Bechet made a left onto Montauk Highway, heading east. Past the first bend was Peconic Road, a narrow side street that wound northward through the Shinnecock Hills. It wasn’t much more than a mile long, and the few houses to be found along its edges, lower-middle-class cottages, were mostly unoccupied this time of year. At its peak Peconic crossed the train tracks, and just beyond that was a secluded area. No cottages to be found there, only a bridge that crossed over Sunrise Highway. On the other side of the bridge, Peconic wound its way back downhill till it ended at North Road.
Bechet made the turn onto Peconic. After a moment he reached the top of the hill, crossed over the train tracks, then turned into a narrow pull-off, followed it as far as the terrain would allow. Beneath the tires gravel, spillover from the train tracks, crunched. The sedan was parallel to the tracks now, just a few feet from it, twenty feet in from the road. This was as private as it was going to get. Bechet killed the motor and lights, leaned across the seat and opened the glove compartment, shining his flashlight inside, searching for anything that might pass for intelligence. An address, a phone number, anything. The glove compartment was empty, though, didn’t even contain a fake registration. Bechet shined his light into the backseat. It, too, was empty, spot-clean. Finally Bechet searched the front seat, saw a folded-up wool blanket, several inches thick, there no doubt to keep LeCur warm on long stakeouts. Beside it was LeCur’s cell phone. Bechet grabbed the phone, slid it into the pocket of the field jacket, and was about to get out when he spotted something sticking out from under the blanket.
It looked like the corner of a book. Bechet moved the blanket aside, saw a pocket-sized Moleskine notebook on the seat. It was open, lying facedown. Bechet picked it up and turned it over, read what was there on the page.
It stopped him dead in his tracks.
He was looking at Gabrielle’s license plate number. Below it was the make and model of her car.
Shit.
Up to this point Bechet had been planning on running, leaving LeCur alive in the trunk with a message for Castello, a warning to leave him and his friends alone. All Bechet cared about was getting Gabrielle safe first, then figuring out what to do from there. He had a year ago set up a way of escape for them, complete with several routes laid out and a place for them to hide, everything they would need ready to go, ready to be grabbed at a moment’s notice. But this was all contingent on Gabrielle’s identity remaining unknown to Castello and his men. No name, no trail for them to pick up, nothing. With Gabrielle’s license plate number in Castello’s possession, all that was blown. Bechet had run before, could easily do so again. But lying low and starting over, that was one thing. Outrunning the price of betrayal, outdistancing a man of means like Castello, that was something else altogether. You can’t look where you’re going—really look where you’re going—when you’re too busy looking over your shoulder.
Bechet closed the notebook, pocketed it, then looked down at his lap. He closed his eyes, breathed in and out a few times, then opened his eyes again, lifted his head and looked through the windshield, down the tracks that led straight past Gabrielle’s cottage, the tracks he had run night after night as part of his preparation for this.
He opened the door, grabbed the folded-up wool blanket from the seat, and stepped onto the gravel. He would leave no tracks on such a surface. He took a look around, quick but careful, then stepped to the rear of the sedan, slid the key into the lock and popped the trunk open.
LeCur had turned onto his back. He looked up at Bechet, but saw only a dark figure with an equally dark sky behind him. Barely distinguishable, one from the other. He could, though, make out the gun in Bechet’s hand, see it moving toward him. He felt the cold metal of its muzzle pressing hard against his head.
“Who else knows her license plate number?” Bechet said.
“What?”
“Did you call it in to anyone? Does anyone other than you know her license plate number?”
LeCur was quick, sensed the change in Bechet, sensed his intent. Bechet was aware of this, as aware of LeCur as LeCur was of him. They had been, once, family.
“Yes,” LeCur said.
“Who?”
“I made a call while I was waiting.”
“To who?”
LeCur shook his head. “Kill me and you never find out.”
Bechet stepped back, removed LeCur’s cell phone from his pocket, scrolled through the recent calls. Incoming and outgoing were listed in one file. There were the calls from his son’s cell phone a little before one, then nothing till the calls Bechet had made from his Jeep and the calls LeCur had made to his son’s cell phone as Bechet made his way up the driveway. Nothing else in the span of time between those calls.
There wasn’t a lot of time to argue this point. Either LeCur had told his son when they had last spoken, when LeCur had told him that he had arrived at Gabrielle’s, or else he had told no one at all. Whichever was the case, it was clear to Bechet what needed to be done so he could make his escape.
Nothing left to chance.
“I’m sorry, Jean,” Bechet said.
He stepped to the trunk again, placed the folded-up blanket over LeCur’s head, then pressed the muzzle of the Desert Eagle deep into the fabric.
“Jesus, Pay Day, wait,” LeCur said.
Bechet ignored the plea, pulled the trigger without hesitation. The gun kicked hard against his palm, and the flat crack of the shot, muffled even as it was by the blanket, rang out in the still night.
Bechet didn’t bother firing a second round, even though he’d been taught to do just that. A double tap, as it was called, to be certain of fatality. But there would be no need for that with a .50 caliber round; LeCur’s skull was easily in a dozen pieces now beneath the thick blanket. And anyway, one rupture in the quiet night, however muted it may have been, however isolated Bechet believed himself to be, was more than enough.
Bechet dropped the heavy gun into the trunk. It landed with a thud. He grabbed one of the garbage bags beside LeCur’s body, then swung the trunk closed and made his way over the gravel and up onto the train tracks.
As he had done hundreds of times before, he ran those tracks, though tonight he ran them with everything he had, a lone man cutting fast through the darkness toward the only thing that mattered.
A hand gently touching her shoulder awakened Gabrielle.
She opened her eyes, looked up and saw Bechet by the light of her small reading lamp, sitting on the edge of their bed, leaning over her.
“You need to get up,” he said.
She was groggy from oversleeping but still heard something in his voice, heard it right away.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“We need to leave.”
“What happened?”
“We’re okay right now, but we don’t have a lot of time. Do you have your grab bag?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Where is it?”
“In the closet, on the top shelf.”
Bechet stood, crossed the small room, opened the closet door and stepped inside. He reached up to the top shelf, pulled down a nylon ditty bag, carried it by its draw cord and placed it on the foot of the bed.
“Get dressed, okay?” he said. “Wear layers, just in case.”
Gabrielle swung the blankets away and rose from the bed. She was naked, instantly felt the cold of the room on every part of her. Yesterday’s clothes were on the floor; she stooped down to gather them together. When she stood she saw that Bechet was kneeling in front of her bureau, reaching under it. He pulled something free and then stood up, stepping aside so Gabrielle could access the drawers. As she opened one she looked at him, saw that he was holding a metal container the size of a paperback book. He pulled off the tape that had held it to the bottom of the bureau, discarded it and then opened the box, making a quick check of its contents. All Gabrielle had time to see was a stack of twenty-dollar bills and several brass keys. Shiny and new. Bechet closed the meta
l container and dropped it into the pocket of the black jacket he was wearing. Gabrielle realized then that she had never seen that jacket before.
“Meet me downstairs,” Bechet said. “And don’t forget all your documents.”
Gabrielle nodded. She was still naked, her clothes in a clump in her arms. Bechet hurried down the stairs, his footsteps hard on the planks. Gabrielle dressed, a combination of the clothes she had gathered up from the floor and items from her bureau. Jeans and T-shirt, over that a thermal shirt and a white fisherman’s sweater. Layers, like Bechet had said. She dressed fast, didn’t bother with a bra, had never really needed one, only ever wore one when it was required, for propriety’s sake. There were advantages in having small breasts, she thought now, moving fast, just as there were advantages in having short hair. No need to fuss, so much less to carry. Everything she would need to live for a few days, in fact, was in the ditty bag—essential toiletries, changes of underwear, a half dozen Clif Bars and a large bottle of water, a decent first-aid kit and a battery-powered charger for her cell phone. Under her bed was a pair of insulated boat shoes. She grabbed them, pulled them on, then felt under the mattress for the watertight pouch that contained her passport and Social Security card, checkbook, and recent tax returns. She grabbed that, too, then yanked her cell phone from the charger on the table by her bed and headed down to the stairs.
Her bills—utilities, credit cards—were kept in a tray on her kitchen counter. Bechet was collecting them when she entered. He handed them to her as he dialed his cell phone and waited for his call to be answered. She put the bills and her document pouch into the ditty bag. All her mail was sent to a post office box in town, not to the cottage. Bechet had advised it; this way no one could stake out her place and steal her mail if they ever had to leave in a hurry, collect information on her that way. Bechet, too, had suggested that she shred all her paid bills and junk mail. He had even brought a shredder over not long after he had started sleeping there.
Finally, whoever Bechet was calling answered.
“I need you to pick me up,” he said. “At the Hampton Bays station. The trains are running from Southampton now, right? Both directions? Okay, good. In your own car, though.” He looked at his watch. “As soon as you can. I think we can just make the last train. All right, thanks, man.” Bechet closed his cell phone.
“Jake, what’s going on?” Gabrielle said.
“I need you to go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
“Just tell me now. Please.”
“We’re okay, Elle. I promise. We just need to hurry.”
He didn’t give her a chance to respond. He took her coat—a snug denim thing with a fur-lined collar—off the hook by the door and handed it to her. As she put it on he took her by the arm and led her from the cottage and up the incline to her Rabbit. He moved more steadily than fast. She noticed as they walked that Bechet was holding an empty garbage bag but didn’t bother to ask him what that was for. He told her to get in behind the wheel, that she was going to drive. She hurried to that side of the car. Instead of heading for the passenger door, though, Bechet walked past her car and out into the dark road. He picked something up off the ground—two things, in fact—and stuffed them into the pocket of the black jacket. Then he picked up something else. It was a leather coat. He stuffed it into the garbage bag as he walked to the passenger door.
He opened the door, laid the bag on the seat, then walked behind her car, scooped some mud with his gloved hands and packed the handful onto the rear license plate, obscuring some of the numbers. He went around to the front of her car, did the same there. Back at the open passenger door, he removed his gloves and threw them into the garbage bag, then tossed the bag into the backseat and climbed in.
He told her they were going to the Southampton station.
“But you said the Hampton Bays station on the phone.”
Bechet nodded. “I know. Drive nice and slow, okay. We should have twenty minutes.” The Southampton train station was a fifteen-minute drive at this time of night. If the fog continued to lift, returning to treetop level, they shouldn’t have a problem.
At the bottom of the gutted road, Gabrielle turned left. Bechet looked behind them as she carefully handled the winding road. Shreds of fog, the menace that killed her parents, here and there. Though she wasn’t the type to panic, her heart was pounding.
“Jake, baby, what’s going on?” Her voice was even and calm. This, she noted, pleased her.
“I need you to lay low for a couple of days.”
“Are you in trouble?”
He nodded, turned forward, dug the book-sized metal container from his pocket and opened it. “Yeah.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“I used to work for somebody, a long time ago. He wasn’t a good guy. He found me, wants me to something for him, something I don’t want to do.”
“What does he want you to do?”
Bechet was going through the container, didn’t answer. He was, Gabrielle could tell, focused on this moment, on what he was doing, what was at hand.
Beneath the stack of twenties was a narrow manila envelope and a pen. Bechet took them out, closed the container again and used its surface to write on the outside of the envelope.
“Here’s an address,” he said as he wrote. “You’re going to take the train to Penn Station, from there take a cab to this address. It’s a safe part of town, you’ll be okay. There’s a security system, too, so I’m writing down the code. I want you to wait there till you hear from me.”
“You’re not coming?”
“I’ll be a few hours behind.”
“Jake.”
“There’s something I have to do first. One last thing.”
“What?”
“Just listen, Elle, please.” He finished writing, then opened the container again, grabbed the stack of twenties—all of them—and stuffed it into the envelope. He did the same with two of the brass keys, held together by a small, curling wire.
“This is five thousand dollars,” he said, “and the keys to the door. You have thirty seconds to punch in the code. After you’ve done that, lock the door behind you and reactivate the alarm system. It’s not the coziest place in the world but it’s safe. There’s food and bottled water, so you shouldn’t have to leave for a while.”
He laid the envelope on the console between their seats. Gabrielle glanced down at it, caught one word.
“Brooklyn?” she said.
“Yeah. Williamsburg. You’ll be fine.”
“Who’s place is this?”
Bechet looked behind them again.
“It’s my place. My father left it to me. Like I said, it’s not much, but it’ll do for now. I wrote a phone number on the envelope. Call me on that number when you get there.”
He looked forward again, returned the pen to the container and closed it, put the container back into the pocket of the jacket.
“I don’t have that phone on me yet,” Bechet said. “I should have it in about a half hour, though. I will only call you from that number, okay? If your phone rings and it’s any other number but that one, I don’t care if it’s someone from work or a friend, don’t answer, okay? Do you understand?”
Gabrielle nodded. “Yeah.”
“If for some reason I need to call you from a number other than that, I’ll call, let it ring twice, then call back and let it ring once. If I call a third time after that, it’s safe to answer.”
Bechet looked behind them once more.
“Who is this man?” Gabrielle said. “The guy you used to work for?” Again, her voice was even and calm.
“I’ll tell you everything when I catch up with you.”
“Tell me now.”
“It’s the past, Elle,” Bechet said. “I thought we didn’t want to talk about our pasts.”
“It doesn’t seem to be in the past anymore now, Jake. I love you, you know that, but you’re
asking me to take off in the middle of the night and hide out in some strange place. I need a little more here.”
Bechet looked forward then. After a moment he nodded once and said, “His name is Castello. I used to work for his family.”
“What do you mean, family?”
“They ran a number of businesses.”
“What kind of businesses?”
“Drugs, prostitution, money laundering, extortion. You name it. There were some legitimate businesses, too, but they mainly served as fronts. It wasn’t small-time, either. The family was involved in some major international deals. Big-time money. I’m talking tens of millions sometimes for one deal, for one day’s work.”
Gabrielle didn’t want to ask her next question, but she had to know.
“What did you do for them?”
Bechet shook his head, a gesture, he hoped, of respectful refusal. Finally, he shrugged and said, “I was a boxer, Elle. What kind of work do you think I did?”
Gabrielle said nothing, just looked through the windshield and drove. They had reached the village, and she steered her Rabbit through its empty streets toward the train station. Once there she parked in its empty lot, shut the motor off.
She sat still now. With no sound from the motor or the heater or the occasional swish of the wiper blades, there was only silence between them. She stared at the long train platform ahead. Finally, though, she spoke.
“So you were, what, hired muscle?”
Bechet nodded. “Yeah. It was a long time ago. I didn’t know how else to make money back then. I didn’t do it for long, if that makes a difference.”
Gabrielle took a breath, let it out, then took another, let that out.
“Did you ever kill someone?” she said finally.
“Would it matter?” Bechet said. “If I had, would it matter?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you ever felt anything other than safe with me?”
The Water's Edge Page 16
