The Betrayer

by Daniel Judson

  He wasn’t used to clarity, to acting thoughtfully as opposed to blindly. Nor was he used to fear turning in his gut like some living thing. And though seeing his hands tremble was something he had seen before, he could honestly say that he never remembered it ever having been because of crippling fear.

  But when eleven o’clock at last came around, he grabbed his cell phone and stood, steadying his hands long enough to enter the number to Elizabeth’s landline.

  He did so without first pressing the three-key code that would block his own number from appearing on her caller ID — the “star” key, followed by the “six” and “seven” keys. It felt strange to him to omit that precaution now — a dangerous thing to do, all things considered, and one that would likely appear to Elizabeth as nothing less than an act of outright betrayal.

  But he needed her to pick up, and this was the only way he knew of that would guarantee she would.

  He moved to the only window in his small living room and looked down on West Tenth Street. He knew the quiet, tree-lined street well and saw nothing that struck him as unusual. It had rained earlier in the evening, spring showers that were at times heavy, but the storm clouds had moved off about an hour ago, leaving behind a clear night sky and a city that smelled sharply of wet pavement.

  The rain having passed was his first piece of luck. He hoped it wouldn’t be his last.

  One ring, two rings, then three — he began to worry that Elizabeth wasn’t home. Or that maybe her husband was and would be the one to pick up. It wasn’t till midway through the fourth ring that his call was answered. He heard Elizabeth say in a soft but slightly alarmed voice, “Jesus, Jeremy, what are you doing, calling me like this?”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes. But what if I weren’t?”

  “You told me a few weeks ago he’d be out of town tonight.”

  “He could have come back early. Or not gone at all. Plans change, you know.”

  “It’s important,” he said. “I needed to make sure I got through to you tonight. Anyway, all you have to do is erase my number. You know how to do that.”

  “I thought we agreed that we were taking a break.”

  Jeremy had just turned twenty-one, and Elizabeth was forty-two and married. She worked as a project manager for a pricey design and renovation firm, had overseen the work being done to a midtown restaurant where Jeremy tended bar. He didn’t hang on to jobs for long, either got fired for one reason or quit for another. He had a strong distrust of authority and something of a temper, even more so now that he was clean. But he had remained at that particular restaurant long enough to cross paths with Elizabeth. He worked the day shift, and she often sat at the bar for hours to wait for vendors or sign for deliveries or watch over work crews. She had felt drawn to Jeremy from the start; he was obviously a troubled young man, and he had the tragic good looks — and emotional stability — of a nineteenth-century poet. She’d read too much Austen in college, had had girlish crushes on Keats and Shelley. Jeremy, because of his soft looks and wounded vulnerability, was as tempting as candy to some women. Elizabeth, married and lonely in every way possible, had proven to be no exception.

  In the two months since he’d quit, they talked on the phone every day, sometimes several times a day, sometimes for hours, even met for coffee now and then, when she could get away. She was an elegant woman, with long chestnut hair and steady blue eyes, and he wanted her from the moment they met, craved her in a wild way. Sexually, yes, but it was more than that, too. For her, their friendship, as risky as it was, filled a gaping void in her life; Jeremy needed her, and in a way that she wasn’t needed at home. Hadn’t ever been needed. It was all as simple as that.

  But recently they’d begun to stray further and further into dangerous territory. Flirting, playful confessions, hand-holding in public but out-of-the-way places — and there was something in the way he took her hand and looked at her, something in his gray eyes.

  The hunger of a boy who had lost his mother too early. The pain of a young man who blamed himself for his father’s death.

  The pull he had on her was palpable. Having too much to lose, though, Elizabeth had put on the brakes, called for a time-out, but not before they — it was she who initiated it, actually — had crossed a line that should never have been crossed.

  That damned photo.

  “Like I said,” Jeremy said, “it’s important.”

  There was a lingering pause, then: “What’s going on?” Her voice was softer.

  “That man I was telling you about, I’m meeting with him tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “He says he has something to show me.”

  Her tone changed instantly. “Don’t go, Jeremy.”

  “I have to.”

  “I think we should talk about this first.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. Anyway, I need to leave now if I’m going to make it.”

  “Where are you meeting him?”

  “Downtown.”

  “Pick a place nearby, a coffee shop or something, and I’ll meet you there beforehand. I can be there in an hour.”

  “There isn’t time. Anyway, I didn’t call for this, Beth. I didn’t call so you could try to stop me.”

  “Then why did you?”

  “I need you to do something for me.”

  “What?”

  “If anything happens, I need you to tell my sister everything I’ve told you.”

  A sigh, then: “I can’t do that, Jeremy. I can’t accept that responsibility.”

  “You said you still wanted to be my friend. I’m asking you this as a friend.”

  “You should just tell her yourself.”

  “She wouldn’t believe me. I’m the crazy one, remember? When I have the proof in my hands, then they’ll have to believe me.”

  “Wait for me there. Okay?” He knew by the way she was speaking that she had gotten up and was moving around in a hurry. He’d never seen her bedroom but for some reason always imagined it as lushly furnished and dark.

  “I have to do this,” he said.

  “You don’t, though. That’s the problem. You were just a kid. What could you have done?”

  She knew more about the night his father was abducted than anyone. He’d told her things he’d never told another — not the police, not doctors or therapists or any of the women who had come and gone in the years since. She knew things even his own family didn’t know. Maybe the fact that Elizabeth had held out and kept their friendship from boiling over into an affair was what allowed such an intimacy to grow between them. He felt safe with her, in a way he’d never before known. Other women had been much weaker than she, had given in to their need for him quickly, only to leave him just as quickly when his intensity, which was what had first attracted them, proved too much to handle.

  “I need to go, Beth,” he said.

  “Wait for me, Jeremy. I can be at your place in an hour.”

  These words, and the way they were spoken, served to instantly weaken his resolve. He was surprised by them, that she had spoken them. What didn’t surprise him was his reaction to them.

  He said nothing, though. She must have sensed his vulnerability.

  “I’m getting dressed right now,” she continued. “Wait for me there. Please.”

  He saw that in his mind, saw her scrambling to gather clothes, putting them on as she kept the phone wedged under her chin. She’d confessed to him once that she could never come to his place because she wouldn’t last five minutes alone with him. He thought now of blowing off the meeting and waiting for her. Would she offer herself to him to keep him from leaving? Would she undress herself for him, while he watched, let him do all the things he wanted? All the things that they had both confessed to wanting — late one night over the phone, she in her home up in Westchester, he in this West Village apartment, thirty miles between them, thirty miles keeping them safe.

  As much as he craved that — as deep into his soul the pleasu
re of that would undoubtedly reach — he knew he couldn’t let himself have it.

  Any night but tonight.

  “I’ll text you when it’s done,” he said. “It shouldn’t take more than an hour or two. If you don’t hear from me, then I need you to let my sister know what happened.”

  “And how will I do that, Jeremy? I mean, without getting involved? How can I come forward like that? How can I explain it to my husband? You’re putting me in a bad situation.”

  It was the first time he’d heard even a hint of anger in her voice.

  “I know I am,” he said. “I’m sorry. But I don’t have anyone else I can turn to. I don’t have anyone else I can trust.”

  “I’m walking out the door right now, Jeremy.” He could hear the sharp echo of shoes quickly crossing a wooden floor. “Stay there, okay? I’m your friend and I care about you. I don’t like the sound of this guy, I told you that. You said yourself it could be dangerous. I’ll be there in an hour. Just wait for me—”

  He abruptly closed his cell phone. His heart was pounding, his mouth and throat dry. He needed a moment before daring to open the phone again. When he did, his hands were once again shaking.

  He thought immediately of scoring some heroin. Of course he did. His mind still did this now and then, still reverted to its old pattern of craving. It would be so easy for him to find a fix. Just one phone call, maybe two. He even knew one dealer who would be more than happy to deliver to his door. One hit and he could shut off his thoughts as well as his feelings. Numb the fear, the guilt, his desire to be seen by one person as lovable, even if that one person was married and would never leave her husband for him…

  Instead of punching in any of the phone numbers he still knew by heart, Jeremy sent his sister’s phone number to Elizabeth’s cell via text message. He made a point of sending Cat’s personal cell number and not her office number. He realized that he should have told Elizabeth he would be doing that; it might have alleviated some of her fears about having to get involved in any official way. He had no desire to destroy her life; he’d destroyed too many already.

  But he didn’t dare call her back to tell her this. He knew he could not resist her pleading for him to wait for her a second time.

  He powered down his cell phone, in case she tried to call back, dropping it into the hip pocket of his jeans. Grabbing his laptop from his kitchen table, he slipped it into a backpack, then paused to consider the possibility that Elizabeth might not come through for him. Was he asking too much of her? Or would she get halfway here and decide that all this was a bluff, a means of manipulating her into bed? Anything was possible. There was also the real possibility that he might get himself killed in the next few hours. He didn’t want to dwell on that, but he couldn’t ignore the facts, either. The old Jeremy ignored facts, lived a life of delusion, not the new Jeremy, the clean Jeremy, the Jeremy who saw things clearly.

  And who, unfortunately, felt fear — real fear — for the first time.

  Jeremy’s father had faced death countless times, first in Vietnam and then as an undercover FBI agent. A celebrated agent, once. His grandfather had faced death on D-day, and so had his great-grandfather, in the trenches of France during the First World War. And Johnny had been eager to face it, couldn’t wait to join the army and follow in the Coyle tradition of bravery and service.

  But that was Johnny. Of the two of them, he was the strong one; he was the athlete, the champion, the one destined for greatness. He wouldn’t be afraid, Jeremy thought. He knew no fear. He wouldn’t hesitate for a second.

  But he wasn’t Johnny.

  The concept of death scared him, but out of that fear came a degree of clarity. He knew that he needed a backup plan of some kind. Too much was at stake. He couldn’t leave a note and risk that the wrong person might find it. Someone had betrayed his father, someone close to the man, and if this went bad, if all his careful planning fell to shit, then events might actually lead Cat to the very person Jeremy most suspected.

  The last man to have spoken with their father on that terrible night three years ago.

  The one man there would be little hope of any of them ever getting to.

  It took Jeremy a moment, but then he thought of something that he could do. How he could leave crucial information behind in such a way that only Cat would find it.

  It was an old game he and his sister had played in their childhood. Something their father had taught them to do.

  He opened a nearby drawer and removed a notepad and pencil, then sat down at the table and wrote a quick note. Just three things. Only three things — it was all he dared to risk. Anyway, Cat would know what they meant. He had faith in her. And she was the one who’d had faith in him the longest. She was the last in their now-fractured family to give up on him, having held on to hope for him long past the others.

  He pressed down hard on the page with each stroke, and when he was done writing, he removed the page and left the blank notepad on the empty table.

  Right there, in plain sight.

  Folding and pocketing the page on which he had written his note, he returned the pencil to the drawer, then put on his vintage leather jacket and headed for the door, shouldering the backpack as he exited.

  He was halfway down the outside hallway when he found himself slowing to a stop and pausing yet again.

  He thought once again about waiting, being here when Elizabeth showed up. He thought of her perfume and the smell of her hair. Even just the memory of that was enough to cause a tugging in his gut. He loved her deeply, though he’d never told her that, never said it aloud, not in those exact words. He loved her for her kindness and the ease with which she had come to care for him. A motherly kind of care — yes, he knew that, saw all that, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t try to fix him the way others had. She didn’t tell him — well, not till a moment ago — that he shouldn’t feel what he was feeling. She had simply listened, always listened.

  But if he stayed now, and if she stayed the night, the root of his torment would still be there when she walked out his door in the morning. He knew this. It would always be there, driving him during his waking hours, haunting him in his dreams as he slept.

  His father was dead because of him. There was no doubt about that. He was the reason a team of thugs had been able to draw the man out. He was the reason they had been able to abduct his father and bring him to an enemy who wanted him dead, who killed him and disposed of his body in a brutal way.

  But it wasn’t just that he was the cause of his father’s death that he was unable to endure. It was the man’s posthumous disgrace, the accusations — false accusations, Jeremy knew — that his father had been corrupt, that instead of risking his life in a series of undercover operations against organized crime, he had actually been working for the men he claimed to have infiltrated, providing them with information in exchange for cash.

  Cash no one had been able to locate.

  A traitor — a betrayer — was what the newspapers had called him.

  If I accomplish this, though, Jeremy thought, if I clear his name once and for all, then maybe I can redeem myself in some small way. I can’t bring the man back, but I can give him back his good name. I can do that much. Life had to get better then, no?

  And even if I’m killed trying, well, either way I’d be free of this fucking guilt.

  And I’d have done what Coyles do.

  He continued forward, picking up speed as he reached the end of the hallway, then rushing down the three flights of stairs and out onto West Tenth Street. He looked around quickly, could see nothing to be concerned about. He’d been on his own since he was fifteen, had always done whatever he’d needed to do to make his way. He counted on his street smarts to get him through this.

  Still, his hands continued shaking, his heart pounding, his thoughts racing.

  It was a warm night for June, and despite the clear sky, dampness hung in the air. His motorcycle, a beat-up Ducati Monster, was parked between t
wo cars, perpendicular to the curb. Despite the warmth, he knew that once he got the bike up to speed the wind chill factor would make his leather jacket a necessity. His helmet was secured to the bike’s trellis frame by a bicycle lock. He removed and pocketed the lock, pulled his leather gloves from inside the helmet, and put the gloves on, then the helmet. Mounting the bike and inserting the key, he turned the ignition.

  The sound of the exhaust echoed down the street, shattering the quiet. Shifting into gear, he pulled away from the curb and was gone.

  Chapter Three

  Elizabeth lived in Chappaqua, thirty miles north of New York City. She knew there would be little traffic on the Saw Mill River Parkway at this time of night, and that this would give rise to the temptation to speed. It took all she had to keep her Volvo under sixty-five. Being issued a speeding ticket — here, now, on a night when her husband was out of town — was a risk she simply couldn’t afford to take.

  She reached the West Village in just under an hour but couldn’t find parking on West Tenth. Locating a spot two blocks down, she pulled in and rushed back to Jeremy’s building on foot. She noticed that his motorcycle wasn’t where he always parked it but still hoped he’d be there. Maybe it was parked elsewhere, or in the shop, or maybe he’d sold the damn thing like she’d asked him to. Entering his building she climbed the stairs, then let herself into his place with the key he had given her on their last meeting. His apartment was small — a narrow living room, corner kitchen area, even narrower bedroom, and tiny bath — so within seconds of stepping inside she knew he had not waited.

  Out of breath, she paused. It was strange to be in his place. She felt like a criminal. What if someone had seen her enter? She began quickly searching through his things, looking for anything that might tell her where he had gone. She started with the kitchen table and drawers, then for some reason expanded her search to the cupboards. Nothing. There was a notepad on the coffee table in the living room, but nothing was written on it. In his bedroom she found only clothes, a few books, most of which were memoirs of addiction and recovery, and a single framed photograph of a woman she assumed was his mother. She knew Jeremy was greatly affected by his mother’s death. He had been, from the way he talked about her, clearly her favorite. Elizabeth was surprised by how much she resembled the woman. Same thick dark hair, same build, same sharp, Anglo features. The more she looked at the photo, though, the more she realized that she shouldn’t have been surprised by this at all.