by Harlan Coben
And that was when the gunfire began.
"Hit the deck!" Myron shouted.
The blue-blazers obeyed. Myron dove. The bullets continued. Sniper fire. One took out the overhead light. One hit the lamp.
Gotta love that Win.
"You want to live," Myron shouted, "stay down."
The bullets stopped. One of the blue-blazers started rising. A bullet sang out, nearly parting the man's hair.
The blazer dropped back down, flattening himself into a bearskin rug.
"I'm getting up now," Myron said. "And I'm leaving. I'd advise you guys to stay down. And, Grover?"
"What?"
"Radio downstairs. Tell them not to stop me. I can't be certain but I'm pretty sure my friend will lob in grenades if I'm unduly delayed."
Granite Man made the call. No one moved. Myron stood up. He almost whistled as he walked out.
26
It was midnight when Myron knocked on the door of Stan Gibbs's condo. "Let's take a walk," Myron said to him.
Stan threw down his cigarette, smothered it with his toe. "A drive might be better," he countered. "The feds use long-range amplifiers."
They got into Myron's Ford Taurus, aka the Chick Trawler. Stan Gibbs flicked on the radio and started playing with the stations. Commercial for Heineken. Does anyone really care that it's imported by Van Munchin and Company?
"Are you wearing a wire, Myron?"
"No."
"But the FBI spoke to you," Stan said. "After you left."
"How did you know?"
"They're watching me," he said with a shrug. "It would only be logical to assume they questioned you."
"Tell me about your connection with Dennis Lex," Myron said.
"I already told you. I don't have one."
"A big guy named Grover picked me up tonight. He and Susan Lex gave me a very stern warning not to play with you anymore. Bronwyn was there too."
Stan Gibbs closed his eyes and rubbed them. "They knew about your visit here."
"Had eight-by-ten glossies."
"And they concluded that you're working for me."
"Bingo."
Stan shook his head. "Get out of this, Myron. You don't want to mess with these people."
"Is that advice you wished someone had given you earlier?"
His smile had nothing behind it. Exhaustion came off him like heat squiggles on a hot sidewalk. "You have no idea," he said.
"Tell me about it."
"No."
"I can help," Myron said.
"Against the Lexes? They're too powerful."
"And being powerful, you wanted to do a story on them, right?"
He said nothing.
"And they didn't like that. In fact, they took exception."
More nothing.
"You started digging where they didn't want you to. You learned that there was another brother named Dennis."
"Yes."
"And that really pissed them off."
Stan started biting a hangnail.
"Come on, Stan. Don't make me drag this out of you."
"You've pretty much got it."
"Then tell me."
"I wanted to do a story on them. An expose, really. I even had a publisher all lined up for a book deal. But then the Lexes got wind of it. They warned me to stay away. A big man came to my apartment. I didn't catch his name. Looked like Sergeant Rock."
"That would be Grover."
"He told me that I could stop or I could be destroyed."
"And that only made you more curious."
"I guess."
"So you found out about Dennis Lex."
"Just that he existed. And that he vanished into thin air when he was a young child." Stan turned to him. Myron slowed the car and felt something creep along the top of his scalp.
"Like the Sow the Seeds victims," Myron finished.
"No."
"Why not?"
"It's different."
"How?" Myron asked.
"This is going to sound silly," Stan said, "but the family doesn't have that same sense of terror that the other families have."
"The rich are good with facades."
"It's more than that," Stan said. "I can't put my finger on it exactly. But I'm sure Susan and Bronwyn Lex know what happened to their brother."
"But they want to keep it a secret."
"Yes."
"Do you have a guess why?"
"No," Stan said.
Myron glanced back. The feds were following at a discreet enough distance.
"Do you think Susan Lex is responsible for that novel surfacing?"
"The thought has crossed my mind."
"But you never looked into it?"
"I started to. After the scandal hit. But I got a call from the big guy. He told me that it was just the beginning. That he was just flicking his finger and next time he would crush me between both palms."
"He can be a poetic fellow," Myron said.
"Yes."
"But I still don't get something."
"What?"
"You don't scare easily. When they warned you away the first time, you ignored it. After what they did to you, I'd have thought you'd fight back even harder."
"You're forgetting something," Stan said.
"What?"
"Melina Garston."
Silence.
"Think about it," Stan said. "My mistress, the only person who can back up my meeting with the Sow the Seeds kidnapper, ends up dead."
"Her father claims she retracted that."
"Oh, right. In some bizarre before-death confession."
"You think the Lexes arranged that too?"
"Why not? Look at what happened here. Who's the lead suspect in Melina's murder? I am, right? That's what the feds told you. They think I killed her. We know that the Lexes have enough juice to dig up this novel I supposedly plagiarized. Who knows what else they can do?"
"You think they could frame you for the murder?"
"At the very least."
"Are you saying they killed Melina Garston?"
"Maybe. Or it could have been the Sow the Seeds kidnapper. I don't know."
"But you think Melina was a warning."
"She was definitely a warning," Stan Gibbs said. "I just don't know who sent it."
On the radio, Stevie sang out about a landslide coming down. Oh yeah.
"You're leaving something out, Stan."
Stan kept his eyes forward. "What's that?"
"There's a personal connection here," Myron said.
"What do you mean?"
"Susan Lex mentioned your father. She said he was a liar."
Stan shrugged. "She might be right."
"What does he have to do with this?"
"Take me back."
"Don't hold back on me now."
"What do you really want here, Myron?"
"Excuse me?"
"What's your interest here?"
"I told you."
"That boy who needs a bone marrow transplant?"
"He's thirteen years old, Stan. He'll die without it."
"And what if I don't believe you? I did a little research of my own. You used to do government work."
"A long time ago."
"And maybe now you're helping the FBI. Or even the Lex family."
"No."
"I can't take that chance."
"Why not? You're telling me the truth, right? The truth can't hurt you."
He snorted. "You really believe that?"
"Why did Susan Lex mention your father?"
Nothing.
"Where is your father?" Myron said.
"That's just it."
"What?"
Stan looked at him. "He vanished. Eight years ago."
Vanished. That word again.
"I know what you're thinking and you're wrong. My father wasn't a well man. He had been in and out of institutions all his life. We've always assumed he ran off."
"But you never heard from him."<
br />
"That's right."
"Dennis Lex vanishes. Your father vanishes--"
"More than twenty years apart," Stan interjected. "It's not connected."
"So I still don't get it," Myron said. "What does your father or his disappearance have to do with the Lexes?"
"They think he's the reason I wanted to do the story. But they're wrong."
"Why would they think that?"
"My father was a student of Raymond Lex's. Before Midnight Confessions came out."
"So?"
"So my father claimed the novel was his. He said that Raymond Lex stole it from him."
"Jesus Christ."
"No one believed him," Stan added quickly. "Like I said, he wasn't right in the head."
"Yet you suddenly decided to investigate the family?"
"Yes."
"And you're telling me that's just a coincidence? That your own investigation had nothing to do with your father's accusations?"
Stan leaned his head against the car window like a little kid longing for home. "No one believed my father. That includes me. He was a sick man. Delusional even."
"So?"
"So at the end of the day, he was still my father," Stan said. "Maybe I owed it to him to at least give him the benefit of the doubt."
"Do you think Raymond Lex plagiarized your father?"
"No."
"Do you think your father is still alive?"
"I don't know."
"There has to be a connection here," Myron said. "Your story, the Lex family, your father's accusations--"
Stan closed his eyes. "No more."
Myron switched tracks. "How did the Sow the Seeds kidnapper get in touch with you?"
"I never reveal sources."
"Come on, Stan."
"No," he said firmly. "I may have lost a lot. But not that part of me. You know I can't say anything about my sources."
"You know who it is, don't you?"
"Take me home, Myron."
"Is it Dennis Lex--or did the same kidnapper take Dennis Lex?"
Stan crossed his arms. "Home," he said.
His face closed down. Myron saw it. There would be no more give tonight. He took a right and started heading back. Neither man spoke again until Myron stopped the car in the front of the condominium.
"Are you telling the truth, Myron? About the bone marrow donor?"
"Yes."
"This boy is someone close to you?"
Myron kept both hands on the wheel. "Yes."
"So there's no way you'll walk away from this?"
"None."
Stan nodded, mostly to himself. "I'll do what I can. But you have to trust me."
"What do you mean?"
"Give me a few days."
"To do what?"
"You won't hear from me for a little while. Don't let that shake your faith."
"What are you talking about?"
"You do what you have to," he said. "I'll do the same."
Stan Gibbs stepped out of the car and disappeared into the night.
27
Greg Downing woke Myron early the next morning with a phone call. "Nathan Mostoni left town," he said. "So I came back to New York. I get to pick up my son this afternoon."
Goody-goody for you, Myron thought. But he kept his tongue still.
"I'm going to the Ninety-second Street Y to shoot around," Greg said. "You want to come?"
"No," Myron said.
"Come anyway. Ten o'clock."
"I'll be late." Myron hung up and rolled out of bed. He checked his e-mail and found a JPEG image from Esperanza's contact at AgeComp. He clicked the file and an image slowly appeared on the screen. The possible face of Dennis Lex as a man in his mid to late thirties. Weird. Myron looked at the picture. Not familiar. Not familiar at all. Remarkable work, these age-enhanced images. So lifelike. Except in the eyes. The eyes always looked like the eyes of the dead.
He clicked on the print icon and heard his Hewlett-Packard go to work. Myron checked the clock on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. Still early in the morning, but he didn't want to wait. He called Melina Garston's father.
George Garston agreed to meet Myron at his penthouse at Fifth Avenue and Seventy-eighth Street, overlooking Central Park. A dark-haired woman answered the door. She introduced herself as Sandra and led him silently down the corridor. Myron looked out a window. He could see the Gothic outline of the Dakota all the way across the park. He remembered reading somewhere how Woody and Mia would wave towels from their respective apartments on either side of Central Park. Happier days, no doubt.
"I don't understand what you have to do with my daughter," George Garston said to him. Garston wore a collared blue shirt nicely offset by a shock of white neck-to-chest hairs sprouting out like a troll doll's. His bald head was an almost perfect sphere jammed between two boulder-excuses for shoulders. He had the proud, burly build of a successful immigrant, but you could see that he'd taken a hit. There was a slump there now, the stoop of the eternally grieving. Myron had seen it before. Grief like his breaks your back. You go on, but you always stoop. You smile, but it never really reaches the eyes.
"Probably nothing," Myron said. "I'm trying to find someone. He may be connected to your daughter's murder. I don't know."
The study was too-dark cherry-wood with drawn curtains and one lamp giving off a faint yellow glow. George Garston turned to the side, staring at the rich paisley wallpaper, showing Myron his profile. "We've worked together once," he said. "Not us personally. Our companies. Did you know that?"
"Yes," Myron said.
George Garston had made his fortune with a chain of Greek quasi-restaurants, the kind that work best as mall stands in crowded food courts. The chain was called Achilles Meals. For real. Myron had a Greek hockey player who endorsed the chain regionally, in the upper Midwest.
"So a sports agent is interested in my daughter's murder," Garston said.
"It's a long story."
"The police aren't talking. But they think it's her boyfriend. This reporter. Do you agree?"
"I don't know. What do you think?"
He made a scoffing noise. Myron could barely see his face anymore. "What do I think?" he said. "You sound like one of those grief counselors."
"Didn't mean to."
"Spewing all that sensitivity garbage. They're just trying to distract you from reality. They say they want you to face it. But really, it's the opposite. They want you to dig so far into yourself you won't be able to see how terrible your life is now." He grunted and shifted in his chair. "I don't have an opinion on Stan Gibbs. I never met him."
"Did you know he and your daughter were dating?"
In the dark, Myron saw the big head silently go back and forth. "She told me she had a boyfriend," he said. "She didn't tell me his name. Or that he was married."
"You wouldn't have approved?"
"Of course I wouldn't have approved," he said, trying to sound snappish, but he was beyond petty indignation. "Would you approve if it was your daughter?"
"I guess not. So you knew nothing about her relationship with Stan Gibbs?"
"Nothing."
"I understand that you spoke to her not long before she died."
"Four days before."
"Can you tell me about the conversation?"
"Melina had been drinking," he said in that pure monotone you get when the words have been ricocheting around your brain too long. "A lot. She drank too much, my daughter. Got that from her papa--who got it from his papa. The Garston family legacy." He made a chuckling sound that sounded far closer to a sob than anything in the neighborhood of a laugh.
"Melina talked to you about her testimony?"
"Yes."
"Could you tell me what she said exactly?"
" 'I made a mistake, Papa.' That's what she said. She said that she lied."
"What did you say?"
"I didn't even know what she was talking about. It's as I told you before--I didn't know ab
out this boyfriend."
"Did you ask her to explain?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"And she didn't. She said to forget about it. She said she'd take care of it. Then she told me she loved me and hung up."
Silence.
"I had two children, Mr. Bolitar. Did you know that?"
Myron shook his head.
"A plane crash killed my Michael three years ago. Now an animal has tortured and killed my girl. My wife, her name was Melina too, passed away fifteen years ago. There is no one. Forty-eight years ago, I thought I came to this country with nothing. I made a lot of money. And now I truly have nothing. You understand?"
"Yes," Myron said.
"Is that all, then?"
"Your daughter had an apartment on Broadway."
"Yes."
"Are her personal belongings still there?"
"Sandra--that's my daughter-in-law--she's been packing her things. But it's all still there. Why?"
"I'd like to go through them, if it's okay with you."
"The police already did that."
"I know."
"You think you might find something they didn't?"
"I'm almost positive I won't."
"But?"
"But I'm attacking this thing from a different perspective. It gives me a fresh set of eyes."
George Garston flicked on his desk lamp. The yellow from the bulb painted his face a dark jaundice. Myron could see that his eyes were too dry, brittle like fallen acorns in the sun. "If you find whoever killed my Melina, you will tell me first."
"No," Myron said.
"Do you know what he did to her?"
"Yes. And I know what you want to do. But it won't make you feel any better."
"You say this like you know it for a fact."
Myron kept silent.
George Garston flicked off the light and turned away. "Sandra will take you over now."
"He sits in that study all day," Sandra Garston told him, pressing the elevator button. "He won't go out anymore."
"It's still new," Myron said.
She shook her head. Her blue-black hair fell in big, loose curls, like thermal fax paper fresh out of the machine. But despite the hair color, her overall effect was almost Icelandic, the face and build of a world-class speed skater. Her features were sharp and ended rather abruptly. Her skin had the red of raw cold.
"He thinks he has no one," she said.
"He has you."
"I'm a daughter-in-law. He sees me and it's like a tether to Michael. I don't have the heart to tell him I finally started dating."
When they reached the street, Myron asked, "Were you and Melina close?"
"I think so, yes."
"Did you know about her relationship with Stan Gibbs?"
"Yes."
"But she never told her father."
