him wasn’t enough, someone wanted him destroyed. His reputation, all the work he’d done, everything about the man, who he was — gone, just like that. If your brother does know something, if he has remembered something after all these years, then I think it would be wise if we knew what that something was before anyone else did. Whoever betrayed your father was close to him — close enough to know enough about the work he did to distort it and turn it into lies. Whoever that someone was, he hid his tracks well, because I’ve never been able to find him. If this is our chance to finally expose him, well, it’s a chance I’d rather not miss.”

  No one said anything.

  Cat stepped
closer to her brother. “Will you help us, Johnny? Will you find Jeremy and bring him home?”

  Johnny felt trapped, and couldn’t help but be reminded of the last time he had felt that way, the last time he’d been cornered in small room by three people.

  There was only one way out then.

  And he could see only one way out now.

  Chapter Eleven

  Johnny returned to the apartment just as the hour he’d predicted he would be away was ending. A promise kept. That mattered to him. Haley wanted to talk, particularly when she saw the look on his face, and he assured her they would, that he’d tell her everything, but not yet. He needed her, he’d said, and she understood what that meant and led him to their dark back bedroom and kissed him as they undressed each other.

  Afterward, they lay naked together under tangled sheets. She was prepared to give him all the time he needed and began counting her breathing. But before she got too far into her meditation, he spoke.

  “Dickey took me to see my sister.”

  Haley knew enough about his family situation to understand the significance of that. “How’d it feel to see her again?”

  Johnny shrugged. “About how I thought it would.”

  Survivors usually did one of two things — avoided each other, or clung to each other. Haley knew this, was grateful that she and Johnny were the latter. Johnny and his sister were of course the former. And the fact that Haley and Johnny were potentially fugitives, and his sister was a federal agent, was yet another reason for Johnny to maintain his distance from her.

  With that in mind, Haley asked, “Was it just you three?”

  “A guy named Donnie Fiermonte was with her.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “He’s a state prosecutor. He used to work with my father.”

  “Are we in trouble?” she said calmly.

  “No.”

  “Can you trust him?”

  “He and my father were close. He was like family.”

  “So that’s a yes.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did they want?”

  Johnny paused before answering. “I never told you much about the night my father was killed,” he said.

  Haley shrugged. “I figured what I knew was enough. And that if I needed to know more, you’d tell me.”

  “I think you need to know more now, Hay. I owe that much to you.”

  “Something is about to happen.”

  Johnny nodded. “I need to do something tonight. But I need you to understand why I have to do it.”

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

  “I want you to know. I owe you that much.”

  She nodded. Johnny sensed no fear from her, only calm determination. She’d come a long way in a year. Through meditation, her grace had only deepened. He had so much further to go if he was going to catch up with her.

  “It was just after I was discharged,” he began.

  Johnny was still on crutches, staying at Riverview, the house in Ossining, trying to figure out what the hell to do with his life. Jeremy was missing, he often disappeared, but no one had heard from him in close to a month. John Coyle Sr. had grown concerned and asked Dickey McVicker to find his wayward son.

  The last thing John Coyle knew was that Jeremy had been crashing with some friends in Greenwich Village and getting into trouble. It wasn’t anything new — Jeremy had gotten wilder and wilder in the years since his mother had died. But John Coyle needed his youngest son home. With Johnny back, there would be someone at the house to keep an eye on the boy. And maybe, just maybe, his two sons forced to be together in that way just might cause them to reconcile, once and for all.

  A father’s hope.

  It was a chilly night late in October when John Coyle got the call from Dickey McVicker. One of Dickey’s men had located Jeremy and was keeping him in an apartment in Chelsea, one of the many apartments around the Greater New York area that Dickey McVicker maintained for various reasons.

  John Coyle hung up the phone and went upstairs to Johnny’s room.

  “You’re coming for a ride with me,” the man said.

  “What’s up?”

  “We’re going to get your brother.”

  Johnny pointed out that he was on crutches, asked what good he could do. Anyway, he just wanted to rest. But his father insisted. “I might need someone to drive back, depending on what condition Jeremy is. And the ride will give us a chance to talk.”

  They were less than an hour from the city. Johnny thought his father was going to tell him that he should consider joining the FBI now that his military career was over, but the man actually surprised Johnny, said he thought Johnny should look into becoming a teacher, maybe at a high school, so he could also coach track or cross country. Somewhere nearby, something — anything — that had nothing at all to do with the criminal world.

  John Coyle wanted to keep his family — what was left of it — together.

  Johnny had no idea at the time that this would be the last moments he and his father would have together. He didn’t really want to hear what his old man had to say, was a bit abrupt with him. He just wasn’t in the mood to think about the future, at least not a new one. He was too busy being pissed off about the future he’d been denied. Too busy feeling sorry for himself.

  Coyles simply didn’t do that.

  John Sr. found a place to park three blocks from where Dickey’s man was holding Jeremy. Johnny would wait in the car. His father wasn’t involved in undercover operations anymore, hadn’t been for a while. He was a supervising agent now, working nine to five, more or less, for the first time in his life. His secret life was behind him, and he was enjoying being able to live without taking the precautions he used to have to take. For his sake, and the sake of his family.

  Even after he had parked, even with Jeremy waiting not far away, John Coyle still wanted to talk. Johnny was getting irritated. Finally, though, the man had enough of his son’s mood — he understood it, sympathized with it, but he’d had enough of it for now.

  He got out, but before he closed the door, he looked in at Johnny and said, “I’m proud of you, son, and always will be, no matter what you do, as long as you always do your best. That’s all I ask of you. Always do your best.”

  Then he closed the door, walked around a corner, and that was the last Johnny ever saw of him.

  Fifteen minutes later Johnny heard gunshots. He knew right away that they involved his father somehow. His gut told him this couldn’t be a coincidence. He wanted to get behind the wheel, figured if he couldn’t run toward the shots, he could at least drive toward them. Rangers ran toward, not away. Coyles ran toward, not away. But the crutches, and the cast around his leg, made sliding over a surprisingly difficult thing to do. When he finally got behind the wheel and started the engine, Johnny hit the accelerator with his good foot and headed toward the corner his father had turned just moments ago.

  As he neared it, two men came running around it, and instinctively Johnny slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting them. But the car skidded, and one of the men got clipped by the front bumper and rolled onto the hood.

  Johnny and this man looked at each other through the windshield. The man was wearing a ski mask, and all Johnny could see were his eyes.

  They were filled with fear.

  The other man pulled his partner off the hood, and the two took off.

  Johnny continued, turning the corner and driving to the next block. It was there that he once again skidded to a stop.

  Ahead, in the middle of street, lay a dead man. He was wearing a ski mask.

  The entire block was deserted, and the only sound Johnny could hear was approaching sirens.

  Johnny sat up and moved the edge of the mattress. Haley untangled herself from the sheets and sat beside him.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Six men were waiting to ambush him. He managed to kill one before he was taken.”

  “I mean what h
appened to your brother?”

  “Don’t know exactly. Whoever was holding him just set him free, apparently. He actually didn’t turn up till the next morning. He was a fucking mess, as high as a kite, couldn’t remember much. Nothing that would help, anyway.”

  “Someone used him to bait your father,” Haley stated.

  Johnny nodded.

  “And so you blame him for your father’s death.”

  Johnny nodded again. “Yeah.”

  “But wasn’t Dickey the one who called your father, got him to come into the city? And you said one of his men had found Jeremy. Didn’t anyone suspect him?”

  “Another one of the men who ambushed my father was caught the next day. He testified that he’d been hired by some Russian, that this Russian was working for Dickey but had betrayed him, and had been paid to do so by someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “No one knows.”

  “And everyone just believed that?”

  “What would Dickey gain by killing my father? He had risked his life for him again and again over the years. And my father had risked his life for Dickey’s. And anyway, Dickey knew where we lived, he could have just sent someone to the house, wouldn’t have had to lure my father out like that.”

  “Maybe coming straight to the house would have been too obvious.”

  “Dickey tore his own organization apart afterward, turned into Stalin for a while there, looking for anyone who might have been in on it, anyone who could identify the man the Russian had been working for.”

  Haley needed a moment after that. More and more the idea of their lives being in the hands of such a man was difficult for her to reconcile.

  Finally, she said, “So the men who kidnapped your father killed him?”

  Johnny nodded. “For three days we only knew that he had been taken. The FBI was all over this, and Fiermonte was leaning on the police. It was crazy. The man they caught, the one who said the dead Russian had been paid to betray Dickey, he confessed that my father had been killed just hours after he was taken. He said they’d kept him alive long enough so the man who wanted him dead could see him die.” Johnny paused. “His body was disposed of in a way I don’t even want to think about.”