The James Deans

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  He startled. “For chrissakes, what the fuck—Prager?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “You look like shit. Go home. Shave and shower, then call me later. We can talk about anything you want then.”

  “Now!” I whispered angrily, letting him see the barrel of my gun pointing at his belly.

  “Okay. What’s this about?”

  “I just got back from Florida.”

  “How nice for you.” He sneered. “You don’t look like you got much of a tan.”

  “Barto tried to kill me.”

  “Who?”

  “Look, Brightman, we can do this a few ways.”

  “And they would be …?”

  “One is I hand you my pistol, let you pat me down to see I’m not wearing a wire, and we have a talk out here in the nice empty street about compensation.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The other is I stick this gun in your ribs and take you for a ride.”

  “You won’t kill me.”

  “You’re right, I won’t, but John Heaton’ll be happy to. You ever meet his friends Rocky and Preacher Simmons? They won’t need much encouragement, Brightman, and I bet you I can be awfully fucking convincing.”

  That put a chink in his armor. Though he was still smiling at me with his mouth, his eyes had withdrawn from the performance. They were too busy sizing me up.

  “Tick … tick … tick …” I waved the .38 from side to side. “Clock’s running.”

  “What is it you think you know?”

  Good. Good. He’d given me an opening. I held my revolver out to him, flat in my palm, my finger nowhere near the trigger.

  “It’s one or the other, Brightman, no free samples. It’s a limited menu. We talk or you die; those are your choices.”

  He swiped the .38 out of my hand and stuffed it in the waistband of his shorts. Without him asking, I removed my shirt and spun around slowly. I put the shirt back on. I spread my legs and let him run his hands and up and down both legs, inside my socks.

  “Check under my balls,” I instructed.

  He laughed, but did it anyway. I moved to the car parked closest to us, sat on the fender, and removed my shoes and socks.

  “Okay?” I asked.

  “Not yet.” He looked down the block in either direction, stepped into the street to see if he could spot anyone lurking about. The early Sunday sky was a bit brighter now, and the new light afforded him a pretty good view. Satisfied that we were alone, he said: “Talk.”

  “I want you to know that I think you’re a piece of shit and if I was able to prove anything I was about to say, we wouldn’t be having this little chitchat. I’d throw the proof up in the air between the DA and John Heaton and let them fight for it like a jump ball. Fortunately for you, all I got is a bag full of circumstance and supposition.”

  “Why not open the bag and let me have a look?” he said, his eyes still locked on my face. “Then maybe we can determine the value of your assets.”

  “Let’s start with the James Deans.”

  “The James Deans … You’re very good, Prager. What a bunch of jerks we were. You know, one other person’s mentioned them to me in twenty-seven years.”

  “Yes, I know. Kyle Lawrence, the boy who helped you murder Carl Stipe. He’s one of the missing pieces. Something happened around the time of his death that caught Moira’s attention. That’s why you had to kill her. But I’m getting ahead of myself.”

  There was no denial. Brightman said nothing. He didn’t have to. The cocky smile he’d been showing me for the last several minutes slid off his face. He noticed me notice.

  “As you were saying …”

  “Okay, so to get into the James Deans you had to take a scalp, steal something, right? You had balls, so you took the Hallworth Harrier. Mike stole a box of sanitary napkins from Wiggman’s. Pete grabbed Mr. Hart’s glasses. Jeff was a pussy and stole his father’s watch. That leaves Kyle. What did Kyle steal? Mike Day told me that no one but you knew and you vouched for him. What did he steal, Senator?”

  “It’s impolite to ask questions you think you know the answers to, Mr. Prager. Didn’t your mama ever teach you that?”

  “She was too busy teaching me not to steal and murder. The way I figure it, you and Kyle saw Carl Stipe’s bike outside Ronny Bishop’s house. You knew he would take the shortcut through the woods to get to his house. What a scalp that bike would be, and from the mayor’s kid, no less. It was close to Halloween, right? So you two got your masks and went into the woods to wait for him. How’m I doing.”

  “It’s all very fascinating, so far.”

  “So Carl comes riding by and one of you shoves a stick through his front wheel and he topples over, headfirst. You should’ve just taken the bike and split, but, of all things, one of you is worried the kid might really be hurt. So Kyle or you go to check on him. A fatal mistake. When you get close, he rips off your mask and sees who you are. Then he starts screaming and struggling. He threatens to tell. You threaten him back. If he doesn’t shut up, you’re going to kill him. Now he’s panicked and struggles harder, screams louder. You ask Kyle to help hold him down, but the kid still won’t shut up. One of you reaches for something to shove into his mouth to quiet him—the stick you used to knock him off the bike.

  “You shove it in to scare him, but it’s gone too deep. It snaps. Now the kid’s gasping for breath, struggling even harder because you are going to kill him. You’re panicked too. You have to kill him. You ram the stick in again and again. Then the kid’s dead. You take the bike and split. I think maybe you weighted it down and threw it into the reservoir. I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me where the bike is?”

  He actually started laughing. “If you knew where the bicycle was, you’d have more than supposition and circumstance, wouldn’t you? We couldn’t have that.”

  “Okay, all right,” I relented, “you can’t give me any physical proof. I didn’t suppose you would. But I want to know who killed the Stipe kid. You don’t have to say a word. Was it you?”

  He shook his head no. He was shrewd. He knew that if he asked me the same question, my reaction would be much the same. It would hold no water in court, but I wasn’t worried about the rules of evidence at the moment.

  “I know you were a bright and ballsy kid, Brightman,” I moved on, “but I was confused about the statement you and Kyle made to the cops afterward. Even if you had thought to do it, to go to the cops and feed them a story about a drifter leaving the woods on a bicycle, I couldn’t picture any fourteen-year-old clever enough to know just exactly what to say. Most kids would have given themselves away, saying too much or too little. You and Kyle, though, gave just the proper amount of detail to throw suspicion away from you, but not enough to point at any one person in particular. Then I realized that had to be your father’s doing. He would know what to say, how to say it, and to whom. He would know how to keep your names out of it, how to get the cops to shield your identities. He knew, huh? All these years, he knew.”

  Again, Brightman was silent, but his fists were clenched so tightly I thought his nails must be biting into the skin of his palms.

  “Then that poor schmuck Martz got picked up by the cops. You and Kyle would probably have gotten away with it without him, but he made it a done deal. When he was unlucky enough to drown, you guys were home free. Your dad waited a respectful amount of time and then got you the hell out of Hallworth. I’m curious, did you and Kyle ever talk about that day? Did you two keep in touch?”

  “So you don’t know everything,” he chided. “There’s holes in that bag of yours.”

  I ignored him. “Well, did you two talk?”

  “Not ever, not once from the day I moved. I put Hallworth behind me.”

  “You mean you thought you did, until about two years ago. Then something happened. And here I’m only guessing, but I think I’m pretty close. Kyle must’ve found out he was dying. That fucks with a man’s mind, you know, knowing he’s about
to die. It’s bad for a young man, especially one who has murdered a little boy. Maybe that’s why he turned to a life of drugs in the first place. Who knows these things?

  “Then I remembered how weird my mom started acting when she found out how sick she was. Suddenly, she remembered the shitty things she’d done to people over the years. There weren’t many, but what few there were ate her like the cancer. She made a list of people she felt she needed to apologize to and either called or wrote to everyone on the list who was still alive. But when you’ve committed murder, who do you apologize to?”

  Brightman looked a bit puzzled. “Are you asking me?”

  It was my turn to laugh. “Don’t waste your energy on it now. You’ll have to ask yourself that question eventually, unless you plan on living forever.”

  “Get on with this or I’m leaving.”

  “So Kyle knows he’s dying,” I picked up. “He writes you a letter. Something about how guilty he’s felt all these years since what happened in Hallworth in ‘56 and how he needs to unburden himself before he dies. When people find out they’re dying, they get religion chop-chop. He suggests you do the same before it’s too late. But you two were close when you were kids, so he says he’ll keep your name out of it. You don’t panic. You did that once and it cost a kid his life. No, you’re working on some sort of plan to prevent or delay Kyle from going to the authorities. Then Kyle has the good form to drop dead a little sooner than expected. You think you’re off the hook. Unfortunately, Moira Heaton’s seen the letter or overheard the phone call. I know this for a fact.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “HNJ1956. It’s a notation I found in Moira’s checkbook under a check she’d written to a research firm. You know that already. Sandra Sotomayor told you all about it. It’s why I got offered reinstatement. It’s why you had Sandra call me up and offer me some bullshit story about the meaning of HNJ1956.”

  “She’ll never testify against me.”

  “No one’s asking her to testify to anything,” I said. “This is between you and me, remember?”

  “Yes, a little chat about compensation.”

  “Exactly. You know the funny thing about Moira, Brightman?”

  “Was there something funny about her? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “That’s my point. By all accounts, she was unfunny, unattractive, and unexciting. But she was a bulldog. When she was curious about something, she wouldn’t let it go. The way I see it, Moira didn’t confront you about the letter. She figured she’d do a little research first. She probably made the mistake of confiding in someone like Sandra, or maybe she asked one too many questions and word got back to you. Once again, you didn’t panic. This time, however, the person on your ass didn’t have a terminal disease. You waited her out, hoping she’d lose interest. Eventually, though, she forced your hand. She was making progress, getting close. That’s why she started asking around about the statute of limitations. You had to get rid of her.”

  “Did I?” he said smugly.

  “I have to admit, this is the thing I had the most trouble with and the thing I’m still most iffy about. At first, I thought you might actually have paid Alfonseca or somebody else to do it, but that would have been too risky. You would have been far too exposed. No, you did it yourself. You were the only one you could trust to do it right.”

  “And how did I accomplish this miraculous feat? Through the use of prestidigitation? There’s the issue of my alibi, you remember.”

  “That alibi works only if you accept other facts. Once you open up your mind to alternative notions, you, Senator, become a very obvious suspect. The cops assumed all along that it was Moira that witnesses saw leaving the office that night. But I looked at those witness statements very carefully. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously inaccurate. None of the witnesses got a look at Moira’s face that night. The closest witness was in a passing car. The others were fifty to a hundred yards away. And by the time these witnesses came forward, the papers had already tainted the information.

  “Witnesses are suggestible. If you tell them they should have seen a five-foot-seven woman leaving an office at around eight p.m. that’s what they see. That wasn’t Moira leaving at all. It was either you wearing her coat or someone like Sandra or maybe even your wife. Moira was already dead by then, neatly wrapped in plastic. Then early on that Thanksgiving morning, you went jogging before the sun came up. No one would question that. You do it every day. You got in your car, drove to the alley behind the office, loaded Moira’s body into the trunk, and disposed of her. You got home when you were expected, sweaty as usual, but not for the usual reason. Dead weight is always harder to handle than people expect.”

  “Bravo! Bravo!” Brightman applauded. “You’re wasting your time in the wine business. You should take up writing fiction. You have quite a flair for it.”

  Again, I ignored him. “One problem solved. But for every problem solved, there are two lurking. You underestimated the press reaction. You see, you knew Moira. To you she was some boring, plain-Jane, forgettable drip who no one would be interested in. To the press, the disappearance of a young woman under mysterious circumstances is like blood in the water to sharks. It doesn’t matter to them if the woman looks like Quasimodo and has the personality of a brick. They turn her into the Black Dahlia and sell papers. So you’d gotten away with two homicides, but your political career was fucked.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “fucked is the word.”

  “But things began breaking your way. Spivack and Associates was floundering, and Joe, who probably assumed you were innocent in Moira’s disappearance, came to you with an idea of how to save his company and your career at the same time. You prop up Spivack and Associates and he’d find you some shithead to take the fall for Moira. He probably convinced himself he wasn’t doing anything wrong, really. After all, you hadn’t done it and you wouldn’t be free to run for higher office until the crime was solved. For his part, he’d be saving his company and a lot of people’s jobs. You didn’t have to be asked twice and gave him the money. But he got cold feet. I don’t know why. Maybe he started taking a good look at you for the crime and arrived at the same conclusion as me. In any case, you refused to take the money back. He may not even have offered. He knew he’d already been compromised.”

  Brightman looked impatiently at his Swatch. “Now the clock’s running on you, Mr. Prager.”

  “I’m almost finished.”

  “Thank God!”

  “I’d watch that if I were you. You’re already into Him pretty deep.”

  “Look—”

  “Did Barto come to you or was it the other way around? Doesn’t matter. Barto sees that Ivan Alfonseca’s been arrested for all these rapes in the boroughs. He remembers Alfonseca from when he worked as a marshal in South Florida. He waits for Alfonseca to get convicted on enough counts so he’d have nothing to lose by confessing to Moira’s murder. Barto arranges to have the family back in Cuba paid off. During trips to Rikers, his lawyers bring him the office sign-in sheets to fill out. He is given a story to remember about how he killed Moira and where he planted the jewelry. Now all you need is a patsy to think he’s discovering all this on his own. That’s where I come in. The timing was just too perfect. After two years, you just had to have me now. Why? I kept asking myself. Why?”

  “It certainly wasn’t your charm,” Brightman said. “I shall have to have a talking-to with the man who recommended you. He assured me you’d be adequately incompetent.”

  “Really, and who was that?”

  “Let’s get on with this, Prager.”

  “I’m curious about how you handled Spivack. My instinct is you and Barto kept him in the dark. Although he’d already been compromised, there was no need to involve him until he couldn’t do anything about it. On the other hand, he might have been a part of it as long as he thought you were innocent. Or you might’ve had more on him than I’m aware of. I guess I’ll never know.”

  “The
man did kill himself. I don’t think he did that because he was depressed over his wardrobe.”

  “You did almost everything right, even lying about having slept with Moira. That was brilliant. It took my attention away from any other reason you might have to do away with her. Once I was convinced it wasn’t about an affair, I stopped thinking of you as a suspect. And you deserve a lot of credit for having the foresight to keep some of Moira’s jewelry. That’s what sold everyone on Alfonseca. Almost everything broke your way. Spivack killed himself. Alfonseca’s dead. I don’t know where Barto is. The thing is, if you’d only hired some other poor schmuck besides me, you’d have gotten away with it.”

  “Oh, but I have, Moe. Like you said, your brilliant oratory is just so much smoke. It’s completely valueless. None of it would stand up in court, and if your pal Wit ever tries to print a word of this, he knows I’d sue and win.”

  “I don’t suppose I could appeal to your humanity and ask you to come with me and turn yourself in?”

  “Humanity! Are you nuts? I’m a politician.”

  “Then just tell me where Moira’s body really is and the bicycle, too. These families have suffered enough.” I raised my right hand. “I give you my word, I won’t mention you at all.”

  “Sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Okay, how’s about you take my revolver and blow the back of your head off.”

  “Once again, I must disappoint you,” he said as calmly as if I’d asked him to pick up some flour for me at the store.

  “How about I go to your brownstone and tell your wife what you’ve done?”

  “Be my guest. Unfortunately she’s away with friends, but I’ll have her call you when she gets back. She wouldn’t believe a word of this.”

  I ripped my .38 out of his waistband and pressed the barrel to his head. “How about I blow your brains all over the street?”