Envy the Night

by Michael Koryta

  Too late. Yes, Frank, I was too late.

  Grady Morgan and the Seven-Year Lie. He could have gotten the nerve just a year ago, six years too late and still it would have been in time for this. If he’d tracked Frank down then and told him the truth, how much blood would have been spilled? Not as much, that was for sure. There would have been some, Devin Matteson’s gunmen would have seen to that, but not as many people would have died, certainly not Atkins. If Frank had known Devin wasn’t responsible for his father’s demise, he never would have headed north, never would have seen Vaughn Duncan or had anything to do with it. Those two from Miami would have made their way north quietly, killed Duncan and taken Renee home to see her husband.

  It was a sick world, Grady thought, when you could stand on the shore of a beautiful lake like this and long for one murder. One murder that would have saved the others. Everybody with their damn score to settle, and Frank in the midst of it with one that didn’t need settling.

  He was done with the Bureau. Wouldn’t have to be—all of this was indirect involvement, he was close to retirement, and the Bureau loved to handle such things quietly and in-house—but he knew he’d resign now. Should have seven years ago, but it wasn’t too late to do it now, and he felt he owed Atkins that much. Atkins wouldn’t have wanted a guy like Grady left in his Bureau.

  The truth would start with Frank, though. The hell with the people in Chicago who would hear it next; Frank was the one that mattered.

  He didn’t see him again until the next morning, and while there were still cops moving around the lake—and still divers looking for Atkins—they were alone in the cabin, sitting with their backs to the window that looked out on the lake and its grisly activity.

  Ezra Ballard was alive and recovering from a single gunshot that had blown through his ribs and wreaked some internal havoc but left him to see another day, and that’s what Frank wanted to talk about at first.

  “He’ll make it,” Frank said after he finished filling Grady in on all the medical details Grady had already heard.

  “Yes.”

  “One of the few, though. One of the few, and you don’t need to tell me how much of that is my responsibility, Grady. I understand it.”

  “That’s not the way anyone else is telling it,” Grady said. “You see the papers? You’re on the front page.”

  “So was my dad.”

  “They’re saying different things about you, though.”

  Frank didn’t respond to that.

  “You let Devin go,” Grady said. “Had him and let him go, there at the end. I saw the reports.”

  A nod.

  “It was the right thing to do,” Grady said, and his voice was so rigid, grandfatherly, none of the relief coming through in it. And it was relief, because a day earlier when the kid stood in this room with a gun in his hand he had somehow done the right thing, despite all the energy Grady had invested into priming him for the wrong thing.

  “Anybody heard about him?” Frank said. “Has he turned up somewhere?”

  Grady shook his head.

  “I was sure that he would,” Frank said. “Sure of it. He’ll need a hospital. I’d be surprised if he didn’t, at least. Nobody’s blaming me for letting him walk, though. Wasn’t my job, they keep saying.”

  “It was the right thing to do,” Grady said again. “And I need to explain that to you.”

  “I get it, Grady.”

  “No, Frank. No, you do not.”

  Frank tilted his head and squinted against the sunlight, and Grady finally opened his mouth and let the truth out.

  “I was seventeen years old,” Frank said when he was done. It was the first thing he’d said in a long time, Grady doing all the talking, speaking too fast, trying to rush out as much as he could before Frank went nuts, blew up.

  He never blew up. Just sat there and listened and didn’t show a thing, and it took Grady back to those first few conversations in the house in Kenilworth and made his cowardice and corruption play through his eyes again, everything here so damn similar except that this time Frank was an adult and Grady was telling the truth.

  “I know,” Grady said. “Frank, I know. You were a child, and one who’d suffered a loss, and we—”

  “Turned me into a gun.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what you said he wanted to do. My father. That he’d raised me to kill. And while you were saying that about him, you were loading me up and pointing me at Devin.”

  “We didn’t want you to go after him. We thought that you might know something, and we needed to push the right buttons to see if . . .” Grady stopped talking and shook his head. “Shit, you’ve got me defending it now. I’m not going to. It’s like I said, Frank, I’m telling the truth now, and it had to start with you.”

  Frank stood up and walked to the window, looked out at the lake. There was a flat-bottomed boat within sight, divers adjusting their masks before going back in, still searching for Atkins.

  “You are a bastard,” Frank said, but it was without any venom at all, or even energy.

  “I’m going to resign.”

  “I don’t care about that. Why would I care if you kept your damn job?”

  Grady didn’t say anything.

  “I’d just turned eighteen,” Frank said, “when I called Ezra Ballard and begged him to go to Miami with me to kill Devin. Begged him. He said he wouldn’t, so I said I’d go alone, and he made a compromise with me. Said as long as Devin stayed down there, the hell with him, let him rot. But we’d never let him come back here. Never.”

  Grady was sitting on the couch with his elbows on his knees, staring up at Frank, who hadn’t turned from the window, didn’t even seem to care that Grady was still in the room.

  “Kudos,” Frank said, “on a job well done, Grady. You set out to convince me that Devin deserved retribution, get me fired up about it, consumed by it, right? Well, you got the job done. Yes, sir, you got it done.”

  “I want you to know,” Grady began, but Frank continued talking as if he hadn’t heard him.

  “I was relieved when Ezra told me the prick was coming back. Well, not at first. At first I had some sense. But then this fat bastard professor asked me if I’d write a memoir, and it was like fate, right, confirmation that there would be no getting away from this legacy, ever. Then I was relieved, Grady. I was absolutely relieved. Because I could finally welcome it.”

  He stopped looking at the search boat then, turned to face Grady. “Devin was important to me. He gave me somebody to hate, somebody to blame, who wasn’t my father. I’m not saying he was enough for me to give the old man a pass, but he was enough to distract me. To redirect some things.”

  “I understand that.”

  “I came up here to kill the guy for no reason, is what you tell me now. But he’s still a piece of a shit. You know that. They’re looking for one of his bodies out there right now. So maybe I should have gone ahead and done it.”

  Grady shook his head. “No.”

  “It would have made sense to me then,” Frank said, “because I had my reasons. Now I don’t. But other people have still got theirs, right? So maybe I should have done it for their reasons. Why are they any less valid than mine?”

  Grady was quiet. Frank said, “How many sorts of crimes has Devin been involved with, you think?”

  “Plenty.”

  “No, give me a number.”

  “I don’t know, Frank. What, dozens?”

  “Dozens,” Frank said, nodding. “And deaths? How many deaths?”

  “The same. There’s a reason we wanted him so bad, Frank.”

  “Yeah. That’s my point. There were plenty of reasons.” He looked around the cabin. “I had him here yesterday with a gun in his mouth and my finger on the trigger. And if the son of a bitch hadn’t been so sick, if he hadn’t looked like he was dying, I probably would have pulled it.”

  “It’s good that you didn’t.”

  “Is it?” Frank said. “I don�
��t know about that, Grady. I don’t know. But I don’t want to be the one who has to decide. I do not want to play that role.”

  They stayed in the living room for a long time without speaking, and eventually Grady stood and said he was leaving.

  “Devin didn’t give my father up,” Frank said. He wasn’t looking at Grady.

  “No.”

  “Somebody did.”

  Grady was silent.

  “It was an anonymous tip, says the legend. From someone close to him.”

  Grady had given his word never to reveal that source. There were divers out in that lake who were proof that Grady’s word wasn’t worth a damn, though, and maybe Frank was entitled to it by now. Surely he was entitled to it by now.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said, “and this time it’ll be the truth.”

  Frank was shaking his head. “No,” he said, and Grady would always remember the awkward way he finished it—“I would like not to know.”

  Grady nodded, and he left, and he did not tell him. Would never tell him, or anyone, about that day when an attractive woman whose dark hair and skin were contrasted by striking blue eyes came into his office and said, I would like to talk with you about my husband.

  When they’d finished that day, he’d praised her bravery, lauded her for doing the right thing. She’d looked at him as if he were insane. Brave? she said. Doing the right thing? It’s got nothing to do with that. I’d never have told you anything. I love him. But he’s going to ruin my son, Mr. Morgan. And I cannot let that happen.

  39

  __________

  They let Ezra out of the hospital seven days after he went in, and Frank picked him up in his own truck, drove south from Minocqua with the windows down and fresh air blowing in, the highway filled with cars towing boats, the first weekend of fishing season under way.

  “How’ve the dogs been?” Ezra asked.

  “Disgruntled.”

  “Good. Nice to see some concern on the home front.”

  “The doctors say when you’ll be able to get back out on the boat, back to work?”

  “They might have, but I don’t recall listening to it. I think it’ll be soon.”

  Frank had already tried offering apologies to Ezra, tried to explain how he’d have handled things differently if he’d understood the situation, how he should never have believed Vaughn. Ezra had cut him off every time, not interested in hearing it, not needing to hear.

  “What about Devin?” Ezra said. “Any word?”

  Frank just shook his head. During the first few days he’d been sure news about Devin was on its way. The memory of his face there at the end left Frank convinced he’d turn up in a hospital somewhere—or dead. That was the preferred option, that he would turn up dead and Frank would able to shake his head and think about just how little would have been accomplished if he’d pulled the trigger, realize that he’d have removed nothing more than a few days of pain from Devin’s existence. Yes, that was what should happen.

  It hadn’t happened, though. The days ticked by and no word came, Devin and Renee still gone.

  “He’s got the right sort of friends for this,” Ezra said. “People who can help him disappear.”

  “He does,” Frank agreed, and he could feel his finger on the trigger again, see that circle he’d traced in Devin’s hair with the gun barrel.

  “You talked to Nora?” Ezra said.

  “Called a few times. Haven’t heard back from her.”

  “She still in town, though? Or has she gone home, after all this?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “How about you? Headed home soon?”

  “Headed where?” Frank answered, and Ezra nodded, and they drove on in silence.

  Nora didn’t get back to the shop for five days. The cops had taken Vaughn’s Lexus, and now she had no cars left but the Mazda that Jerry had refused to repaint. Nobody to fix any cars that came in, either. She tried to finish the Mazda herself, spent three days on the paint job, creating runs and streaks and then sanding them back down and starting over and making it worse. By the third day the car was an absolute disaster, and she finally called another shop across town and towed it over to them. The owner, a man who’d known her father well, painted it in one day and then had it towed back to her shop, with her check for the work sitting on the driver’s seat.

  She called the car’s owner to tell him it was ready, and he came over immediately, more anxious for conversation than for the car. He’d read about her in the papers, he said. Hell of a story.

  He left with the car, and then it was just her and an empty shop. No business, no employees. More bills on the way.

  Frank Temple had called a few times, left messages. Why did he want to see her so bad before he took off again? Did he think there was some sort of closure for this, some nice, neat wrap-up to such awful events? She didn’t call back. It was surprising that he was even still in town.

  Her mother called daily, first to politely urge her to return home, then to demand it. Nora said she was considering her options, and then she called the local newspaper and put out an ad for a new body man and painter.

  The ad ran for a week, and she interviewed two guys. Told them she’d be in touch, but the truth was they couldn’t handle the job, and she couldn’t pay them even if they could. That Friday, she answered her father’s constant question honestly for the first time, told him, no, we don’t have any cars. Then his face fell, and she responded with a lie, promised some were on the way in, that things would be too busy by the first of the week.

  The shop was lost, and she supposed she should have felt relief at that. It ended the uncertainty, at least. She could go home now. So why did she feel so damn sad? Her father was part of it, of course—the idea of leaving him in this town without any family still haunted her—but today she was more aware than ever of what had always helped her linger: She didn’t know what came next. It was that simple, that sad. While her peers were caught up with their families or careers, she still waited for the road sign that told her which way to turn. Tomahawk, and Stafford’s Collision and Custom, had provided a welcome delay. Now the delay was past and the uncertainty remained and, worst of all, she’d failed at the one goal she’d set. The family shop was closing, and not on Stafford terms.

  The next Monday found her alone in the empty shop. The phone rang several times, but it was always a long distance number. Reporters, not customers. It was nearly noon and she was getting ready to leave for lunch when Frank Temple came through the door.

  “Hey,” he said, letting it close softly behind him. He looked good, all the bruises and nicks gone. The black-and-blue streaks on her arms were gone, too, but she continued to wear long sleeves every day.

  “Hi,” she said. “I know, I owe you a call. It’s been hectic, though. I figured you might have left town already.”

  “No.” He looked around, taking in the quiet place, her sitting alone in the little office. She felt pathetic, didn’t want him to see it.

  “How are things?” he said, and she meant to tell him they were fine, she really did, but somehow the truth came out instead. She wasn’t weepy about it, wasn’t sentimental, just told it like it was. She was going to have to close the shop, and that was that. Head back to Madison, or maybe, much as she hated to think of it, to her stepfather’s house in Minneapolis.

  “I saw your ad,” he said. “If you hired somebody new, couldn’t you get it going again?”

  “The truth is, I couldn’t afford to pay anyone until we’d made some money, and that takes time. Most body men don’t want to work on spec. And really, I need two people, because most aren’t going to be able to do what Jerry did.”

  He nodded. “How much would you need to make it till then?”

  What was this about? She didn’t like the question.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but it’s going to be more than a bank will want to loan a company that’s already overextended and has no employees and no customers.”r />
  He nodded again, just taking all of this in as if it were minor stuff.

  “I was thinking I’d like to invest in something,” he said. “I’ve got some money left, and rather than burn through it and then go looking for income, I thought it would be a good idea to put it into something promising. An up-and-coming business, something like that. Or maybe one with some history. Some tradition. You know, a proven entity.”

  She was shaking her head before he was done.

  “I don’t take handouts. It’s generous, a very sweet offer, but no.”

  “I don’t give handouts,” he said. “Maybe you missed the investment part of what I said? I’m thinking of something different entirely. More like being a partner.”

  She kept right on shaking her head.

  “I don’t want a partner. If I can’t do it alone, then I’ll just get out.”

  “You know,” Frank said, “being strong doesn’t necessarily mean being alone.”

  She looked at him for a long time, then pulled her chair closer to the desk.

  “Dad told me the only partner worth having was one who’d get his hands dirty, share the job side by side.”

  “Then I’ll share the job.”

  “You don’t know anything about fixing cars.”

  “No,” he said, “but we can find some people who do. And I’m pretty sure I could drive a plow in the winter.”

  “In the winter.” She said it carefully, a verification.

  “Made more sense to me that way,” Frank said. “But if you want me to drive the damn plow in the summer, Nora, I’ll do it.”

  He stopped talking and looked her in the eye, and she saw something surprising there, a deep and powerful quality of need.

  “You could think about it,” he said. “You could do that much, couldn’t you? I don’t want to go. I’d like to stay here. It’s the best chance I’ve got.”

  They sealed the deal on a handshake. It was a start.

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