“You saw him there?”
“You did, too. He’s the guy who opened the loading dock door as you were driven in.”
It took a moment, but then Johnny saw the man in his mind.
“The smoker,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“And Jeremy says he saw these two men together.”
“Smith held him down while the other guy, a Russian, injected him.”
Johnny paused. “He’s sure it was a Russian?”
Cat knew by the way he asked this that he understood the significance of the nationality of Jeremy’s attacker.
“That’s what he says.”
Johnny thought about that for a moment, then: “Did Jeremy escape?”
“What do you mean?”
“If he saw their faces, why would they just let him go?”
“They didn’t just let him go. They beat the shit out of him. They shot heroin into him and dumped him in McCarren Park around dawn this morning.”
The location — so close to where he and Haley lived in hiding — unsettled Johnny, but he put that aside for now and continued.
“Were they trying to kill him? Trying to make it look like he died of an overdose?”
“I don’t know. But my guess is no.”
“Why do you think that?”
“He was high when we found him, but that was it.”
“We?”
“Donnie was with me.”
Johnny nodded but said nothing. The man being with Cat made sense. Fiermonte was to her, after all, as McVicker was to him.
Cat continued. “If Jeremy had been injected with enough to cause an overdose, he wouldn’t be able to stay awake. He wouldn’t be able to talk, let alone walk.”
“But does that make sense, Cat?”
“I’m not following.”
“Look, I know about his recovered memories. I talked to a friend of Jeremy’s, from a long time ago. Maybe you remember him. A punk named Atkins.”
“Rich kid turned dealer.”
“That’s him. He said Jeremy called him a month ago and told him about his memories. He also wanted to know if Atkins could set up a meeting with Dickey.”
“Hold it a minute,” Cat said. “How did you find him?”
“Dickey sent me to him.”
Cat said nothing.
“I know, it doesn’t make sense to me, either. But neither does Jeremy’s getting beat up, shot up, and left in a relatively safe part of Brooklyn. How did you find him, by the way?”
“He called me.”
“He had his phone with him.”
“Yeah.”
“So they dumped him with his phone. That doesn’t really add up, Cat. If Jeremy were a threat to Dickey — if what he remembered were a threat to Dickey in any way — then why would two men you think work for Dickey just let him go?”
“I know you owe him, Johnny,” Cat said. “I know you owe Dickey a lot, I get that, I do. And I know you’re all about loyalty, and that there was this loyalty thing between Dickey and Dad, that Dad had trusted Dickey with his life and ours for so long. But you might see things differently when you talk to Jeremy.”
Johnny said nothing. It was obvious to Cat that he wasn’t ready to do that, to face the brother he blamed for their father’s death.
But that was Johnny — black and white, right and wrong, good and bad.
For such a smart guy, he always did have a tendency to be ignorant to the gray areas of life, the shadowy places that existed between all things.
Blind, even.
Or at least he was when it came to his kid brother. Johnny didn’t seem to have any problem with Dickey McVicker’s dwelling in — and profiting from — those shadowy places.
Loyalty trumped all else.
Haley suggested that Johnny sit down, but he told her he was okay. He would stand there till he was on the verge of collapsing, Cat knew. Haley then asked Cat if there was any bottled water in the room. Cat stepped to the desk, grabbed a complimentary bottle of Fiji Water, then handed it to the woman.
Haley unscrewed the cap and offered the bottle to Johnny. He shook his head, keeping his eyes on his sister.
Cat was reminded of their childhood dynamic — she was the eldest child, but he was the eldest boy. The result was a constant vying for power, Johnny challenging her in every way. As they grew older, they competed endlessly for their father’s attention and approval. This drove them both to excel, but it also kept them apart.
That distance remained even now that they were adults.
And so did Johnny’s need to challenge her.
“Why did you change rooms at the last minute, Cat?” he said.
“We need to be very cautious from now on.”
“Is there reason to believe that anyone knows Jeremy is here?”
“He says he didn’t tell anyone.”
“That he can remember, right?”
“You’re saying he forgot.”
“I’m just saying maybe in his condition we shouldn’t rely on his memory.”
“It sounds to me like you want him to have relapsed.”
“Why would I want that?”
“So you can dismiss him. Like you did years ago. Like you’ve always done with him, since we were kids. You know, maybe that’s why they shot him up before they let him go. To discredit him, make sure that no one would listen to him.” She paused. “That’s why he didn’t come to either of us in the first place. When he recovered his memories, when he suddenly knew what he knew. He didn’t think we’d believe him. That’s why he was so determined to do this on his own.”
“So he’s told you what he remembered.”
“Yes.”
“And you believe him.”
She nodded. “I do.”
“So why do you need me in on this?”
Cat paused, then said in a softer voice, “I know what happened in Brooklyn last night. Fiermonte gave me a heads-up this morning. I won’t stop you from going, and I won’t look for you. Before you go, though, before you disappear again, you need to know what really happened. What our father did that got him killed. And you need to know the truth about the man who has been protecting you and your girlfriend for the past year.”
Johnny was quiet for a moment. “How bad does it look? Last night, I mean.”
“Hair in the vehicle. Yours and hers. A thumbprint on the steering wheel. And a man killed by a single blow.” She paused. “At first I thought when you came back to the States and didn’t visit me that you were just avoiding me, that it was still too painful for you to be around anything or anyone that reminded you of him. But I realize now that everything about the way you live says you’re a man in hiding. There’s nothing in your name, you’re entirely off the books, and the only hint that you exist at all is the record of you reentering the country over a year ago. So I’m assuming you’re hiding from something that happened during your travels abroad. Whatever it is, whatever would make a guy like you go to a man like Dickey for help, it has to be pretty bad. But this is bad, too, Johnny. The other men in the car can identify you, I assume. Maybe they will and maybe they won’t. Maybe Dickey can make this go away. But if he turns over on you, if he lets his men talk, then the cops will start looking into you. When they see you’re a ghost, they’ll want to know why. The places you went, they’re all documented by your passport, so it’s just a matter of sending e-mails and making phone calls to the right departments and the right people. After that it’s just a matter of time before whatever it is you’re running from catches up to you.”
Johnny said nothing. Cat knew she wasn’t telling him something he didn’t already know. But she also knew that if she was going to help him, she needed the truth about last night, and now.
“Were those men taking you two to Dickey?” she asked.
Johnny nodded.
“I need more than nodding right now, Johnny.”
He cleared his throat. “Dickey had Haley abducted, then left Richter and some men b
ehind to wait for me.”
“Why would Dickey do that?”
“He had bugged my conversation with Atkins. Haley and I timed it out, and it was something Atkins said to me that made Dickey make his move.”
“What?”
“Basically, that Dickey was withholding information from me.”
“What information?”
“For starters, he knew about Jeremy’s memories.”
“How could he know that?”
“Atkins had told him.”
“What else?”
“That Jeremy had asked Atkins if he could set up a meeting with Dickey.”
“Did he?”
“Jeremy only asked if he could, never called back to actually ask him to do it. Dickey had just stood there and played dumb to all this when the four of us met at his warehouse.”
“What else did Atkins say?”
“That some woman named Elizabeth Hall had sent Jeremy to a hypnotherapist.”
Cat hesitated at this.
“What?” Johnny said.
“Elizabeth Hall was murdered last night. She and her husband. The way Fiermonte figures it, it happened about the same time as your car crash in Brooklyn.”
“A hit?”
“Yes. A professional. A woman. Short blonde hair, prominent cheekbones, tall.”
Johnny glanced at Cat’s broken arm. “That’s when you got that,” he concluded.
She nodded. “Does Dickey employ anyone who fits that description?”
“Not that I’ve seen. But why would I? I just run a bar for him.”
Cat thought about all that. She got the sense, though, that her having survived an encounter with a hired killer altered the way her brother thought of her. It was something in the way he was looking at her.
They were, for now, and for the first time, on equal ground.
Two battered soldiers, the children of a soldier in a long line of soldiers.
“But I don’t understand something,” Cat said finally. “Why would Dickey send you to talk with Atkins in the first place if Atkins had information Dickey didn’t want shared with you?”
“That’s the wall we kept hitting. All I can come up with is Atkins screwed up.”
“If he did, it’s probably the last screwup he’ll make.”
Neither Johnny nor Cat spoke. The silence lingered for a moment. It was broken finally by Haley.
“Unless it’s something else,” she said.
Johnny looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“You told me it sounded as if Atkins had been trying to talk you out of looking for your brother and, at the same time, trying to talk you into not believing him if you did find him.” She looked at Cat. “And then you find him hours later, but he’s high on heroin, like maybe he’s back to using again.”
“What are you thinking, Hay?” Johnny said.
“What your sister just said, that someone wants your brother discredited.”
“What good would that do?” Cat said. “Jeremy’s repressed memories came out under hypnosis, and the sessions were all recorded. They were on a CD, which he’d hidden in a safe place. That’s why Elizabeth Hall was killed. She knew where the CD was. She was holding the key to it, literally. The only key, according to Jeremy.”
“So someone is after the recordings,” Haley said.
“Yeah.”
“And with those recordings gone for good, and Jeremy looking like an addict, who’d believe anything he said? Would his own brother and sister even believe him? You’re the only other people who might still care what happened to their father.”
Cat and Johnny looked at each other. Eventually a thought came to Johnny. “It would be safer to just kill Jeremy, though,” he said to Haley. Then he addressed Cat. “I mean, if he knows something someone wants kept secret, why not just kill him?”
“Because he’s the only one who knows the exact location of the CD,” Cat answered. “Elizabeth Hall was his fail-safe. She was the only other person who knew. If anything happened to him, she was to contact me.”
“Did she?”
“No, I found her. That code Jeremy left was to his cell phone account. There was a call to her landline, placed a few hours before he got shot at on Delancey. And there was a photo of her in his photo file.”
“How’d you recognize her?”
“I didn’t. Donnie did.”
“He knew her?”
“He’d seen her before, with Jeremy. At that restaurant he was working at.”
“She was Jeremy’s girlfriend?”
Cat shrugged. “They were close.” She paused, then: “She wore Chloé, like Mom used to.”
Johnny nodded. “Oh.”
“I think she was his only friend,” Cat said. “And it looks like I led McVicker’s hired killer right to her.”
“We still don’t know for sure the woman worked for McVicker.”
“Listen to what Jeremy has to say, and then try to tell me that.”
Johnny glanced briefly toward the closed doors. “So where is the CD now?” he asked Cat.
“All Jeremy told me was that it’s in a mailbox that one of those office-supply places rent out.”
“The key Elizabeth Hall had was to that mailbox?” Haley said.
“Yeah.”
“So does that mean whoever killed her has the key? And knows the box number and what store?”
Cat shook her head. “We don’t know. Maybe they just have the key.”
“Did they get try to the location of the box out of Jeremy when they had him?” Johnny asked. “When they were beating him?”
“According to him, they didn’t ask him a thing,” Cat said. “But maybe that’s why Dickey came after you. He wanted to use you as leverage. ‘Bring me the CD, Jeremy, or I’ll kill your brother.’”
“But that just brings us back to my same question,” Johnny said. “Why let him go?”
“They had to come up with a different plan when you and Haley got away. Maybe they thought if they let Jeremy go he would lead them to the CD.”
“That doesn’t feel right, Cat. They could have made him tell them where it was when they had him. But instead they beat him, shoot him up, and let him loose with his cell phone.”
“So maybe they wanted him to go running to someone,” Haley suggested.
Cat and Johnny looked at her.
Haley nodded toward Cat. “To you, maybe.”
Cat looked at Johnny. “Dickey said it himself. When we were trying to figure out why the guy on the surveillance tape had removed his suppressor before shooting at Jeremy. ‘To drive him to someone,’ he’d said.”
“I can’t imagine Dickey giving himself away like that,” Johnny said.
“He has always been bold, Johnny. Dodging charges has been as much sport as business for him. For all we know, that could have been a taunt for Donnie. The peace between them has always been an uneasy one.”
“But what would be gained by Jeremy coming to you?”
Cat shrugged. “Inflicting pain on someone is one thing. Your victim could hold out, or give you misinformation to fuck with you or waste time. But forcing someone to watch pain being inflicted on another is something else. Especially when it’s a loved one.” She paused. “You got away, and they couldn’t find you, so who else is left for them to use? I mean, that could explain why they didn’t bother to ask him anything when they had him.” Cat thought for a moment. “And it might also explain why Dickey’s bitch didn’t kill me.”
“What do you mean?”
“She attacked me in a way that wasn’t necessarily lethal. She was behind me, in the backseat of my car. She could have put a bullet in my head but slipped a garrote around my neck instead. And later on, when I was beating the crap out of her, someone came up from behind and knocked me out.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t see. But I wasn’t killed then, either. I came to and they were both gone. And you’d think I would have been killed, considering I’d gotten a goo
d look at her face and could ID her, maybe even track her back to her employer.”
“This happened around the same time Dickey’s men came for Haley and me?” Johnny said.
“That’s how we timed it out.”
“But if Jeremy was supposed to come to you,” Haley said, “then doesn’t that mean, at best, whoever is behind all this has the key but not the location of the box? I mean, that could be why they let him go to begin with, right? They simply didn’t need him anymore.”
“The office-supply store has surveillance cameras,” Cat said. “Whoever walks in and opens the box will have his face seen and recorded by two cameras. The safest way for them to get the CD is for Jeremy to open the box himself and bring it back to them. And the only way I can see for them to get him to do that would be if they had me or Johnny.”
“Or both,” Haley said.
“Did you check Jeremy for tracking devices?” Johnny said quickly.
“Yes.”
“They can make transmitters pretty small these days, Cat. It could be in his clothes, or something in his pockets you wouldn’t think twice about. A pen, a lighter. Or it could be in his cell phone.”
“We left his phone in the apartment on West Tenth. I was going to destroy it, just in case, but then I figured if it was bugged, we might need to use it later. Plus, if anyone is tracking him, then they’ll think he’s still there.”
“What about his clothes?”
“Left them behind, too. He changed before we came here.”
Johnny seemed assured by this. And a little impressed, too. He thought for a moment, then said, “Have you told Fiermonte any of this?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“At first because Jeremy asked me not to. He didn’t want to risk anything getting back to Morris or Smith. And I didn’t call Donnie after I talked to Jeremy because he’s an officer of the court, he took an oath, and the less he knows about your involvement in this, the better for all of us. For now, anyway.”
Johnny nodded, then took a breath. Cat could see the effort doing so required.
Time was running out.
Her brother needed to make his escape while he still could.
“You should talk to Jeremy now,” Cat said. “And then you should go. You’ve done all you can. I’ll take care of things from here. If you need money, I can give it to you. I’ve got some of Dad’s left. And if there’s anything I can do to throw the cops off your scent, I promise I will.”
The Betrayer Page 24