The Betrayer

by Daniel Judson

  Like endless currents of electricity reaching deep into his bones.

  He was naked and the motel room, as dark as a cave, was once again cold. He hoped that might help numb him, but so far his injuries were all there was in the world.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said.

  “Do you feel up to telling me what’s going on?”

  Johnny took a shallow breath, then looked at her and said, “Dickey is up to something.”

  “Do you know what?”

  “No.”

  “What happened?”

  “He sent me to look for Jeremy, gave me money and a big pep talk, but it seems he has been withholding some important information from me.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “For starters, that Jeremy has actually been looking for him.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I went to an old friend of Jeremy’s. A guy named Atkins. He told me that he’d heard from Jeremy about a month ago, and that Jeremy had asked if he could set up a meeting with Dickey.”

  “Atkins could do that?”

  “He’s a dealer. He works out of one of Dickey’s bars.”

  Haley couldn’t help but wonder if the bar they ran for Dickey was a front as well. But she pushed that from her mind.

  “How did you find him so fast?”

  “That’s the thing, Hay. Dickey sent me straight to him. According to Atkins, Dickey knew that Jeremy had asked about arranging a meeting. He also knew something else, something he didn’t share with me.”

  “What?”

  “That Jeremy had uncovered some repressed memories.”

  “Of what?”

  “The night our father was killed.”

  “How?”

  “Hypnosis.”

  Haley thought about that, then asked, “Do you know exactly what it is he’s remembered?”

  “No. Atkins didn’t say. Jeremy hadn’t told him.”

  “I don’t get it. Why would Dickey send you to find out something he already knew?”

  Johnny looked at her. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe Dickey wanted you out of the apartment so Richter and his men could get to me.”

  “There are easier ways to get me to leave the apartment, don’t you think? And anyway, what would grabbing you get Dickey? What purpose would it serve?”

  To Haley, there was only one possible answer to that.

  One possible motive to everything Dickey McVicker did.

  She shrugged. “Leverage. Use me to get you to do something you wouldn’t normally do.”

  “But why send me all the way into Manhattan, Hay? He could have sent me on some other errand. He could have sent me to our bar, for that matter, made up some bullshit excuse.”

  “Maybe they wanted to be certain there’d be plenty of time. With you all the way in Manhattan, they wouldn’t have to worry about you coming back too early.”

  “I don’t think that’s it. And anyway, it only brings us right back to the same question. What would Dickey gain by taking you?”

  Haley shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

  Johnny began to run last night’s timeline through his head — crossing the bridge in the cab, walking to Vincent’s on Mulberry Street, talking with Atkins, leaving Vincent’s in a hurry, the subway ride back to Williamsburg.

  How long had all that taken? An hour? Maybe a little more?

  Plenty of time for Richter simply to cross a street and climb some stairs.

  More than plenty, actually.

  Suddenly a thought occurred to Johnny.

  “When exactly did Richter show up?”

  Haley needed a few seconds. “It was right after you texted me,” she recalled.

  “Yeah, but which text? I sent you a few.”

  “The text telling me to go downstairs.”

  “Did you make it down there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long did that take you?”

  “A minute. Not even. I went to the closet, moved the cases of water, and climbed down, just like we’d practiced.”

  “And how long were you there before Richter showed up?”

  “Not long. A few minutes, maybe.”

  “More than five, less than five?”

  “Less. Three, at the most. Why?”

  Johnny did the math. “That’s about the time it would take for Dickey to call Richter and for Richter to get out of the watch car and let himself in.”

  Haley nodded. “Yeah, okay, but what does that mean?”

  “Dickey gave me a cell phone so I would have a direct line to him. I had just assumed that he would use its GPS to track my whereabouts if he had to. I’m pretty sure now that he used it to listen in on everything Atkins and I said.”

  “A cell phone can do that?”

  “If it’s equipped with a hot mic, yeah. Cops use them, but I’m sure Dickey could get his hands on one easily enough. Richter’s showing up when he did, at the exact moment he did, that can’t be a coincidence, Hay. He didn’t storm our place the minute I left, which he would have done if that had been their plan all along. No, Dickey had to have heard Atkins and me, and something Atkins said caused him to pick up the phone right away and send Richter to get you.”

  “But why would Dickey eavesdrop on you if he already knew what Atkins was going to tell you? For that matter, why would he send you to Atkins if Atkins had information he didn’t want shared with you?”

  Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Haley waited a moment, then said, “Tell me everything Atkins told you.”

  Fiermonte carried Jeremy into the West Tenth Street apartment and laid him on the bed, then stepped out into the living room while Cat remained behind to tuck her kid brother in.

  She drew the blinds to keep out the daylight — heavy wooden blinds from when their father had lived his nocturnal, dangerous life here.

  A secret life meant to protect his real life up in Ossining.

  The life he could barely be part of.

  As always, this place held many memories of the man. Even now, Cat couldn’t take a step without seeing something and remembering him.

  She checked on Jeremy — his breathing was slow but steady — then turned to leave. Passing the bureau, on which stood several framed photographs, she paused.

  A wedding photo — her mother and father together, laughing, her father so handsome and fit at forty, her mother a thirty-year-old stunner with thick black hair. A photo of John Coyle Sr. in Vietnam, geared up and about to go on patrol. A photo of John Coyle Sr. holding a newborn Cat. A photo of his three children together — Cat, Johnny, and Jeremy when he was just a baby — Cat holding Jeremy, Johnny around five, wearing an army cap and saluting the camera.

  All she felt as she looked at these was an overwhelming sense of loss.

  This tiny apartment was that last remaining hub of the Coyle family.

  A museum to two lives ended too early, and a shrine to three lives that were not at all what they could have been.

  Should have been.

  The Temple of Squandered Potential.

  Cat was heading toward the door when Jeremy suddenly whispered, “Are we alone?”

  She stopped and turned. “You’re awake,” she said softly.

  He repeated in the same whisper, “Are we alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Donnie? Out in the living room.”

  An even lower whisper: “C’mere.”

  Cat walked to the bed. The room was so small it only took a few steps.

  Now that she was next to him, his whisper grew even more hushed. “I need to talk to you. I need to tell you things.”

  Cat nodded. “I know. But I think you should rest first, though.”

  “No. Now. Send him away.”

  “Why?”

  “Because right now, Cat, you’re the only one I can trust.”

  She hesitated, knew that paranoia was a potenti
al side effect of heroin use, but this seemed…different. Or maybe she wanted it to be different. She remembered the surveillance video of Jeremy — not for one moment had he looked high to her. She remembered, too, what Elizabeth Hall had said about Jeremy having transformed before her eyes.

  From a troubled boy into a determined man.

  Still, for an addict like Jeremy, relapse was always a possibility. Perhaps he knew about what had happened to Elizabeth. That would be enough to cause a return to his old ways.

  But something told Cat this wasn’t the case.

  Something in her gut.

  “Are you using again?” she said flatly. “Tell me the truth, okay?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “No. This was done to me.”

  “By who?”

  He shook his head again, then nodded toward the door. “Not till we’re alone.”

  Cat paused, then said, “Yeah, okay. I’ll be right back.”

  Fiermonte was standing in the center of the narrow living room when Cat emerged from the bedroom. His back was to her and he was holding his cell phone to his ear, listening intently. He turned to face her and held up one finger. Cat waited till he was done. She knew by his face that he had something to tell her, and that it wasn’t going to be good.

  He finally ended the call and said, “That was Morris. There was a car crash in Brooklyn last night. One of the cars seems to have been filled with men who work for Dickey McVicker.”

  “Johnny?” Cat said quickly.

  “No. But one of McVicker’s men is dead, and according to the coroner, he died of injuries unrelated to the crash.”

  “What kind of injuries?”

  “Someone fractured his trachea.”

  Cat couldn’t help but recall the feel of the cord closing tight around her own throat.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Apparently, about the same time you were up in Chappaqua.”

  “Did Morris say anything about Johnny?”

  “No. But the way the cops see it, there were five people in the car when it crashed. Three were McVicker’s men — the one found dead outside the vehicle, and two badly injured men found still inside the vehicle. The remaining two were an unknown male and female.”

  “How did they determine that?”

  “A fingerprint not matching any of the three men was found on the steering wheel, along with male hair on the dashboard. And on the passenger seat were several strands of long red hair. A woman’s hair.”

  “And?”

  “Johnny runs one of Dickey’s bars in Brooklyn. It’s a small bar and grill — burgers and sushi, popular with the hipsters. According to the owner of the shop next to it, Johnny’s girlfriend is one of the cooks. And she has long red hair.”

  Cat didn’t hesitate. “If Johnny killed a man, it was in self-defense, you know that.”

  “Unless he’s more involved with McVicker than he led us to believe.”

  “You’ve known Johnny his whole life. He’s as straightlaced as they come.”

  “Men change, Cat. Shit happens, and they change. God knows what he was up to while he was wandering around Southeast Asia. And when he gets back, the first person he gets in touch with isn’t you or me; it’s McVicker. For the past year, he’s been virtually off the grid — no address, nothing in his name, working off the books. Does that sound like the Johnny you remember? Does that sound straightlaced to you?” He paused. “Either way, I’m not sure that I like the coincidence of you being attacked by a professional killer at the same moment Johnny is being driven around by three of McVicker’s men — being driven around in a car that mysteriously crashes into another, a crash that Johnny himself might have caused.”

  “What are you saying, Donnie?”

  “Jeremy remembers something about the night your father was killed, and the next thing you know, all hell is breaking loose. The woman Jeremy was having an affair with is killed, along with her husband; some mysterious woman comes out of nowhere and tries to kill you; and Johnny and his girlfriend may very well be the only two people who were able to walk away from a car crash that left two of McVicker’s men crippled and another dead by the kind of blow someone trained in hand-to-hand combat would land. And let’s not forget what started all this off — some nasty-looking guy took shots at Jeremy yesterday morning. It looks to me like Jeremy’s recovered memories are making someone very nervous. Someone willing to kill to keep those memories, whatever they are, secret. Someone with access to hired killers.”

  “Why would Jeremy’s memories be such a threat to Dickey?”

  “McVicker was the last man to speak to your father, Cat. And Jeremy was being held as bait in one of McVicker’s apartments by one of McVicker’s own men.”

  “A man who betrayed him,” Cat said quickly.

  “According to McVicker, yeah. But what if his man didn’t betray him? What if he was doing exactly what McVicker had told him to do? What if everything McVicker did after that was just for show, just a cover?”

  “You’re saying Dickey McVicker had my father killed.”

  “You never had your doubts, Cat? Back when all this happened? I know I did. If you add all this up, where else does this point but to McVicker? He’s the common denominator. You were getting too close, so he tried to have you killed. For all we know McVicker’s men were taking Johnny and his girlfriend to be killed as well. And don’t forget McVicker’s theory about the guy who took shots at Jeremy. ‘He was trying to scare Jeremy.’ Did you buy that for one second, ’cause I didn’t.”

  Cat thought about all this, or tried to — between exhaustion and the lingering effects of the painkillers, not to mention the steady, sickening throbbing from her broken arm, her mind was mush.

  But somehow out of this chaos a single question emerged.

  No matter how she spun all this around, everything consistently distilled down to one thing.

  “Why would McVicker want to kill my father?”

  Johnny finished filling Haley in on everything Atkins had told him. After a moment, Haley stood and got a bottle of water from her stash of supplies. Opening it, she returned to the bed and handed it to Johnny.

  He took a sip, then another. Even talking was a drain on his strength.

  Haley, still standing in front of Johnny, said, “So Atkins’s message was pretty clear, wouldn’t you say? ‘Don’t believe a word your brother says.’”

  “More or less, yeah.”

  “‘He’s manic and paranoid, and you’re better off letting him do whatever it is he’s doing, even if it gets him killed.’ In other words, don’t waste your time finding him, but if you do, don’t bother listening to anything he tells you. Pretty cold, if you ask me.”

  Johnny shrugged. “Atkins is an asshole. Guys like him like to talk shit. Anyway, he knows about the crap Jeremy has pulled. And is still pulling. He’s probably had his fill of it, like everyone else.”

  Like you, Haley wanted to say, but didn’t.

  “I don’t know, Johnny, I wasn’t there, but it sounds to me like Atkins was maybe trying to talk you out of looking for your brother.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “If Dickey sent you to see him, then maybe he was telling you what Dickey wanted him to tell you.”

  “Why would Dickey do that? Send me all the way there just to get me to quit?”

  “So it would look like he tried to help, and that you bailed on your brother for your own reasons.”

  “If Atkins was reading from Dickey’s script, then why did he tell me that Dickey knew about Jeremy’s repressed memories? And that Jeremy had asked about a meeting with Dickey?”

  “Maybe Dickey didn’t think you’d ask. Or maybe Atkins screwed up by telling you what he did.”

  “A lot of maybes, Hay. And if Atkins did screw up like that, then he’d know he was a dead man. When I left him, he went about his business like nothing was wrong.”

  “I’m just trying to make sense of this mess, Johnny.”

  �
��I know. I’m sorry. But none of this tells us why Dickey sent Richter after you when he did. What exactly did he hear that made him do that?”

  Johnny fell silent. Haley waited a moment, then sat beside Johnny.

  “Do you think it’s possible that Dickey had something to do with your father’s murder?”

  Johnny looked at her. “No.”

  “You have that much faith in him?”

  “I told you, Hay, Dickey knew where we lived. He didn’t have to use my brother to bait him. It wouldn’t make sense for him to go to all that trouble.”

  “But what happened last night doesn’t make much sense, either.”

  “He saved my father’s life a dozen times. They grew up together.”

  “You said you and Richter were like cousins, but that didn’t stop him from betraying you. Or stop you from doing what you had to do to keep us safe.”

  “I just can’t get there, Hay.”

  “You don’t want to.”

  “Can’t, don’t want to, what difference does it make? You didn’t see what Dickey did after my father was killed. He went on a rampage.” Johnny paused, then said, “Men were killed. Some of them in pretty unpleasant ways.”

  Haley was once again thrown by the fact that she and Johnny had been so reliant for so long on such a man. She set that aside, though, and said, “But you said it yourself: Dickey is up to something. We can agree on that much, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And whatever it is, your brother is caught in the middle. And now so are we.”

  Haley held out her hand. In it was the prepaid cell phone she had removed from its packaging.

  “I think you need to tell your sister everything you know,” she said. “You’re going to have to put your differences aside for now. And you need to hear what your brother has to say. You need to finally hear his side of the story.”

  “I want to talk to Jeremy,” Fiermonte said. “Right now.”

  What Jeremy had just said to Cat was still fresh in her ears.

  You’re the only one I trust.

  So, too, was what she had said to Fiermonte.

  Why would McVicker want to kill my father?

  She had a choice to make, and she made it fast.