Lieutenant Gillotte’s skeptical smile.
The shrunken, lifeless lump inside that black body bag.
Brian Gold’s naked childlike body in those grainy black-and-white photographs—
The phone beside my head bleated. I started to pick it up, then pulled my hand back.
I’d turned the answering machine off, so the phone just kept ringing.
After a minute, I reached over and unplugged it.
Then I let my head fall back on my pillow.
I didn’t really sleep, and it certainly wasn’t restful, but when I opened my eyes and looked at my watch, I saw that it was after ten o’clock. I’d stopped shaking, and my stomach was no longer flip-flopping.
I took my unfinished glass of whiskey out to the kitchen and dumped it down the sink. Then I made myself a fried-egg sandwich. I ate it standing over the sink. I realized I was famished. I made another sandwich, ate that one, then had a banana. I found a bag of oatmeal-and-raisin cookies and ate half of them.
Then I got a Coke from the refrigerator and took it into my bedroom. I picked up the phone and started to dial Evie’s number before I realized I had no dial tone.
I plugged the phone in and tried again.
She picked up on the second ring.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Oh, God,” she said. “Where are you? What’s going on? I’ve been trying to call you all night. Are you all right?”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“I saw it on the news. Is it true?”
“I killed a man today. Yes. What are they saying?”
“Nothing, really. They interviewed some police detective, and all he’d say was that you were not under arrest at this time, and that the victim was a known criminal. They showed a mug shot of him on the television, one of those head-on police pictures. He looked like a nasty man.”
“At this time? Is that what they said?”
“Yes.” Evie hesitated. “Brady, about the weekend …”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I was—I don’t know. Upset with you.”
“I figured you were.”
She was silent for a minute. Then she said, “Sometimes I don’t think it’s working.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I didn’t want to be with you,” she said.
“You were with me when I needed you.”
“Yes. Of course I was.”
“Then, in the morning, you couldn’t get away from me fast enough.”
“I’m not sure I can explain it,” she said.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to.”
“I would if I could. It’s just …” She laughed softly. “We do have some fun, don’t we?”
“I know I do,” I said. “Sometimes I’m not so sure about you, though.”
“I had a date,” she said. “Both days.”
“Whatever,” I said. “We’ve got no commitment.”
She laughed quickly. “No, we don’t, do we?” She hesitated. “Her name is Mary.”
“Mary,” I repeated. “Jesus. Don’t tell me—”
“Oh, Brady. Not that.” She chuckled. “Mary’s an old friend, for heaven’s sake. She and I used to hang out a lot.”
“Before I came along.”
“Yes. Saturday we went to the MFA. We always used to go to the museum on Saturdays, then go treat ourselves to dinner in a fancy restaurant. We spent all day Sunday dumping quarters into the slots down at Foxwoods.” She hesitated. “Would you ever spend a Sunday at Foxwoods with me?”
“Not if I could help it.”
“See,” she said, “sometimes I like to do things like that.”
“I don’t like casinos,” I said. “Crowds, noise, glitz. Everybody after your money. Such an intense, desperate quest for pleasure. It depresses me. I don’t like shopping, either, or lying around on a beach, or ballet or opera or rock concerts. I don’t like paying money to be entertained. I can entertain myself.”
“What about Red Sox games?”
“That’s different,” I said.
She laughed. “Anyway,” she said, “I know how you are. So I went with Mary. I had to get away, that’s all.”
“Away from me,” I said.
“I guess so. I like to go places sometimes, and it’s no fun going with somebody who’s miserable.”
I lit a cigarette. “I’m not very good at talking about this stuff.”
“Yes,” she said. “Don’t I know it.”
“Relationships,” I said. “How I feel. I don’t like to analyze those things. It doesn’t seem to get me—us—anywhere.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, “I felt guilty the whole time I was away, you know.”
“That was dumb.”
“It felt like I was cheating on you.”
“I thought of that, actually,” I said.
“That I was cheating on you?”
“Like I said—”
At that instant somebody started banging on my door. It was loud and insistent, and a man’s voice was calling my name.
“Someone’s here,” I said to Evie. “It better not be more reporters. Hang on.”
I took the phone out to the door and peeked through the peephole. It was Horowitz.
I opened the door for him, and he pushed past me. “Okay, Coyne,” he said. “We gotta—”
“I’ve got a buzzer, you know.”
He shrugged. “Figured you’d think it was a reporter and ignore me.”
“You’re right.” I pointed at the telephone I was holding. “Make yourself at home. Be right with you.”
I went back into the bedroom. “It’s Lieutenant Horowitz,” I told Evie. “I’ve got to go talk to him.”
“Sure,” she said.
“I’ll call you.”
“Not tonight,” she said. “I’ve been worrying about you all evening. It’s past bedtime, and you’re okay, and now I’ve got to get some sleep.”
“I meant I’d call you later in the week,” I said. “We’ll have ourselves a nice weekend. Maybe go somewhere. I don’t mind museums.
“I’ll call you,” she said. “Let’s leave it that way.”
I looked at the phone for a minute after she disconnected. Then I put it back on its cradle and unplugged it again.
TWENTY-ONE
After I hung up with Evie, I went out to my living room. Horowitz was standing at the glass sliders with his hands clasped behind his back, staring down at the harbor. The ferry was on its way out and some kind of barge was on its way in. Both craft were brightly lit. Their lights made wavy reflections on the wind-riffled water.
I stood beside him. “Kinda pretty, huh?”
He shrugged. He needed a shave, and his eyes were red, and his thinning black hair stuck up in clumps on the back of his head.
“You look like shit,” I said.
He rubbed his whiskery cheek with the palm of his hand. “You got a drink?”
“Sure,” I said. “I quit drinking, myself.”
“Yeah? Since when?”
I looked at my watch. “Little over an hour ago.”
He shrugged. “I want one. I don’t give a shit if you have one or not.”
“An hour is long enough,” I said. “I’ll join you.”
He followed me to the kitchen and slouched into a chair at the table. I poured each of us a drink, then sat across from him.
Horowitz held up his glass. “Pretty, ain’t it? The way the light comes through?”
“I never noticed,” I said.
He took a gulp, held it in his mouth for a moment, then swallowed. He closed his eyes and sighed. Then he looked at me. “You’re probably thinking you killed the bad guy today. Mystery solved. Case closed.”
I shrugged. “I’ve been trying not to think about it, to tell you the truth.”
“As soon as their ballistics boys match up that slug they dug out of your office wall with the ones they found
in Sprague and the professor, run a couple bullets through Bobby Klemm’s gun, that’s how they’ll play it.”
“How will they explain Klemm’s motive?” I said.
Horowitz shrugged. “They won’t. They don’t have to. Why bother? They don’t have to prosecute him. He’s the killer, now he’s dead.”
“So it’s over,” I said.
“Good chance of it. Officially, anyway.” He arched his eyebrows at me.
“But—?”
“But that’ll just be for public consumption, to give the media something, let everybody know they did their job, solved a multiple murder.” Horowitz dipped his finger into his drink, then touched it to his tongue. “They ain’t going to leave it lay, though. Chris Stone might be an asshole, but he ain’t stupid, and the same goes double for Gus Nash. It won’t sit right with either of them. Why the hell would Klemm assassinate a mild-mannered college professor in a barn, plug a chief of police in that very same professor’s motel room, and then try to rob a lawyer in his own office at gunpoint? Especially when the professor’s kid just died in a car crash, and the professor happened to be that lawyer’s client and lived in the same town as that chief?”
“Because Klemm was dealing in kiddie porn and those three people found out about it,” I said.
“Yeah, if you shared those photographs with them, that’s maybe how they’d see it.”
“Well, I’m not going to do that,” I said. “The hell with motive. The bad guy’s dead. That’s good enough.”
Horowitz took another sip from his drink. Then he put it down on the table and leaned toward me. “Bobby Klemm was no child pornographer, Coyne.”
“Then who—?”
“I don’t know. But I talked with some people this evening. People who knew Klemm.”
“Who?” I said.
He shrugged. “Don’t matter who. Klemm was strictly a freelance gunslinger. Worked for hire. Killed people. That was his job. You want somebody dead, you pay Bobby Klemm, he’ll do it. He was pretty good at his job, but he never had an original idea in his life. People I talked to, they laughed when I hinted at kiddie porn. Not Klemm. He wasn’t smart enough.”
“So you’re saying the real bad guy is some mysterious pornographer, and he hired Klemm to—”
“To kill the people who found out about it,” said Horowitz.
I nodded. “Okay. I get it. Jake Gold found those photos in his son’s bedroom and went to his friend Ed Sprague. Sprague did some investigating, got a line on whoever it was, and—”
“Sprague’s the one who killed those kids, don’t forget,” said Horowitz.
“Right,” I said. “So Sprague was in on it.”
Horowitz nodded. “But he was sloppy. That accident made a mess for them. So they hired Klemm to clean things up. Didn’t just whack the two of them, though. First he tortured the professor, who told him about giving you those photographs. Then Klemm set up Sprague in Gold’s motel room. Then he went after you.”
“So I was right,” I said. “Klemm would’ve killed me.”
“No doubt about it. You and Julie both. Like I say, that was his job. Killing people. First he had to retrieve those photos.”
“But he failed.”
Horowitz nodded.
“Which means,” I said slowly, “whoever hired Klemm isn’t done with me.”
“Not as long as you’re holding on to those pictures.” He arched his eyebrows at me.
“You’re saying I should just give them to Gus Nash?”
He shrugged. “Make him agree to tell the media that you’ve turned over important evidence in the case. Bad guys hear that, maybe they’ll leave you alone.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And maybe not.” I shook my head. “I’m not gonna do it.”
“You might not have a choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look,” he said. “Nash and Stone know damn well Bobby Klemm doesn’t walk into some law office to commit robbery, okay? Nothing random about this. It was your office he went into. You’re Professor Gold’s lawyer. Klemm had to be after something. Nash and Stone’ll hound you for it.”
“Let’em,” I said. “I’ll play dumb. Those photos are staying in my safe. Nobody knows they’re there except you, me, and Julie.”
Horowitz gave me his Jack Nicholson smile. “I figured you’d say something like that. Just remember, there’s a hundred Bobby Klemms out there. Nothing special about him. Whoever hired him will hire someone else.”
“You trying to scare me?”
Horowitz nodded.
“You’re doing a good job of it,” I said.
“I figure you got a few days to play with,” he said. “It’ll take’em that long to find a replacement for Klemm, and it might take Nash and Stone that long to connect the dots and figure out you got something the bad guys want. You better hope it’s the cops who come after you first.”
“Then what?” I said.
“Then you probably ought to come across with those photos.”
“And if I don’t?”
He shrugged. “You get too stupid and stubborn, Coyne, you’ll have to deal with me.”
“You promised,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I had my fingers crossed.”
“Wait a minute—”
“I’ll give you a few days,” he said. “See what happens. After that, fuck it. I’ll come and get them photos myself.”
Horowitz held up his glass. It was empty. I took it, poured him a refill, and handed it to him.
He swirled the whiskey around in his glass. “I been working my ass off this evening,” he said. “Made a million phone calls, talked with some of my colleagues. Had a very interesting conversation with a couple guys in vice.” He took a sip, then peered at me. “I asked’em about the kiddie porn industry in Massachusetts.”
“I bet it’s thriving,” I said.
He shook his head. “Internet’s the way to go these days. They can upload, download, in, out, and offload this shit. Photographs, films, live stuff, even, whatever, buy and sell, hard as hell to trace.” He waved his hand. “Anyway, point is, from what the vice boys’re telling me, no new players in New England have come into the game in the past year or so.”
“Did you describe those photos to your colleagues?”
He shrugged. “A description wouldn’t do much good.”
“But you’re saying these photos aren’t being sold or traded?”
“Those photos are worth shit. Still photos, black-and-white, lousy quality? You seen the stuff you can rent at your local video store?”
I shook my head.
“A few years ago,” said Horowitz, “those photos might’ve been worth something. How old are they?”
“They’re all recent pictures of Brian,” I said. “Okay, so what happens next?”
“So far, we got four murders,” said Horowitz. “Five, counting what you did today. Who’s next, do you figure?”
“Me, I guess.”
He grinned. “That’d be my guess, too. You prepared to die to protect the reputation of a kid who’s already dead?”
Brian, I thought, isn’t dead. But I wasn’t going to reveal that. Not to Horowitz, not to anybody.
“Of course I don’t want to die,” I said.
“Then maybe you oughta—”
I shook my head. “You said I’ve got a few days. I only just saw those photos this afternoon. I haven’t had much chance to think it through. It’s all pretty confusing right now. But this is what feels right to me, okay?”
He looked at me blearily, lifted his glass, drained it, put it down on the table, then stood up. “You’ve always been a stubborn bastard, Coyne. No sense even talking to you.” He put both hands on the tabletop and shoved his face close to mine. “So, okay,” he said. “It’s about time you started thinking and stopped going on what fucking feels right. Think about what I been telling you. You don’t turn over those photos, and make damn sure the entire world knows you don’t have’em any
more, there isn’t much I can do for you.”
I looked up at him. “Oh, I’ll do some thinking. I guarantee that.”
“Just don’t go doing something stupid.”
I smiled. “I can’t guarantee that.”
TWENTY-TWO
It was after midnight when Horowitz left.
I waited fifteen minutes to be sure he was gone. Then I put on my jacket, took the elevator down to the parking garage, and climbed into my car.
It occurred to me that I could be followed, and I didn’t think it was paranoia. Whoever had hired Bobby Klemm knew that he’d failed. They weren’t done with me.
Nor were the Boston police. Safe to assume that they considered me a suspicious character. After all, I had killed a man.
For that matter, I wouldn’t have put it past Horowitz to stick somebody on my tail.
I didn’t want to lead anybody to Brian Gold.
Traffic was predictably sparse on the Boston streets at half past midnight on a Monday night in February. I kept my eye in the rearview mirror as I wandered up and down and in and out of the hilly one-way streets in the North End, and I kept looping back around on myself until I was satisfied that nobody was following me.
Then I found Cambridge Street, hopped onto Storrow Drive, headed west, and took the Fenway exit.
It took me as long to find a parking space after I got there as it did to drive from my place on Lewis Wharf to the apartment behind Symphony Hall where Brian was holed up.
I figured somebody would still be awake. If I knew college kids, the night was young.
I found the building, went into the foyer, and squinted at the rows of buttons beside the mailboxes. I pressed number twenty-two.
A minute later the door buzzed. I pushed it open, climbed the stairs to the second floor, and knocked on the door at apartment twenty-two.
Jason, the kid who’d been there before, pulled it open, releasing a blast of amplified guitar into the hallway. He blinked at me. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”
“You were expecting somebody else?”
“I certainly wasn’t expecting you.”
“Sorry. Can I come in?”
He shrugged. “I guess so.” He stepped back, and I went into the apartment.
Scar Tissue Page 17
